Sometimes when you build a character you just want them to be fast, darting in and out of combat with unparalleled speed and agility, and that’s where Mobile 5E feat comes in.
Let’s break down what this feat gives you:
- Your speed increases by 10 feet. Useful for all characters, this is particularly useful when paired with the last bullet point.
- When you take the Dash action, difficult terrain doesn’t cost you additional movement on that turn. This is a more situational benefit unless your party creates difficult terrain as a commonly-used tactic, consider this point as your speed is reliable, rather than something interesting on its own.
- When you make a melee attack against a creature, you don’t provoke an opportunity attack from that creature for the rest of the turn, whether you hit or not. This allows you to become a skirmishing character, taking swipes at the enemy and darting away to safety with your increased movement speed. Alternatively, this allows you to ensure that your ranged character can always get away if a monster gets too close.
Moving faster and saying no to opportunity attacks must be great for everyone, right? Well to some degree, yes, but for some classes and builds it may not be worth spending an ASI on:
Mobile 5E is most useful for
- Fighters – The more attacks you have, the more creatures you can safely escape from, so the combination of Fighters having the most attacks and the most ASIs in the game make them perfect candidates for this feat.
- Rogues – Those choosing to play a melee Rogue will want to close on a monster to attack them but they usually won’t want to stay there with a d8 Hit Die and a decent but not very high AC. This feat allows Rogues to get out of melee range without needing to use their bonus action to Disengage, which allows them to use that bonus action to attack with an off-hand weapon. This synergizes well, allowing the Rogue to get a second chance to do their Sneak Attack damage and able to get away from two monsters safely, instead of just one.
Mobile 5E is least useful for
- Wizards and other full casters – A feat is a steep investment for most classes, especially as there will likely be multiple feats clamoring for your precious ASIs. Unless you’re going to be leveraging the benefits of Mobile frequently, it’s too costly to pick up on a whim and most fullcasters won’t be doing so. Exceptions here are gish characters such as College of Swords Bards, Bladesinger Wizards, and Pact of the Blade Warlocks.
- Swashbuckler Rogues – Whilst Rogues, in general, get a lot out of Mobile the Swashbuckler subclass has one of its biggest benefits built-in. Whilst the speed boost would still be beneficial for Swashbucklers, there are other ways to increase your speed at a lower cost.
I know what you’re thinking, wouldn’t this be a great feat for a Monk? And the answer to that is simply yes, being able to skirmish seamlessly whilst being even faster is great. The problem is that Monks are MAD with no additional ASIs to compensate, so this feat would be really great for a Monk but you need to either be a variant human/custom lineage, take the feat at higher levels, or just accept your Dex or Wis not being as high as possible at that moment.
We hope that this article has put some pep in your step and put you on equal footing with that centaur you’ve been looking to race. If you found this article helpful and want to know more about the game, then check out our how to play section, or if the idea of a Mobile Fighters has piqued your interest then check out our Fighter 5E guide here.
