Here we discuss the new Legends & Lore column: Feats of Game Design
Here is the list of feats that will be available in the Player's Handbook.
- Alert
- Athlete
- Actor
- Charger
- Crossbow Expert
- Defensive Duelist
- Dual Wielder
- Dungeon Delver
- Durable
- Elemental Adept
- Grappler
- Great Weapon Master
- Healer
- Heavily Armored
- Heavy Armor Master
- Inspiring Leader
- Keen Mind
- Lightly Armored
- Linguist
- Lucky
- Mage Slayer
- Magic Initiate
- Martial Adept
- Medium Armor Master
- Mobile
- Moderately Armored
- Mounted Combatant
- Observant
- Polearm Master
- Resilient
- Ritual Caster
- Savage Attacker
- Sentinel
- Sharpshooter
- Shield Master
- Skilled
- Skulker
- Spell Sniper
- Tavern Brawler
- Tough
- War Caster
- Weapon Master
There are definitely some very interesting looking feats there... Actor, Dungeon Delver, Elemental Adept, Inspiring Leader Mage Slayer, Ritual Caster, Skulker, Spell Sniper, War Caster are all sounding really good. (Bonus to Concentration checks for the last one?)
Interesting that they seem to have seperated the Armour Proficiency feats (Armoured - I would assume anyway) from the Armour Master feats...
Definitely looking forward to seeing what some of these feats actually do.
New Feats that we haven't seen and my wild guesses for what they do.
- Actor (instantly become the group's face?)
- Crossbow Expert (maybe ignore the Loading property as a bonus action?)
- Defensive Duelist / Dual Wielder (we saw Duelist, but not two feats like this)
- Dungeon Delver (free Darkvision???)
- Durable (pick an ability score, gain saving throw proficiency?)
- Elemental Adept (change physical weapon damage into fire??)
- Grappler (Advantage on Grapple checks, perhaps a new grapple move)
- Heavily Armored / Heavy Armor Master (curious to learn the difference between these)
- Inspiring Leader (martial healing?)
- Keen Mind (gain Adv on one Intelligence based skill? and +1 Int?)
- Lightly Armored / Moderately Armored (again, curious to know what these do)
- Mage Slayer (not sure)
- Martial Adept (free martial proficiency and +1 STR or +1 DEX?)
- Mounted Combatant (as a bonus action, you can direct your mount to make a free bite or hoof/claw attack)
- Observant (prof in Perception and Investigation?)
- Resilient (gain a bonus to death saves?)
- Ritual Caster (learn how to cast ritual spells from either the Wizard, Cleric, or Druid spell list?)
- Savage Attacker (not sure)
- Sentinel (not sure)
- Sharpshooter (no penalties for long range and reduced penalties from cover)
- Skilled (gain three skill or tool proficiencies)
- Skulker (gain Stealth proficiency and a surprise attack damage bonus)
- Spell Sniper (improved crit range for spell attacks and reduced penalties from cover)
- Tavern Brawler (unarmed attacks deal 1d6 bludgeoning)
- War Caster (bonus to Concentration checks?)
- Weapon Master (pick a weapon, deal +2 damage?)
Aaaand once more stuff like Linguist, presented in the same mechanical slots as stuff like Polearm Mastery.
Sigh.
thespaceinvader wrote:
No Arcane Archer feat? Hmm.
pukunui wrote:
FallingIcicle wrote:
Each feat will have more than one benefit though so linguist could include a bonus to intelligence, wisdom, or charisma, and/or some kind of interaction bonus to history, persuasion, intimidation, or deception. They have separated armour proficiency from mastery so wizards won't be able to go from nothing to heavy armour master, which is cool. Likely the proficiency feats will include proficiency in maybe a couple of martial weapons too probably allowing wizards going to light a choice of a couple of rogue weapons and medium armour martial weapons etc. Nice to see that medium armour mastery isn't mirrored by light armour so an improvement is finally in the rules.
thespaceinvader wrote:
It is was saidsome featswould give you access to some features of other classes.
