Slasher Feat 5E Guide | Pros, Cons, and Potential Builds

Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything wanted those who specialize in a type of weapon to really prosper. The Slasher feat was designed for those who like slashing Frtypes of weapons. Your specialization in swords and spears has become almost sadistic. You are incredibly accurate, and know to cut at the legs and arms when needed to hamper your opponent. Is it worth losing the Ability Score Improvement? Find out in our Slasher Feat 5E guide!

Slasher Feat 5E Guide

The Slasher feat gives you the option to boost your Strength or Dexterity by 1. In addition, once per turn, you may reduce the speed of a person you hit with slashing damage by 10 feet. Finally, on a critical hit, any target that took your slashing damage takes disadvantage on attack rolls.

Is Slasher Feat Any Good?

So, bright side, you got at least one ability score boost. Dexterity works well for you no matter what, and Strength builds of course benefit from Strength. So not bad!

Reducing movement speed by 10 feet is pretty hard to do! Especially if you take this feat on a Fighter or a Barbarian, they don’t really have options to slow someone down. So, you can reduce movement speed every round! That will allow you to either keep up with an enemy running away, or stop the enemy from sneaking into your backlines.

Finally, when you crit, you give a buff to your entire party! This benefit is more useful on smashy enemies, who use attack rolls to crush you. But imagine this on a dragon! You slice them, and then those massive fang and claw attacks that would often one-shot you will have a ton of trouble finding their mark! With a good crit rate, you can really mess with some harder enemies.

The bottom line is that this feat is situational. For most characters, it is a below average option that is not worth taking. There are builds – like the Champion fighter archetype – that slasher is perfect for. With the champion, your increased rate of critical hits has great synergy with this feat.

Downsides to the Slasher Feat

Okay, well, 10 feet of movement speed, while hard to acquire, isn’t necessarily good to acquire. You’d much rather lock down enemies with a more permanent effect, like a Paralyzing spell. Alternatively, the spell Entangle can keep your Casters alive, or lock down enemies, much greater.

In general, this feat does very little to counter casters. Sure, harder enemies will occasionally take disadvantage on attack rolls, allowing you to fight mercilessly. But if they’re a spell user, they can just cast on that turn. The disadvantage on attack rolls does very little to spells that don’t have any attack rolls!

Also, the movement speed reduction does nothing to stop teleports, since that’s not a speed. Your feat is countered by someone using Misty Step… Which won’t feel great!

Potential Builds

You most likely want to use this on a weapon build. While some spells have slashing damage, they’re somewhat niche, and you can’t really fish for critical hits on any of them.

Barbarians have a huge chance to critically hit, and hit in general, thanks to Reckless Attack. Advantage is really good, as it turns out! You can turn that energy into constant slows and the chance to make your enemy really not that good at attacking. A great option for tanking! Alternatively, a Fighter Cavalier can use the movement speed slow to ensure that the enemy doesn’t get too far when they try to run away.

This is better on defender builds, since you can’t really do slashing damage on ranged attacks too well. So you want to put it on someone in melee who’d like to stay in melee!

Conclusions

The Slasher feat is possibly the weakest of the three feats, not really able to match the sheer utility of the Crusher feat or the damage of the Piercer feat. However, it’s possibly the best option for a tank to ensure their party stays on a target and brings it down. It is not a bad option for certain fighter archetypes like the Champion. Try it out on a Defender with a propensity to slash.