SOURCE: Player’s Handbook

Rating the Benefits of Polearm Master

Benefit #1 – 

After attacking, a character armed with a polearm can use their bonus action to make a special attack. This deals d4 bludgeoning damage. 

An extra attack, even one that deals lower-than-average damage, is a big deal, especially when wielding a two-handed weapon. Damage bonuses scale hardest with more attack rolls, and even without boosts, this is a solid increase to DPS.   

Benefit #2 – 

When wielding a polearm, creatures provoke opportunity attacks when moving into your reach.  

Out-of-sequence attacks are incredibly strong in 5e, and one of the most efficient ways to increase a character’s damage. Positioned correctly, a character could spend their reaction every turn on this, making 50% more attacks than equivalent builds.  

Mechanics and Requirements

Understanding How It Functions

The benefits of the Polearm Master feat only function when a character is using specific weapons. Realistically, this is never going to be a problem. A character build that takes this feat is gonna want to use their chosen weapon, but it’s still worth pointing out.

The weapons which qualify for Polearm Master are: 

• Glaive (1d10 slashing, Heavy, Reach, Two-handed)
• Halberd (1d10 slashing, Heavy, Reach, Two-handed)
• Quarterstaff (1d6 bludgeoning, Versatile 1d8)
• Spear (1d6 piercing, thrown 20/60, Versatile 1d8)

Interestingly, the Pike (1d10 piercing, Heavy, Reach, Two-handed) qualifies for half of the feat, allowing reactionary attacks, but not the bonus action. There’s no conceivable reason for this, considering it’s just a pointy halberd in stats, with none of the advantages (ie, even more reach) you’d expect to see. 

We’d be comfortable handwaving this at the table and allowing the Pike to make bonus attacks as well, but as always, talk to your GM first before making assumptions. Onto feat benefits!

Polearm Bonus Attacks

The first benefit of Polearm Master is the ability to spend a bonus action to make a secondary attack, after taking the attack action. 

Despite coming with a low d4 damage dice, this is a very nice ability because of how consistent it is. Many bonus action attacks have a trigger, like Great Weapon Master’s bonus action attack that only works on crits or kills, or limited amounts of daily uses. 

This has neither of those things. If you take the attack action, you can bonus action attack. No questions asked.  

There are several important things to understand about the ability:

First, the attack takes a bonus action, which can only be spent after taking the attack action. This means the bonus attack slots neatly into your attack sequence, but can’t be taken if the character does something else, for example, casts a spell. 

The attack deals Bludgeoning damage, instead of the damage the weapon normally deals. Glaives and Halberds; both of the two-handed weapons in the list, naturally deal slashing, so it’s a bigger deal for these weapon types. Damage types tend to matter a lot less in 5e, but this might come up against enemies with certain resistances. 

The rules also specify the attack uses the same ability modifier as the primary attack. All weapons that qualify for Polearm Master use Strength, so this last clause is only important for character builds that can shift their attack rolls to another stat. Most likely is Hexblade Warlock, using Charisma, but Battle Smith Artificers might also consider this feat, and it’s nice that the attack won’t suddenly use a stat you’re not boosting. 

Amusingly, the bonus action attack from Polearm Master is better than two-weapon fighting in almost every way. Here’s why:

• It’s a better base weapon. Polearms do far more damage than anything that qualifies for two-weapon fighting, even with feats
• The bonus action attack adds your stat bonus to damage without needing other abilities. 
• No further investment. TWF takes a feat and a fighting style to optimize fully, and even then only ever draws even with other options. Polearm Master is a one-stop shop for effective combat and needs nothing else. 
• Better scaling. As the character levels up and gains new abilities, Polearm Master only gets stronger, whereas TWF struggles to keep up. 

Reactionary Attacking

The second part of the Polearm Master feat is the ability to spend a reaction to attack an enemy that enters the reach of their weapon. 

This is big. Yet another attack roll, this one dealing full damage, out of standard turn sequence, as an interrupt to enemies moving, but it has a little nuance. 

• The ability requires your reaction. Characters have one reaction to spend, which refreshes at the start of their turn. 
• The reaction is a common price for many abilities, defensive and offensive. Examples include the Shield spell or the Sentinel feat’s reaction attack. 
• The ability only triggers when an enemy enters your reach. This means, specifically, moving from outside of your reach into it. Enemies that move around within your reach do not trigger this attack. 
• Your reach can change, depending mostly on the weapon you’re using, but also through spells and abilities. 

The most important part of using this ability is positioning. It can trigger once per turn, against any enemy that moves into your reach. You’re using a weapon with a 10ft reach. That means a lot of enemies who rely on melee attacks for their own damage have to trigger this ability to be able to hurt you. 

With smart positioning, a character should trigger this ability in the first round of every single encounter, and with the right use of abilities and spells, plus a willing party happy to place defense, might even find a way to activate it in almost every round of combat they face. 