- Actor (add some bard? traits to your character)
- Elemental Adept (add some scorcerer traits to your character)
- Inspiring Leader (add some bard ? traits to your character)
- Magic Initiate ( add some wizard traits to your caracter)
- Martial Adept ( add some fighter traits to your character)
- Savage Attacker (add some barbarian traits to your character)
- Sentinel (add somepaladin? traits to your character )
- Skilled (add some rogue expertise traits to your character)
- Skulker (add some rogue sneaktraits to your character)
- Tavern Brawler (add some monk? traits to your character)
I also think that feats may allow access to fighter expertise dice. It would make sense if they bundled them into themed manoeuvres so Inspiring Leader could be two warlordy tricks plus a higher leel warlordy trick when you reach x level. They could then bundle these into fighting styles that other classes can buy or that fighters can take to increase their expertise dice.
Maybe, but I don't think they'll be so convoluted in their mechanics.
pukunui wrote:
@edwin_su and pauln6: I don't believe either of you are on the right track. From what I've seen, the feats are all a little more unique and/or self-contained than that.
Youngy wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Unlikely, although they may yet surprise us with something like that. They withheld some stuff even from the alpha testers after all.
pukunui wrote:
yep heaps of great sounding feats, looking forward to getting the details, esp shield mastery, alert, heavy armour master and war caster.
I suppose spell sniper could allow sneak attack damage on cantrips with an attack roll on the assumption that you can't have high cantrip damage and high sneak attack.
Psikerlord wrote:
pukunui wrote:
pukunui wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
Yeah it seems the leak has been shared on 4chan, reddit and other sites at this point.
If the feats remain similar to that I'll be fairly happy overall. There are "trap" options, but they're really obvious ones so you'll only really take them if you prefer the RP flavour.
pukunui wrote:
pauln6 wrote:
pauln6 wrote:
JRutterbush wrote:
pauln6 wrote:
Lightly armored, Moderately Armored, and Heavily Armored are the proficiency feats for those classes that don't start with proficiency. They may give you something more as well but at minimum those provide proficiency. Whereas the master stuff is advances uses of said armor.
Just my guess.
On the bright side, no potion brewing or scribe scroll.
Mephi1234 wrote:
Mephi1234 wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Mephi1234 wrote:
pukunui wrote:
I just had a neat idea. Feats will be a great way to reproduce the 4e Roles for Monsters. So if you want to make your Goblin a Brute, give them Tough or an Armor Feat. Or if you want the leader of the human thugs to be Artillery, then give him Crossbow Expert or Sharpshooter. Just slap on a Feat and BAM, instant monster customization.
pukunui wrote:
pukunui wrote:
1eejit wrote:
Rogues, paladins, and bards make excellent archers, not just rangers! Well, the bard used to anyways*, but the paladin still gets the archery fighting styles like ranger and fighter, and rogues make scary good stealth-snipers. As well, if the rumors of monk weapons are true, we can have very scary monk archers running around.
* Given that bardic inspiration is single other person now, how troublesome it is to self buff at all with magic, and we're at full caster-ness (leaving few levels for adding combat prowress), I'm kind of leery about how combat effective the skald is going to be.
Mephi1234 wrote:
The loss of archer-din would be very sad. And kind of annoying - while I'm all for traditional styles, its kind of annoying to be unable to play an untraditional style either.
IMO:
The "lesser" feats:
Athlete: +1 Str, gain proficency in...
Tough: +1 Con, gain proficency in...
Skilled: +1 Dex, gain proficency in...
Linguist: +1 Int, gain a language...
Observant: +1 Wis, gain proficenct in...
Actor: +1 Cha, gain proficency in...
We've all seen this coming for a while, but I'm not happy with this.
I hate Feats (and class abilities/spells/magic items) that provide "a number of small upgrades bundled together" or "a lesser benefit with a +1 bonus to a single ability score." These fall into two categories:
- Things you feel obligated to take, because you use them all the time, and you're 5%ish less effective without them. The best example of this is Implement Expertise and Weapon Expertise from 4E. They're basically Feat taxes. You either get your primary ability score up to 20 and/or take the +1 to attacks and/or +1 to your Save DCs with spells Feats, or you don't keep up with the AC/Saves of monsters, and you become LESS effective against them as you gain class levels.
- Things that provide a minor fiddly bonus rarely. The best example of this is 99% of the Skill related Feats from 3.5. You use it maybe once per game, and it only matters if the result of your roll is right on the edge of failure and success.
I was hoping that all of the 5E Feats would fall into the "significant new class feature that you'll use a lot" category.
