D&D 5E Moar Feats

[mips42]

More peeks into the PHB AND stuff we have not yet seen? Is this some sort of dream?
Feats seem to DO a lot more than 3e or 4e, which makes me glad that there will apparently be less of them.
Dungeon Delver: This seems like a 'dungeoneering expert' type feat. If you're the type that goes delving a lot, I could see taking this (at least one char).
Durable: It's the return of toughness but with more stuff. I would say, as far as healing goes, it affects the minimum you regain.
Elemental Adept: I can see this being a thing for themed Wizards and Sorcerers. 'Spells you cast ignore resistance to damage of the chosen type'. So if a monster has, immunity to cold damage and you cast an ice spell, it blows through the Immunity and does full damage? Wow. That's... good. And you can take it more than once (for different types)! I might House rule this (after test play, of course) to 'if a creature has Immunity to the chosen damage type, treat that creature as if it had Damage Reduction 5 instead' so that you're not completely ignoring the monsters immunity, just overwhelming it. Just a thought.

 

[Remathilis]

More peeks into the PHB AND stuff we have not yet seen? Is this some sort of dream?
Feats seem to DO a lot more than 3e or 4e, which makes me glad that there will apparently be less of them.
Dungeon Delver: This seems like a 'dungeoneering expert' type feat. If you're the type that goes delving a lot, I could see taking this (at least one char).
Durable: It's the return of toughness but with more stuff. I would say, as far as healing goes, it affects the minimum you regain.
Elemental Adept: I can see this being a thing for themed Wizards and Sorcerers. 'Spells you cast ignore resistance to damage of the chosen type'. So if a monster has, immunity to cold damage and you cast an ice spell, it blows through the Immunity and does full damage? Wow. That's... good. And you can take it more than once (for different types)! I might House rule this (after test play, of course) to 'if a creature has Immunity to the chosen damage type, treat that creature as if it had Damage Reduction 5 instead' so that you're not completely ignoring the monsters immunity, just overwhelming it. Just a thought.

Not immunity; resistance. So a tiefling (who has resistance to fire) would normally take half from a fireball takes the full amount now, but a fire giant (who has immunity) is still immune.

 

[Neonchameleon]

All three 4e feats you listed are pure mechanics. They exist only to allow for more complex tactical combat strategies that have almost nothing to do with you character lore-wise. (When's the last time you thought, "My wizard is the kind of guy whose psychic spells inflict temporary attack debuffs"?)

"My psychic wizard messes extra hard with peoples' heads and distracts them?" Every time I'm playing a psychic wizard. The messing with their heads is represented by a mechanical debuff.

Elemental Adept allows you to completely change up your spell selection to focus on your favored element without fear of dealing half damage to a bunch of stuff. It allows you to be a "fire mage."

Which is why it was an ability of the 4e Pyromancer. Seriously, almost nothing resists acid, lightning, or thunder damage. And the creatures you don't want to electrocute, like the Shambling Mound or the Flesh Golem, haven't in the past been because they resisted lightning damage; the only major exceptions I can think of are demons and electricity-breathing dragons. The only two archetypes you've done much for are the Pyromancer and the Cryomancer (and not a whole lot for the Cryomancer tbh) - for thunder or acid mages I'd go so far as to call that a trap feat.

Really, I think that's what a lot of the best 5e feats do: take a character concept that might be a little underpowered or rough around the edges and allow it to stand out.[/quote]

Which is what Psychic Lock and resounding thunder do. And Elemental Adept fails to do, being pure mechanics with little thematic link. With the 4e feats you are really good with your element in a way that reinforces your elemental theme - more messing with peoples minds for Psychic Lock and more loud disruption for Resounding Thunder. With Elemental Adept you only stand out by not sucking under circumstances that are normally rare.

