Prerequisite: Proficiency with a martial weapon
Your martial training has helped you develop a particular style of fighting. As a result, you learn one Fighting Style option of your choice from the fighter class. If you already have a style, the one you choose must be different.
Whenever you reach a level that grants the Ability Score Improvement feature, you can replace this feat's fighting style with another one from the fighter class that you don't have.
Fighting Initiate: Add Some Style to Your Fight
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
The scout garbed in dark browns and greens with a longbow slung across their back, the knight brandishing a longsword and shield reflecting brilliant light in their steel, the scoundrel wielding a dagger in their left hand and a short-sword in the other: these are classic archetypes that embody the fighting styles. Fighting styles act as a foundation you build a character on, a reason to fight in a specific way over any other because of a tiny advantage that pushes it to the top of your regular means of engagement. This is normally reserved for 1st or 2nd level characters, and offers a minimal bonus. That minimal bonus is rarely going to be more meaningful than a +1 to an ability score modifier. It's not worth a feat on its own.
It irritates me to no end that this feat, of all the ones presented, doesn’t come with an ability score bump. That’s all it needs to go from a feat I’m literally never going to recommend taking to one you’d readily pick up on a decent chunk of characters.
The fighting styles available are Archery, Blind Fighting, Defense, Dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, Interception, Protection, Superior Technique, Thrown Weapon Fighting, Two-Weapon Fighting, and Unarmed Fighting. Some new styles presented add a bit more power to the feature, but overall you’re getting a tiny little damage or to hit bonus for the style. Archery, for example, gives you a +2 bonus to attack rolls with ranged weapons. A +1 Dexterity would give you a +1 to hit and damage with ranged weapons, +1 to Dex ability checks, and a +1 to Dex saving throws at minimum. Sometimes you’ll also get +1 AC out of the deal, which entirely invalidates the Defense fighting style. Dueling, Two-Weapon Fighting, and Thrown Weapon Fighting have similar problems where you’re primarily just getting numbers that aren’t as good as a relevant ability score modifier increase.
Great Weapon Fighting is kind of close to Savage Attacker, a feat nobody is crazy about, and is nowhere near the power of Great Weapon Master if you’re already in that lane. Unarmed Fighting lets you cosplay a worse monk instead of just using a regular weapon with a nifty little d4 damage a turn to grappled creatures; that quickly becomes nearly a non-factor.
This leaves Interception and Protection, the two I’d be most interested in taking when looking at this feat. Protection does require a shield, making it something for an oddball frontline cleric or druid, but Interception expands out to work with any class that simply is using at least one weapon. Both crucially give players new reactions, which can majorly empower builds without ample access to them. Because of this, I rate them as the only ones worth your time.
If you aren’t looking to find a way to get Protection or Interception on one of the handful of characters in existence that don’t already have access to them that want them, this is a waste of a feat. A one level dip in fighter gives you whatever one you want, second wind, a ton of proficiencies, a decent hit die, and a boatload of proficiencies. It's not one to one with taking a feat, as it delays other class progression opportunities, but if you find you desperately need a fighting style, I think that will nearly always be a better option. Taking this feat seems like a waste that I wouldn’t recommend to almost any character who’d consider it.
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