SOURCE: Player’s Handbook

Rating the Benefits of Mobile

Benefit #1 – 

Increase your speed by 10ft

A 10ft increase in speed is a 33% boost for most characters. This is a big increase, plus it affects every speed type a character has

Benefit #2 – 

When taking the Dash action, ignore difficult terrain for that turn

Difficult terrain comes up surprisingly often. The doubled speed from a Dash action should allow most characters, with their boosted speed from this feat, to escape the area. 

This feature is far more efficient on classes that can Dash as a bonus action. More on this later in the guide. 

Benefit #2 – 

After attacking a creature, it cannot take opportunity attacks against you for the rest of the turn 

Opportunity attacks are the main method melee enemies use to encourage PCs not to ignore them and run away. This benefit switches off opportunity attacks against you entirely, just by making a single attack against an enemy. 

This feature is surprisingly in-depth. Again, more details below. 

Mechanics and Requirements

Understanding How Mobile Functions

Increasing Speed

The first benefit of the Mobile feat is simple but deceptively impactful. 

A character with this feat increases their speed by 10ft. 

This sounds like a minor benefit, but the uses are widespread, and it’s likely to make a difference far more often than you’d think. 

First off, in the first round of most combat encounters, movement is king in 5e. The quicker a character can get to the right position, ie, the position it can deal the most damage from, the better. Melee characters want to be up close and personal (duh).  Archers and casters generally want to stay back. 10ft of extra movement makes it that much simpler to be where you need to be. 

Second, the increase in speed from Mobile increases every speed that the character has. Any variant movement options, for example, climb, swim, or fly speeds, are all also increased by 10ft. 

This is huge, especially since between racial and class benefits it’s surprisingly easy to pick up one or more alternate movement options. 

Third, consider out-of-combat benefits. A character that’s significantly faster than everyone else is awesome in chases, (or when being chased…) timed challenges, even just getting across town to deliver a message is that much more efficient when you walk faster than most people can run.  

Lastly, many classes, spells, and abilities in 5e also increase a creature’s movement speed. These stack with Mobile, and together can create characters capable of some terrifying turns of speed. Some potential combos are detailed later. 

Ignoring difficult terrain

Difficult terrain as an effect is caused by a ton of spells, enemy skills, and class abilities, from as early as level 1. Some GMs are particularly in love with environmental effects, but this is something most characters will face at some point during their adventuring careers.

A character moving through difficult terrain treats all movement distance as double. Each square moved costs 10ft. That’s a surprisingly debilitating slow, which can hinder a character’s ability to act. Most characters have a base movement speed of 30ft. Difficult terrain reduces that to 15ft if they still want to take any kind of action. Which, in a lot of encounters, can make getting into range to do anything difficult, especially for the pure melee beatstick types.

Mobile fixes that, allowing a character that takes the Dash action to ignore difficult terrain until the end of their turn. Dashing doubles a character’s movement speed, which, remember, has also been boosted by the first benefit of the Mobile feat.

An average movement of 70-80ft is almost certainly enough to clear any non-permanent terrain effect. This feature might also have niche benefits when chasing down enemies or taking skill challenges. 

For most characters, ignoring difficult terrain is the least important part of the Mobile feat. But for the classes that can Dash as a bonus action (primarily Rogues and Monks,) this is much more useful. More on this later in the guide.   

Disabling opportunity attacks

The final benefit of the Mobile feat, and by far the most unique: 

Every time a character with this feat makes a melee attack roll against an enemy, that enemy cannot make opportunity attacks against the character until the end of the turn. 

This feature has to be built towards but can be incredibly powerful in the right circumstances. Here’s the intricacies:

An opportunity attack is made when a hostile opponent moves outside of your reach. It costs a Reaction and allows the creature to make a single melee attack. 

A few key points. Firstly, this means most creatures can only make one opportunity attack per turn. For PCs, this can be quite an important limitation, but tends to matter a lot less for enemies. Either you’re facing a big single foe, and even one extra attack is already a lot of damage, or you’re facing a lot of enemies, which might all be able to make an opp. attack if you step backward. 

Second, a creature can freely move around inside another creature’s threat range without provoking opportunity attacks. That giant, with the 10ft reach? Feel free to sprint around his ankles, running literal circles around him, as long as you don’t step outside of his slapping range. 

So, how is this useful?

There are two main situations where a character wants to escape opportunity attacks. 

1. Characters who do not want to be in melee combat any longer than they have to be. Examples include squishy casters like the Wizard, who want to hide at the back of an encounter, or skirmishing melee characters like Rogues who want to dart in, deliver their damage, then pirouette back out to safety. 
2. Characters who want to get into combat, and don’t really want to take free damage getting there. Barbarians, Fighters, Rangers, builds with specific abilities like Favored Enemy or Mage Hunter who might want to target individual foes. Enemies are likely to protect their glass cannon damage dealers. But a character with Mobile can get right to them. 

This feature becomes much more powerful post level 5, where (almost) every martial character is making two or more attacks per round, allowing them to swing once at the enemy in front of them, then sprint straight at their real target. 

