D&D 5E Feat Workshop

[CapnZapp]

The feats most in need of a redesign were identified in the Feat Review:

Athlete, Charger, Crossbow Expert, Grappler, Great weapon master, Heavily/Moderately/Lightly Armored, Savage Attacker, Sharpshooter, Weapon Master
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?494701-2016-Feats-Review

Here I intend to discuss them one post at a time. Constructive suggestions welcome!

 

[CapnZapp]

Athlete
Half feat; minor move-related boons
Design: A good example of the design school that says non-magical effects should be underwhelming and petty. Saved only by the fact it is a half feat (you do get a +1 ability bonus).
Fun: No, lifting harmless limits in the most stingy and ungenerous way doesn't win any friends.
Power: This is basically just the half-feat. The rest is worthless compared to a real climb or jump speed.

I don't actually have any immediate ideas, and have focused on the other ones for now.

Feel free to make suggestions

Should this grant more swashbucklery benefits? Perhaps bring "Athletics" up to par with "Acrobatics" (as understood by 3rd Edition). Or merely beef up the existing ones?

 

[CapnZapp]

Charger
bonus action attack; +5 damage on this charge attack only
Design: This is the first truly failed feat. Contrast with if the feat let you take the Dash action instead (as your bonus action), and gave you the damage bonus or push on all your attacks that round. Then just maybe you could justify the feat.
Fun: Nothing fun about being able to make the least impressive charge in the history of D&D
Power: This is a trap. Not charging is better than charging, which means this feat actually makes you weaker than you were.

Charger

• You can take the Dash action as a bonus action.
• Each time during your round you move at least 20 feet straight toward a creature and then hit it with at least one melee attack, you gain a free shove attack against it.

The intention is that you gain one free shove per creature you charge and hit. Charge a second creature (total movement 40 ft), if you hit it too, you gain a new shove.

 

[CapnZapp]

Crossbow Expert
use a crossbow like a bow, shoot when in melee, and use your bonus attack to make an extra hand crossbow attack
Design: This is the first time where I reject the actual design idea and not merely its implementation. Feats like Athlete or Charger are decent ideas even if the actual implementations are failures. But nothing about Crossbow Expert is even a good idea, and the feat should simply not exist at all. I have written about this extensively elsewhere and there is no reason to bloat this review with the details. See http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470488-Crossbows-and-dual-wielding.
Fun: For the user the feat might be fun alright, but the cost to the overall game is simply too great. I leave this black to mean "ungraded".
Power: The dpr increase isn't why this feat should not exist. I leave this black to mean "ungraded".

Crossbow Expert
Removed entirely.

In its place, amend the rule on Two-Weapon Fighting (PHB 195) to include the Hand Crossbow. Simply replace “light melee weapon” with “light weapon” - the only non-melee light weapon is the Hand Crossbow. Then remove the bit on thrown weapons, since there's no need: the rule only specifies attacks, not melee attacks. You end up with this:

Two-Weapon Fighting
When you take the Attack action and attack with a light weapon that you’re holding in one hand, you can use a bonus action to attack with a different light weapon that you’re holding in the other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.​

Note to people concerned about “magical reloading”. If you adhere to RAW on the (errataed) ammunition property, you need a free hand to reload your crossbow, and thus can't dual-wield them anyway. Myself, I don't mind, and I like the consistency in that if a weapon lacks the two-handed property, it can actually be used with one hand.

More notes:
Without the feat, you can't get rid of the Loading property. This is completely intentional. You can still shoot once every round with your off-hand; you just can't shoot more than once using Extra Attack with your main hand.

Without the feat, you no longer gain Dex damage on your off-hand attacks automatically. This levels the playing field between melee and ranged dual-wielders – now both need to take the Two-Handed Fighting fighting style. Previously ranged dual-wielders could stack Two-Handed Fighting and Archery fighting styles.

Without the feat, ranged combatants can no longer become immune to disadvantage when in melee. This is very intentional, since being able to shut down archers by closing to melee is one of the most important checks on ranged combat dominance.

