Tavern Brawler 5e (Updated for the 2024 Rules)

Published on January 15, 2025

Crush your drink and grab a chair, it’s time for a bar fight!

Justine Cruz - Wizards of the Coast - Pugnacious Pugilist

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What Is Tavern Brawler 5e?

If you’ve ever wanted to turn your environment into a weapon, the Tavern Brawler Origin feat might be your perfect match. This feat combines unarmed combat with improvisation, letting you turn almost anything—bar stools, tankards, or even a rock—into a formidable tool of destruction. It’s a fantastic option for characters who want to bring a gritty, unpredictable edge to their combat style.

The 2024 Player’s Handbook has introduced a fresh take on Tavern Brawler, incorporating some new mechanics with practical combat benefits. Whether you’re roleplaying a rowdy brawler or an opportunistic fighter, this feat delivers on all fronts.

How Does Tavern Brawler Work?

The Tavern Brawler feat has been updated as an Origin feat in the 2024 Player’s Handbook, meaning you can gain it for free when choosing certain backgrounds. When you pick up the Tavern Brawler Origin feat, you gain the following benefits:

Enhanced Unarmed Strike: Your Unarmed Strikes deal 1d4 Bludgeoning damage plus your Strength modifier instead of the normal damage. This only improves Unarmed Strike’s damage by an average of 1.5, so it’s not a huge gain.
Damage Rerolls: When you roll a 1 on a damage die for your Unarmed Strikes, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll. Again, not a huge increase in damage, especially not enough to forgo a real weapon for Unarmed Strikes.
Improvised Weaponry: You gain proficiency with improvised weapons, which isn’t particularly important to any builds.
Push: Once per turn, when you hit a creature with an Unarmed Strike, you can deal damage and Shove the target 5 feet away from you. This is easily the most interesting benefit of this feat, though it’s made irrelevant by the Shove mastery property introduced in the 2024 Player’s Handbook.

How to Get the Tavern Brawler Feat

You can pick up the Tavern Brawler feat by choosing the Sailor background, or whenever you gain the ability to choose a feat, like at level 4.

Is Tavern Brawler Good?

We gave Tavern Brawler a C Tier rating In our 5e Feats Tier List, making it a below-average feat in D&D 5e.

Unfortunately, Tavern Brawler doesn’t even come close to being optimized, even when it’s a free Origin feat included with your background. When you have access to Origin feats like Lucky, Alert, Magic Initiate, and even Skilled, this feat just pales in comparison.

Tavern Brawler 5e Interactions

Critting With Unarmed Strikes

Thanks to this feat, you can now score a Critical Hit on your Unarmed Strikes, outputting a whopping 2d4 + Strength damage.

Monks/Unarmed Fighting and Grappler

Though they likely would never take this feat, Monks or Fighters that take Unarmed Fighting don’t need to worry about the 1d4 overriding their higher Unarmed Strike damage dice. These abilities can take precedent over the benefit granted by Tavern Brawler if you choose (which you should).

That said, Monks may enjoy the ability to Shove and Damage simultaneously with their Unarmed Strikes because they don’t have access to Weapon Mastery, so this feat may still be worth it for non-weapon builds.

Which 5e Classes Make the Most of Tavern Brawler?

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

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

This is an extremely niche feat that realistically only provides value for one class.

Artificer: Nothing here for an Artificer.

Barbarian: Barbarians would much rather go for an Origin feat like Lucky, especially because they can access the Push mastery property.

Bard: Nothing here for a Bard.

Cleric: Nothing here for a Cleric.

Druid: RAW, a beast's attacks aren't "Unarmed Strikes" and, therefore, wouldn't work with Wild Shape.

Fighter: Fighters would much rather go for an Origin feat like Lucky, especially because they can access the Push mastery property.

Monk: This provides two pieces of value for Monks. They can reroll 1s on Unarmed Strikes, and they can Damage and Shove simultaneously when they make an Unarmed Strike as part of their Attack action. The damage boost to Unarmed Strikes is made irrelevant by the Monk's Martial Arts feature, and they rarely (if ever) want to use Improvised Weapons.

Paladin: Paladins would much rather go for an Origin feat like Lucky, especially because they can access the Push mastery property.

Ranger: Nothing here for a Ranger.

Sorcerer: Nothing here for a Sorcerer.

Warlock: Nothing here for a Warlock.

Wizard: Nothing here for a Wizard.

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.

Tavern Brawler 5e (Updated for the 2024 Rules)

What Is Tavern Brawler 5e?

How Does Tavern Brawler Work?

How to Get the Tavern Brawler Feat

Is Tavern Brawler Good?

Tavern Brawler 5e Interactions

Which 5e Classes Make the Most of Tavern Brawler?

Related Feats

Healer Guide 5e

Grappler Guide 5e

Alert Guide 5e

Crafter Guide 5e

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Mike Bernier