Summary
Despite all the powerful magicDungeons & Dragonshas to offer, some folks enjoy the simplicity of hitting someone with a stick until they’re down - or maybe hitting them with something sharper, like a blade, or shooting them with an arrow while being at a safe distance.
Regardless of your preferred weapon, the 2024 Player’s Handbook came with weapon mastery, which allows you to give your favorite weapon’s attacks special properties. While that’s all fine and good, it’s tricky to know which of these works well together. If you and a friend want to do a nice weapon combo together, there are fun options to play around with here.
Though some combinations can be made by a single character, most of these will require two people wielding the appropriate weapons. Thus, unless stated otherwise, assume that there are two characters involved in these combos.
Slow Weapons
Club, javelin, light crossbow, sling, whip, longbow, musket.
While, in theory, you could do this by yourself through dual-wielding, this combo will be better executed with teamwork. Theweapon mastery Pushwill push your target ten feet/three meters away if you hit them (no saving throw required), which can put them pretty far from you if you use all your movement the other way afterward.
Then, suppose they’re hit by an ally with an attack that causes Slow. In that case, they lose ten feet/three meters of movement for a turn, preventing them from potentially reaching any of your party members if everyone is smart about their positioning. If the enemy in question is formidable at melee attacks, you’re essentially forcing them to waste a turn dashing or standing still.
While two attacks with Slow won’t stack, you may stack other things that decrease movement. The party’s spellcaster can throw in a Ray of Frost to remove an extra ten feet/three meters of movement, for instance.
Topple Weapons
Quarterstaff, battleaxe, lance, maul, trident.
The idea here is similar and more effective, though not as guaranteed. Pushing the enemy will work the same way, but Topple will force the opponent into a constitution saving throw, and if they fail, they’re knocked prone.
Knocking someone prone is particularly useful by itself because all melee attacks against them will get advantage, but the fun part here is that, in order to get up, the prone creature will have to sacrifice half of their movement for that turn.
Though ten feet/three meters will likely be less than half and the creature will still get up, their movement for their turn would be half their normal movement minus ten feet/three meters, which is significantly worse. If you do stack with something like Ray of Frost as we suggested previously, you may actually cut more than half their movement, preventing them from getting up on their turn.
If you have a third friend with Sap (a mastery that gives disadvantage to your target’s next attack), you can stack it up here on melee enemies. A melee enemy will likely still have at least one ranged attack just in case they can’t reach someone, but it’ll likely have a smaller chance to hit since that’s not their focus.
Thus, if your group prevents the enemy from reaching anybody and then someone else gives the enemy disadvantage on the attack, you could potentially make the enemy’s whole round worthless.
Vex Weapons
Handaxe, dart, shortbow, rapier, shortsword, blowgun, hand crossbow, pistol.
If you wish to dual-wield weapons, this combination of weapon mastery will get you covered. If you hit and damage someone with a Vex weapon, your next attack will have advantage. With Nick, when you make an off-hand attack with a light weapon as a bonus action, this attack will instead be a free action, saving your bonus action for something else.
With a characterlike a rogue,you may approach, attack, and give yourself a free attack that also has advantage (which will trigger Sneak Attack if the first attack didn’t use it), and you’ll still have your bonus action to disengage, all in one turn. Perfect for hit and runs.
Fighters, on the other hand, can simply take advantage of the two-weapon Fighting Style and perform two attacks at level one, where both attacks use your ability score on the damage roll without using a bonus action. Then, as you get more and more extra attacks, you’ll be able to perform even more strikes at once. A fighter-rogue multiclass would work well here, too.
Cleave Weapons
Greataxe, halberd.
This one is highly situational and a bit cheesy, but it works. As mentioned, Vex gives you advantage on your next attack, while Cleave lets your attack hit a secondary target, as long as they’re adjacent to both you and your initial target (you’ll roll a separate attack roll for the second target).
Thus, if you already have Extra Attack, you can attack with one weapon and give yourself advantage for the second attack, which will trigger a third attack if successful.
Cleave’s additional attack won’t get Vex’s advantage, but the first will, and hitting the first one is necessary for the second one to even be a possibility. The tricky part here is how you will trigger things since all cleave weapons are two-handed.
In the rules as written, whenever you perform an attack, you get to equip or unequip a weapon, and you can also do one of those once per turn as a free interaction (plus, you can unequip after the attack). Thus, you can pick up the weapon with Vex for free, attack, unequip it as part of the same attack, and then pick up the Cleave weapon as part of the second attack.
If the weapon has the thrown condition, too, you can immediately pick it up and throw, freeing your hands to equip another weapon during the second attack as well. Still, throwing is not necessary to make this work.
Alternatively, you can replace a weapon with the Cleave property with a versatile weapon that has an effect you like, such as the warhammer for a Push or a trident for a Topple, which will also give your melee friends advantage.
While you may do the same weapon juggle combo we mentioned above, this one will work better if you have multiple allies that can trigger Topple. The idea here is to knock both enemies prone and get advantage in your attacks, so not only the advantage on the first one will make triggering Cleave easier, but you can also get a better chance at hitting the second target.
Unlessyou’re a fighterwith many attacks (and likely using Action Surge), you won’t be able to knock both targets prone to give yourself advantage on both attack rolls from Cleave (not to mention that Topple uses a saving throw, so enemies can just, you know, pass the check). Thus, having allies helping you knock both enemies down before you cleave them is easier to pull off.