Either way, many martial characters struggle to consistently and meaningfully spend their reactions. An ability like this, which lets a character deal effective damage outside of their combat round, is very powerful even if it only gets used occasionally.  

Key Stats

Every weapon that qualifies for Polearm Master requires Strength to wield. The feat itself gives no stats, but look to boost Strength as high as possible to make the best use of it. 

Ideal Characters for Polearm Master

Top Classes

Fighter – Obviously Fighter is number 1 here. It’s a Fighter. Automatic proficiency in every necessary weapon. Access from level 1 to Fighting Styles, further boosting either damage or defense, more attacks than every other class in the game, and the almighty Action Surge, which lets a character take one turn of all-out offense. 

Multiple subclasses are so good with this feat. Battle Master is, as always, fantastic, as long as you can maintain resources, as a Polearm Master could probably blow every use of the ability in one round. Still, adding effects to your plethora of attacks is incredible power. 

Rune Knights are similarly fantastic, able to grow larger, increasing their reach to 15ft or further, plus stacking their unique effects. For something simpler, though still powerful, the Samura subclass is both historically thematic and pretty damn strong, able to switch on advantage at the cost of their bonus action attack, generally on important spike turns; like the one you Action Surge.

Paladin – The Paladin class has potentially the highest single-round damage in 5e, at all levels. Smite is an unbelievable damage steroid, that can be spent on every attack a character lands. Both the bonus action and reaction stabs of Polearm Master qualify, giving a polearm Paladin (pole-adin?) two more opportunities for divine vengeance. 

Oath of Vengeance buys into the damage dealer aspect of the builds and doubles down on it. Access to the Hunter’s Mark spell spends a bonus action for +d6 damage on every subsequent attack (and this is one of the best ways to optimize a Polearm Master, see later in the guide.) Then, once per rest, a character can spend a bonus action for advantage against one creature until a minute passes. Or you kill it, which is probably more likely. 

Cleric – Many Cleric subclasses give the character proficiency in martial weapons. A lot of Clerics also struggle to find a consistent way to spend bonus actions and generally want to be up in the middle of the party, handing out buffs and disrupting enemy plans. 

Polearm Master slots neatly into all of these situations, turning the character into a capable melee fighter, and giving them ways to spend bonus actions and reactions on meaningful damage, even when they’re spending turns throwing out spellcasting instead of stabbing.  

Barbarian – What if you take a feat that offers a character multiple ways to spend secondary actions on extra attacks, and glue it into a class whose main role is “brawling DPS machine.” You get an absolute monster, that’s what. 

The Ancestral Guardian subclass is disgusting with Polearm Master. Its main effect near-forces a single enemy to focus on you, giving all of its attacks disadvantage and halving damage on targets who aren’t the gigantic pile of muscle. A glaive lets the character poke for damage, then step back and force the enemy to engage on their terms, or do almost nothing. 

For something simpler, the Zealot deals lots of damage and doesn’t cost money to revive. So, uh, hurl yourself into the enemy to your heart’s content?

Race or Subrace Choices

Bugbear – What’s better than 10ft of reach? 15ft of reach, of course! The ability to push attacks out 3 squares makes it almost impossible for enemies to escape your grasp. The bonuses are also nice. Stealth proficiency is handy to have, and if you ever gain a surprise round, 2d6 extra damage on your multitude of attacks is genuinely vicious. 

Half-Orc – Between main actions, bonus actions, and reactions, a Polearm Master makes more attacks than many builds, so crits more often than most. An extra d10 damage on every crit is a big deal when you might crit every 3 or 4 rounds. As melee builds, the Polearm Master tends to take a lot of heat, so the ability to ignore death once per day is handy to have. 

Harengon – Combine an initiative bonus to go first and get where your spear-wielding character needs to be, with a multiple times per day hop that can get you out of combat without AOOs, or behind the enemy front lines, for an infuriatingly mobile damage dealer. 

Combos, Tactics, and Synergies

Complementary Feats

Great Weapon Master – The best weapons that qualify for this feat also qualify for GWM, which adds a whole bunch of damage to every attack

Sentinel – Enemies move into your reach? Hit them. Enemies move out of your reach? Hit them? Enemies try to attack your friends? Hit them! This combo is hilarious. For you. Not for the guys you’re fighting. 

Lucky – You’re already leaning into the strongest builds possible. Why not glue the most universally powerful feat into it somewhere, so you never fail those important rolls. 

Spells that Synergize

Smites – Other attack buffing spells also count here, for example, the Ranger’s Zephyr Strike. More damage on all your hits is more gooder. 

Haste – More attacks. More AC. More speed to get into a reactive position. All of this is excellent on a melee build. Just don’t let the caster lose concentration, or you’re losing a turn. 

