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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6959785" data-attributes="member: 12731">Anyway... onwards! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Great Weapon Master"Cleave" plus major damage boostDesign: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.Since I don't want the mods to slap a "homebrew" sticker on this thread, let's just say the follow-up article, where I draw conclusion from this feat review will have to update this feat.HealerYour stabilize actions put heroes back into action. You effectively gain one completely free cure spell per creature. Design:Not too bad. If you have plenty of clerical healing or an excess of healing potions you don't need this, but that's not what it's designed for. It's designed for the low magic campaigns that doesn't have all of that. And in that it's reasonably successful with no particular niggles.Fun:Satisfying for the support player.Power:A party will feel the impact of this compared to one without, but not to the extent of Inspiring Leader (below). You gain free heals sure, but you still need to spend the action, so this doesn't unbalance combat. It just makes life easier. The grittier the healing rules, the better this feat becomes. Heavy/Medium/Light Armorarmor proficiencyDesign: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?I'm seriously tempted to bunch these together and just have one "Armor Proficiency Feat" that lets you pick the armor and shield proficiencies you like. All of them, if that's you fancy. After all, power gamers pick them up through multiclassing without any discernible cost (close to the cost of a feat!) anyway.Also, why not throw in "choose one damage type. You gain damage reduction 3 against that damage type"? Would be a cool way to have you specialize in, say, piercing protection. Or acid. Anyway, the point is not to cheapen out by limiting this to nonmagical damage only. It's still an expensive way of getting a proficiency...Heavy Armor MasterDR 3Design:If the game should have damage reduction, I'd place it in a feat too. But why non-magical attacks only?!Fun:Not particularly, but serves its purpose. Against lots of very weak attackers I do see the fun factor, but that's not happening enough for me to raise the grade. It is all passive, after all.Power:I actually haven't analysed this in great detail. I do know people on the forums have picked it up, and I realize that as boring as it sounds like, it probably will save you lots of damage over the long run.Inspired Leadertemp hpDesign:The actual language used is a bit confusing. The consensus is that you can use this over and over as long you have the time to spare, but this is not hinted at in any way. I would have phrased it differently, even if its effect stayed exactly the same.Fun:In my experience, the satisfaction is so prevalent I'm gonna give this a blue rating. It does have a roleplay angle in that it can be gifted on NPCs.Power:The way temp hp doesn't stack does limit this, but in practice it only means the group can abandon any other temp hp minmaxing stratagems. It really is a noticeable power buff, since the whole party is given a level's worth of bonus hit points after each rest. Power gamers don't need this easy power-up.Keen MindbenefitsDesign:Apart from the hodge podge nature and lack of actual power, I dislike absolutes like "you remember everything". How do you even DM something like that? Designwise it's unfun how this only helps wizards.Fun:I'm sure it's fun for the player...Power:A difficult evaluation. Rp-wise it has its benefits. Otherwise its a half-feat for wizards. Couldn't its benefits have been handed out as a background instead?Lightly ArmoredSee Heavy/Medium/Light Armor above</blockquote>

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