Fighter Subclasses 5e
Published on December 6, 2024
Explore the best Fighter subclasses in D&D 5e. Discover how each combat style changes your warriors abilities and storytelling potential.
Wayne Reynolds - Wizards of the Coast - Bruenor Battlehammer
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Learn more.Your Guide to DnD 5e Fighter Subclasses
The Fighter’s subclass doesn’t drastically alter the core mechanics of the class, but it plays a big role in defining your playstyle and battlefield presence. Whether it’s the tactical mastery of a Battle Master, the raw might of a Champion, or the magical edge of an Eldritch Knight, your subclass choice shapes how your Fighter makes their mark in combat and beyond.
What is this guide?
This guide is meant as a deep dive into the 5e fighters subclasses. For the full overview of the fighter class, check out our fighter class guide.
To allow you to scan through the options quickly, we use the following color rating scheme:
- Red : Isn’t going to contribute to the effectiveness of your character build at all
- Orange : Situationally good, but a below-average option otherwise
- Green : A good option
- Blue : A great option, you should strongly consider this option for your character
- Sky Blue: An amazing option. If you do not take this option your character would not be optimized
Arcane Archer
Check out our
Arcane Archer 5e guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the Arcane Archer subclass, including build recommendations, playstyle breakdowns, and an example build.
Battle Master
Check out our
Battle Master 5e guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the Battle Master subclass, including build recommendations, playstyle breakdowns, and an example build.
Cavalier
The Cavalier is a warrior proficient in mounted combat. Even without a mount, Cavaliers are extremely effective melee fighters that have a wide variety of battlefield control options.
3rd level
- Bonus Proficiency: Choose an extra skill proficiency from a list of “meh” skills.
- Born to the Saddle: Nothing groundbreaking here. Makes it easier to get on and stay on your mount.
- Unwavering Mark: A strong ability that provides a bonus action attack, advantage, and extra damage on the attack if someone you hit hits another creature. Its primary purpose is obviously to punish creatures for attacking your mount, but seeing as you don’t get the special attack until your next turn, your mount could easily be put down before then. Either way, this ability grants a ton of benefit and provides an excellent battlefield control option.
7th level
- Warding Maneuver: Adding an average of +4 to your AC as a reaction is a stellar ability. Throw in that you can apply this to your mount or other friendlies within 5ft and it gets even better. NOW throw in the fact that, even if the attack hits, the target gains resistance to the attack’s damage, and you have an absolutely amazing ability.
10th level
- Hold the Line: This ability is kind of like “Polearm Master lite”. Being able to attack creatures if they move within your reach and reduce their speed to 0 if you hit is very exploitable with a reach weapon.
15th level
- Ferocious Charger: Another class feature that mimics a feat. This ability is an improvement over the dismal Charger feat because it can be activated by simply moving 10ft before hitting a creature, rather than having to take the dash action. Being able to use this once per turn will mean a lot more prone enemies, which means a lot more attacks with advantage for you and your party.
18th level
- Vigilant Defender: Hold the Line makes using the special reactions granted by this feature more than once per round more likely. If you are able to pick up the Sentinel feat with one of your myriad of ASIs, you will be a force of nature when dropped into a group of enemies.
Champion
Simple and effective, the Champion keeps things very easy by not introducing too many additional mechanics in its class features. Instead, it focuses on improving things that fighters already do, like crit a lot. Unfortunately, increasing your chance to crit doesn't actually net that much damage, despite how good it looks on paper.
3rd level
- Improved Critical: Doubling your chance for a critical hit looks good at first glance until you realize that you’ll only be getting extra damage every 20ish attacks.
7th level
- Remarkable Athlete: This is great for builds that have a lower DEX stat as it allows you to act outside of combat a little more (sneaking, sleight of hand) and provides a great bonus to initiative rolls.
10th level
- Additional Fighting Style: If you didn’t pick up Defense the first time around, now is your time for +1 to AC. Otherwise, the world is your oyster.
15th level
- Superior Critical: By this point, you’re attacking at least three times a round. Being able to score a crit on 18, 19, 0r 20 means you’ll crit a bit less than 50% of the time you take your full attack action. Once you get to four attacks, you’ll essentially be critting 50% of the time you attack. This can net some serious damage, especially if you find a way to increase the amount of damage dice you’re rolling, like a magic item.
