Great Weapon Master 5e (Updated for the 2024 Rules)

By Mike Bernier

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

Swing your weapon with devastating force! Great Weapon Master lets you push your heavy weapon to its absolute limits—delivering extra damage and bonus attacks that can turn the tide of battle.

Todd Lockwood - Wizards of the Coast - Sun Titan

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What Is the Great Weapon Master Feat in 5e?

Great Weapon Master is a feat designed for characters who rely on Heavy weapons to dish out massive damage. With this feat, you not only gain a crucial Ability Score Increase to boost your Strength (and, by extension, your attack and damage rolls), but you also unlock two potent abilities: Heavy Weapon Mastery and Hew.

Changes in the 2024 Player’s Handbook

You no longer have the option to take a -5 penalty on your attack roll to dish out an extra 10 damage. Instead, you deal damage equal to your Proficiency Bonus when you hit with a Heavy weapon during your action. While it may not output quite as much damage in the new Player’s Handbook, this iteration doesn’t give you a -5 modifier to your attack rolls, meaning you’ll be hitting more and the damage will likely even out.

Plus, seeing as its a General feat, it offers an ASI to Strength, which can easily boost your attack roll’s effectiveness and their damage on its own.

How Does Great Weapon Master Work?

Ability Score Increase: Increase your Strength score by 1, to a maximum of 20. This not only improves your attack bonus but also your damage output when using heavy weapons.
Heavy Weapon Mastery: When you hit a creature with a weapon that has the Heavy property as part of the Attack action on your turn, you can cause the weapon to deal extra damage equal to your Proficiency Bonus. As your Proficiency Bonus increases with level, this extra damage becomes a significant boost to your overall damage.
Hew: Immediately after you score a Critical Hit with a melee weapon or reduce a creature to 0 Hit Points with one, you can make one attack with the same weapon as a Bonus Action. This extra attack can help you maximize your damage output, especially if you’re fighting weaker mobs.

How to Get the Great Weapon Master Feat

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

How to Get the Great Weapon Master Feat

Is Great Weapon Master Good?

We gave Great Weapon Master an S Tier rating In our 5e Feats Tier List, making it among the most potent feats in D&D 5e.

The ability to add your Proficiency Bonus to damage is a constant increase to your damage output that doesn’t require any resources to activate, making it devastatingly effective. Moreover, the Hew ability provides a Bonus Action attack that can net extra attacks which is a huge boost to action economy and damage output. Throw in a +1 to Strength, and you’ve got a feat that Heavy weapon builds will scramble for as soon as they hit level 4.

Which 5e Classes Make the Most of Great Weapon Master?

The color code below has been implemented to help you identify, at a glance, how good the Great Weapon Master 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: Artificers can’t use Heavy weapons outside of the Battle Smith subclass. It’s not a terrible option for Battle Smiths though, as they can easily imbue their Heavy weapon with something even more powerful.

Barbarian: Probably the best feat for a barbarian using a two-handed weapon, regardless of build. Extra attacks from this feat will occur often when you're in the thick of things and the extra damage will ensure you put your enemies down faster.

Bard: Nothing here for a Bard.

Cleric: Clerics who prefer to be more melee-focused, such as War Domain clerics, and want to output damage at the expense of defense can certainly make use of this feat. They can output a lot of damage and won’t be limited by spellcasting as they can wear their holy symbol. Keep in mind, that this is feat is only useable for Clerics that can choose the Protector option of their Divine Order to gain proficiency with Martial weapons.

Druid: Druids can gain proficiency with Martial weapons through the Warden Primal Order option, but they would rather use Wild Shape if they want to get into melee range.

Fighter: The new version of Great Weapon Master works best with Fighters as the extra damage can only be applied on attacks made with you action. Not only do Fighters get more action-based attack rolls than any other class, but they can use Action Surge to gain even more, making this a devastatingly effective combination.

Monk: Monks absolutely cannot use this feat without losing out on the entirety of their Martial Arts features. They also can’t equip Heavy weapons outside of taking the Weapon Master feat, but it’s still not worth it.

Paladin: Paladins will adore this feat. It can add tons of damage and works well for all of their subclasses, and they don’t need to compromise their spellcasting for a Heavy weapon. This paired with a Vengeance paladin for Vow of Enmity's Advantage on attacks would create a near-perfect killing machine.

Ranger: Most rangers won’t get a lot out of this feat. Yes, they can use Heavy weapons, but they don’t have any incentive to do so. STR-based melee rangers using Heavy weapons will certainly see a substantial benefit from this feat, but they are quite uncommon.

Rogue: Rogues can’t use any Heavy Martial weapons, locking them out of the best benefit from this feat.

Sorcerer: Sorcerers can’t wield Martial weapons either and are far too squishy to be up close and personal.

Warlock: Most warlocks want nothing to do with Great Weapon Master. Some melee Hexblade builds can make use of this feat, the details of which can be found on our Hexblade 5e Guide.

Wizard: Wizards can’t wield Martial weapons either and are far too squishy to be up close and personal.

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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.

Great Weapon Master 5e (Updated for the 2024 Rules)

What Is the Great Weapon Master Feat in 5e?

How Does Great Weapon Master Work?

How to Get the Great Weapon Master Feat

How to Get the Great Weapon Master Feat

Is Great Weapon Master Good?

Which 5e Classes Make the Most of Great Weapon Master?

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Mike Bernier