Learn how to stop your enemy in their tracks or help out a party member that is getting hammered!! Learn how the Sentinel feat works in D&D 5e and how to utilise this amazing feat.

What Is Sentinel 5e?

Sentinel is a feat that helps you control the flow of a combat encounter. You do this by using your reaction to attack enemies when they make moves outside of your own combat round.

How Does Sentinel Work?

The sentinel feat consists of three components:

1. When you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, the creature’s speed becomes 0 for the rest of the turn.

This means that when an enemy is trying to flee from you or a party member within melee range of you, and you hit. They will no longer be able to move away and stay right where they are. 

2. Creatures provoke opportunity attacks from you even if they take the Disengage action before leaving your reach.

When you are fighting with pesky rogues, or in general smart enemies who behave like player characters, they might use the disengage action to try to escape you. With the sentinel feat you can still stop them in their tracks! There are two very specific exceptions to this; enemies that use the Swashbuckler rogue’s Fancy Footwork ability won’t trigger Sentinel, and neither will certain enemies using the Flyby trait. This means an Ogre will be stopped, but an Owl will still be able to fly away and laugh at you.

3. 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.

This is the sleeper feature of the sentinel feat that most players forget about. You are allowed to strike an enemy when they try to strike your own party members (within 5ft of course). This way you can take revenge with a beautiful critical hit when that stupid Ogre downs one of your party members.

Is Sentinel Good?

Sentinel can be considered one of the better early level feats since it allows you to really control the flow of battle. When you only have two attacks yet, getting one more in a close combat scenario. This feat is a great choice for tanks and players who are on the frontline of combat. It will help you keep enemies close to you and you won’t let them get to your tanks this way.

Learn more about all the feats you can choose in D&D 5e by taking a look at our Feats list