Fighting Style Feats in D&D 5e 2024

Fighting styles, how good they are and how to use them in D&D 2024.

How have fighting styles changed in D&D 2024?

In the 2014 Player’s Handbook, each fighting style available to each class was printed out as part of the class features. This duplicated many of the styles and took up a lot of space. To streamline this, fighting styles have been placed under the umbrella of feats, with this particular feat type being exclusive to a few martial classes.

The classes that can take fighting styles are the same as before (fighters, paladins and rangers). But now, every class can take every fighting style other than blessed warrior and druidic warrior which only paladins and rangers can take to specialise in spellcasting over weapon fighting. Previously, certain classes were unable to take certain fighting styles.

One fighting style has also been removed in the form of superior technique which in practice, wasn’t a great choice.

I’ve broken this down in the table below showing which options were available to which classes now and in the 2014 rules:

Fighting style	Fighter 2014	Fighter 2024	Paladin 2014	Paladin 2024	Ranger 2014	Ranger 2024
Archery	✓	✓	X	✓	✓	✓
Blind fighting	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Defense	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Dueling	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Great weapon fighting	✓	✓	✓	✓	X	✓
Interception	✓	✓	✓	✓	X	✓
Protection	✓	✓	✓	✓	X	✓
Superior technique	✓	X	X	X	X	X
Thrown weapon fighting	✓	✓	X	✓	✓	✓
Two weapon fighting	✓	✓	X	✓	✓	✓
Unarmed fighting	✓	✓	X	✓	X	✓
Blessed warrior	X	X	✓	✓	X	X
Druidic warrior	X	X	X	X	✓	✓

One other improvement is that fighters can now change fighting styles when they level up which wasn’t previously an option. Rangers and paladins don’t seem to have this option, but perhaps represents the greater versatility and specialism that fighters have in combat.

Examining the fighting styles

Below I’ve gone through all 12 of the fighting styles available in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. I’ve gone through how they work, tactics you can employ and rated them based on how well I think they perform. Most stay largely the same as their 2014 counterparts, but there are some important changes that come into play:

Archery – 4/5

Good for: Archers and anyone using projectiles a lot.

Ability: +2 to attack rolls made with ranged weapons.

Changes from 2014: Unchanged

Tactics: Not much to know here tactically, just enjoy hitting more often, but go for this if you expect most of your attacks to be ranged attacks.

One thing to be wary of is that ranged attacks do tend to be weaker than melee attacks. This is the trade off for the relative safety of attacking at range. So just be aware of your lessened damage output. Ranged fighting still remains effective in D&D 2024 though.

Having said that, it is a strong fighting style that’s easy to use and very effective.

Blind fighting – 2/5

Good for: Fighting while blinded.

Ability: You have blindsight with a range of 10ft.

Changes from 2014: This is the same even though the entry is shorter, relying on the explanation of blindsight to give the details of what you can do.

Tactics: This is excellent if you need it and pointless when you don’t making it difficult to recommend. Having said that, you can engineer it to be more useful using something like the darkness spell effectively allowing you to attack with advantage while enemies attack with disadvantage. It can be tricky to engineer though, gets in the way of allies and requires help from a friendly spellcaster.

Defense – 4/5

Good for: Anyone that wants to be a bit tougher and isn’t using unarmoured defense.

Ability: +1 AC while wearing armor.

Changes from 2014: This works the same.

Tactics: Nothing much, just make sure you’re not using unarmoured defense from a barbarian, monk or dance bard (in case you’ve multiclassed) and remember that a shield won’t count as armor here. Generally, increased defense keeps you in the fight longer so is more worthwhile than increased damage output, though it tends to be less fun. This does make this a really solid fighting style though.

Dueling – 4/5

Good for: Sword and shield warriors.

Ability: When you’re holding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you can add +2 to damage rolls with that weapon.

Changes from 2014: None, it’s the same.