You make people stand out by polishing their strengths, not by saying their weaknesses aren't - unless those are pretty huge weaknesses. Against 90%+ foes in the game all Elemental Adept is going to do is add an absolutely miniscule amount of damage per dice (assuming Xd6 damage they get +1 damage one time in six per dice or a sixth of a point of damage per dice on average) - and 90% assumes a Fire Mage.

Of course they accomplish that through mechanics; that's what feats ARE. (And yes, stuff like Durable and probably Skiled and Moderately Armored and others are less exciting, but they still can serve a purpose.)

The only feat I'm aware of that doesn't serve a purpose is Prone Shooter (and Paizo errata'd that).

Edit: As [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] pointed out, Elemental Adept isn't going to do one single thing to help a Fire Mage hurt a Fire Elemental or a Fire Giant. That hurts the fire mage, but almost cripples the feat for the other elemental types. It's even weaker than I thought. +1/6 point per dice of damage and dealing with the creatures that are resistant but not immune and not powered up by damage? That's almost never meaningful.

 

[Reynard]

Re: Durable

You have to get rid of your preconceptions of what a "roll" is from 4e, 3e, 2e, and 1e. 5e is different. Just look at the rogue's reliable talent feature or the halfling's lucky ability. Both call out a roll and only refer to the result of the die roll, not the total of the die oll and all applicable bonuses. The same happens fro great weapon fighting style, and man other features that affect rolls. The designers deliberately separate the total from the results of the rolled dice.

This would imply that your 2x Con minimum replaces the rolled dice only, not the total. So a 20 con wizard with durable would gain 15 HP per HD spent.

Of course, the feat is still a rather poor choice for most PCs. Tough, +2 Con, or resilient are all better options for most PCs.

Even if you are right about the definition of "roll" -- and I think you're wrong -- you still would not get more than 11. The die still has a maximum result; even an artificial minimum as with the Durable feat can't make the die read an impossible number.

 

[Remathilis]

Even if you are right about the definition of "roll" -- and I think you're wrong -- you still would not get more than 11. The die still has a maximum result; even an artificial minimum as with the Durable feat can't make the die read an impossible number.

This is the thing people keep trying to rules lawyer forgetting, durable provides a floor for the die roll, not the hp recovered. You still can't roll a 10 on a d6.

 

[Dausuul]

While I agree it's specialized and may require some communication to keep players from taking in certain campaigns, it also occurs to me that the Dungeon Delver feat could be a good indication that your player wants to do some dungeon crawls, and maybe the DM should consider that as a topic of that conversation.

If the player wants dungeon crawls, the player should up and say, "Hey, I'd like to do some dungeon crawls." DMs have enough work without reading tea leaves on the players' character sheets. Half the time I don't even know what feats the PCs have.

 

[Plissken]

Where is Improved Initiative?

I kid.

 

[mach1.9pants]

Where is Improved Initiative?

I kid.

Well, someone posted this elsewhere

Alert
Always on the lookout for danger, you gain the following benefits:
• You gain a +5 bonus to initiative.
• You can’t be surprised while you are conscious.
• Other creatures don’t gain advantage on attack rolls against you as a result of being hidden from you

BTW where, apart from common sense, where is the definition of Immune/Immunity?

 

[Plissken]

Well, someone posted this elsewhere

Alert
Always on the lookout for danger, you gain the following benefits:
• You gain a +5 bonus to initiative.
• You can’t be surprised while you are conscious.
• Other creatures don’t gain advantage on attack rolls against you as a result of being hidden from you

BTW where, apart from common sense, where is the definition of Immune/Immunity?

Oh, wow. That's way better than improved initiative. I always thought improved init was kind of a waste to take but Alert seems worth it.

 

[variant]

I am not sure what's confusing about Durability. If you have a 20 Constitution and you roll a d6+5 your for Hit Die, you can get up to 11 back. So the minimum you can get back is 10, the most you can get back is 11. If you roll a 1-5 you get 5+5 hit points back, if you roll a 6 you get 6+5 hit points back.