 

[CapnZapp]

Grappler
Design: It appears Grappler is a failed design. Its first benefit, getting advantage on attacks (not grapple checks), can be obtained by shoving the grappled creature prone. Its second benefit, allowing you to pin to restrained, is functionally not (much) better than what you can already do, again shoving to prone. Its third benefit has been errataed away completely.
Fun: It's fun alright. (Even if it's all an illusion)
Power: With the feat, you gain advantage on attacks without first having to shove them prone, so that's something. You don't get advantage on grapple checks however. With the feat, your pin-to-restrained is microscopically better than regular shove-to-prones: your ranged allies do benefit. These somethings still rate red.

Grappler: Like with Athletics, I'm open to suggestions.

 

[CapnZapp]

Great Weapon Master
"Cleave" plus major damage boost
Design:This design is seriously backwards. For casual users, it doesn't provide that much of a benefit, while seriously threatening to be an actual trap. For power users, it's the game's single biggest power-up.
Fun:Doing massive damage might sound fun, but it isn't fun to those left out in the cold (i.e. anyone not taking this feat, anyone that can't take the feat, and NPCs that generally don't get feats at all). Still, from a pure fun perspective, it would be dishonest to give it a bad grade.
Power:As a power gamer, the existence of this feat (together with Sharpshooter) divides martials into the have and the have nots. It's that big of a deal. Optimizing around this feat gives you much better DPR than any other minmax focus. And on top of this, you also gain "cleave" which in itself is fun and good.

Great Weapon Master
Split into two feats: Cleave and Great Weapon Master

Cleave

• Increase your Strength score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• When you reduce a foe to 0 hit points using a melee weapon, you can make a melee attack as a bonus action during your turn.

This is the old Great Weapon Master feat with the -5/+10 part replaced by +1 Strength (as suggested by many). Because there no longer is any connection to heavy weapons specifically, the feat is renamed. Like before, Cleave applies equally to all melee weapons, including finesse ones. The way the feat only adds to Strength and not also to Dexterity is intentional.

Great Weapon Master
When making a melee attack using a weapon in both hands, you may decide to trade accuracy for momentum. You can take disadvantage on two-handed attacks until the end of your round. If you do, you add your proficiency bonus to damage of each of these attacks.

Notes:
The “-5” part is replaced by disadvantage, ensuring it can't be combined with advantage. This alone is a powerful check on minmax combos. The “+10” part is replaced by your proficiency bonus, which keeps the effect within reason for low-level characters (getting +10 at low level is a stupendous difference, and is very hard to explain within the game world. It messes too much with out of combat situations like "break this chain" or "axe this door", and it means you can't introduce hardness as an effective slow-down measure.

You still gain +6 at high level, though. Since “no advantage” is equivalent to anything between -2 to -5 but typically -3, I consider the feat to grant -3/+6 to optimized high level users. Bringing us back to where we started, though without the charop cheese!

Note that the feat no longer specifies heavy weapons. This allows you to use it with a versatile weapon if you hold it in two hands, fixing an important omission in that property's versatility!

Behind the Scenes:
In my campaign, a character with +12 reliably attacks AC 18 with the GWM damage boost, which is way too good. The gap between +7 and AC 18 is effectively shut by advantage, top-up abilities and lucky.

As my observation to this - with disadvantage, you can't close the gap which effectively means the -5 penalty stays even if you gain advantage to negate the disadvantage. The difference is that now we've balanced the feat on the assumption you always get advantage, instead of the core assumption which is naively balanced on the initial scenario (and thus is abusable, which is the reason power gamers find it too good)

Now the feat is (hopefully) balanced for optimized high level users, which it should have been from the beginning. (That low level characters might hold off on taking this feat is not something I consider a negative)

This relies on the core rule that one disadvantage negates many advantage, so don't use this for a campaign where you've houseruled otherwise.

