D&D 5E Cartomancer feat - OP at high levels

[DEFCON 1]

We did notice it, as already mentioned, there is an older thread on the subject. But as I said, not many people have Book of Many Things in any case so it tends not to come up.

And if no one ever actually uses it, then is it something to concern oneself about? Therein lies the deeper question.

Is a problem that never occurs actually a problem?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

It is really concerning how terribly this is written. I'd expect such poor wording from the early parts of the edition, but at this point the writers should have already learned to avoid such pitfalls.

And yeah, if it allows you to cast a high level spell that you don't even need to know without using slot, it is obviously hella broken.

Odd. I would say the opposite: with a few exceptions (e.g. 3.5e, because they hardly playtested it at all), it's the earliest stuff which will be closest to the mark, because that's the stuff that actually got extensive playtesting. The standards become looser over time, due to a variety of factors like power creep, changing of the guard, re-evaluating past decisions, etc. I also find that, in general, editorial standards are at their highest with the core books, because those are so important to not screw up, whereas supplements are treated much more laxly because eh, it's just a supplement, if it goes bad it's not the whole game affected (even if, realistically, it is.) 4e had the much worse balance of Essentials (and the massive over-emphasis on Wizard subclasses...), 2e had Skills and Powers and the crap-tastic Complete Book of Elves, Pathfinder had the very poorly-handled Gunslinger with its "misfires become more common as you gain levels due to making more attacks per round" problem, etc.

It's why we've gotten Twilight Cleric and Cartomancer and these other things several years after 5e's launch, not at the start. Why the Storm Sorcerer was initially much more powerful than other Sorcerer subclasses for good reason, and they neutered it before publication, because they couldn't justify drifting that far from the PHB Sorcerer, even though it really did need the boost.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Stuff like this is why I don't play with Feats...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Stuff like this is why I don't play with Feats...

Which is a shame. Because the vast majority of actually interesting mechanics in 5e are locked behind feats, and compared to other games, 5e feats are on the whole quite balanced--they just have a small number of stand-out problem children. Elven Accuracy is honestly worse than this Cartomancer feat, but I never see folks complaining about how badly that messes the game up.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Which is a shame. Because the vast majority of actually interesting mechanics in 5e are locked behind feats, and compared to other games, 5e feats are on the whole quite balanced--they just have a small number of stand-out problem children. Elven Accuracy is honestly worse than this Cartomancer feat, but I never see folks complaining about how badly that messes the game up.

I think most players will notice and avoid bad-OP feats just as much as they avoid UP feats.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think most players will notice and avoid bad-OP feats just as much as they avoid UP feats.

Seems to me Elven Accuracy is at very least third on most folks' list, coming after only Lucky and either Resilient (Con) for spellcasters or the relevant -5 hit/+10 damage feats. And the only reason it's not as popular as Lucky is that it's race-locked, though that's not saying much considering it's locked to the 2nd and 3rd most popular races in the game (Elves and Half-Elves, varies as to which is 2nd and which is 3rd). Given the bitter, bitter complaints about GWM/SS/PAM I see on this board, I'm inclined to think those are pretty common.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Never seen anyone pick up elven accuracy. But then I've never seen anyone play an elf apart from me.

 

[Distracted DM]

Never seen anyone pick up elven accuracy. But then I've never seen anyone play an elf apart from me.

An elf-rogue-archer in my game used it constantly with Tasha's "Steady Aim" feature.
Don't move, bonus action to get advantage, just keep crit-fishing.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Never seen anyone pick up elven accuracy. But then I've never seen anyone play an elf apart from me.

Has anyone at your table picked up the Cartomancy feat? That seems even less likely than Elven Accuracy nowadays.

The fact that there's such a strong flavor attached to the feat makes me wonder if anyone even ever takes it, despite the claims it is overly powerful? To take this feat a player would either have to go in on the idea their character is a Cartomancer, or they'd have to just completely ignore the attached flavor and take the feat purely for the mechanical bonus. And I don't how often anyone would ever really see that occur at their table. Maybe someone sometime, but not enough to warrant too much concern about it.

 

[Distracted DM]

Has anyone at your table picked up the Cartomancy feat? That seems even less likely than Elven Accuracy nowadays.

The fact that there's such a strong flavor attached to the feat makes me wonder if anyone even ever takes it, despite the claims it is overly powerful? To take this feat a player would either have to go in on the idea their character is a Cartomancer, or they'd have to just completely ignore the attached flavor and take the feat purely for the mechanical bonus. And I don't how often anyone would ever really see that occur at their table. Maybe someone sometime, but not enough to warrant too much concern about it.

The contents of the Book of Many Things don't seem to see a lot of discussion at large post-release. The original discussion was largely around the poor design of the feat, the poor design around the Deck of Wonder, and the good design of the GM-side stuff.

From what I've seen there are good things in there, and I even took the Deck of Wonder and modified it so that players wouldn't just say "I pull every card I can" to get as many permanent bonuses as possible and then sleep off the temporary negatives.

The physical release had quality issues, was delayed due to said issues, and then rereleased. So it had a bumpy ride altogether.