Tactics: Note that you don’t need to have nothing in your other hand so you can wield a shield and increase your damage output bringing you more in line with great weapon fighters for damage output. It’s also worth being aware that a versatile weapon being wielded with 2 hands won’t gain this benefit as you won’t be holding a weapon in one hand.

Great weapon fighting – 2/5

Good for: Warriors using two-handed weapons, though the mathematics on this are quite unfavourable.

Ability: If you roll a 1 or a 2 for damage with a two-handed weapon, you can treat the roll as a 3.

Changes from 2014: This used to be a reroll if you rolled a 1 or a 2 rather than a flat increase to 3 damage. It’s more streamlined and quicker to use, but when your average roll for a 1d12 weapon is 6.5 (or 5.5 for a 1d10 weapon or 7 for a 2d6 weapon), you can see that what wasn’t a great option before is now even worse mathematically.

Tactics: Lets get to grips with the average increase in damage here. This will average an extra 1.5 damage if you roll a 1 or a 2 (2 more damage if you roll a 1 and 1 more damage if you roll a 2). The chances of this happening depend on the weapon your wielding, but we have to divide the average damage increase by the chances of rolling a 1 or a 2. This means we get an average damage increase that looks like the below:

• 1d10 – There’s a 1 in 5 chance of rolling a 1 or 2. Divide 1.5 by 5 and you get an average extra damage of 0.3.
• 1d12 – There’s a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a 1 or 2. Divide 1.5 by 6 and you get an average extra damage of 0.25.
• 2d6 – There’s a 1 in 3 chance of rolling a 1 or 2. Divide 1.5 by 3 and you get an average extra damage of 0.5. As it’s 2d6, you multiply this by 2 to get an average of 1 extra damage per attack.

If you compare this to something like dueling, which is a flat increase of 2 damage each attack guaranteed (and great weapon master can’t do better than that unless your rolls are terrible and you’re consistently landing 1s with 2d6) then this fighting style is clearly inferior.

If you are committed to using a great weapon, it remains an option and is better than nothing, but sadly, it’s one of the worst fighting styles available.

Interception – 3/5

Good for: Anyone that expects to regularly fight alongside an ally and wants to give some protection.

Ability: Use your reaction to reduce damage to an ally by 1d10 + your proficiency bonus.

Changes from 2014: None, it’s the same.

Tactics: Make sure you’re fighting next to a buddy and ensure you’re not fighting unarmed. That’s basically all there is to it.

There’s an interesting decision to be made between taking this or protection if you’re wanting to go for a protector build.

Protection is technically the superior fighting style as it provides more protection, however, the drawback of that is that it encourages enemies to attack you. Which is great for a tank like a paladin, but less so for a ranger for instance. If you’re the less durable of the party’s frontline warriors, you’re better off grabbing this.

Protection 4/5

Good for: Tanks with shields that want to protect their melee buddies.

Ability: Use your shield and a reaction to cause disadvantage to attacks against a nearby ally until the start of your next turn.

Changes from 2014: The big change in here is that all subsequent attacks also have disadvantage against your ally. Previously, your ally was just protected against the one attack.

Tactics: A great way to protect your martial allies. The main thing to make sure of is that you fight next to an ally.

Of course, the implication of this ability is that imposing disadvantage on all subsequent attacks against your ally is that your enemies will probably attack you instead. As such, I’d only recommend this if you’re ready to take a beating. If you are, then it’s a really effective way to protect your allies. If not, interception may be a better option for you.

While it is very effective and not hard to use regularly, just be aware that you won’t use this every turn like some other fighting styles.

Thrown weapon fighting – 2/5

Good for: Strength-based martials that need ranged attacks for when they can’t get into melee.

Ability: Deal +2 damage when you make a ranged attack with a thrown weapon.

Changes from 2014: The drawing your weapon aspect of this fighting style has been removed as the new rules now cover this as standard.

Tactics: This is comparable to dueling in the extra damage it deals out. However, the problem here is that if you’re using thrown weapons, it’s probably because your a strength-based martial that’s no good with bows, but might need some range for when you can’t quite reach melee combat. This means you’ll likely only be throwing a weapon once per combat (if that).

