D&D 5E 2016 Feats Review

[CapnZapp]

part of my series on how D&D 5.1 Edition might look like.

this is not meant as a homebrew or houserule thread

I suddently realized I have had a number of unconnected discusions related to feats, that it was high time I put together a comprehensive review!

Lets look at the entire rost of 5E feats, and to grade them on three important scales.

Are they well designed? (As in, from a mechanical and psycological point of view, as well as not stealing play time or contributing to analysis paralysis)
Are they fun to use? (As in, do the feat actually enhance gameplay)
Are they truly useful? (As in powerful, but not too powerful)

I'm the first to acknowledge the three pillars of 5E (combat, social, exploration), but this review is done assuming combat is the predominant mechanic and pastime in the game. That is, the number of rules and mechanisms devoted to combat greatly outnumber that of rules for social and exploration. This review reflects that. (If your game focuses on the other two pillars, maybe this review just isn't for you - please simply do not respond if that's the case. Thanks)

The scale is (hopefully) the standard for these things: gold, blue, black, purple, and red, in descending order (gold is the best, red is the worst). Yes, I'm proudly using the standard black on white color scheme.

As you might expect after this many years since the PHB was released, this isn't an armchair read-through review; this is a review well into dungeonmastering my second 5E campaign (currently at level 14).

With no further ado, let's get right to it!

The first part is the basic mechanism of aquiring feats itself.

Design: The basic idea is excellent: giving players the opportunity to flesh out what their characters can do in ways that transcend the class system. And the decision to make you give up an ASI does a lot to widen the design space for what a feat can actually do, as well as making the whole subsystem truly optional. The biggest flaw is that the balance of it all pretty much requires you to use point-buy ability scores, which is not the default. I guess I really should have lowered the grade because it is possible (probably even) you might have a bad experience if you use feats in a campaign where somebody rolls three straight 18's... but I can't bring myself to it.
Fun: To me, a fun decision is also a hard decision. I'm downgrading this from gold to blue because I've seen several players say it isn't fun to have to choose between a feat and an ASI; and for the number of feats that might be fun but provide far too little power, they're actually right.
Power: Of course the overall feat system needs to be powerful, otherwise you would never use it. This rating is based on the fact that apart from a few feats that turned out to be too easy to game, the overall impression is that there is plenty of choices, even if mostly for martial characters and even if not all the interesting choices actually work out so well in practical gaming. But the thing that lifts this from black to blue is that without feats, the mechanical means of expressing your character would be much lessened. Crunch is good, and actually useful crunch is better!

 

[CapnZapp]

Alert
+5 to initiative, can't be surprised, getting ambushed doesn't provide advantage to attacker
Design: This is one of the more coarse feats. Some would say the design was crude or even clumsy. The benefits are a little too absolute for my taste. Especially "can't be surprised" is a story-wrecker right there. But other than that, a fairly reasonable feat.
Fun: If you actively enjoy being immune to adventure, good for you. For the rest of us, average.
Power: The benefits are rightly strong, since things like winning initiative is more of a nice perk than a gamechanger. Blue for rogue assassins, whose build actually does mechanically rely on being first.

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.

Actor
Half feat; advantage on two skills; unreliable minor effect
Design: The advantage is straight-forward, and the condition you are not yourself set the tone well. The mimic part is weak though.
Fun: Since advantage encourages you to resolve situations by social means, good fun can be had. (Edit: Of course this assumes the player still works within the framework of the adventure. Few NPCs can resist a player that wilfully (ab)uses advantage - but that I consider out of scope for this review.)
Power: No real power, but still a half feat. Since obviously geared toward the social pillar in a way that is actually used by adventurers I consider it a successful feat.

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.

 

[CapnZapp]

I seem to have been slowed down by a nasty cold...
Anyway, a few notes for future use, followed by a new bunch of feats.

Athlete: a truly fun swashbuckling feat should have allowed the character to break the rather mundane limits on leaping around.
Actor: This feat should have been called "rascal" or "scoundrel" since it's all about misleading and straightfaced lies. Is the acting profession nothing more to WotC??

I hate the design decision to give a feat a more general benefit as well as a more specific one. And the name only rubs it in. Everytime you pick "greatweapon master" because you have a longsword and would like to be able to cleave, you a) have to take the feat despite its name and b) always be reminded about what you're missing out by not wielding an actual greatweapon. Same with Crossbow Expert, which arguably benefits all archers, only hand crossbows is the only true optimal usage.

If I am to take Cleave for my shortsword or longsword, I expect to find a feat balanced for my use case, and not have to take a feat where some of the goodness simply can't be used by me, since I know that is suboptimal. In short: there should have been a general Cleave feat (etc).


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".

Defensive Duelist
Essentially the NPC "parry" ability
Design: Straightforward enough (though "Parry" would have been a MUCH better name)
Fun: Sorry but I can't rate a minor way of not getting hit once in a while as actually "fun". On the other hand, it's not actively embarassing either. So black it is.
Power: This is not good enough for a full feat. Remember, you must use up your reaction, so not only is this limited to once a round, but you're potentially giving up on making an opportunity attack as well. And you're not even guaranteed the incoming attack to miss; that is, the language does not allow you to learn what the monster rolled. (It explicitly allows for the attack to still hit you! And everytime it does still hit you, the feat is weak as hell)

Dual Wielder
+1 AC, use non-light weapons, "dual quickdraw"
Design: Straightforward enough
Fun:Apart from the (very minor) ability to "dual quickdraw", only passive bonuses to what you do already
Power: Again, not good enough. The AC bump is the only thing that saves this feat from a Grappler-like grade.

