5e Feat for 2-Handed

[Kaiwen]

Strong Grip
Requirements: 13 Str
Your uncommonly strong grip allows you to wield larger weapons than the average person.
- Your strength or dexterity (your choice) increases by 1.
- You can treat two-handed weapons as one-handed, and one-handed weapons as light. You cannot benefit from Great Weapon Master's damage bonus without using both hands.
- At the start of your turn, you can forgo the above benefit to increase a weapon's damage die by 1 step. (1d4 => 1d6 => 1d8 => 1d10 => 1d12 or 2d6 =>2d8 => 3d6)

What do you think? I wanted to give 5e something like Monkey Grip from 3.5 that let you wield larger weapons, as well as enable two character ideas. The first is FF7 Cloud. Superhumanly strong guy wielding a massively oversized sword, you've all seen this before. The second is the hoplite, a warrior with a longspear and a shield.

My chief balance concerns were exploits involving a certain large weapon wielding feat. I was tempted to make benefit number 3 a flat +3 damage, but this is more in line with versatile weapons and the already-existing concept of wielding a 1-handed weapon 2-handed for more damage.

[Trask]

This looks balanced in my opinion, if anything its a little weaker than the usual suspects (GWM, Resilient, Lucky), but it also helps fulfill the fantasy of being impossibly strong.

[Greywander]

The one combo that immediately jumps out to me is PAM + reach weapon + shield. So, basically a hoplite build. This is only notable to me because it's something you can't currently approximate exactly. For example, there isn't much difference between a greatsword + shield and a longsword + shield, just slightly higher damage, but this "hoplite build" doesn't have such an approximation. You can use a polearm without a shield (which is probably the closest approximation), but you lose the benefits of a shield. You can use a whip and shield, but this won't work with PAM. You could use a spear or quarterstaff with a shield, but you won't have reach.

It's probably fine. It's a feat tax to let you wield a two-hander and shield at the same time. You're basically gaining +2 AC, which would normally be not a good idea, but only because you could stack it with things like a shield.

This actually reminds me of a homebrew race concept I had that was a creature with four arms. Such a creature would already be able to wield a shield and two-hander at the same time, and still have a free hand, too. So this feat would probably be comparable, balance-wise.

One thing I might change is that last bullet point. I'd probably just have it say, "While wielding a weapon with both hands..." and I might change it to either +1d4 damage (which is in line with Enlarge/Reduce) or a flat +2 (if you want to avoid it being affected by things that affect damage rolls, like crits, or the GWF style).

[wayfare]

I like the bulk of the feature, but I'm not getting where a dexterity bump is appropriate. This one seems pretty clearly strength.

Additionally, 5e doesn't typically use effects that increase damage die step. I'm not saying this is necessarily unbalanced, but it is definitely out of vernacular and shouldn't be used with something you intend to put on DMs Guild.

As a final note, a dueling fighter with this is getting significant benefit (2d6+2 or 9 per strike) vs (1d8+2 or 6.5 per strike). Honestly, +1 strength might be too powerful a benefit to pair with this. At 5th level, a fighter is doing 26-28 damage on average with this each round and has an AC between 18-20.

[Kaiwen]

I like the bulk of the feature, but I'm not getting where a dexterity bump is appropriate. This one seems pretty clearly strength.

Huh. I mixed up light and finesse, so I was thinking that 1h TWFers might want dex. My bad.



Additionally, 5e doesn't typically use effects that increase damage die step. I'm not saying this is necessarily unbalanced, but it is definitely out of vernacular and shouldn't be used with something you intend to put on DMs Guild.

This is derived from Versatile, which is more or less what it's meant to represent, ie two-handing a one-handed weapon for more damage.