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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6918855" data-attributes="member: 12731">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 Expertuse a crossbow like a bow, shoot when in melee, and use your bonus attack to make an extra hand crossbow attackDesign: 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 <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470488-Crossbows-and-dual-wielding" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?470488-Crossbows-and-dual-wielding</a>.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 DuelistEssentially the NPC "parry" abilityDesign: 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 enoughFun:Apart from the (very minor) ability to "dual quickdraw", only passive bonuses to what you do alreadyPower: Again, not good enough. The AC bump is the only thing that saves this feat from a Grappler-like grade.Dungeon DelverAdvantage vs secret doors and traps, resistance vs traps, "quicksearch" trapsDesign: 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. DurableHalf feat; +2 to spending hit diceDesign: 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.</blockquote>

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