Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Get Better At Skills With These Feats

The latest Unearthed Arcana from Jeremy Crawford and again featuring guest writer Robert J. Schwalb introduces a number of feats which make you better at skills. Each increases the skill's primary ability score, doubles your proficiency bonus, and gives you a little bonus ability. "This week we introduce new feats to playtest. Each of these feats makes you better at one of the game’s eighteen skills. We invite you to read them, give them a try in play, and let us know what you think in the survey we release in the next installment of Unearthed Arcana."

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[The Human Target]

I think, by hand-waiving the "double proficiency" portion, you're missing the key on some of these feats. For example, that's the key to the Brawny feat. It's for grapplers, so they don't have to multiclass to get that double proficiency. That's very meaningful for them - much more meaningful than the capacity bonus. However the capacity bonus also helps with things like using improvised weapons, and the tavern brawler feat.

Oh I didn't mean to imply double proficiency isn't a great feature.

But at the end of the day, its just more numbers.

Double proficiency kind of like the skill version of the +10/-5 combat feats.

And that to me is pretty boring.

But if Brawny is for grapplers, why isn't it called Improved Grappling or something that actually tells you what its designed for instead of smoke screening the intent behind Athletics?

Thats bad design of a different breed.

 

[MagicSN]

At our gametable we usually handle skills like that the player describes what the character tries to achieve. If it is an action or bonus action or movement action or whatever the GM decides on the situation and what makes sense for the situation (some things players want to do might not be possible or only with disadvantage). This way of playing makes for interesting play - but it also makes the new feats quite uninteresting. Many of the things offered (asides from the spells and the double-proficiency) is something we would allow without the feat as well,

depending on DC, roll, situation and description on how the character will do this ;-) Okay, some are above what we would allow, like the Medic and stuff...

As an example: What speaks against achieving the hide+move with just a stealth check, but the player needs to describe exactly how he performs this and the GM sets a DC based on how good/logical this description is and he needs a really good roll for it?

Another example would be frightening a creature with the intimidation skill... if the player RP's what his character is doing good - why not allow him to roll for it without the feat?

Personally I always think it is not a good design to have actions which "only can be done if you have a specific feat/skill/whatever". If it makes sense
for a character to do something the system should allow that he can try it. Though some characters might be able to do it more easy than others.
[MENTION=6704138]User_Undefined[/MENTION]:

>I agree in principle, but have a question for you. You say you'd let characters without the feat do these moves. Would you still let them do the >moves as a bonus action? Because that is what a lot of these feats allow. You can do what other characters can, just faster/better. At least, that's >how I see it.

As a feat you can either get something you can do to be able to do it as a bonus action or you can get a feat to be able to do something which
without the feat you cannot do at all. What do you take? ^^
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[The Human Target]

For the record...

18 feats.

4 of them deal with bonus actions.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

TL;DR

Nope. No. Nada. Niet. Non. Negative.

This is a HORRIBLE idea for so many reasons. Say good by to ASI's, kids! A game will no longer be "Feats and ASI's", it will be "Feats or ASI's". Why do characters improve their ability scores? For Skills, primarily. You have a character that is an Acrobat type? Don't bother with ASI's...take the Acrobat feat. Why? Because if you don't, nobody will ever consider your character a "real" Acrobat.

These "Feats" will encourage cookie-cutter characters with specific "combat/skill-feat Builds". No thank you sir. Just...no.

Bottom line: Yuk!

To those that think this is a great idea, good on you. I'm sure you'll enjoy them and have fun at your table. But from my standpoint, these are, as I said, an absolutely horrible idea.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Horwath]

Yeah, really worried about DC inflation. And that means you fail unless you are of the right class or spend the feat tax.

Why would it lead to DC infaltion.

in PHB, nearly impossible DC is 30. It was 35 in some playtest, but they chopped down last category to 30.

with expertise and 20 in that ability you can get only to +17. You can get to +20 with some magical items.

With +17 you are the best of the best in your field and you should do nearly impossible on more regular basics. 40% chance in this example.


Also, survivalist should get a cantrip in addition to alarm spell.

I suggest Move earth cantrip from Elemental Evil.

 

[CapnZapp]

In the PHB, Expertise (double proficiency on skills) was limited to Rogues (any skill or Thieves' tools), Bards (any skill), or Knowledge clerics (knowledge skills). These feats dilute that niche. That's a problem, especially for Rogues, who now lose the ability to specialize through these skills (in that their benefit from the feats is smaller than another class).

