D&D (2024) So the Power Feats Got Nerfed!

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, though personally I find it harder to guess if an opponent has shield prepared than it is to guess if they have high AC. Obviously if you see them use shield, don’t keep using -5/+10 because they effectively have high-AC.

Well you do if it's a MM npc spellcaster with mage armor. AC 18 only matters at low level.

DM specials eg Gish types using shield kinda shut it down but also punishes everyone else dealing with AC 21+.
Ironically making bless and spiritual guardians even better.

Main point is even if you miss 25% of the time big whoop.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yes, there is a math to it, and it will all depend on both the chance to hit (advantage also changes the math), and how much damage you do without the extra 10 damage. It also depends on if you have something else positive to do with the ASI (such as contributing the the attack stat).

Right, but if you do that math, it turns out that the -5/+10 is really good most of the time. And since it comes attached to a bunch of other really strong benefits, the Feats that grant it are pretty much no-brainers if you’re looking to optimize damage output. Which is presumably part of why the -5/+10 part was removed in the 1D&D UA versions.

 

[Zardnaar]

Right, but if you do that math, it turns out that the -5/+10 is really good most of the time. And since it comes attached to a bunch of other really strong benefits, the Feats that grant it are pretty much no-brainers if you’re looking to optimize damage output. Which is presumably part of why the -5/+10 part was removed in the 1D&D UA versions.

Very early on in 5E I didn't combo them eg SS+CBE or GWM+PAM.

Mostly due to how rare feats are.

Then using bless became a thing. Then those combos turned up.

Unless an adventure contains them I don't think I've added a magic great weapon or missile weapon to the game since 2015.

Yay for artificers.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Right, but if you do that math, it turns out that the -5/+10 is really good most of the time. And since it comes attached to a bunch of other really strong benefits, the Feats that grant it are pretty much no-brainers if you’re looking to optimize damage output. Which is presumably part of why the -5/+10 part was removed in the 1D&D UA versions.

I think I'm going to wait around until someone finds and posts the chart. I haven't seen it in a while, but my initial takeaway was that it is less than people tend to treat it as (it really comes online well when they are combined with consistent advantage and/or massively multiple to-hit adders, whose opportunity cost also need to be taken into account). Regardless to whether they are the first thing you take or whether you wait until you've maxed out your dex, we're kinda violently agreeing, they are good options (but I would place the side benefits as dominant).

As to why they were removed, I don't know what to think. Between rogues losing reaction-SAs, Boomin-Blade-SAs, getting rid of one-handed-quarterstaff-shield-PAM, and a bunch of other not-necessarily bank-breaking effects but ones that dedicated forumites know all about but casual gamers might not have caught, my takeaway is that they want to make the style of plays (and thus effectiveness thresholds, ability to balance CRs, etc.) more similar between rules minutia types and beer&pretzel players.

Even if it is the effectiveness, I think it is the perception that matters most -- if people feel like they can't do any martial build except greatsword-GWM, halberd-PAM-GWM, longbow-SS, hand crossbow-CBE-SS, and one-handed-quarterstaff/spear-shield-PAM, then they won't pick the other concepts and the game loses out in playstyle diversity.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Right, but if you do that math, it turns out that the -5/+10 is really good most of the time. And since it comes attached to a bunch of other really strong benefits, the Feats that grant it are pretty much no-brainers if you’re looking to optimize damage output. Which is presumably part of why the -5/+10 part was removed in the 1D&D UA versions.

If you do the math against which baseline? Because it turns out that boosting your primary stat for +1 to hit and +1 damage on all attacks is also really good. It also turns out that -5/+10 is much more important on low power Dex 18 hand crossbow attacks that do an average of 7.5 damage (and therefore more than doubles their damage) than it is on Str 20 fighter with Great Weapon Fighter and a flame tongue greatsword (doing an average of 21.66 damage per attack therefore adding less than 50% of your damage per attack).