18th level
- Survivor: Automatically healing at the beginning of every round when you’re below half health is extremely good.
Echo Knight
Create an echo of yourself that you can use for attacking, teleport, healing, and much more.
3rd level
- Manifest Echo: This is the Echo Knight’s primary ability and all of its class features revolve around the Echo. The echo has tons of potential for shenanigans and its baseline is stellar. Repeatable bonus action teleportation is amazing and doubling your opportunity for opportunity attacks is always useful.
- Unleash Incarnation: Free extra attacks to go with all of your fighters extra attacks? Yes, please.
7th level
- Echo Avatar: Your echo becomes the ultimate scouting tool. It is like a familiar because you can see and hear from its position, but is even better since you can summon it as a bonus action instead of having to perform a 1-hour ritual. Seeing as this echo can be moved in any direction and doesn’t need to breathe, it can travel through the air, underwater, etc. Then, you can teleport to its space whenever you see fit.
10th level
- Shadow Martyr: Being able to automatically redirect an attack is a great backup plan in case you really need an attack to miss. Only being able to use one per short/long rest is somewhat limiting.
15th level
- Reclaim Potential: Excellent way of getting some healing mid-combat. You can also use this outside of combat for some extra hit points if you’re willing to kill your own echo.
18th level
- Legion of One: Doubling your echo is a fine capstone ability for the Echo Knight, and always having a use of Unleash Incarnation is certainly useful. That said, having two echos isn’t twice as good as having one echo. Their strengths are somewhat diluted by the fact that you still have the same number of actions, bonus actions, and reactions as before.
Eldritch Knight
Check out our
Eldritch Knight 5e guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the Eldritch Knight subclass, including build recommendations, playstyle breakdowns, and an example build.
Psi Warrior
The Psi Warrior's Psionic Power gives the fighter a lot of additional utility. Unfortunately, these abilities often rely on your INT modifier. While having a fighter with a high INT is entirely possible, it will come at a tradeoff of becoming MAD (Multi-Ability Dependant) and being able to pick up fewer feats.
3rd level
- Psionic Power: Expend uses of your Psionic dice to provide useful abilities in combat. Most of the abilities gained at 3rd-level use your INT modifier, which is a tough sell for Fighters.
- Protective Field: Reduce damage equal to Psionic die + INT as a reaction. To be really effective having a high INT is necessary which, as mentioned before, is a tough sell for Fighters. Because of the somewhat meager damage reduction, you’ll usually want to keep the dice for other uses.
- Psionic Strike: An extra die of force damage is solid, but not overly powerful. Because this ability activates after you hit, it can’t be used for crits, which is a bummer. This ability would be even better if the force damage wasn’t dependant on INT.
- Telekinetic Movement: You can move a size Large or smaller object or willing creature up to 30ft. This is feature will have some solid utility outside of combat but inside of combat its best use will be pulling friendly creatures out of dangerous situations.
7th level
- Telekinetic Adept: Two more amazing psionic abilities to help increase your utility in combat:
- Psi-Powered Leap: If you’ve ever wanted to live out your Jedi fantasy and force jump around, now is your time. Gaining flying speed as a bonus action for free once every short/long rest provides excellent mobility options. You can maintain your flying speed for a short time by expending psionic dice if you can’t get to your desired location in one turn. Use this to get to high ground for ranged attacks, or to get out of trouble.
- Telekinetic Thrust: This is simply adding value to your psionics strike because it doesn’t require any further resources. Of course, if you haven’t pumped your INT this could end up failing more often than not, but seeing as it doesn’t cost you anything it is still stellar. Because Psionics Strike doesn’t require an attack from a melee weapon, this is especially useful against flying creatures because it can knock them prone.
10th level
- Guarded Mind: Resistance to psychic damage will come up in a typical campaign, but not often. Being able to end Charmed and Frightened conditions at will makes up for the situationalness and renders this ability very useful.
15th level
- Bulwark of Force: Give +2 to AC and saving throws to your entire party (depending on your INT modifier) with no way of breaking it short of killing you, for a full minute, as a bonus action. Oh, you can do this up to 11 times between long rests. Damn.
