D&D (2024) 2024 PHB Feats and Misc discussion

[Ruin Explorer]

I consider that most people vastly overrate Constitution as a stat. But one of the biggest things it does is to give you more hp - especially as there are no skills based on Constitution. 2hp/level gives you the same combat endurance boost much of the time as +4 Con.

To be honest I go back and forth on Toughness. Like I know intellectually that you're correct, but I've seen PCs with Toughness, and somehow it's just not working for them, y'know? Like, they're dying just as often as other PCs, and I dunno what exactly is causing this, like is it incaution on their part, is it something mechanical that's getting things there, is it just bad luck and not representative? I dunno. But my mind says Toughness isn't quite a trap (not as an L1 Feat), but it isn't as good as it sounds on paper. Sorry to be vague.

I will say with that and Dwarf you could have +3 HP/level which with some classes would be close to double HP (before CON), that's gotta count for something, right?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

For the 20% discount to be actually useful past third level you'd need meaningful money sinks in D&D. I'm more interested in the time - and whether they'll do anything with the fact it also covers gambling.

I'm assuming they just have to be introducing a ton more money sinks, because it would be easy to do and madness not to, but I guess we'll see.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To be honest I go back and forth on Toughness. Like I know intellectually that you're correct, but I've seen PCs with Toughness, and somehow it's just not working for them, y'know? Like, they're dying just as often as other PCs, and I dunno what exactly is causing this, like is incaution on their part, is it something mechanical that's getting things there, is it just bad luck and not representative? I dunno. But my mind says Toughness isn't quite a trap (not as an L1 Feat), but it isn't as good as it sounds on paper. Sorry to be vague.

I know what you mean here. And I think that rather than a mechancal trap it's the sort of effect that makes winding roads with poor visibility safer because people drive more cautiously so when you have the accidents (with the rates barely changing) you'll be driving more slowly.

 

[Horwath]

100% agree. It is so frustrating to see wasted racial powers on things like you can bite for 1d6 damage (if not 1d4!) that doesn't scale in any way...

It is only wasted if valued to much, if you value unarmed damage as extra tool or language or a single weapon, then I'm fine with it. If you value it as a skill proficiency or darkvision, then it's a problem.

Every race should have 4 or 5 minor trait slots:
tool proficiency,
language,
weapon proficiency,
unarmed damage,
unarmored defense(12+dex),
non damaging/non save cantrip that it is not guidance

 

[Horwath]

maybe Toughness could give 4HP at 1st level and then 2HP per level, as in 2 steps in increasing your HD.
4HP would be noticable even for high HP classes(d10/d12)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I know what you mean here. And I think that rather than a mechancal trap it's the sort of effect that makes winding roads with poor visibility safer because people drive more cautiously so when you have the accidents (with the rates barely changing) you'll be driving more slowly.

Thinking out loud here:

1) If you don't get like, into the bottom 50% of your HP with some regularity it doesn't really matter how many HP you have (above level 1/2) because it's so unlikely you'll be one-shot or even two-shot. And that's a lot of PCs, in my experience. So they have this higher number but it's not actually helping them most of the time, because like, quite often it's the same number of actual hits to kill them, or very close. Ironically the higher the damage-per-hit the less it's likely those extra HP will matter too. This is actually part of why D&D works so well with classes with significantly different HP values (not all games do).

2) Toughness (and Dwarf) don't help you to regain HPs (unlike CON, which helps with HD healing at the least). They just give you a higher initial max. So both HD healing and magical healing only heals the same exact amount as PCs without those Feats. So the extra HP only count "once per day", as it were, assuming a Long Rest. Like, two level 6 Fighters, a Toughness one has 12 HP more - but only once per day and quite likely on a tough day, both those Fighters go through more than 100% of their HP, what with Second Wind, magical healing, and HD healing.

Add in the "incautious driving" factor, because the guy who has 20% more HP is probably going to worry less about damage, even when he should worry, and I think that accounts for most of it. I think the "doesn't help you regain HPs" thing is particularly part of what makes this rather trap-y. I guess I will suggest that it should add to HD HP rolls at the very least in the Feedback.

 

[Stalker0]

This new alert feat is way weaker than the last one. Losing the “you can no longer be surprised” clause is a huge loss (though it’s possible that surprise is just advantage on initiative checks now…based on one snippet of the Packet, but that’s an unknown)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

After Tasha's playtest, they decided that having rangers with Hunter's mark without concentration would break the game and then they added Twilight cleric as "perfectly balanced" sub-class...

okay... that is funny

Let's just say that when it comes to themes and "feel" of the game, they did great job with 5E, but when it comes to balance and numbers, they don't have a clue, because if they do, they would not waste time writing Crafter, Musician and Savage attacker in this form.
They are not worth half a feat, yet they have audacity to make them full feats.

I agree, I have been told that there is a chart about how spells that lock opponents out of count as only minor damage

 

[DEFCON 1]

I suspect that in the case of all of these Level 1 starter feats... they really need to boost them all equally-- in that they should each have a functionality for the character outside of combat and as part of combat. If you can't give a small bonus to both sides with the feat in question... you either need to redo the mechanics or else change the name to allow for it.

I can't remember who said it and in which thread... but I agree that so long as you have combat-only feats alongside non-combat-only feats... you're never going to get them balanced. Except in the most extreme "characterization" players will you ever have someone take Crafter over Lucky. The Tool system and the Money system in the game are both too wishy-washy to make a feat that aids both of them seem actually useful. You would need to give that feat something that would help the character in battle for it to have anything meaningful for a large percentage of the playerbase.

What that combat-related ability could be for Crafter in particular (that would also be useful for the Artificer class) I do not know. But there has to be something.

 

[Thunder Brother]

This was mainly "biking home from work" brainstorming, but I wonder if Crafter would be more worthwhile if it allowed a character to make two items for the same resource and time cost as one.

This would be quite powerful, but the current effects are pretty lame by themselves. Doubly so when you consider it's competing with other feats and faced with D&D's anemic crafting system.