Dungeon Delver
Advantage vs secret doors and traps, resistance vs traps, "quicksearch" traps
Design: Hmm. This feat is problematic on many levels. First off, in my experience, just being proficient in Perception coupled with a decent Wisdom score is enough to find every trap in every published module, since actual practice never calls for more than a passive perception check that such a character will always autosucceed at. And almost every party is guaranteed to have a Cleric, say, with Perception proficiency. The ability to search for traps at normal speed, what use is that? When you charge blindly ahead into the kobold warrens? Okay, so that's incredibly niche. The resistance to traps is the sole feature that just works. But even that is dependent on a rather trap heavy campaign. And again, this feat is really only warranted if your DM makes trapfinding harder than actual practice. So I am going to give it a poor grade since it is so sensitive to campaign style. For heavy duty oldschool campaigns, this is more likely blue.
Fun: It does allow you to barge in with little fear for traps, so in a trapheavy campaign it's probably blue. In my experience, however, this seldom happens. It's not actively unfun, though.
Power: For the type of campaign where the design works, the power is decent.

Durable
Half feat; +2 to spending hit dice
Design: The division between this and Tough is too artificial. I see why they wanted to use the design space "bonus to spending Hit Dice", but this is simply too rote, too boring. This should have been combined with a thematic feat like Savage Attacker.
Fun:Meh.
Power:Meh. Since it's a half-feat it's not actively bad, but it is much less useful than either Resilient (Con) or Tough.

 

[CapnZapp]

I know I have gotten sidetracked with other projects, but to show this thread isn't dead, let's do away with a feat I have no practical experience with.

Elemental Adept
Negate resistance to one of five damage types, minor damage boost
Design:Designwise the first part (negate resistance) is perfectly clear. The other represents less than a 5% increase, and that is for d6 spells - for d8 and d10 spells it does even less. Talk about minor.
Fun:This isn't actively unfun, but it is "meh". This black grade is generous.
Power:This is not good enough for a full feat. Perhaps it was in d20 where you got more feats and you didn't pay an ASI. I understand their hesitance to add feats that make fireball more powerful, but this is simply too cautious.



Let me just add something discussed in another thread (regarding Energy Substitution), namely this:

Any feat design that doesn't take into account how different damage types are unequal will fail. Either the feat is underpowered for, say, Acid or Poison, or it is overpowered for, say, Fire or Force.

The solution must be to make the feat give better benefits to Acid or Poison, than to Fire or Force. Of course, creating a unique feat for each damage type would work too

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.

Edit: Thanks to [MENTION=60210]jaelis[/MENTION] I've realized I was completely wrong about Grappler. Here is my original appraisal unedited:
[sblock=Grappler]Grappler
Design:While I understand the idea "give the specialist advantage" this works less well here than for, say, initiative or some skill. Getting advantage on grapples is in effect an autosuccess against all humanoids, and means you can quite easily grapple the strongest of Large foes. At least thank the gods you no longer can grapple colossal creatures. The reason is that Strength isn't nearly as exponential as common sense tells you it should be, and so it interacts especially badly with Advantage.
Fun:It's fun alright.
Power:Getting to pin creatures and grappling large creatures fair and square are both perfectly alright. Getting advantage is too good, however. This feat is as a result too crude. Its black grade is saved by the fact it is still not trivial to make a grappler build work.
[/sblock]

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[jaelis]

Grappler
Design:While I understand the idea "give the specialist advantage" this works less well here than for, say, initiative or some skill. Getting advantage on grapples is in effect an autosuccess against all humanoids, and means you can quite easily grapple the strongest of Large foes. At least thank the gods you no longer can grapple colossal creatures. The reason is that Strength isn't nearly as exponential as common sense tells you it should be, and so it interacts especially badly with Advantage.
Fun:It's fun alright.
Power:Getting to pin creatures and grappling large creatures fair and square are both perfectly alright. Getting advantage is too good, however. This feat is as a result too crude. Its black grade is saved by the fact it is still not trivial to make a grappler build work.

Do note that you can grapple a Large creature even without the feat; the third benefit is meaningless.

 

[CapnZapp]

EDIT- I just noticed that you've graded almost everything as purple or red, so ... I guess on your curve you're grading alert as a pretty awesome feat, which is good?

I'm not done yet. Hopefully there are at least a few feats that I rate gold

(No seriously, if I don't rate anything as gold, I will probably recalibrate the ratings)

 

[CapnZapp]

Do note that you can grapple a Large creature even without the feat; the third benefit is meaningless.

The third benefit reads "Creatures that are one size larger than you don’t automatically succeed on checks to escape your grapple."

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[jaelis]

The third benefit reads "Creatures that are one size larger than you don’t automatically succeed on checks to escape your grapple."

Indeed. But there is no rule that creatures one size larger than you can automatically escape your grapple, whether you have the feat or not. Per the errata: "Ignore the third benefit; it refers to a nonexistent rule."