Fighter Martial Archetype: Cavalier 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

A mounted knight clad in shining steel blitzes past the monstrosities on the low ground, making a mad dash through the masses to their leader. A halfling basks in the sun next to their mastiff companion, petting its fuzzy belly with their feet up on the pile of loot obtained from a life of adventuring.

The Cavalier has a wide breadth of possibilities in a game full of creatures of all types. If that’s something you're interested in, Find Steed in the Paladin class is the perfect place to start. If Paladin isn’t for you, I guess technically you could opt to try Cavalier. Alternatively, if you just want to take the Sentinel feat to its extreme, Cavalier can certainly deliver there.

3rd Level: Bonus Proficiency, Born to the Saddle, and Unwavering Mark

Bonus Proficiency offers you a bonus skill from Animal Handling, History, Insight, Performance, Persuasion, or if you’d like to deliberately opt for a character with a language over a skill, you have that option too. Bonus skills are great, and given this whole subclass is dedicated to riding a mount, Animal Handling seems like a no-brainer.

Born to the Saddle is a quality of life update to help you stay mounted in mounted combat. This basically comes up when something attempts to move your mount against its will, as that is the most common way you’ll be making saving throws to remain mounted. That’s not particularly common, but alongside the ability to land on your feet without expending your reaction and mounting and dismounting with just 5 feet of movement makes the whole of the feature just nice to have.

Unwavering Mark is the main reason you consider Cavalier. Whenever you hit something, you can mark it for a turn. As long as you’re within 5 feet of it, the marked creature has disadvantage on all attacks against creatures other than you, which extends beyond the scope of mounted combat. Additionally, if they opt to hit somebody else anyway, you get free reaction attacks with some bonus damage to punish them your Strength mod times per long rest.

This mark is a pretty excellent feature at drawing attention; as long as you’re engaged on the biggest threat, it has to deal with you or be at a disadvantage and take some punishment. When mounted, this means you’re partially protecting your mount. It also happens to protect your melee range squishier allies like your monk and rogue friends, though, making it a more generally applicable ability that happens to work great while mounted. I’m a big fan.

What holds this all together is the quality of life updates aren’t the core of the subclass, but encouragement to go into the mounted combat life alongside the powerful feature that can work with or without your mount.

7th Level: Warding Maneuver

Warding Maneuver expands on Unwavering Mark in the protection department, this time giving you your Constitution modifier uses per long rest of a d8 Shield like ability. Then, even if the attack hits, the creature gains resistance to the damage, which means you’re rarely going to feel like you’re wasting these.

Being gated in use by your Con mod uses per long rest feels quite a bit harsher than Unwavering Mark's free attack does, as Unwavering Mark’s bonus attack isn’t necessarily happening all that often because you’re encouraging your marked targets to attack you anyway. This is something you want to be using frequently, and given that you don’t necessarily race to get to a 20 Constitution, you’re probably sitting at two or three uses, tops, per long rest. It can have a big impact when timed well, but often is going to feel incredibly limited by its total uses.

10th Level: Hold the Line

Hold the Line is similar to Sentinel in that it’ll help you lock down one primary creature. It really wants you to be using a weapon with reach, like a Lance or Halberd, and will help keep monsters you’ve gotten on top of engaged with you. It pairs perfectly with the Unwavering Mark gameplan of getting up in a thing's face and making it have a miserable time dealing with anyone other than you, which again, doesn’t even require you to do the mounted combat thing to make it work.

15th Level: Ferocious Charger

Ferocious Charger is kind of just the Charge ability a lot of low CR monsters get where you’re paid off for engaging an enemy after movement. Knocking a creature prone for free on top of an attack is a genuinely powerful ability, as it’ll line up your subsequent attacks to happen at advantage. If you’re mounted and want to use this, make sure you’re controlling your mount, otherwise you’re probably not going to ever be able to get the charge ability this way.

Is an ability worse than a CR ¼ panther’s pounce ability worth the 15th level feature here? Probably not. It's still something that’s nice to have, though, even if it works against the gameplan of taunting the big bad and keeping it from going anywhere a bit. It also doesn’t serve the feature that the Mounted Combatant Feat, something mounted combatants probably want to pick up, gives you advantage on attack rolls against a lot of non-mounted creatures you’re going up against.

18th Level: Vigilant Defender

Vigilant Defender closes out the option with a special reaction you can take on every other creature’s turns, offering you as many attacks of opportunity as there are creatures to provoke them, which works very nicely with Hold the Line. If you’re wondering what a capstone looks like for a fighter fantasy, Vigilant Defender breaking the reaction rules to give you absolute lockdown for a space is it.

All Together

Cavalier’s biggest issues, to me, are its non-synergy with the supportive feats for it. Mounted Combatant offering your steed Evasion is excellent, but forcing their attacks to you instead of your mount pulls against Unwavering Mark and advantage on unmounted creatures smaller than your mount pushes against Ferocious Charger. Sentinel has overlapping speed reduction text, but also gives you an insane combination of features to empower you to become a whirlwind of death attacking anything that attacks anyone other than you every round. The bits of wasted potential aren’t the end of the world, though.

Beyond these nitpicks, I think either mounted or not, Cavalier can come together as a powerful defensive option. If you want to be the defensive Bulwark that draws the focus of the baddest thing in the room, Cavalier can do it. All of the features come together to punish things for attempting to attack anything other than you, and Unwavering Maneuver gives you a tool also capable of defending yourself from breaking blows.

As far as fighter subclasses goes, this one feels clearly directed and pretty powerful at all levels. If the defensive fighter option sounds appealing to you, or you want the mounted combatant hero look, Cavalier will serve you well.

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