Also, it appears as some of the Feats will be very similar to the "permission based" Feats of 3.5/PF, which remove the penalty from something that you should be able to do normally without a penalty so that it actually becomes useful. In 3.5/PF the best examples are the Improved Trip/Bull Rush/Grapple Feats - basically no one is going to Trip/Bull Rush/Grapple without the appropriate Feat for it because of the AoO/penalties you'd take - even though its supposed to be a default option available to all creatures. In 5E, things it looks like Crossbow Expert will let you make multiple attacks with a crossbow, Polearm Master will let you make an Opportunity Attack on an enemy when they enter your reach with a polearm (by default, enemies provoke an OA when they LEAVE your reach, which makes you LESS effective at dealing Opportunity Attacks with a Reach weapon without this Feat), Tavern Brawler will let you use Unarmed Strikes effectively, and so on.
Blerg.
Person_Man wrote:
Person_Man wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Person_Man wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
pauln6 wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
As feats are a separate system and the game is designed to work with or without them, it looks like the perfect place to put things that a DM may want to restrict or ban.
A few things I don't like about these feats.
1) There is no way to significantly increase your spell damage. The best feat for spellcasters turns 1s into 2s on the damage roll and ignores resistance for a single element. Weapon users in general get more out of feats than spellcasters do.
2) There are too many ways to gain opportunity attacks or reaction attacks. Mage Slayer, Polearm Master, Sentinel, etc. It will be standard for optimized PCs to use their reaction to attack.
3) Greatweapon Master is the only feat that significantly increases your damage. No other feat simply increases how much damage your deal. Everyone can cap out at 20 Str. After that, no feats really increase the damage you deal. But great weapon users can get a feat that increases their DPR by almost 50%. No other feat comes anywhere near to that kind of benefit.
The combination of these issues essentially means that players who opt out of choosing feats will fall behind feat users significantly when it comes to combat effectiveness.
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
Eerongal wrote:
Lawolf wrote:
Caliburn101. wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Person_Man wrote:
Well that didn't take long.
Article: "Hey guys, here is a preview at the list of feats in the PH. Enjoy!"
Knee-Jerkers and Speculatists: "And here's a list about why we don't like these feats...."
Logic: "But, but these are just the names of the feats. We haven't actually seen what they do yet. You can't complain about something if you don't know what it really is."
Knee-Jerkers and Speculatists: "I shut my ears to logic and complain anyway!"
Lawolf wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
Uskglass wrote:
1eejit wrote:
masterfat78 wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
masterfat78 wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
42 Feats? That's not a list, that's an insult.
Exactly, there should be at least 1500.
iserith wrote:
Person_Man wrote:
1eejit wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
Chakravant wrote:
I like the direction of the feats for 5E, both as optional and stronger defining aspect of PC.
Uskglass wrote:
JohnLynch wrote:
The Lucky feat sounds absurdly powerful, or am I missing something.
mellored wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
Probably the biggest mistake for 3E was to have a massive spell list for casters and a small feat list for melee. Although this got fixed with splat books, the initial imbalance it caused between the two types of classes, while no longer existing, is something people still think does because of the initial problem.
Looking at that list, it's an even smaller one... but with the melee having so many crazy abilities, particularly the fighter, built right in, it might not cause as many problems... unless of course Heavy Armor Master and Great Weapon Master are as busted in the PHB as they were in the playtest.
Spell Sniper sounds like it might have an Eldritch Spear-plus-type effect to it, which will let you increase the range and damage of single-target spells. That would be cool. Using Melf's Acid Arrow up to 250 feet or so, with an extra d6 of initial damage would be fun.
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
It's nice to see a reduced feat list. I just hope we don't end up with feat trees later on.
Chakravant wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
thewok wrote:
Mike says “In terms of character concept, feats fall into two camps, representing either specialized training or a mechanical benefit tied to some specific aspect of your character.” If you look at the feats, this separation can be seen in how the feat name would be used in a sentence.
My character is known as being -
- Alert
- Durable
- Heavily Armored
- Lightly Armored
- Lucky
- Mobile
- Moderately Armored
- Observant
- Resilient
- Skilled
- Tough
My character is a trained -
- Athlete
- Actor
- Charger
- Crossbow Expert
- Defensive Duelist
- Dual Wielder
- Dungeon Delver
- Elemental Adept
- Grappler
- Great Weapon Master
- Healer
- Heavy Armor Master
- Inspiring Leader
- Keen Mind
- Linguist
- Mage Slayer
- Magic Initiate
- Martial Adept
- Medium Armor Master
- Mounted Combatant
- Polearm Master
- Ritual Caster
- Savage Attacker
- Sentinel
- Sharpshooter
- Shield Master
- Skulker
- Spell Sniper
- Tavern Brawler
- War Caster
- Weapon Master
Ashrym wrote:
3e had around a 100 feats in their core book. A goodly portion of those were item creations, metamagic, combat enabling feat taxes (weapon finesse / two weapon fighting), individual skill bumps, multiple "weapon style" feat chains, and Spell / Weapon focus style things.
