D&D 5E New Race Feats Appearing in D&D's 'Xanathar's Guide to Everything

Blue said:

You're only talking about d20 checks there. Many ability attributes get added to weapon or spell damage. Or show how many times per rest you can use an ability like bardic inspiration and many clerical domains. CON gets added to every level's HPs AND every day's natural healing.

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I included damage bonuses, although for simplicity's sake, I overvalued stat mods to damage heavily by assuming everyone is rolling 1d8 and is moving from a raw 1d8 to 1d8+1. What I left out was the skill benefits of an ASI. I think the numbers probably end up about right - but like I said, this is hardly scientific, because so much of it is going to be dependent on table variation.

Con is in a different boat, because it is not an attack stat for any class, and almost never contributes to an action from a player, instead serving a passive and defensive role. It's not possible to 'use' your constitution to reduce the damage you take, so it's not possible to make it's rolls anywhere near as common as those of other stats. If you want to compare it to a feat, you'll need to work out an equivalence for how many hit points an encounter drains you of and work backwards to how many extra encounters that allows your party to survive. My guess is that the equivalence more-or-less holds.

TheHobgoblin said:

I am a bit skeptical that you would be using the abilities of Actor, Athlete, Dungeon Delver, Keen Mind, Linguist, Mage Slayer, Martial Adept, Mounted Combat, Observant, or Tavern Brawler more often than you would make an attack or damage roll. Or Stealth roll if you are a thief.

Also-- while a +1 on a D20 is a 5% increase, a +1 on a d8 is a 12.5% increase.

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I actually made a scout around Observant, until my GM got board of me auto-detecting all the traps an secrets. So made me role for everything voiding the feat then let me take Alert as a replacement.... Basically a rogue (16 wisdom and dexterity)with observant and expertise in perception gave me a passive perception of 22 at level 1 and even Deadly traps had a max DC of 21 to spot for even high level characters. So he switched to investigation hoping to use my inelegance instead....but I had a passive investigation of 19 (14 intellect) and the investigation traps seem to max out at 15.... By level 7 he said my character was broken as a scout, pick a different feet. ... I hadn't even found my eyes of the eagle yet!!!

Also, I wanted to pick Keen Mind because my DM was making us role for judging how long we were on watch to see if we were getting a long rest or not. Also, roles to see if my character remembered names and places when I forgot them. I ended up buying a note pad for me and an hour glass in game for characters to manage watches. Still, I think there is a chance he might break my hour glass so I may need these feat or a spare hour glass. Also, knowing directions under ground will be key if our campaign ends up in the under dark / fey wild / shadow fey.

Athlete, is great if you have a GM that likes knocking you prone.

Mounted Combat is broken feat with a battlemaster due to advantage + lowered critical threshold + polearm

TavenBrawler is great for those "no weapons here" moments and "i use my first attack to knock my opponent down, by bonus action to grapple him by pushing a boot down into his chest so he has a speed of 0 and can't get up on his turn, and my second attack hit him with advantage." Then my opponent has disadvantage on attacks against me and I advantage on him until he breaks the grapple and stands up... wasting a turn... at which point I just do it again.
I built a barbarian around this in one campaign because high strength + athletics skill + advantage on strength checks to knock down and grapple the opponent while raging. Also, its nice to punch a monk in the face for 1d4 + 3 at level 1 while taking half damage with a D12 hit die pool so they can't laugh at you fighting them with your fists.

Some of them like Actor and Linguist could be really handy out of combat if your the "Face" character its just not an archetype I want to play for the most part.

ClaytonCross said:

Some of them like Actor and Linguist could be really handy out of combat if your the "Face" character its just not an archetype I want to play for the most part.

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My perfected way of using Actor is being a Warlock with Mask of Many Faces (and later Master of Myriad Forms) and Beguiling Influence so I can just basically be whoever I want.

If Everybody's Friend is still in Xanathar's this is an even better idea.

I am fine with the concept of ractial feats, and I love feats in general so I don't think we're nowhere near having too many of them.

I just wish they hadn't continued with this trend of "half-feats" i.e. feats which also grant you ASI. A few feats working like that is ok, but now they are slowly becoming the majority.

rfkannen said:

Wait, if barbed and wings were removed, which ones imply transformation? All the rest seem more like skills?

I honestly don't see how the others are tranformative.

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My thoughts too.

And IIRC only the draconic wings feat gave a permanent physical change, while the other gave "retractable" claws or spikes, which the character might have always had, but perhaps was not yet capable of making them work. They could be after all just physical changes due to coming of age, which in case of fantasy races doesn't have to work the same way it does for humans... who says that the bodies of tieflings and dragonborns have to stop developing at adulthood? Last time I checked, dragons never stop growing bigger!

Mistwell said:

Over, and over, and over again we see evidence that players don't tend to min/max and choose the "overpowered" options over the "normal" or "underpowered" ones as a generalization. And yet, over and over again I see people, like yourself, make the claim that everyone plays that way. What's it going to take to convince people that the typical 5e player just doesn't seem to make those kinds of choices nearly as often as the typical message board poster does?

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If everyone played that way it would be less of a problem!

