One D&D Battle Master Fighter Build Guide – 2025 Update
Learn the best build for the Battle Master Fighter with full leveling guides and easy to navigate sections to only read what you need!
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Article Disclaimers
For all D&D guides on Nat1gaming, they only use the main sourcebooks (Player’s Handbook, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Xanathar’s Guide to Everything) as well as Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos (mostly for Silvery Barbs) as those tend to be the most commonly used books at tables. Always be sure that if you’re following a guide that you’re adhering to your tables rules about what sourcebooks you are allowed to follow.
Any spell, class, feature, or other game item that is linkable on this website is covered by the 5th edition Open Games License and will be in the Player’s Handbook, but not everything in the Player’s Handbook will be linked to. All other materials that aren’t linked to are from other sourcebooks or aren’t allowed to be linked to per the 5th Edition Open Games License, so please refer to the appropriate sourcebooks for that information.
For the purposes of this guide, it will be assumed that you would not be multiclassing. While multiclassing can be excellent for many of these, this is for those who want to play the build all the way through in the same class. Guides that use multiclassing will be separate from these.
For spellcasters, you may notice substantial overlap between the spell lists of builds with the same base class. This is due to each guide utilizing a generically good spell list and not considering extenuating factors that will influence how you particularly sculpt your spell list. When creating your own spell list, you should take into account the campaign setting, what spells any other party members are capable of casting, potential overlap (ritual spells tend to overlap so it’s rare you need multiple people capable of casting them), or potential shortcomings in the parties total spell list. While this guide can definitely help point you in the right direction for crafting a spell list, you should use your judgement and preferences to figure out what spells make the most sense for your character.
To that end, please refer to the Spell List and Spell Tier list for any substitutions you’d want to make to the build.
Why Battle Master Fighter?
If you want to play Battle Master, you want to use maneuvers plain and simple. Maneuvers give you extra combat abilities which can shake things up versus just moving, attacking, and passing your turn. While not a spellcaster in any capacity, they function similarly as you can get bonus effects by spending from a resource pool, so if you want to spellcast without spellcasting, this is how you do it.
Battle Master Fighter Abilities Ranked
Combat Superiority (Level 3) – A- Tier – Most maneuvers are quite strong, you start with a d8 for your Superiority dice, and you get enough of them to make this feel constantly impactful.
Student of War (Level 3) – D Tier – A tool and skill proficiency is neat and all, but nothing special.
Know Your Enemy (Level 7) – D+ Tier – I’m a big fan of this ability as being able to discern any vulnerabilities or resistances/immunities can be really helpful information, but being limited to once per day (without using Superiority dice anyway) is confusing both from a balance perspective and a game play perspective. I do believe this is a good ability, but this not having more charges (without using Superiority dice which I’d like to avoid using) really limits the usefulness.
Additional Maneuvers (Level 7) –