Once per turn when you roll damage for a melee weapon attack, you can reroll the weapon's damage dice and use either total.
Savage Attacker: Brings Out the Tiger in You
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Savage Attacker is a mechanic that is in the wrong lane. Weapon damage dice are explicitly and only damage dice dealt by the weapon itself written in the damage portion of the weapon tables. Magic weapons, like Flame Tongues, have adjusted weapon damage that qualifies for rerolls, but beyond that, you’re getting to reroll the dice from a weapon that hits. If it's a handaxe, roll two sets of 1d6, keeping the higher result. For a greatsword, roll 2d6 twice, keeping the higher total. You get the idea.
I say this mechanic is in the wrong lane because weapon attacks have a pretty high damaging floor, and usually don’t really need Savage Attacker. The higher the die size the better this tends to be, specifically when you really don’t want 1s or 2s (like on a d12), but regardless of die you’re getting your Strength or Dexterity modifier to damage as well, making the floor of a hit normally a 4 or 5before other damage adjustments. Very often 4-5 damage is just “enough”, especially when hitting multiple times or against multiple low HP enemies. Unlike weapon attacks, cantrips have no modifiers when dealing damage outside of some subclasses, making it so you really care about your minimum results and want to avoid them at all costs. The difference between 1 and 4 damage is enormous; a feat that could heavily reduce instances of 1s would be a major boon to casters, whereas on martial characters it's kind of mediocre.
The other main issue with Savage Attacker is it only scales with quantity of attacks and weapon size. You’ll get more out of the feat specifically when paired with two-weapon fighting or a greatsword or maul to maximize the quantity of dice you get to see and get the best average result. Unfortunately, these die sizes are really small; d6s are attached to weapons you’re typically going for these builds with as they are the most consistent or just the highest average damage available. If you want to bust out a greataxe to dust off the d12, this will help it, but even with Savage Attack I think I’d rather be dealing consistently higher average damage than running with the volatility of the d12.
In these martial builds, feats are competitive. Great Weapon Master, Sentinel, Polearm Master, and even just a regular Ability Score Improvement for Strength is worth a lot. If we compare this just to adding +2 to your Strength score (for a +1 to your modifier), if we compare it to rerolling a d6, you’re looking at roughly the same bonus to your average damage. In exchange, you’re trading off a +1 to hit, to Str saves, and Str ability checks for a much lower likelihood of low results and a higher likelihood of higher results. With thirty-six possible outcomes of 2d6 keep the highest, you’re looking at only one result landing you on 1 damage (a 2% chance of occurring) while you’re getting roughly a 30% chance to get a 6, or 55% chance to get a 5 or a 6 in damage. That’s way better odds at max and almost max damage with a nex to no chance to roll incredibly low, which normally is just a 2/6 (or roughly 33% chance) chance to get a 5 or higher. Is that 20% bump in likelihood of high damage better than +1 to your Strength modifier? I think it's quite close, which isn’t a good sign for the feat.
All in all if you’ve got a spare feat to spend, you make a lot of weapon attacks with big dice, and you’re in the market to make it marginally better, Savage Attacker probably is great for you. If you just hate rolling low, and want to reduce those outcomes to feel better about your dice rolling, Savage Attacker can make that happen. If you’re going for a specific build that requires one or more feats and you want to keep your ability scores growing, you probably can’t justifiably fit this on your sheet.
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