While it is not spelled out, the only way to preserve the niche held by these classes would be to allow the expertise granted by these feats to stack (i.e. to give triple the proficiency bonus, not double). That will bend the limits of the game, but would help keep the rogue and the knowledge cleric distinct. (I am not sure the Bard needs more benefits).

Since all of these feats can grant expertise as well as +1 to a related stat, all of them end up more powerful than a feat such as Skilled. The third bullet point, then is gravy on top of an already strong feat.

I can't help feel many of these will be appealing to players, and that part of the reason is that they are all strong. I can think of cases where I would take these even without the bonus to the associated ability.

I will say, I think they have balanced the feats that grant spells (or, better as [MENTION=6798775]Ath-kethin[/MENTION] suggests, spell-like but nonmagical abilities) well: iI still suspect the bonus to the relevant stat is too much -- expertise on a skill and a 1st-level spell (and in three cases a multi-use, flavourful, but non-damaging cantrip), should be enough for a full feat; still, they have constrained the choice of first-level spell and limited the available cantrip.

I both agree and I don't agree.

You're right about the Rogue's (Bard's etc) niche being threatened.

But I think you overestimate the value of getting good in a single skill. Or skills in general.

There really are only a few game wrecking skills. Perception for instance, it's boring and bad for the game if you can functionally become immune to ambushes since nothing can sneak up on you.

But that is already an issue, and I don't think it is a sound argument to deny these feats because of it.

Instead monsters (some monsters) need much better stealth, and the game needs much more stringent stealth rules, where you get penalties so you can actually fail.

But I think that's the topic of another discussion. In the meanwhile, I'm not so sure giving out thief-like Expertise on a single skill basis can be all that bad.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Horwath]

With these feats, a level 13 Cleric can achieve a passive Perception of 30.

So much for bounded accuracy.

And he spent 3 out of 3 feats he/she has on that feature.

So, why not let him have i?

 

[CapnZapp]

The question is if a feat is worth and ABI. Many of these solve that problem and add flavor.

Medic is what healer should have been. Or healer should have been +1 WIS. I play healer as its not d6+4, its d6 + your medicine skill bonus to encourage medicine skill.

I find the Medoc feat incredibly underwhelming. Changing a single hit die from perhaps 5.5 to 10 is an extremely minor boost, and I can't think of anyone bothering with it when Healer and Inspiring Leader is already in the game.

Contrast to a Medic which allowed all six allies to maximize ALL their hit dice, and you'll see my point: now the feat gimme at least does something noticeable.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[Li Shenron]

I have mixed feelings here...

These are clearly structured feats:

a) +1 to default ability score associated to skill
b) proficiency (or expertise, if you already have proficiency)
c) small unique ability

This set of skills essentially introduce a structural change to the game by providing a default way for everyone to get expertise (or an equivalent bonus), or a single proficiency. If this is good or bad, I am not sure. On one hand, bounded accuracy doesn't work as well with skills as it does with attacks and ST, because you don't normally want skill results to be 'swingy', and you want to have a fairly wide range of DCs for skills so that most characters can do simple tasks while only the specialized characters can do awesome things (and at the same time, be very consistent in succeeding with the easy ones) -> this means to me that Expertise is good to make available to anyone for the right price. On the other hand, Expertise is one of the premium features of Rogues and Bards (and secondary Rangers, although it's called differently). I guess this however is mostly in line with feats granting spells or maneuvers.

One open question is actually whether this 'double bonus' could be allowed to stack with Expertise. I don't think this is the RAI, but it might be an idea to preserve the Rogue's edge on skills, at the expense however of increasing that edge even more up.

But overall I can say I am mostly positive about these additions, even if the feel like a "system fix". The benefits for me are:

- having an option for a single-class character to learn a single new skill after 1st level (IIRC there isn't any such option in the core game, you can only take the Skilled feat for 3)
- stretching bounded accuracy for skills for specialized characters
- adding extra unique ways to use some skills, making them more interesting

I'd still like to have also the other kind of skills-feats which was previewed in a previous UA article.

 

[Li Shenron]

There really are only a few game wrecking skills. Perception for instance, it's boring and bad for the game if you can functionally become immune to ambushes since nothing can sneak up on you.

This is true, but the gamewrecking worry might be exaggerated if you look at the problem from a 'solo' point of view, which is in fact a mistake we make too often i.e. to think of a character in a vacuum as if the game was to be played alone. Normally it's a team game, so as a DM I am not really worried about one PC being immune to ambushes, because I can still very much feature ambushes in my adventures and I know that as long as someone is vulnerable to them, then they are still a valuable narrative device.

An ability that lets one PC boost everyone in the party vs ambushes (without making them immune) worries me more.