Feel free to shoot holes in my line of reasoning (and math), so we can improve it further

 

[CapnZapp]

Heavily/Moderately/Lightly Armored
armor proficiency
Design:Couldn't be more straight-forward. One of few feats directly imported from previous edition. Fills a narrow niche as the simple or themed way to gain armor.
Fun:Not particularly, but serves its purpose. Those few that take it are happy, I presume.
Power:Sorry, but the armor proficiency feats are a trap for the theme-seeking player and are never picked up by power gamers. You can gain armor proficiencies much more cheaply by other means. Because they're half feats they escape a red rating.

This could have been implemented much more generously to keep in step with the rest of the game. For instance, if we assume picking Mountain Dwarf is as good a pick as any other, getting Medium Armor proficiency is essentially free, so why should it cost a feat?

Heavily/Moderately/Lightly Armored and Weapons Master
These feats used to offer absurdly expensive proficiencies compared to simple multi-classing. Or even picking the right race!

All these four feats are replaced with Martial Training:

Martial Training

• Increase your Strength or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• Then, pick three out of the following five options:

# Proficiency with light armor
# Proficiency with medium armor
# Proficiency with heavy armor
# Proficiency with shields
# Proficiency with three weapons of your choice (you may pick this more than once, picking three more weapon proficiencies each time)​

 

[CapnZapp]

Savage Attacker
reroll weapon damage once per turn
Design: Oof. This turkey was designed by someone that failed math.

On the other hand, most analysis I've googled does too. Here's the deal: the average increase is only +2. But that's only true when you have a single attack per turn. That's because you need to take into account the decision point of actually using the reroll. With just the one attack, it's simple - use it every time, the math checks out. But with two attacks and you roll a 6 on your first d12? Should you use it? Probably not - the average gain is only 0.5 damage points. In contrast, you have a 50% "chance" of rolling not better (than 6) on your second attack (if it hits), in which case the reroll can help you much more (if that second damage roll is a 5, the expected benefit is +1.5 damage points).

Too Long, Didn't Understand: with more attacks, you should probably not reroll an early attack that's around your die's average. For a d12, you probably benefit from keeping 6's, for instance, even though they're below average. In short: most calculations fail to account for the decision point, slightly underestimating the feat's value.

The sad part, of course, is that even if we generously accept the feat gives not merely a +2 increase but a whopping +5 increase, that's still only +5 damage per round (not per attack) for a high-level fighter. Whopeedoo.

In addition, this. Adding a decision point for every single damage roll is probably not a wise choice.
Fun: I read about plenty of satisfied players that like rerolling bad results, so blue it is. (I hate to burst their bubble by telling them they would be much better off with +2 Strength. Not to speak another, actually powerful, feat.)
Power: Nope

For the time being, I'm starting out by the idea to combine Durable with Savage Attacker. And going from there...:

Savage Attacker

• When you roll a Hit Die to regain hit points, add a d6 to the number of hit points you regain.
• Once per turn when you have hit with a melee attack, add a d6 to the damage.
• When you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, the target becomes frightened of you until the end of its next turn.

The third benefit is meant as a perk especially for Champion Fighters.

 

[CapnZapp]

Sharpshooter
ignore range, ignore cover, "greatbow mastery" (the -5/+10 bit)
Design: Where to start? This is the most generous feat in the whole book. Even if you feel Great Weapon Master is completely balanced and unproblematic, you should give pause before approving this one: it gives the best aspect of a greatweapon at incredible range. I understand that the designer wanted a simple way of saying "you can shoot longer and more accurately", but a complete negation of range and cover removes an important part of the game - the tactics and maneuvering. And even ignoring all of this, this isn't exactly a sharpshooter's feat. Nothing about this feat turns you into a William Tell. It just turns you into a combat monster in general. WotC really needed to playtest this more. The grade is still not red, since from a pure design perspective it's still a very simple and direct implementation.
Fun: While you could argue it's fun to pick off monsters that feebly try to take cover etc, I will grade this on the assumption that range and cover actually adds to the game.
Power: By itself this is good, and obviously gold for specialized archers. It is taken together with all the other changes to ranged fire this goes over the top. And it is with Crossbow Expert the game finally crosses the line entirely into a game where you no longer need melee. To grade that, I would have to get a new grade, sky blue perhaps?

