Piss and Vinegar might be the most risque name for a subclass in D&D, it’s also a source of pride for many a Pugilist.
Let’s round out our deep dive into the Pugilist with one last subclass, Piss and Vinegar. And you might be wondering, what does that have to do with anything? Well, consider the Pugilist’s role as a third-party class. It was created to fill a niche. A gritty, often grimy brawler. Someone who grew up on the streets and has fought their way to becoming the adventurer they are in your campaign.
Of the six different subclasses, I’d say three are akin to different “fighting styles” – one is punch harder – the Sweet Science, one is grappling for glory – the Squared Circle, and then the Piss and Vinegar Pugilist is all about taunting your enemies and being a mean, mean cuss.
It’s an interesting concept. And a fun niche to play with. I think it shows off what kinds of fun corners you can explore when you start looking into third party content. Just because it isn’t WotC official doesn’t mean it’s unplayable. I think every class, every idea can be done well. It’s just up to the DM and players to decide what’s fun for them – it varies wildly from table to table, but it always has.
Piss And Vinegar Pugilists – The Meanest Cuss This Side Of The DM Screen
And so we come to the Pugilist. These Streetfighters with “swagger to spare” are plenty tough on their own. With Moxie points that can be spent to increase their resilience, with abilities like Dig Deep and Down But Not Out, they can be surprisingly gritty. And this, in an edition where characters are already kind of hard to kill.
So, what then, makes the Piss and Vinegar subclass stand out? These are the Pugilists that know how to revel in a heel turn. They revel in rudeness and fight dirty. Mechanically speaking, this is about taunting your enemies and having a few dirty tricks of your own to pull off. Though it’s another one that doesn’t come fully online until level 6 or so.
But at level 3, you get a pretty good taste of what the Piss and Vinegar school of fighting is all about. Starting with the Salty Salute. This lets you provoke a creature near you as a Bonus Action. If they fail a saving throw, they become so enraged they take psychic damage, an ability that you may have experienced in the lobby of many a multiplayer video game. But in addition, the creature so afflicted also has Disadvantage to attack anyone other than you.
I feel like this is one mechanic where flavor and function work in perfect harmony. This is all about enraging your enemy. And it also does damage. It gets right to the point of what makes the Piss and Vinegar Pugilist special.
It needs to, because the other feature is lackluster, even for a “ribbon” feature. Bad Attitude gives you proficiency with Intimidation and also lets you add your Strength bonus to your Intimidation checks. It’s fine. But without giving your Intimidation a little extra, just feels underweighted.
Especially because imagine nt having Intimidation and suddenly being trained in it after three levels. It doesn’t play into the fantasy as much. But D&D subclasses on the whole are full of features like these. And if you can swing Expertise, you can then throw two stat mods PLUS double proficiency for a truly egregious total bonus.
Higher Levels, Concentrated Vinegar
At level 6, the subclass really comes into its own, with the Dirty Tricks feature. Dirty Tricks gets you a number of Battle Master-like maneuvers that you can pull when making unarmed strikes, though you can only use each of the three different dirty tricks once per Short or Long Rest.
First, you can pull off a Heelstomper, which lets you reduce a creature’s speed to 0 after you deal damage to them. And it lasts until the creature succeeds on a Dex save, so you can potentially lock someone down a while. Then Low Blow lets you hit below the belt, giving all attacks on the creature Advantage until the end of your next turn. Finally, the Dale Gribble special, Pocket Sand, which lets you throw sand at a creature and blind them temporarily if they fail a save.
At level 11, you unlock Mean Old Cuss. This upgrades your Salty Salute, allowing you to target any number of creatures within 30 feet of you. If they fail a save, they take damage and have disadvantage to attack anyone other than you. You can do this once per Rest for free, otherwise you spend 3 Moxie Points to do it.
Finally, at level 17, you gain Dirtier Tricks. This abilitiy gives you two more Dirty Tricks: Rabbit Punch, which gives your target disadvantage on saving throws (and removes resistance to psychic damage), and Sucker Punch, which lets you turn an unarmed strike into a Critical Hit that does triple damage instead of double damage. All in all, fun stuff.
If you are Pugilist-curious, you can find it on D&D Beyond!
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