18th level
- Telekinetic Master: Telekinesis is an excellent spell that offers a ton of utility. Moving an object up to 1,000 pounds won’t require a high INT modifier, but you will likely need a pumped INT if you are attempting to grapple a high level, strength-focused creature. The second part of the feature allows you to take a bonus action attack while using telekinesis. While this doesn’t quite make up for losing your other three attacks, it can allow you to strike out at foes that get too close while you are busy levitating things with your mind.
Purple Dragon Knight
A noble knight that can extend their core fighter features to other party members.
3rd level
- Rallying Cry: Healing up to three party members from 60ft away is nice, but seeing as it’s not a ton of healing it would be best for saving downed teammates. Unfortunately, because you can only heal creatures that can see and hear you, this ability doesn’t work on unconscious teammates.
7th level
- Royal Envoy: Grabbing a free expertise in Persuasion is a nice bonus, but fighters will usually dump CHA. This means that, unless you spend your precious ASIs on pumping CHA, you likely won’t feel the full benefits of this bonus. The other skills you can pick up aren’t bad but doesn’t change that this feature is weak compared to other 7th-level subclass features.
10th level
- Inspiring Surge: Giving another party member a free attack will vary in effectiveness based on your party’s composition. If you have a paladin or rogue, you are going to get way more mileage out of this feature than if you don’t. Getting an extra use of this feature at 18th level won’t necessarily be twice as effective unless you’ve managed to party up with two of the classes mentioned before.
15th level
- Bulwark: Failing a WIS, INT, or CHA save past 15th-level usually comes with very serious consequences. Being able to extend your Indomitable feature to another team member that failed their save can turn around an entire encounter.
Rune Knight
Use runes, the language of giants, to infuse your weapon and armor with special abilities.
Check out our
Rune Knight 5e guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the Rune Knight subclass, including build recommendations, playstyle breakdowns, and an example build.
3rd level
7th level
10th level
- Great Stature: This feature really doesn’t offer much. The extra height is meaningless and the increase of Giant’s Might damage is still unimpressive.
15th level
- Master of Runes: Double the activations on your runes means double the fun. Most of the runes have very powerful activated abilities and triggering the twice per short/long rest is going to feel really nice.
18th level
- Runic Juggernaut: The extra damage is still unimpressive and the size increase won’t help much beyond the reach it grants. However, being Huge is pretty funny and will let you grapple almost anything your DM can throw at you.
Samurai
3rd level
- Bonus Proficiency: History, Insight, Performance, or Persuasion aren’t going to do a whole lot for your Fighter.
- Fighting Spirit: Three times per long rest, you can give yourself advantage on all attacks and gain temp hit points. This is an amazing ability.
7th level
- Elegant Courtier: It’s nice flavor, but adding your WIS modifier to Persuasion checks isn’t going to do much if you dumped the stat. Proficiency in WIS will be useful at higher levels but won’t make a huge impact unless you stack into a typically dumped stat.
10th level
- Tireless Spirit: Regaining a use of Fighting Spirit every initiative allows you to use them much more freely.
15th level
- Rapid Strike: Being able to forgo one of your Fighting Spirit granted advantages for an extra attack is essentially a free crit against lower AC creatures.
18th level
- Strength Before Death: This is an absolutely amazing ability. You immediately take a whole extra turn when you drop to 0 hit points. This means when you drop to 0, you can take a round of three attacks and use either a Fighting Spirit or Second Wind to keep yourself standing.
Sources Used in This Guide
- : 2014 Player's Handbook
- 2024 PHB: 2024 Player's Handbook
- BR: Basic Rules
- GotG: Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants
- SotDQ: Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen
- ERLW: Eberron: Rising from the Last War
- EEPC: Elemental Evil Player’s Companion
- EGtW: Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount
- FToD: Fizban's Treasury of Dragon
- GGtR: Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica
- MotM: Monsters of the Multiverse
- MToF: Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes
- MOoT: Mythic Odyessys of Theros
- PAitM: Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse
- PHB: Player's Handbook
- SAiS: Spelljammer: Adventures in Space
- SCoC: Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos
- SCAG: Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
- TCoE: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
- TTP: The Tortle Package
- WBtW: The Wild Beyond The Witchlight
- : Unearthed Arcana
- VRGtR: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft
- VGtM: Volo's Guide to Monsters
- XGtE: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
Other Fighter Guides
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