Given the hypothetical of your party having save support such as paladin aura + bless (at lower levels we’re not facing bad save or sucks very frequently so we’re ignoring low levels), lucky adds an additional layer of defense against really bad shit happening which can lose an encounter
That’s high value regardless of the adventuring day
Oh god, there was a freakish spider in my bathroom
MIND BLAST!
Initiative use case is ~fine but Alert is moderately better for the role
I will
Dream ugily at night
alright
I think I’ve reached a conclusion
In games where you are trying to extend resources due to a high number of encounters (6-8 encounter adventuring day which is suggested by sourcebooks), I believe you are going to squeeze more value out of res con or war caster. As an example, using Spirit Guardians on a cleric which has 10 minutes could be used for multiple encounters in lets say a dungeon. Dropping concentration on it can limit your ability to chain encounters. These scenarios are rare at most tables but they are deadly when they happen.
If you are making use of the additional effects of war caster (the AOO effect for builds such as ghostlance, the full hands casting one for most paladins and bladelocks), it’s going to be priority over lucky as it is build defining.
Lucky has a lot of versatility which is good at tables that are taking a lot of rests and are doing a variety of things outside of dungeoneering.
I would say Lucky is a better early pick at most tables where most tables are ones that aren’t doing high encounter days
Why are you spending so much time on theorying one feat over another geyde?
The answer i think is that it’s really difficult to approximate usefulness of things that don’t increase dpr
Well, there’s less of a direct comparison to Lucky and I haven’t given PAM/XBE much thought. If they’re going to be fighting in melee a lot, I also find it difficult to see it either being better than Sentinel? Sentinel + PAM seems like a two great tastes that taste great together situation, but Sentinel’s speed reduction and reaction attacks both seem insane in most party comps.
sentinel is dog and I will die on that hill
You have mastered techniques to take advantage of every drop in any enemy’s guard, gaining the following benefits.
- When you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, the creature’s speed becomes 0 for the rest of the turn.
- Creatures provoke opportunity attacks from you even if they take the Disengage action before leaving your reach.
- When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn’t have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creature.
to sum it up without a thousand words:
tl:dr since I used too many words
it’s not helping you outside of already easy encounters and taking advantage of it requires you to play very dangerously
The best ‘frontline’ effect in 5e is spirit guardians and you don’t have that as a martial
why you don’t want to be in melee in 5e
Most monsters don’t have super high speed so they can be kited with push effects, difficult terrain generation, and speed reduction. Ranged is much much better at kiting than melee.
There are something like 20-ish monsters out of several hundreds who are more dangerous at range than in melee
There are many passives (such as enemy auras) that punish being at close range against them
Melee doesn’t have a damage lead on ranged characters at similar investment
this is something assumed but the reason why I say this is that the unique utility of sentinel is being able to default kill single monster encounters when the monster doesn’t have ranged attacks or reach
has anyone been watching the euros uefa
the real pain for 3 is the 5 feet restriction
it would actually be pretty solid if it was just ‘within your reach’
Sentinel is probably the best example of a trap feat
ok no it’s not a complete trap
it’s just mediocre