DnD 2024 Shield Master Feat – A Practical Guide

Introduction

With the 2024 Rules update, DnD 5e’s Shield Master feat got some frankly huge quality of life updates at the cost of a feature that was hard to both remember how to use accurately and then, even when you did, it was hardly ever relevant. It’s all about focusing on the “and board” style of fighting and it has two very powerful features. We’re going to discuss the changes to the first feature and how it compares to other similar options, then talk about ways to make sure you’re optimizing both the Prone condition you inflict and the Reaction which the Feat grants.

First (and, perhaps, foremost), because all non-origin feats grant +1 ability score increases in the 2024 rules, they are much easier to slot into a build without getting too much off the Fundamental Math than they were in the 2014 rules. While Shield Master only allows us to increase Strength, I can’t actually come up with an optimal build offhand that would want this feat and any other stat bonus early in the level progression. This immediately presents a huge usability boon before we start talking about features.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Disclaimer
• Changes from the 2014 Rules
• Shield Master Features
  • Shield Bash
  • Interpose Shield
• Conclusion
• Example Build – Judge Dredd… Shield of the People?
  • Ability Scores
  • Background
  • Species
  • Skill and Tool Proficiencies
  • Feats and Ability Score Increases
  • Levels

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

• Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
• Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
• Green: Good options. Useful often.
• Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Changes from the 2014 Rules

The Shield Master feat’s signature feature, Shield Bash, still exists, but it has changes from the 2014 version. It’s still very much the meat of the feat, though. The feel-good update is that it no longer requires a Bonus Action, instead being effectively a free action that interrupts your Attack action. This means two wonderful things:

• Characters with this feat can still use their Bonus Action for other things, including an additional attack with Polearm Master, other class-based, species-based, or feat-based features, etc. It also allows for casting spells with a Bonus Action casting time (which Paladins are exceptionally thrilled about, given the changes to Divine Smite).
• If you have multiple attacks, assuming the target fails the save and you give them the Prone condition, you make the rest of your attacks against them with Advantage.

Obviously this means we’re going to want to optimize getting more attacks to take advantage of our prone target, so Barbarians, Fighters, and Paladins are the natural choice for this feat. Rangers and War Clerics could use it, but I wouldn’t recommend it as their class features don’t particularly mesh with being an optimized Defender. Let’s rate those other options:

Barbarian: While there are two subclasses that currently exist as reasonable defensive options for Barbarians, the rest don’t generally make good Defenders. Even for the ones that do, they don’t have access to Fighting Styles, making the Reaction part of optimized shield use inaccessible without multiclassing.

Fighter: Access to Fighting Styles, the most attacks per round of anyone in the game except the Monk, and an extra feat so that they can take several and still be on Fundamental Math track at level 8. I’ll present an abbreviated example build later in this article showing a Battle Master Fighter making good use of Shield Master.

Paladin: Iconic shield users, the Oath of Devotion subclass art literally features a Paladin holding a huge shield they use to protect their party members. Access to Fighting Styles and an additional attack make Paladins solid users of the feat.

Shield Master Features

Shield Bash

With that said, we need to talk about the actual mechanics of how it makes targets Prone. As Shield Master no longer uses Athletics, you cannot increase your effectiveness with the shove in any way other than with straight Strength increases: no Expertise, no Enhance Ability, no Guidance, no Luckstone, etc. This dramatically reduces the amount you can invest into this tactic and therefore its power, but it also means there’s a much lower opportunity cost ceiling to use this feat to its maximum effectiveness.

Additionally, while the changes to Shove in general meant that this feat has also changed to only target Strength to match, it now allows a Strength save instead of giving them their choice of two skills in which not many enemy stat blocks had proficiency (except humanoids). Strength scores are consistently the highest at nearly every CR, and Strength saves aren’t far behind Con in terms of having proficiency, especially at CR’s 4-10 where you’ll have 99% of the play time possible with this feat.

In fact, an average CR 5 monster (representing a “boss fight” for a level 5 character that has this feat) will have an average Strength Save of roughly +4 vs the character’s save DC of 15, allowing the target to succeed 45% of the time. Compare that to a character optimized for this in the 2014 rules: With Custom Origin, a level 5 character could have this feat and Skill Expert, meaning a +8 on their Athletics checks. This would be compared to the average target’s Strength of 16 or Dex of 12 (again, basically only humanoids had skill proficiencies and not even all of them had Athletics or Acrobatics), meaning they’d be rolling against you with +3 or +1.

Even if we only look at average Strength, the target only has a 30% chance to succeed (yes, I made a chart of the 400 possible roll combinations and checked). That number actually goes down over time because Expertise means your bonus scales exponentially, eventually ending at +17 without magic items while targets are likely stuck somewhere around +8, giving less than a 20% chance of success. Compare that to this version, a level 20 optimized character will have around 20 Strength (not accounting for Epic Boons or magic items which could increase your Strength), for a save DC of 19 while average Strength saves are roughly +7, meaning a 40% chance of success.

We can also compare Shield Bash to the Topple weapon mastery. It allows a Con save (which, for an average monster, is even higher than a Strength save), but it occurs every time you attack the target. At level 5, two attacks a round gives two chances for your DC 15 save vs their +4 average Con save bonus. That gives them only a 20% chance of remaining upright through two successful attacks with Topple. Once you get up to level 20, 6 attacks a round (if you do it right), with your save DC of 20 vs their save bonus of +13, they’ll only have a 7% chance of remaining upright through the whole 6 seconds.

Interpose Shield

Evasion is always rated Blue on any class or subclass that has it. That said, Evasion doesn’t use your Reaction, and any character that wants this feat is probably going to have at least two good uses for its Reaction already: some combination of a Fighting Style using the shield, Polearm Master’s not-an-Opportunity-Attack, Sentinel’s actual Opportunity Attack, and some personal defensive ability. With all these defensive tools taking a Reaction, I would expect that many Defenders would choose to protect their party members at their own expense, making this option less attractive in many circumstances.

Conclusion

Given Topple’s clear numerical dominance, I think the best way to think of this incarnation of Shield Master is as a supplement to the strategy of knocking people over rather than a core component. In that vein, enjoy.

Example Build – Judge Dredd… Shield of the People?

I am the law! (of large numbers)

Ability Scores

Background

Strength and Con means either Farmer or Soldier. As we’re intending to be a Defender, we take Farmer for Tough.

Species

Goliath (Hill) will come in clutch if something chooses to burn Legendary Resistances on our shenanigans or just rolls incredibly well.

Skill and Tool Proficiencies

Not relevant.

Feats and Ability Score Increases

At level 1 we get Tough from our Background.

At level 4 we’ll take Shield Master

At level 6 we’ll take Polearm Master.

At level 8 we’ll take Sentinel.

Levels