I feel that in 5e there is less "spread" between the classes - no 5 or 6 tiers thing going on here. The paladin may be a bit OP, and the beastmaster and monk of the 4 elements lagging a bit, but it's not as dramatic. However adding feats can increase the spread in power level between characters, based on level of system mastery. Again, while it's not as bad as 3.X/pathfinder, it's there.

The key point here is "between characters". If all the players have the same design philosophy/system mastery, it's not too much of a problem. But if some players do powergame but not the others, then you end up with some of the characters being more powerful than others

Ancalagon said:

If everyone played that way it would be less of a problem!

I feel that in 5e there is less "spread" between the classes - no 5 or 6 tiers thing going on here. The paladin may be a bit OP, and the beastmaster and monk of the 4 elements lagging a bit, but it's not as dramatic. However adding feats can increase the spread in power level between characters, based on level of system mastery. Again, while it's not as bad as 3.X/pathfinder, it's there.

The key point here is "between characters". If all the players have the same design philosophy/system mastery, it's not too much of a problem. But if some players do powergame but not the others, then you end up with some of the characters being more powerful than others

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You might have a point: but this may be why precisely why feats and multiclassing are cordoned off as options. Use at your own party balance risk.

TheHobgoblin said:

Feats and racial classes just entirely devalue the races that came out after the PHB. And particularly in regards to Volo where the races were designed as absolute garbage, the last thing that is needed is to devalue them even more by giving the PHB races elite overpowered feats and racial classes.

And, make no mistake, I guarantee you that the feats are going to be stupidly over-powered. If they weren't stupidly overpowered, people would just ignore them and stick to the most broken feats in the PHB and it would just be a waste of paper and ink to have printed them at all. In this edition character don't get many feats and some of those in the PHB are so vastly superior to others that those others never get taken by any characters at all. And that is putting aside the fact that feats have to compete with raising your attributes by 2 points-- which, until your attribute is a 20, could well mean getting a +1 to 75-90% of the rolls you make in the game. So if these feats are things that people would at all be tempted to take instead of gaining a +1 to the majority of their rolls OR take one of the stupidly broken feats already in the PHB....

Yeah, just stupidly powerful abilities to boost the handful of actually well designed races to further ensure that absolutely no one ever plays the ones that they created later.

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A I have no issues with the Volo's classes and they have held up just fine in my game and so have the EE Gensai and Goliath

I disliked Racial feats idea; I do not dislike some of the feats they have just the way they restricted them so i will just open them up as a house rule I may have a few exceptions were I restricted but that depends on what gets released wait and see on that part for me. other than that I will ignore the racial part in general and just treat them as feats for characters. Since I do not use AL I do not have to deal with the stupid restrictions

Li Shenron said:

And IIRC only the draconic wings feat gave a permanent physical change, while the other gave "retractable" claws or spikes, which the character might have always had, but perhaps was not yet capable of making them work. They could be after all just physical changes due to coming of age, which in case of fantasy races doesn't have to work the same way it does for humans... who says that the bodies of tieflings and dragonborns have to stop developing at adulthood? Last time I checked, dragons never stop growing bigger!

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IRL, alligators continue to grow larger as they age, too. I might have to work this into the background stuff for dragonborn in my setting...

[double-post]

Ancalagon said:

If everyone played that way it would be less of a problem!

I feel that in 5e there is less "spread" between the classes - no 5 or 6 tiers thing going on here. The paladin may be a bit OP, and the beastmaster and monk of the 4 elements lagging a bit, but it's not as dramatic. However adding feats can increase the spread in power level between characters, based on level of system mastery. Again, while it's not as bad as 3.X/pathfinder, it's there.

The key point here is "between characters". If all the players have the same design philosophy/system mastery, it's not too much of a problem. But if some players do powergame but not the others, then you end up with some of the characters being more powerful than others

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Once character being more powerful at something is not a problem ... it is character design goal. Every group should and will have characters that are good a different things. Even if everyone in the group picks the same class, the selections of attributes, subclasses, skills, backgrounds, weapons, armor, and spells will make some characters more powerful at somethings than others.... including damage output, damage resistance, and amount of health. If your trying to make it all equal ... your missing the point. Inequality in a system where all the players have the same buy in creates character distinction which gives the DM different tools to play with to make each player shine. Even if you made 2 identical characters, one player would end up with better roles at key moments. If your worried that players are too offset in your game... its usually not the players or the builds... its the GMs play style favoring one characters specific features. If everyone is complaining because one character kicks but in combat and no one else is doing anything then the GM is not sending a stronge enough force at your group that one player can't handle them. If he was you would need that guy with massive hit points and armor to tank a bit which can be a shining moment even if he doesn't damage much. In my group the paladin does the most constant high damage, tanks, heals, leads, the group, and is the party face... But I am the scout, the party bank, alternate point of view adviser, the guy who sets up the ambushes, and I do a lot of field control to keep our tank from being overwhelmed. If a player doesn't shine, its not because his character is "less" its because he is trying go against is design instead of with its strengths and/or the GM is not providing enough opportunities for that player to engage with those strengths.