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."

​

 

[Rod Staffwand]

Nope. Do not want.

I don't mind giving out PBx2 and wouldn't even increase DCs to compensate. Does it really matter if one PC has a 90% chance of success on some checks? There's always more checks or different checks or different PCs to make checks. And it allows the player to feel their PC is actually an expert at something--go figure.

What's detestable about these feats is their clumsy interaction with the skill system (d20 + stat + PB vs DC) in the form of the add-on special effects to pad them out to half-feat status. Now the DM has to take these abilities into consideration when adjudicating skill uses and PCs need to take a serious look at them if they want to be considered experts at those skills.

Feat by feat breakdown!:

Acrobatics. Roll as bonus action to avoid difficult terrain. I'd allow this with a standard skill check, no feat needed. If you have this feat in the game would you allow someone without the feat to do this, albeit at maybe a DC20 or 25? The feat just confuses the situation.

Animal Handling. Player: "What do you mean I need the animal handler feat to handle animals, I'm already proficient in the animal handler skill? And I have animal handler as a background!"

Arcanist/Theologian. Wait..what happened to magic initiate?

Brawny. I suppose I'll have to take this feat into account when I hand-wave the whole carrying capacity thing.

Diplomat. Be prepared for the PC to use this in EVERY interaction encounter. It will absolutely 100% not be annoying at all.

Empathic. Seems like an insight skill check to me.

Historian. I know when I'm struggling with a task it greatly helps when those around me shout out historical examples: "The Windsor knot was named after the Duke of Windsor. If his valet could tie one, so can you!"

Investigator. Skill check, maybe with disadvantage.

Medic. Should be a skill use.

Menacing. Skill use.

Naturalist. 5e: "Our skill system is under-written. Here, have some spells."

Perception. It makes people better at perception and even better in a very specific circumstance (and no others). Awesome!

Perform. Standard skill use.

Quick-Fingered. Oh just take a couple of levels of rogue you cheap @#&%!

Silver-Tongued. Standard skill use.

Stealthy. Skill use w/ disadvantage. Or not...I don't understand how stealth works in this game.

Survival. "The wilderness taught me the alarm spell. Blue birds they were, alighting on my shoulders and singing to me of low-level magic!"

 

[OB1]

But then a single catch-all Proficient feat would suffice.

Gotta justify the design space.

Yep, I got there eventually, but also added the ability to allow someone with the feat to act more swiftly when using the feat. I appreciate what they were trying to do but I'd rather them keep it broader.

Skill Master - (prerequisite, you are trained in the skill you are mastering) You gain +1 in the primary ability of a skill, can add double your proficiency with the skill, and any use of the skill that previously took an action can be done using a bonus action instead. You may take this feat multiple times, choosing a new skill each time.

 

[zaratan]

Rogues are sad, because they lost his 1 level dip. But I'm happy because I love feats.

More feats, spells, equipament, tools! We want content for old characters!

 

[Jester David]

Fairly against this article. It fails several showstopping ways.

1. Many of these are the sorts of things that a character can already try. Now it's a gate where you can only do these with the appropriate feat.

Another category is "I want to become better at skill (non-magical) use, so no matter my concept you grant me magic". Hey, I want to become better at survival or knowledge(nature), so the solution is to give me a magical spell instead. This hits one of my hot-buttons (I lambasted several spells-replacing-skills in the recent spells UA feedback).

2. These are leveraging the "half-feat" mechanism to only give out a smaller benefit, but really feats are so scarce that these become rather wimpy. Sure, if you really want that ability score AND you have planned (probably from character creation) that a +1 will bump you to the next modifier, it's not bad. But otherwise it's trying to have lesser feats, which works better in a system with more frequent feats.

The corollary is that if you are now high levels and have already maxed you ability score can now afford to take second choice feats, there's a whole category of ones you won't take because you're already capped.

Sorry, dislike this whole article.

I agree with this poster.

A few feats (Stealthy springs to mind) take something that was once DM fiat or open to a ruling and makes it a hard rule.
Before, running from cover to cover while an enemy is distracted could be allowed. That's just what stealthy people do. Now, you can do it in plain sight while the enemy is looking in that direction and the rules state you remain unseen. Just charge across that open double doorway in front of the watching guard.
Other ones would be Performer or Menacing.

Also, I agree with the half-feat issue. A lot of players will be uninterested in these feats as an odd-bonus isn't useful or they might already be at or close to cap. These should appeal to someone who is focused in these skills (and with those ability scores high) but will likely appeal most to characters who consider these abilities secondary.

 

[TwoSix]

Man, these feats remind me why I'm getting rid of skills for my Beyond the Wall/5e mashup. Most of these features are simply things that should have been listed as skill uses when proficient.

 

[Jester David]

Diplomat. Be prepared for the PC to use this in EVERY interaction encounter. It will absolutely 100% not be annoying at all.

Totally.

"Okay, according to my stopwatch, we've been talking to these bandits for 65 seconds. They all have to make an Insight check or they cannot attack me. And I have advantage on all ability checks socially."

 

[Blue]

or you auto-succed if you are the right class.

Let the guy who took the history feat be good at history. Let everyone else have a chance.

But when it's something like finding traps, the DM isn't going to want to let someone auto-succeed. Which means everyone without expertise is hosed.

 

[Prakriti]

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

So much for bounded accuracy.

 

[Blue]

Why would DCs increase? Isn't part of the point of bounded accuracy meant to be that the PCs are getting better at skills while the DCs stay the same? A difficult DC 20 climb shouldn't become more difficult just because a player has invested in improving their athletics skill.

How could some DCs not increase? There are some challenges that you want to be, well, challenging.

"Well, I guess it's okay that the cleric auto-detects every trap with his passive perception. After all, he spent a feat."

"Yeah, you can convince every NPC as long as they don't start hostile, you took the diplomacy feat."

Either you fiat that things that should be /possible/ with skills are impossible - in other words "say no" to any solutions you don't approve which is bull, or you see that things you want to happen /sometimes/ now happen /very commonly/, especially at the higher levels when you have the free ASIs to take these.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I'm of the opinion that if something doubles your proficiency bonus, it doesn't stack with other things that double your proficiency bonus, they just overlap and you're left with just double your prof bonus and not x4 prof.