My "is this feat worth taking" benchmark is therefore not "Is it worth using" - but "is it worth taking against +2 to your primary stat?"

So how does this work out? Turns out that Great Weapon Master was actually pretty well balanced IMO. It was about worth +1 to hit and damage unless you had a major combo - so it was balanced at the right level. (On a tangent this was a problem for both sword & board and two weapon fighting; Shield Master and Dual Wielder weren't worth +1 to hit and damage). Sharpshooter on the other hand was worth more proportionally.

 

[Mistwell]

You need to see healer in action to see how good it is.

Note that it's been nerfed.

Other than the Thief's Fast Hands ability interacting with the Healer Feat, it was never a powerful feat. You've always been essentially alone in arguing it was a power feat other than with that Fast Hands exception. Otherwise it was always just essentially a discount on Cure potions for a feat, which became meaningless after the first 5 levels or so.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

And most people don't seem to follow the 6-8 encounters thing either.

Be interested to see if this guidance changes.

I mean, it should. It's doable. But will it? Most of the older WotC adventures (I haven't looked at the most recent ones) do roughly follow the 6-8 guideline, but that's not really a problem.

 

[Horwath]

Other than the Thief's Fast Hands ability interacting with the Healer Feat, it was never a powerful feat. You've always been essentially alone in arguing it was a power feat other than with that Fast Hands exception. Otherwise it was always just essentially a discount on Cure potions for a feat, which became meaningless after the first 5 levels or so.

This.

It is very expensive opportunity cost.

PHB healer should have been a half feat and 1d6+4 base replaced by:
1d6 per proficiency bonus of the user and then increased by +1 per level of the target.
That way it would scale with both user that took the feat and the target.

And short rest should be dropped and any creature can benefit from this feat a number of times equal to it's own proficiency bonus per long rest.

 

[Staffan]

The existence of the Healer feat is good, but it should be stronger. Anything that makes a cleric-less party more viable is a good thing.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Be interested to see if this guidance changes.

I mean, it should. It's doable. But will it? Most of the older WotC adventures (I haven't looked at the most recent ones) do roughly follow the 6-8 guideline, but that's not really a problem.

Given that it seems doubtful that they will ever go back to the 4e AEDU model or otherwise drop a 'prep spells for the day' model, they pretty much have to use rest frequency guidance as the way to police the workday and balance classes with more and less expendable resources.

The 2014 game DMG has in it acceptable (perhaps 'good-enough') guidelines on what to do if you can't or don't want to run 6-8 (or 3-4 more difficult) encounters per physical (in-game) day. They clearly didn't sell it (the idea, not the DMG) well enough, though, because (anecdotally) I see people ignoring or rejecting them and complaining that no one does the 6-8 encounters per day and fie on the designers for designing the game on such a framework.

It's one of a few complaints about the game* for which I have two diverging opinions rather than ambivalence. On one hand, there's nothing wrong with a game having some default assumption but clear guidance on what to do when you don't want to follow those assumptions** (and I'm not exactly swayed by arguments that they should have set something else as the default, as why should we care?). On the other hand, when something doesn't work for you, 'but they addressed that here' is rarely helpful advice if you did see it and bounced off the advise first go-round (and clearly plenty of people bounced off gritty reset and the rest).
*the other being that except maybe levels 1-3 it defaults to easy-mode compared to many previous editions, which they also have DMG guidance on modifying
**Traveller has it for when you want to play military vs. small time merchants making the ship's mortgage vs. explorers vs. etc.; GURPS/Hero System/the rest of the omni-setting systems pretty much are built around the idea of dialing in your preferences; 90s White Wolf was at times in conflict with their fanbase on whether they should acknowledge the superhero-with-fangs playstyle; etc.

I think the most important thing they can do with <whatever the final product gets called> is clearly communicate what they are doing, what the base assumptions were when setting some default settings, and when to and how best to adjust them if your gameplay will deviate from them.