Item creation is now in the DMG, by all appearances. This is good, because it often led to unbalanced games with players abusing the system. Metamagic is now baked into the sorcerer class; spell school focused metamagic is basically now part of each wizard school subclass. Feat taxes have, by large, been eliminated from being needed in the game. You can TWF, shoot arrows, use finesse weapons, etc without needing a tax. Skill bumps are basically now just a single feat instead of one for each. Each weapon style feat chain has been consolidated into a single feat. Focus-style feats are effectively just attribute bumps - does the same thing.
With just a difference to how magic feats work, what exactly is wrong with the number of feats in the book? By and large, it seems like all the stuff from 3.x core books is covered here (again, minus the metamagic and creating items). What else would you put in? I mean, I would love to see some racial feats, or something to enhance your background, but I can see where they'd want to just hit the basics.
From the looks of things, I would have to guess that most characters are going to end up with 2 or 3 feats. Two or three attribute bumps to get your main class attribute to 20 (or two bumps and one of the +1 attribute feats). Then picking up a weapon style for the martial / half-casters, and full casters will probably be grabbing Spell Sniper or War Caster for ranged / melee respectively as their "weapon style."
After that? I bet it will be a toss up between raising Wis/Con for more perception/hp, or grabbing general utility feats. This will take place around level 16, so most people will never even get to that stage of the game.
mellored wrote:
SwampDog wrote:
Mephi1234 wrote:
Mephi1234 wrote:
1eejit wrote:
IMNSHO, Setting an ideal number of feats, working to meet it, and then stoping all feat production is a bad plan. beyong the PHB (or core three, I guess) content, I want WotC to introduce a new feat every time they feels there's a need for a new feat, and no more often. Whether we end up with 500 or 5,000 feats, so long as they're well thought out and suited to the 3 pillars of gameplay schematic, I'll be a very happy nerd.
Chakravant wrote:
GhostStepper wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Mistwell wrote:
Mephi1234 wrote:
Sturmunddrang wrote:
Chakravant wrote:
Brock_Landers wrote:
GhostStepper wrote:
I don't see anything here hinting at a feat tax, or even prerequisites. None of these feats, from just their titles, of course, seem like they'd have to have them. Which is, IMO, awesome.
I do wish there were more in the PHB. (or at least rules for splitting them apart) I read the article, so I know some will be minor and include a +1 to an ability score. That's good.
LOL, I never thought I'd be saying "gimmie more feats!" after 3e/PF and 4e.
I really, really hope that Medium Armor Master doesn't increase the maximum Dexterity bonus allowed while wearing medium armor.
Sturmunddrang wrote:
Cyber-Dave wrote:
Cyber-Dave wrote:
Taken with a huge dose of speculation until we see the PHB...
These look awesome! 
I really like the idea of adding a class feature to expand the class you are playing and make it unique. This plus backgrounds should offer a ton of role-playing hooks. Ritual casing for my warrior? Yes please. Sure you could do this in previous editions, but usually at a huge opportunity cost to your core competency.
GhostStepper wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
pauln6 wrote:
May decide to allow feats in my game... guess it all depends. Still leaning towards keeping it mostly basic.
Ramzour wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
1eejit wrote:
Person_Man wrote:
Mephi1234 wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
Sturmunddrang wrote:
dmgorgon wrote:
Lawolf wrote:
Person_Man wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
pauln6 wrote:
Psikerlord wrote:
From what I've seen of the feats, you don't need many. Those feats are very powerful. The beta play test and alpha play test has indicated this.
Also, why are we assuming that the Concentration bonus remains? Wasn't there a tweet saying that there wouldn't be any Concentration boosting feats? Or am I misrembering?
Mephi1234 wrote:
iserith wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
pukunui wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Person_Man wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
Gizmoduck_5000 wrote:
Ramzour wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:
DLfan wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
MechaPilot wrote:
MechaPilot wrote: