Would a feat allowing thrown weapons to be counted as melee be overpowered?

Question

I am considering adding the following feat:

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Thrown Weapon Commander

You have honed your skill with thrown weapons to the point that your weapons acts like a natural extension of your arm granting you the following benefits:

• Increase your Strength or your Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• You can apply effects that normally require a melee attack to attacks done with a thrown weapon.

The weapon must naturally have the thrown property, and does not stack with abilities that grant the thrown property to melee-only weapons.

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Most of the feats I've seen are the reverse, in granting the thrown property to melee weapons. This is, to coin the phrase, granting melee status to weapons when they are thrown.

I don't want this to stack so that other features that grant the thrown status work. So no turning a lance into a thrown weapon, and be able to toss it with all the benefits of being a melee attack.

My example of why I'm trying to add this is for an Artificer. They want to get a handaxe, and apply the returning weapon infusion. Then for their attacks, use the booming blade cantrip.

So they can throw the axe, hit the enemy with booming blade, and have the axe automatically appear back in their hand. However, to get this to work, they would have to dedicate a feat and an infusion. Mind you, they already have dedicated the infusion, but it's still not a combo without cost.

Are there any other melee-only effects that might cause a thrown weapon to be over powered?

Answer 1

No

I don't think this would be all that "game breaking".

Why?

Because if it was, you'd see more builds with Magic Initiate -> Druid taking Thorn Whip. It is a melee attack with 30' reach. You already cannot benefit from Booming Blade with a reach weapon, since the spell only has a range of 5'. Casting it when wielding a thrown weapon will face the same limitation. There are many other properties limiting the utility of melee features, like Great Weapon Master's Heavy property requirement.

Barbarian

This would also help a 2014 barbarian, but some of these changes are now RAW in the 2024 Player's Handbook, as their Rage applies to thrown weapons now.

It depends on what you compare it to.

It's not going to seem that great compared with Great Weapon Master, Polearm Master or Fey Touched, but perhaps when compared with Weapon Master, Savage Attacker or Lightly Armored, it may seem overly powerful.

When in doubt, Playtest it!

Any house rule or homebrew that may have unforeseen consequences is a prime candidate for playtesting. You can discuss with your player that you want to introduce this feature, but if it proves to be overly powerful, you will remove it and they can swap it out.

Good luck!

Update

After mulling over the fact that the range of the spell prevents your intended outcome,

My example of why I'm trying to add this is for an Artificer. They want to get a handaxe, and apply the returning weapon infusion. Then for their attacks, use the booming blade cantrip.

I think what you want is something like

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Gish Thrower

You can apply effects from a cantrip with a range of self to a target hit with a ranged attack with a melee weapon with the thrown property.

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It's kind of a mouthful, but provides specificity. This would allow your Artificer to apply Booming Blade to a thrown weapon. Would this be overpowered? I don't think so, but it would be much better than what was proposed. Since Booming Blade is a cantrip, it scales with character level, so could potentially be more impactful than anticipated. Ultimately, it's just a bit more damage and I wouldn't imagine it could break the game.