D&D 5E Moar Feats

Juriel said:

Err... extremely situational is hardly powerful.

You do avoid halving your damage when you're throwing fireballs at salamanders, but that just begs the question of why not use any of a million other spells they aren't resistant to. I bet thundermancers never have to worry about resistances.

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Because we have, in all editions, lots of fire spells and less thunder spells. On 3.x the thunder(sonic) spells has less damage just because you face less enemies with that resistance. On Basic Set:
Fire Spells. Cantrip: 1. 1st - 1. 2nd - 1. 3rd - 1. 4th to 6th - 0. 7th - 1. 8th - 0. 9th - 1.
Thunder Spells. Cantrip: 0. 1st - 1. All other levels - 0.
Fire total: 5. More important: one of them is a cantrip.
Thunder total: 1.
Now, you'll cast the Thunderwave as 3rd level? 4d8 damage (18 average). Fireball: 8d6 (28 average), with wide area, also.
Of course we all expect more thunder (and fire whatsoever) on the PHB.

And more important, "why caste a fireball on a salamander?" Well, because one can make a pyromancer just to flavor the PC and this precise feat allow it without penalize the player for it (well, the penalty is the exchange the ability boost to take the feat). The feats isn't all about power, but a way to customize your character.

Also this feat is very useful to a npc hit the group tiefling (can you imagine the face of the player when the DM says: "you took 40 fire damage" and the player "20, because I have resistance", "no, not for this attack"?)

Edit: as said by TwoSix I made a wrong calculation about fireball average damage with the feat. Deleted that part.

Neonchameleon said:

Remember that you don't have to take +2 to an ability score; you can instead take +1 to two ability scores. For Durable to be worthwhile, either the hit dice part needs to stack up to bumping a different stat to an even number (IMO it doesn't - even if you're playing a wizard and bumping strength) or you need to have no odd numbered stats (which is going to be vanishingly rare).

Even then you need a pretty high Con to take advantage of it (depending on whether the roll is meant to include the modifier; my belief is it is) the only time where assuming you spend all your hit dice in a day, it gives you more HP than Pathfinder Toughness is if you are a Wizard (or by inches a Cleric or Rogue) with an already-existing Con of 19 that you can boost to 20.

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Didn't realize that. Good point.

Alessandro Guarita said:

The feats isn't all about power, but a way to customize your character.

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Just pulling this out because it's so refreshing to see.

Missed this one on the way through - from the WotC Twitter feed.


The best character I can think to make of this is a fist and shield defender fighter who uses the shield block reaction and punches and grapples enemies who try to attack their friends.

Alessandro Guarita said:

Now, you'll cast the Thunderwave as 3rd level? 4d8 damage (18 average). Fireball: 8d6 (28 average), with wide area, also. With the feat, the average fireball damage goes up to 32.

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It would increase the average damage to 32 if it was rerolls 1s. (1d6 reroll 1 is equivalent to 1d5+1, average 4). But the feat doesn't do that, it merely flips a rerolled 1 to a 2. Thus the die distribution is {2,2,3,4,5,6}, which averages out to 11/3, or 3.67, a 1/6 increase on average. So an 8d6 fireball now does 29.33 on average.

5e seems to like the "treat low number as higher number" mechanic, which is nice for small dice, but I think they need a complementary mechanic that prefers larger dice. Much like empower versus maximize in 3.5.

TwoSix said:

It would increase the average damage to 32 if it was rerolls 1s. (1d6 reroll 1 is equivalent to 1d5+1, average 4). But the feat doesn't do that, it merely flips a rerolled 1 to a 2. Thus the die distribution is {2,2,3,4,5,6}, which averages out to 11/3, or 3.67, a 1/6 increase on average. So an 8d6 fireball now does 29.33 on average.

5e seems to like the "treat low number as higher number" mechanic, which is nice for small dice, but I think they need a complementary mechanic that prefers larger dice. Much like empower versus maximize in 3.5.

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Yeah, true, I simple made the average from minimum (2) to (6) but I forget that the minimum, on this case, has 2x more chance to roll than other numbers.
I'll correct the post.
But still: is better cast a fireball than a 3rd-level thunderwave

Juriel said:

Durable is horrible, and it gets worse the larger your hitdie is. A Con 18 Barbarian going from 5-16 healing to 8-16 healing is nothing. Especially when you only recover HALF of your hitdice during a long rest, so this won't even help you 'naturally' heal anything.

If Durable skipped the roll and just let you treat each hitdie as its maximum, even then it would still only be worth taking in a specific kind of a campaign. But at least then it would fit the other campaign-specific feats on this page.

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Yet again, I'll say it: The point of Durable is to increase your Constitution when you have an odd-numbered Con score. If you have Con 13, and all your other stats are even-numbered, then Durable is strictly better than putting a stat boost in Con. There is no value whatsoever in having Con 15 rather than Con 14.

Gargoyle said:

Because all D&D players are extroverts who frequently speak their mind.

You don't look at new character's sheets? I don't think of it as work, or see it as mind reading to talk about stuff, that's all I was suggesting. Also I suspect since feats are bigger and fewer, it won't be like like looking a huge list.

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I'll look at a new player's character sheet, since newbies often make mistakes. Regular players, I note class and race but that's about it. I assume they know what they're doing, and I also assume that if they want more dungeon crawling they'll say so.

Although in 5E I will probably add flaws, bonds, ideals, and backgrounds to class and race as "things to make a note of."

Alessandro Guarita said:

Yeah, true, I simpled made the average from minimum (2) to (6) but I forget that the minimum, on this case, has 2x more chance to roll than other numbers.
I'll correct the post.
But still: is better cast a fireball than a 3rd-level thunderwave

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Agreed on FB vs TW. That's part of the spell balancing; low-level spells don't scale up to match their higher level counterparts (look at Cure Wounds vs Heal for an excellent example). But they have the additional versatility of being able to be used in your low-level slots, which matters because max-level and near-max-level slots are at such a premium.

Dausuul said:

I'll look at a new player's character sheet, since newbies often make mistakes. Regular players, I assume they know what they're doing, and I also assume that if they want more dungeon crawling they'll say so. Although in 5E I will probably start looking at their sheets to the extent of reviewing their flaws, bonds, and ideals, since that's stuff that I will need to know as DM.

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To be honest, feats are going to be relatively rare in 5e, so treating them as mini-aspects much like Flaws and Bonds makes an awful lot of sense.

Neonchameleon said:

Remember that you don't have to take +2 to an ability score; you can instead take +1 to two ability scores. For Durable to be worthwhile, either the hit dice part needs to stack up to bumping a different stat to an even number (IMO it doesn't - even if you're playing a wizard and bumping strength) or you need to have no odd numbered stats (which is going to be vanishingly rare).

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It won't be vanishingly rare at all. Many folks will be using point buy. In point buy, you will usually pick your stats so you get even-numbered values after applying racial mods. However, this can lead to you ending up with a leftover stat point. What do you do with that stat point? No sense not using it, so you shove it in a secondary stat and forget about it. Therefore, point-buy characters with a single odd-numbered stat will be fairly common.