DnD 5e Feats

Charger 5e (Updated for the 2024 Rules)

By Mike Bernier

Published on February 12, 2025, Last modified on March 15th, 2025

When you need to close the gap and deal a decisive blow, the Charger feat offers a combination of mobility and aggression.

A Barbarian charging through a wall.

Raymond Swanland - Wizards of the Coast - Domri, Anarch of Bolas

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What Is the Charger Feat in 5e?

With the Charger feat, you gain extra mobility and a chance to enhance your melee attack, either by boosting your damage with a 1d8 bonus or by pushing your target away. However, its situational benefits and limited application in combat mean that, overall, it isn’t the most effective option available.

How Does Charger Work?

When you pick up the Charger feat, you gain the following benefits:

  • Ability Score Increase: Increase your Strength or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
  • Improved Dash: When you take the Dash action, your Speed increases by 10 feet for that action.
  • Charge Attack: If you move at least 10 feet in a straight line toward a target immediately before hitting it with a melee attack roll as part of the Attack action, choose one of the following effects: gain a 1d8 bonus to the attack’s damage roll, or push the target up to 10 feet away if it is no more than one size larger than you. You can use this benefit only once on each of your turns.

How to Get the Charger Feat

Charger is a General feat that requires you to be at least level 4 and have a Strength or Dexterity score of 13 or higher.

How to Get the Charger Feat

Is Charger Good?

We gave Charger a D Tier rating In our 5e Feats Tier List, making it an underwhelming feat in most cases.

While the improved Dash speed can help you close the gap or reposition in battle, the modest bonus to damage—or the option to Shove an opponent—is rarely enough to justify sacrificing more potent alternatives that are easier to activate.

Which 5e Classes Make the Most of Charger?

The color code below has been implemented to help you identify, at a glance, how good the Charger 5e feat is for a specific class/subclass.

  • Red: Weak, unlikely to contribute to your build
  • Orange: Situationally good, but below average
  • Green: A solid choice
  • Blue: A great option worth considering
  • Sky Blue: One of the best choices for optimization

Artificer: Nothing here for an Artificer.

Barbarian: The extra speed when you Dash is alright, but, surprisingly, the Charge Attack doesn't do much. The added from this benefit damage is easily gained through a better feat, like Great Weapon Master, and doesn't need you to charge in a 10-foot line to activate. The ability to push enemies is also easily mitigated by choosing a weapon that has the Push mastery property.

Bard: Nothing here for a Bard.

Cleric: Nothing here for a Cleric.

Druid: Nothing here for a Druid.

Fighter: The extra speed when you Dash is alright, but, surprisingly, the Charge Attack doesn't do much. The added from this benefit damage is easily gained through a better feat, like Great Weapon Master, and doesn't need you to charge in a 10-foot line to activate. The ability to push enemies is also easily mitigated by choosing a weapon that has the Push mastery property.

Monk: This is an okay feat for Monks, who can navigate the battlefield easily thanks to Step of the Wind. They also don't get Weapon Mastery, meaning this is a solid opportunity to push enemies around for battlefield control.

Paladin: The extra speed when you Dash is alright, but, surprisingly, the Charge Attack doesn't do much. The added from this benefit damage is easily gained through a better feat, like Great Weapon Master, and doesn't need you to charge in a 10-foot line to activate. The ability to push enemies is also easily mitigated by choosing a weapon that has the Push mastery property.

Ranger: Nothing here for a Ranged-weapon Ranger and its relatively unimpactful for Melee-weapon Rangers.

Rogue: Nothing here for a Rogue.

Sorcerer: Nothing here for a Sorcerer.

Warlock: Nothing here for a Warlock.

Wizard: Nothing here for a Wizard.

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Mike Bernier

Mike Bernier is the lead content writer and founder of Arcane Eye. He is a Adamantine best-selling author of Strixhaven: A Syllabus of Sorcery on DMs Guild and is a contributing author at D&D Beyond. Follow Mike on Twitter.