D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: 16 New Feats

"Today’s Unearthed Arcana presents a selection of new feats for Dungeons & Dragons. Each feat offers a way to become better at something or to gain a whole new ability."

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The feats include Artificer Initiate, Chef, Crusher, Eldritch Adept, Fey Touched, Fighting Initiate, Gunner, Metamagic Adept, Poisoner, Piercer, Practiced Expert, Shadow Touched, Shield Training, Slasher, Tandem Tactician, and Tracker.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I also have an issue with the Gunner feat removing the loading property of firearms. I think that the loading property is one of the main things about firearms, and if one wants to fire more than once per round than it should be only from either magic or technology (like multiple barrels or being a firearm with tech from at least the 1800s). I think that benefit needs to be replaced with another one.

I think that's a problem with the Loading property in general. The loading property a limitation that only (or overwhelmingly) affects characters that get Extra Attack so the designers created all these feats to circumvent this limitation. It's kind of bizarre.

I'd almost rather change the Loading property to, "Unless you have the Extra Attack feature, reloading this weapon requires a bonus action."

It's the same design oddity with characters that use thrown weapons and being unable to draw and throw two weapons at once. Even if you have a bandoleer of throwing knives (a.k.a., darts). It's just an odd design choice.

 

[Guest 6801328]

It was just personal info about me that I decided did nothing for anyone. If I could have deleted the post I would have, but I can't once it is posted.

Good call. My usual poor forum judgment aside, I do try to avoid invoking personal information or trying to pull rank with real life expertise.

 

[cbwjm]

I really like these feats and will be happy to add them to my games. I like the generic weapon feats, not too worried about players locking in a fighting style since they tend to do that anyway.

The various magic feats are how I've been considering running magic initiate and the various races with spells, allowing a caster to use their spell slots in addition to a single use of the 1st level spell.

The various "multi-class" feats are cool, I think for the Eldritch Adept feat I would allow anyone who has taken magic initiate to count as having the spellcasting/pact magic feature and allow them to choose this feat as well.

I've been wondering how to do a metamagic feat and looks similar to my last attempt but better.

Combine practised expert with tracker and now my fighter really is a (mostly) spell-less ranger.

 

[Phazonfish]

It's been brought up a couple times, but just to be sure nobody glosses over it, I'll say it once more extra loud.

YOU CAN'T TAKE AGONIZING BLAST WITH ELDRITCH ADAPT

...unless you are already a Warlock. The feat doesn't allow non-Warlocks to take invocations that have requirements even if they meet the requirements.

Edit: Here's an additional note to save some people some book searching: Every invocation in XGtE has a requirement.

 

[Chaosmancer]

A few things I haven't seen mentioned yet.

Fighting Initiate gives Barbarians access to Fighting Styles, and Rogues access to Archery. Both of those are very good.

The poison from Poisoner is quite powerful +2d8 and the poison condition is kind of beastly. Also, while people are complaining about ingested poisons, those are listed in the DMG, and the crafting rules allow you to make it with the poisoner kit proficiency, so I', not sure what else the feat could have added. Though, now you canonically have a way to easily overcome a dwarves poison resistance, which could make for a fun "super assassin" villain.

I am disappointed that Practiced Expert is just flat better than the Prodigy feat, and that Fey Touched is better than Fey Teleportation.

Chef is a ton of fun, and I have two separate character's that want it now.

 

[Gadget]

Not a big fan. One of the big pluses for 5e is that they have, so far, shown a fair amount of restraint in burying us under an avalanche of feats, which was a big problem in the last two editions. I don't particularly care for the "raid this class's unique schtick via feat" either. I get that they are intended to be pseudo-multiclass feats, but there are too many ways these can be opened up for abuse.

Then again, I'm not a huge fan of feats to begin with, I tend think they're a broken design that just won't go away.

 

[Remathilis]

I don't particularly care for the "raid this class's unique schtick via feat" either. I get that they are intended to be pseudo-multiclass feats, but there are too many ways these can be opened up for abuse.

Funny enough, I saw most of that less as "steal another classes toys" and more of "I want more of my toy faster". Most Warlocks would love one extra invocation, or a sorcerer get more metamagic before 11th level, and this gives them the ability. It also gives those high level players who capped thier primary stat already something that isn't just bumping dump stats.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm not going to lie: I kind of want to play a hobbit with the Chef feat. (If they're spending feats on Cooking, they're hobbits, damn it.)

 

[dave2008]

Different strokes.

Absolutely - and it is so very clear on these forums!

 

[Weiley31]

The Poisoner feat makes it sounds like that it ALLOWS YA to ignore Poison resistance. So Poison Spray Cantrip now GG?