Key Stats

The Mobile feat has zero reliance on stats a character won’t already be using to make attack rolls with.  

The only edge case here is Strength, which boosts Athletics skill checks. These might be handy if you’re using alternative movement methods like climbing or swimming. 

Ideal Characters for Mobile

Top Classes

Rogue – Combine a predatory class that wants to pick off opportune targets, a single attack that can deal truly ridiculous amounts of damage, and innate access to a bonus action Dash for a chassis that’s absolutely in love with the Mobile feat. 

The Soulknife subclass has great synergy with the feat. Innate weapons that can flex melee and ranged attacks at will, boosted skills for running up walls, and the ability in the mid-game to teleport to places the class can’t just run to. 

Monk – The Monk is probably the fastest character in 5e and combines that with the ability to throw out a truly absurd amount of low damage attacks per turn. Gluing the Mobile feat into the build lets the character sprint through entire encounters, ignoring opportunity attacks from up to four enemies per round. 

Our choice of subclass is Ascendant Dragon. The Mobile feat does nothing to increase the killing power of a character. The Ascendant Dragon subclass does, adding AOE energy blasts to a build that can always position at the perfect angle to use them. 

Barbarian – If there’s one class the enemy really doesn’t want in the thick of their lines, hacking chunks out of their friends, it’s the Barbarian. It pairs boosted movement speed with terrifying damage potential, then adds built-in damage reduction to take the inevitable return hits. Just don’t get too deep and leave the rest of your party exposed. 

Ancestral Guardian is great with this feat because it can almost force an enemy to target the Barbarian by giving enemies disadvantage to attack anyone else, plus resistance on the damage that does go through. Pairing this with a class that can always be right next to the correct target is incredibly strong. 

Multiclassing Considerations

Race or Subrace Choices

Tabaxi – Double your speed on command for a turn, without costing actions or resources. Mobile + Tabaxi + Dash is 160ft of movement in one round. Also, you have a climb speed. That’s neat. 

Owlin (or other flying races) – The Mobile feat increases a character’s speed. That includes fly speeds. Pick whichever race suits your build most and own the skies. 

Dwarf (or other slow races) – Overcompensate for your naturally slow movement speed, and start outpacing the longshanks.

Combos, Tactics, and Synergies

Complementary Feats

Polearm Master – Stacks incredibly well with Mobile. This feat combo is so strong we’ve gone over it fully at the end of this guide. 

Sentinel – Pair the ability to get precisely where you want to be, while preventing your enemies from being able to do the same. Sentinel locks down enemy formations and allows out-of-sequence attack rolls. Another very powerful feat combo. 

Alert – Roll super initiative. Go first. Run precisely where your enemy doesn’t want you to be. Stab them. Hooray. You won 5e!  

Spells that Synergize

Longstrider – Another +10ft movement speed, lasting for up to an hour.

Misty Step – Sometimes you overextend and get into risky situations. Misty Step teleports you out of them

Haste – Even more movement speed, extra attacks, more AC, all great stuff for a versatile warrior. 

Strategies for Maximizing Mobility

Dart in, dart out

The single biggest reason many characters will consider the Mobile feat is for the ability to run into combat, make attacks against their enemy, and then retreat to safety, all in the same turn. 

Consider the humble Rogue, optimized for melee combat. She’s carrying two weapons because a single failed attack roll means no Sneak Attack that turn, which is a lot of missed damage for the party. The bonus action attack from two-weapon fighting adds a ton of reliability but precludes being able to Disengage with Cunning Action. 

What to do?

A Rogue with Mobile can freely step into combat against their choice of enemy, stab them somewhere painful, make a free second attack if that first one hits, and then scurry away to safety behind the big, beefy meatshields. Rinse and repeat until all enemies are dead. 

Other characters this fighting style is good on might include: 

• Rangers, tend to focus on excessive offensive power rather than their mediocre defensive choices. 
• Melee Warlocks, especially the Hexblade, which deals a ton of damage but isn’t that tough. 
• Melee subclass Bards, who want to mix spellcasting and melee attacks, but don’t really want to take hits
• Monks, who are built to be skirmishing melee classes
• The aforementioned Rogues

Get to the backline

The second major use for the Mobile feat is on heavy hitting bruisers who want to hunt down the enemy back line and are comfortable with making themselves a target

The quintessential example is the Barbarian. The class is built around throwing itself straight at enemy targets, with class features that increase its own damage but also make it a bigger target that’s easier to hit and take damage on. 

A Barbarian with Mobile can run straight into the enemy formation, tactically attack the enemies that would otherwise prevent them from breaking through, then ignore opportunity attacks as they launch themselves at foes that really don’t want a berserk damage dealer standing in front of them, like archers and mages. 

This use of the feat is great for:

• Barbarians
• Fighters
• Paladins
• Melee Clerics

Mobile, Rogues, and Cunning Action

In addition to loving the combat style the Mobile feat pushes a build towards, there’s another reason the class and feat are perfectly suited. 

Cunning Action. 