Sharpshooter

• Add 1 to your Dexterity score, to a maximum of 20.
• You can take careful aim, even in the midst of battle. If you spend your bonus action, you gain advantage on your ranged attacks during the rest of your round.

1. +1 to dex replaces the bonus damage thing, just like +1 to str replaces it for the gwm feat (now renamed Cleave)
2. note how this advantage can be used to negate range disadvantage and/or to offset cover penalties WHILE STILL ensuring you have a reason to seek out short range and no cover (because there you gain actual advantage.
3. the way sharpshooter can't be stacked with other ways to gain advantage is quite intentional

If we compare this to dual wield (perhaps the first available way to use your bonus action), we see that instead of making two d20 rolls (two attacks) you make two d20 rolls (one attack with advantage). So that's a draw.

Once you gain extra attack, the feat becomes better. But, crucially, it always eats your bonus action, so it never becomes a free lunch - you can't stack it with other build strategies that also use the bonus action.

Is this perhaps still too attractive? Advantage on short range is awfully good.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I don't actually have any immediate ideas, and have focused on the other ones for now.

Feel free to make suggestions

Should this grant more swashbucklery benefits? Perhaps bring "Athletics" up to par with "Acrobatics" (as understood by 3rd Edition). Or merely beef up the existing ones?

The existing abilities that the feat grants are rather nice: You don't want to add much to it or it will become too powerful.
I'd suggest not expanding Athletics skill too much: its already head and shoulders above Acrobatics.
Perhaps a small speed boost when you take the Dash action?

Charger

• You can take the Dash action as a bonus action.
• Each time during your round you move at least 20 feet straight toward a creature and then hit it with at least one melee attack, you gain a free shove attack against it.

The intention is that you gain one free shove per creature you charge and hit. Charge a second creature (total movement 40 ft), if you hit it too, you gain a new shove.

Note that your wording allows you to hit a single creature twice with the shove at a little risk.

Grappler: Like with Athletics, I'm open to suggestions.

Add the ability to shove a creature in any direction?
While grappling can share a space with your opponent?
Don't take disadvantage to attacks when you're prone?
Deal damage on a shove, prone, and increased unarmed damage to the target of your grapple?

Great Weapon Master
Split into two feats: Cleave and Great Weapon Master

Cleave

• Increase your Strength score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• When you reduce a foe to 0 hit points using a melee weapon, you can make a melee attack as a bonus action during your turn.

I'd suggest leaving in the ability to cleave on a crit as well as dropping a creature.

Great Weapon Master

Beware of encouraging stacking up of disadvantages.

Heavily/Moderately/Lightly Armored and Weapons Master
These feats used to offer absurdly expensive proficiencies compared to simple multi-classing. Or even picking the right race!

All these four feats are replaced with Martial Training:

Martial Training

• Increase your Strength or Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• Then, pick three out of the following five options:

# Proficiency with light armor
# Proficiency with medium armor
# Proficiency with heavy armor
# Proficiency with shields
# Proficiency with three weapons of your choice​

Might want to require armour prerequisites. (So getting prof in Heavy Armour requires prof in Light and Medium.)

If you're feeling generous, might want to also include an option of picking a single weapon that will then count as a Monk weapon

For the time being, I'm starting out by the idea to combine Durable with Savage Attacker. And going from there...:

From your review, I'm guessing that you have some sort of table rule requiring attacks to be rolled one at a time?

Savage Attacker

• When you roll a Hit Die to regain hit points, add a d6 to the number of hit points you regain.
• Once per turn when you have hit with a melee attack, add a d6 to the damage.
• When you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, the target becomes frightened of you until the end of its next turn.

Extra d6 damage a round is quite good. Might want to consider it Sneak attack, or increasing the dice size, but only on crits etc.