D&D: Wait You Can Punch How Far?! – The Inescapable Fist
Are you playing a melee character? Do your enemies keep running away? No need to worry friends, here’s how you can punch someone 30 ft away.
Melee characters often get the shortest end of the stick in D&D. Whether they’re outclassed by spellcasters who can rain down destructive fire from hundreds of feet away, or are feathered with arrows from bow-using fighters and bow-adins packing in divine smites on top of arrows–even RANGERS get in on the ranged attack fun.
And here you are running 30-60ft at a time towards your foes hoping to get within 5 feet. Well now’s the time to spread your wings and make everyone think about just how far you’re punching in a single punch, because we’re going to show you how to make a melee attack that seems to break time and space.
After all, one of the absolute joys in D&D is digging through the rules for weird, corner-case scenarios that, while legal according to the rules of the game, carry implications about the world that take it in almost cartoonish directions. Let’s take a look.
It all starts with bugbears. These are the 2nd best -bear creature in D&D, above werebear but below owlbear, and they’re also the core of our build here. You can find the rules for playing a bugbear in Volo’s Guide to Monsters, and even if you’re not trying to make a very long puncher, bugbears are still one of the best goblins that you can be. Just look at them.
But the reason you want to be a bugbear is because they’ve got long arms, represented by the long-armed trait, which gives them an extra 5 feet of melee range, which means that you’re already hitting someone within a 10′ reach just from the jump. On top of that, you’re going to want to talk to your DM about using the Ravenloft book because you also want to have a Dark Gift, which pretty much any PC in Ravenloft has, even bugbears–and you specifically want the Living Shadow gift which makes you cool and emo because you have a living shadow that doesn’t necessarily do what you think a shadow would.
It also has a feature called Shadow Strike which increases the reach of your melee attack by 10 feet (you can do this a number of time per day equal to your proficiency bonus). So now you can punch someone 20 feet away and you haven’t even picked a class.
Now, we’re talking specifically about punches, so let’s take three levels of Monk and become a practitioner of the Way of Four Elements, which is not necessarily the best monk subclass, but has an ability called Fangs of the Fire Snake, which, you guessed it, extends your reach by 10 feet with unarmed attacks. So now you’re striking at someone 30 feet away for your entire turn, flurry of blows and all.
You could also accomplish the same effect by taking three levels of Battlemaster Fighter and wielding a reach weapon–then any time you used a lunging attack you could hit a target up to 30 feet away. Sadly, you can’t combine lunging attack with the Fangs of the Fire Snake since, for whatever reason, an unarmed strike in D&D is never a weapon attack, it’s an unarmed strike which allows you to make melee attacks, but not melee weapon attacks.
Which is why monk/paladin multiclass characters can’t use divine smite on their punches, sadly. If you don’t care about that rule, then you can get an extra 5 feet and punch someone 35 feet away. If you’re looking for other ways to try and increase your reach, there aren’t too many more. Our good friend enlarge/reduce comes in handy not for increasing your reach, but for increasing your size and giving you a larger space to reach from. It’s a weird technicality but it nets you an extra five feet without making your reach five feet longer.
Think of it as hitting someone from 35-40 feet away from where you started as a medium sized creature and it works. You could also potentially use the Eldritch Maul ability of the Eldritch Claw tattoo, which lets your melee attacks and unarmed strikes reach a target up to 15 feet away from you. Rules as written, this doesn’t “set your base range to 15” or “add 15 feet to your reach” it just lets you hit someone 15 feet away, which you can already do so there’s probably no effect here if your DM hates fun.
But as intended? If it happened at my table? Yeah punch away you crazy diamond, let’s hit someone 45-50 feet away with an unarmed strike. At that point it’s time to start looking for maneuvers that let you grapple with an attack as well.
But that’s a story for another time! Happy Adventuring!
