D&D 5E Is it just me or does it look like we are getting the "must have feats" once again?

[Jester David]

This is inevitable so long as feats make you better at what you want to be better at. If you want to be excellent as a ____ you will either need to take the feat or accept being not excellent.
The only way to change that would be to make feats only make you better at inoptimal things.

 

[Paraxis]

I am definitely spotting some must-have feats. Alertness: +5 to initiative. Wow! Even better than Improved Initiative from D&D 3.0/3.5 In a turn-based game, the person who goes first has a big advantage. After all, your opponent cannot attack you if you have already killed them.

Since initiative is only rolled once, it only matters for that first round of combat. So for casters maybe it is a good choice to put a well placed AoE, or cast a powerful encounter changing buff spell, but for fighter types it hardly matters.

 

[yakuba]

Since initiative is only rolled once, it only matters for that first round of combat. So for casters maybe it is a good choice to put a well placed AoE, or cast a powerful encounter changing buff spell, but for fighter types it hardly matters.

Playing basic GW fighter, I'm finding I wish I had good initiative. It's very useful to be able to move first into melee range to both set up the rogue and to limit movement towards the squishies via threatened OA. If I go fighter again I'm probably going to go Dex based TWF just for that reason.

 

[KarinsDad]

Emphasis on 'single element'. If you're Evoker spreads damage around the elements it won't be worthwhile, but if you're building a focused pyromancer, this is a very good feat. For that build it's effectively double damage 5%-10% of the time, using your initial guesses. That was exactly my point, it's good for a particular build, but it's not great for most builds, even most Evoker builds.

Except that it is not double damage.

Let's be generous and say 10% of the monsters have resist to this particular element and that monsters save for half damage 40% of the time and the spell does 12D6 damage.

Without feat: (42 * .6 + 21 * .4) *.9 + (21 * .6 + 10.5 * .4) *.1 = 31.92
With feat: 44 * .6 + 22 * .4 = 35.2

So, the PC is doing a little over 3 more points of damage on average per monster per major spell at the cost of a feat. In the large scheme of things, the vast majority of the time, it's 1 or 2 extra points of damage and once in a blue moon, it's 11 or 23 extra damage.

Over 90% of the time, it's white noise. 1 or 2 extra points of damage is not usually even going to be noticed.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Since initiative is only rolled once, it only matters for that first round of combat. So for casters maybe it is a good choice to put a well placed AoE, or cast a powerful encounter changing buff spell, but for fighter types it hardly matters.

Disagree. For assassin rogues it's huge.

 

[yakuba]

Except that it is not double damage.

Good math, I stand corrected.

 

[keterys]

Disagree. For assassin rogues it's huge.

If your goal is to run in and look really dangerous, then have all the monsters try to kill you (and likely succeed), that is also my experience

For fighters, it also depends on the range the fights start at. Going first can often mean it's worth delaying until enemies are closer to you, for example.

Initiative is super important, absolutely, but there are plenty of times where being the best at initiative isn't as important as +2 to a stat.

 

[greymarch]

Since initiative is only rolled once, it only matters for that first round of combat. So for casters maybe it is a good choice to put a well placed AoE, or cast a powerful encounter changing buff spell, but for fighter types it hardly matters.

Someone who knows the rules well, no matter what class they play, will find attacks that can kill/stun/charm/hold etc an opponent in the very first round, thus eliminating that opponent from the entire combat. If a wizard, as you mentioned, is the only class that has such potential, then the classes are inherently unbalanced, which WOTC has worked hard to avoid. Every class will inevitably have spells or abilities which allow them to eliminate an opponent in the first round, which is why in a turn-based game attacking first IS HUGE!

Besides, let's say you don't have an ability that can put your opponent down in the first round, since you also go first in the second round (if you won initiative before combat started), all things being equal, if you and your opponent have done roughly the same damage to each other, you once again get a chance to put your opponent down before he can put you down. Every round you get to go first. Every round you get a chance to put your opponent down before he can put you down. Initiative is everything.

 

[Gargoyle]

It might be just you. Maybe not. I'm undecided, but I do find your point of view interesting.

If the goal of feats is to help you customize your character, I don't think it's wrong for most or even all of them to be "must have's" for particular builds, as long as they are roughly balanced with a +2 ability score bonus. The alternative is having weak feats that no one will want, or feats that are great for everyone, which seems flavorless and possibly overpowered.

I don't think any feats I've seen are must haves. Sure, if you want to be the best at doing damage with a greatsword, your choice is simple. But you still have a choice; you could opt for something defensive like an armor feat or go with an ability score increase which helps other things besides the damage you do.

I'm not sure how they could have designed it differently without making feats bland or too weak. It would have been nice for every type of build to have a choice of feats, for example, if there was both a two weapon defense feat and a two weapon fighting feat. But I like what they've done, prefer smaller lists of feats, and more feats can be added later, so I'm happy with it so far.

 

[Sacrosanct]

If your goal is to run in and look really dangerous, then have all the monsters try to kill you (and likely succeed), that is also my experience

For fighters, it also depends on the range the fights start at. Going first can often mean it's worth delaying until enemies are closer to you, for example.

Initiative is super important, absolutely, but there are plenty of times where being the best at initiative isn't as important as +2 to a stat.

Granted, I don't know how much it might have changed, but my playtest ranged assassin was deadly with that feat. I went first almost every time (or at least could find a target that I went before) to apply sneak attack damage on pretty much every attack roll. And with advantage, I hit almost every time.