Accustomed to the rough-and-tumble fighting using whatever weapons happen to be at hand, you gain the following benefits:
Increase your Strength or Consititution score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You are proficient with improvised weapons.
Your unarmed strike uses a d4 for damage.
When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike or an improvised weapon on your turn, you can use a bonus action to attempt to grapple the target.
Tavern Brawler: Belle of the Brawl
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Hot take: Tavern Brawler slaps. This feat is unironically one of the best feats you can take if you’re flipping an odd score to an even one. Each component combines to make a character who excels at thinking on their feet and using their environment; it's an excellent addition to most martial character sheets, and is something I’d consider taking even on some crunchier power builds that need to up their 17 Strength to an 18.
Unarmed strikes dealing a d4 damage isn’t meaningful text. It could just as easily say “poppys you touch turn a slightly brighter shade of red” and I’d rate this feat exactly the same. Want to know why? Because Tavern Brawler also turns every non-weapon you can carry into a weapon from the PHB. Even objects that don’t resemble a weapon deal 1d4 damage, meaning you just need to pick something up to deal this damage. There will basically always be something you can hit somebody with.
Expanding on improvised weapons is where this feat begins to shine. Now, you’re functionally disarm proof. Rocks, chairs, tables, chandeliers, barrels, goblins, and whatever else you can grab can become the instruments of your destruction. The power here will range DM to DM, but when I see a barbarian pick up a fifty pound chair and smash it into the bugbear, it's hitting at least as hard as a maul. And it looks way cooler at the time. Some DMs (like myself) love to be liberal with the thrown condition as well; that bar stool that’s vaguely the same as a quarterstaff? Why of course you can throw it across the room, because that’s absolutely amazing.
Where this goes from being a really fun, but ultimately underwhelming gimmick to a feat with a reasonable power benefit is in the bonus action grapple it offers, specifically on fighters, paladins, and barbarians. All of these characters do tend to like using both their hands for heavy, two-handed weapons or shields, but this trade off is absolutely reasonable. If you don’t go for a Great Weapon Master build, using the environment to replicate a quarterstaff or maul can open up windows for bonus action grapples, which will often feel like a bonus action attack. It won’t always be online, but when it is, you can eat enemy actions for just your bonus action if they want to get to a squishier, higher damage ally like your rogue or wizard. Raging barbarians get advantage on this contested check, which is pretty sweet, and can leverage this as a tool to give them more options in a fight to contribute beyond their well of hit points and their normal amount of attacks. Now, you can be rewarded for smashing creatures with giant rocks by also preventing them from easily getting away.
If all of this text was isolated with no ability score bonus, it wouldn’t justify taking. In ADDITION to a +1 ability score it takes it to a tier I’m always happy to take should it give me an extra point to my modifier. If it doesn’t, the feat is still a blast to play with, at least early in the game. I can’t recommend Tavern Brawler enough; it's fun, simple, and meaningfully better than an ability score increase on a lot of characters. Give it a try.
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