Elemental Weapon/Crusader’s Mantle – Damage bonuses are more effective the more attacks you make. Polearm Master builds make a lot of attacks. That’s called synergy. 

Strategies for Maximizing Polearm Master Effectiveness

How effective is Polearm Master?

So why is Polearm Master such a good feat? Multiple reasons, but the principle among them is the fact that it just lets a character make so many attacks. Almost no other feat can compare with simply rolling more dice. Let’s illustrate this with an example; 

We have two generic Fighters, Smash, and Poke. Neither has a subclass. Both have a roughly equal hit chance of 50%. 

Smash uses a great weapon, best in class for damage, with its large, consistent 2d6 damage dice. 

Stab uses a Glaive, or another polearm, dealing a swingy but high d10 damage. 

Smash has a damage per round (DPR) of 10 (2 x 2d6 + 3 / 2)

Stab has a DPR of 8.5 (2 x 2d6 + 3 / 2)

We’re going to give both of them a feat. Smash gets Great Weapon Master, which gives him a mighty +10 bonus to damage, at the cost of -5 to hit, plus an infrequent bonus action swing. You can find our full guide on this feat here, but the simple calculation is around a 15% increase in DPR. 

Smash now has a DPR of 11.5. 

Stab gains Polearm Master. He gains a consistent bonus action attack, plus a possible reaction attack. We’ll ignore the reactions, for now, showing its possible damage in squared brackets [like this.]

His DPR is now 11: (2 x 1d10 + 3 + 1d4 + 3 / 2) 

Adding in the reactionary attack increases this to a colossal 15.25, almost doubling the character’s damage on a round by round basis. And this only gets stronger as a character finds other ways to stack further damage bonuses. So let’s get onto that…

Stack damage bonuses

In 5e, bonuses to damage become more effective, the more attacks a character makes. 

A character with Polearm Master, and the two extra opportunities the feat provides to hit with attacks, is bar none one of the most efficient ways to spike damage numbers in 5e. 

A quick, illustrative example. 

Character A uses a Greatsword. He hits really hard, but only gets two attacks per round most rounds. 

He finds a way to add d6 damage to all of his attacks. Perhaps through a spell like Hunter’s Mark. 

He gains a potential 2d6 damage every round. 

Character B has Polearm Master. He gains the same buff. 

He gains 3d6 damage per round, and with the potential to add a fourth d6 on the rounds, he can trigger his reaction attack. 50 to 100% more efficiency. 

What this says to you is this: If you’re taking Polearm Master, investing heavily into offense isn’t just a good thing, it should be encouraged. 

Great Weapon Fighting Style

The Great Weapon Fighting style, available to Fighters, Paladins, or by taking the Fighting Initiate feat (full guide here) lets a character reroll damage dice of 1 and 2 when attacking with Heavy weapons. 

Unlike with many builds, this is a great fighting style for characters using this feat. Everything but the spear qualifies for the reroll, and the damage dice of every Heavy polearm is a D10, which is high but swingy. The single dice roll means rolling a 1 is equally as likely as rolling a 10. 

You might have noticed when reading this guide, but Polearm Master builds make a lot of attacks. The ability to reroll your lowest damage dice is a small but significant damage boost, but more importantly, it almost eliminates those feel bad moments where all your dice come up 1s. 

The one-handed spear tank

The typical Polearm Master build is to wield two-handed polearms and destroy anything that gets close to you. But everything in the Polearm Master feat is fully compatible with wielding a spear (or staff) in one hand, which leaves the character’s other hand free to hold a shield for +2 AC. 

This build, used correctly, can turn a character into some sort of nightmare porcupine. 3 attacks per round, which deal surprisingly high damage if the character has the dueling fighting style, plus the ability to throw out attacks every time an enemy moves up to them, is a ton of damage for a build that easily hits tank-level AC. 

Building on top of this makes it even stronger. The Bugbear can extend the range of that spear to 10ft, as can taking Rune Knight Fighter or Path of the Giant Barbarian. Sentinel prevents enemies from moving away from you once they’ve realized their mistake and stepped into the murder zone. Or use spells or Smites from combat classes like the Paladin to simply annihilate everything in poking range. 

Final Thoughts on Polearm Master

In D&D 5e, some feats are build-defining. They’re so strong that there’s no question whether an optimized character should ever take them. 

Polearm Master is one of those. What it offers is incredibly strong, both on a base level, as well as scaling incredibly heavily with class abilities and other boosts to damage. 

But it’s also fun. Both of the abilities on offer are interesting, and cool, and make a player piloting the build genuinely think about how they’re playing, when to do things, and where their character should be. Combining power and playability is, in our opinion, the best marker of an incredibly good feat. 

If building a good spear-using character has sadly remained at arm’s reach for you, the next time you roll up something new, try a Polearm Master build. You’ll quickly realize just why this feat is so well regarded. And probably have a ton of fun at the table, too.