The Sentinel feat is a powerful option for melee characters, allowing them to:
This feat is great for controlling the battlefield, protecting allies, and getting extra attacks. It pairs well with Polearm Master for maximum lockdown potential.
Sentinel is a feat in D&D 5e. It allows you to:
When you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, the creature's speed becomes 0 for the rest of the turn. Creatures provoke opportunity attacks from you even if they take the Disengage action before leaving your reach. When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you (and that target doesn't have this feat), you can use your reaction to make a melee weapon attack against the attacking creature.
Overall, the 5e Sentinel Feat is all about controlling the battlefield. When enemies would wish to flee, you prevent that. This can be a pivotal thing if an enemy is trying to flee or attack less defended allies.
Sentinel can be a powerful tool when paired with other complementary abilities. Once you understand the Sentinel feat 5e rules you can gain many benefits by using this feat in combat.
Those benefits include:
Let’s take a minute to talk about opportunity attacks first.
An opportunity attack is where a creature leaves your engaged space on their turn. Using your reaction to them leaving, you attack them. This happens outside your turn. You can only use melee attacks in an opportunity attack unless you have a special feat.
If the enemy chooses to use the Disengage action or bonus action, then they do not provoke opportunity attacks. That is unless, you’ve done your exploring of all the 5e feats, and Sentinel was your top choice. As already explained, Sentinel disregards the Disengage and can actually stop the enemy from leaving at all.
One interesting thing to note with the Disengage action is that it applies for your entire turn. Once you disengage, that applies to every creature you come into contact with.
That means that sentinel becomes that much more powerful against creatures that rely on their ability to Disengage.
Let’s take rogues for example.
Rogues can use their cunning action to take the Disengage action as a Bonus Action. They can use this to move up and down the battlefield, causing damage wherever they go but taking none. They dart in, make the attack, Disengage, and then dart out unscathed.
On that note, let’s also talk about how to use this feat from the point-of-view of the tank in the party.
The tank’s job is to absorb damage and demand the enemy’s attention. They make themselves the target so that other, squishier characters can ping the enemy with ranged attacks from safety.
Often adversaries will get wise to this tactic and leave to attack the ranged party members. As the tank, we don’t want that. So we just use our handy-dandy Sentinel Feat and boom! They can’t leave.
When they try to Disengage, it doesn’t work and we can hopefully stop them in their tracks.
Not just that, but if an ally happens to be nearby, we can still help them. If the enemy chooses to attack the ally, we can simply use our sentinel feat to attack the enemy first!
Yes, Sentinel does work against enemies who also have the Sentinel feat. Because the Feat focuses on opportunity attacks, both engaged combatants can use the Feat against each other. This would make for quite a comical situation if both parties wanted to leave but the other party would not allow them.
So now that you have a good idea of what Sentinel allows you to do, let’s talk combos. In this next section, we’ll look at some of the most useful combinations to add to Sentinel.
One of the best combinations to pair with the Sentinel Feat is the Polearm Master Feat. It makes it so adversaries provoke opportunity attack at the range of your weapon’s reach. For most polearm weapons, this reach is either 5 feet or 10 feet.
With a 5-foot reach, your character can now use their opportunity attack on anything within 10 feet on any side. That’s effectively a 25-foot square (counting the 5 feet you take up in the middle). That’s 25 feet where you can stop characters in their tracks. That is a lot of area control.
There are a few different ways to build the “perfect” Sentinel. But for the purpose of this article, I’ll talk about the tank version (you can always go for a monk version later).
To build a Sentinel Tank, you choose a Paladin and you go for a high Strength modifier. You then armor up as much as possible and you acquire a Glaive. Next you pick both the Sentinel and the Polearm Master Feats.
You choose high strength so that you can land your hits with the Glaive. You want to grab as much armor as possible because you will become the target of many enemy attacks. Finally, we chose paladin so that when we do land those opportunity attacks, we can smite whenever we want.
Put your Sentinel Feat to good use, by thinking about the tactical opportunities of the battlefield. Look for choke points where you can deny access to the enemy.
If nothing like that is present, close the distance to the enemy quickly. This will give your ranged allies more space to avoid damage.
Lastly, you want to make sure that you are strategic with how and when you use your opportunity attacks. If there are multiple enemies, using Sentinel on the first one that leaves your space may be unwise. Wait for the most opportune moment to strike. That said, remember you can use Sentinel every single round if you can find the opportunity.
The Sentinel Feat is a very strong feat for most melee classes. It can provide the ability to attack an extra time every single round. It can also help protect squishier allies.
The Sentinel Feat also lends itself to a very strong narrative aspect as well. Whoever would choose the Feat should consider why their character would choose it. Why would their character use it to protect other allies? Thinking in terms like this can really help you flesh out your character when it comes time for roleplaying.
Overall, this Feat is a fun one because it lets you do much more on the battlefield. Don’t forget to use your opportunity attacks wisely so as not to waste them. If you like this article and our deep dive into this Feat, check out our other articles on character building. Leave a comment below telling how you use this Feat.
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