The Cunning Action class feature lets a Rogue take the Dash, Disengage, or Hide actions as a Bonus Action, rather than an Action. This is huge when combined with the benefits of Mobile. Here’s why:

Rogues don’t typically like to be stuck in combat. A d8 hit die and middling AC don’t go far. Sure, the Rogue could Disengage to duck back, but with Mobile, now they can use that bonus action to attack instead. Or…

Dashing allows the Rogue to double their movement. Coupled with Mobile, the character can move 80ft in one round. That’s 16 combat squares. Pair this with some sort of movement option; a climb speed, or flight, and the character will always be able to get where Sneak Attack is most devastating. 

We can safely ignore the third part of Cunning Action; hiding in combat. It’s one way for a Rogue to gain Sneak Attack, but it tends to be a before combat type of thing, instead. Either way, Mobile does nothing here.

Mobile Monks

Monks have a massive natural synergy with the Mobile feat, to the point that you might consider it an auto-take. 

Three big things here. One is Monk movement. 

At level 2, the Monk class gains a natural 10ft bonus to movement speed, which scales as the character levels, ending at a massive +30ft. 

Combining that with Mobile could potentially create the most consistently speedy character in 5e, able to move 70ft per turn, every turn, without Dashing. Speaking of the Dash action…

Two, Step of the Wind. 

Monks can spend a Ki point to Disengage or Dash as a bonus action, plus double their jump distance. 

The Mobile feat makes Disengaging basically pointless, but being able to Dash, doubling that already high base Monk speed, and still being able to take the Attack action could be massive in the right encounter. 

Oh, and did we mention that from level 9 Monks can freely run across walls and liquids, as long as they end their turn on solid ground? That’s pretty cool, too. 

Three, multiple attacks per round, including Flurry of Blows. That’s four potential attacks in a single round, that could be aimed at four separate enemies to allow a Monk so inclined to dance through an entire conga line of enemies. 

It’s probably not necessary, but for a class that might want to slip past the enemy frontline to go Stunning Blow the squishy guy at the back with the terrible Con save, it’s a fantastic utility. 

The Mobile feat and weapons

Interestingly, the Mobile feat only specifies making a melee attack against a creature. It says nothing about whether that must be with weapons or spells. 

So, characters with melee spell attacks can benefit from the Mobile feat against their target. The main beneficiary here is Druids, as casters who might stay closer than most, and who have both Primal Savagery, a melee spell attack, and Thorn Whip, a melee attack with 30ft of range, in their spell lists.  

Is this a reason to take the feat on spellcasters? Not really, but for spellswords or other characters with casting as a major feature, it’s well worth looking through the spell list for melee spells that qualify, because there are a surprising amount. 

Examples include:

• Inflict Wounds
• Vampiric Touch
• Contagion

Other spells that qualify are any which include a melee attack as part of the casting. Cantrips like Booming Blade magically created weapons like Shadow Blade and all of the spells that augment existing melee attacks like Smite or Zephyr Strike. 

Polearm Master and Mobile

Polearm Master is already a strong feat. But taking both it and Mobile is an incredibly strong combo that’s worth going over in much closer detail. Here’s why:

The Bonus Action Attack

Polearm Master lets a character taking the Attack action spend their Bonus Action on a low damage bonus attack. Normally, this is a cute but meaningful increase in damage. But the intricacies of timing in 5e allow a character to make this attack first, before making their main, harder-hitting attacks. 

The specifics were clarified by Sage Advice far back in the heady days of 2015. Unless it specifies, like the Monk’s Fluffy of Blows, which states “immediately after you have taken the Attack action” you choose when a Bonus Action is taken.  

Yes, this means you can slap the enemy currently engaging you with the butt of your halberd, then launch across the battlefield to deal meaningful damage to the enemy that really needs to die.  

Secondly, reach. Being able to extend your combat range by another 5ft, stabbing past allies and obstructions, is already a powerful ability. It’s better on a character who is incredibly fast and can position precisely where they want to be. Especially against enemies who only have 5ft of reach, and now have to come to you to deal damage. And while we’re on that…

The Polearm Master Opportunity Attack

In addition to letting a character make Bonus Action attacks, Polearm Master also lets a character spend a reaction to attack when an enemy moves within their 10ft threat range. 

If you’re now thinking that you can make your attacks against the creature you’re fighting, then step back out of their range for free and force them to step into combat range, eating another out-of-sequence reactionary stab, every single turn, you’re thinking exactly like us. This is an incredibly powerful, and easy, way to boost DPS by around a third. 

Final Thoughts on Mobile

Mobile does nothing to directly increase a character’s damage. However, what it does do is allow a character to safely deliver their damage to precisely the right targets. 

Whether you’re using it to dance in and out of combat, shove through enemy lines to get to their leaders and spellcasters, or combine it with feats and class abilities in interesting ways, there’s a surprising amount of play in moving faster, without worrying about enemies holding you back. 

Mobile isn’t going to turn a character into a killing machine. But it can turn your killing machine into a backflipping daredevil that no enemy can ever escape from. And for the right character, that makes it an incredibly powerful feat.