If you are opting for a fully throwing build, you’re in a luxurious position as usually these characters should be on the front lines absorbing a lot of attacks. The other use case might be a rogue throwing 2 daggers with each hand for an offhand attack that’s taken a level in fighter for a fighting style. But these builds are too niche to really rely on. This means that even though the damage increase is solid, this is a fighting style that’s actually quite hard to recommend.

Two weapon fighting – 4/5

Good for: Dual wielders.

Ability: You can add your ability modifier to the attack roll with your extra attack that’s been gained by wielding a second weapon with the light property.

Changes from 2014: The wording has changed slightly to account for characters using the nick weapon mastery property, but otherwise, works the same.

Tactics: You can pair this with a weapon with the nick weapon mastery property (like a scimitar or dagger) to preserve your bonus action. This makes dual wielding paladins and rangers a possibility and gives you extra chances to land your smites and make use of hunter’s mark. In fact, this approach can make a dual wielding ranger quite appealing alongside hunter’s mark and your other bonus action spells enhancing each attack you make.

In terms of value from this fighting style, you should be getting +3 damage per offhand attack at low levels with this going up to +5 at higher levels (assuming you go heavy on ability scores for your attack modifier). Compare this to dueling which gives you +2 per attack, then this seems pretty good. However, you can normally only get this bonus once per turn, dueling increases the damage of all your attacks so as you gain extra attacks, this scales more.

If you want to really beef this up, you can take the duel wielder feat and the nick weapon mastery property for 2 extra attacks per turn that both benefit from this fighting style giving you +3-5 damage on 2 attacks per turn which makes this very strong, but does require heavy investment elsewhere.

With that in mind, it does have the potential to grant the most extra damage per turn on a regular basis, but requires a lot of other things to make this work.

Unarmed fighting 3/5

Good for: Melee warriors that want to punch their enemies.

Ability: Your unarmed strikes now deal 1d6 + your strength modifier or 1d8 if you aren’t holding any weapons or shields. You can also deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage to a creature you’re grappling each turn.

Changes from 2014: None, this works the same.

Tactics: This gets your unarmed attacks on a par with weapon attacks that aren’t two-handed which is solid. It’s worth bearing in mind that you have multiple ways to use unarmed strikes which don’t need to be with your fists so you can even kick and headbutt if your hands are occupied.

Many abilities that required a weapon, now bake in the use of unarmed strikes too. For example, a paladin can use divine smite with their fists making an unarmed striking paladin a possibility too.

Blessed warrior 3/5

Good for: Paladins that want to use cantrips. Note that this fighting style is a paladin exclusive fighting style.

Ability: You gain 2 cleric cantrips of your choice.

Changes from 2014: None, this works the same.

Tactics: If you need a ranged attack, without having to invest in dexterity for a bow and want greater range than thrown weapons offer, then a ranged cantrip is going to be useful. Sacred flame is OK for this but toll the dead will do more damage. Word of radiance is good when you’ve got a crowd of enemies around you (which shouldn’t be too uncommon for a paladin).

I wouldn’t bother with spare the dying as you should have enough healing in you to spare those dying allies anyway. Guidance is a good out of combat option though.

Druidic warrior 3/5

Good for: Rangers that want to use cantrips. Note that this fighting style is a ranger exclusive fighting style.

Ability: You gain 2 druid cantrips of your choice.

Changes from 2014: None, this works the same.

Tactics: Poison spray is a solid option if you need a ranged cantrip (perhaps because you’re a strength build or because you’ll be able to do more damage at later levels than with your solitary extra attack). Poison spray is the highest damage form of this but has a damage type that is often resisted. Starry wisp could make a decent alternative, especially as it has better range, but it does deal less damage.

Thunderclap is great for when you’re surrounded by foes while guidance is great for out of combat support.

Spotlight on D&D 2024

All the latest updates on what’s changing with the 2024 rules revision.