D&D 5E Any of these Feat changes look too good?

[DND_Reborn]

If players aren't taking Mounted Combat, it's probably because they don't fight on horses often enough to justify a feat to get better at it.

We've had two PCs take it so far. And it is strong when it gets used but since those PCs aren't often mounted...

Maybe allow you to use your bonus action to allow the mount to attack? I mean, warhorses were trained to fight while they were mounted. What do you think?

 

[DND_Reborn]

Ah...I understood your intent differently. I thought you mean to say that it could only remove disadvantage from one source: wind or darkness, but not both, for example.

No worries. I can clean up the text to make it clearer. But, just to be clear, if you were shooting in darkness and a strong wind, you wouldn't be able to negate both.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Other than Lucky, GWM, SS, PAM, XBE, and maybe Inspiring Leader, you could make every other feat in the game a half-feat and it would be fine.

Well, I think there are a fair number that aren't bad without an ASI, just as Healer, Alert, Observant, etc. but we did feel the ones listed needed a bump to make them more appealing.

 

[NotAYakk]

What standard are you aiming for?

The standard I'd use for revising feats is "a PC could pick this at level 4 and build an effective character concept around it".

Elven Accuracy, Polearm Mastery, Crossbow Expert, Lucky, Sentinel, War Caster, Svirfneblin Magic, Magic Initiate are examples of ones that currently qualify.

Too strong means something that breaks things (a) more than the above, (b) possibly as taken at level 1.

(GWM/SS are strong feats, but mainly come online around level 8, after you have near-maxed your attack stat and already grabbed XBE/PAM).

Your changes make HAM start to approach this. It still scales poorly. My variant is "you reduce BPS by your proficiency modifier. Unless you are wearing magical heavy armor, this only applies to non-magical BPS." This weakens HAM at level 1 (where I think it is too strong), but makes it scale much better (so you won't feel bad about it at level 20).

Elemental Adept as written just lets you build a character who is "all fire all the time", which isn't a bad thing. But I don't like the idea of burning fire elementals. So one approach I am going to try is:

Elemental Corruption: You have twisted your elemental magic to make it more effective.

• When you gain this feat, choose one of the following damage types: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder.
• Spells you cast ignore resistance to damage of the chosen type.
• When you deal damage with a spell of that type, you may choose to make 1/2 of the damage necrotic. If you do so, you gain temporary HP equal to the necrotic damage done to one target until the end of your next turn.
• If you have temporary HP granted by this feat at the start of your turn, you can sacrifice them in order to increase the damage one spell that deals the chosen type of damage on one target on your turn by half the sacrificed temporary HP.

This is basically a dresden-files esque "hellfire" upgrade.

Against a creature immune to fire, you can use your corrupt flames, and they still take 1/2 damage as necrotic.

When you use your corrupt flames, you drain life power (temporary HP), which you can then expel to deal more damage.

This isn't as "neutral" as elemental adept is, and is honestly too complex, but it does give a fire-wizard something to do when enemies are fire elementals. That energy substitution (fire->necrotic) is a lot like treating immunity as resistance, DPR wise.

 

[DND_Reborn]

What standard are you aiming for?

Simple changes that make the listed feats more appealing.

Your changes make HAM start to approach this. It still scales poorly. My variant is "you reduce BPS by your proficiency modifier. Unless you are wearing magical heavy armor, this only applies to non-magical BPS." This weakens HAM at level 1 (where I think it is too strong), but makes it scale much better (so you won't feel bad about it at level 20).

(emphasis mine)

Start to approach this... what? Too strong? If I am reading your suggestion correctly, you are adding the same thing mine does (magical armor allows DR vs. magical BPS) but you are also making the DR up to 6 at higher levels! Yes, this keeps pace, but IMO would definitely make the feat too strong. Also, changing it to proficiency bonus only makes it less for levels 1-4. I do consider it a strong feat at level 1, but this is balanced out in that it isn't as useful at higher levels IME (still helpful, but not as much).

Elemental Adept as written just lets you build a character who is "all fire all the time", which isn't a bad thing. But I don't like the idea of burning fire elementals.

Yep, but of course not just fire, but whatever damage type you select. Our group actually liked the idea of being able to penetrate the immunity of things like giants, elementals, and dragons. However, they would still be resistant to it-- so it helps if a caster doesn't have other options ready at the time, but hardly solves the immunity issue completely IMO.

This isn't as "neutral" as elemental adept is, and is honestly too complex,

(emphasis mine)
Yeah, definitely too complex for a feat. I might not make a bad class feature in flavor, but I would be worried about it also being too strong as is.

Thanks for your input though.

 

[jmartkdr2]

We've had two PCs take it so far. And it is strong when it gets used but since those PCs aren't often mounted...

Maybe allow you to use your bonus action to allow the mount to attack? I mean, warhorses were trained to fight while they were mounted. What do you think?

The only real fix is to make bringing along a horse easier. If you can't bring a horse, the feat is bad no matter how powerful it is.

There's magic solutions for that (from horse familiars to pokeballs) but those don't seem like things that a feat should be addressing - it's a spell or magic item.

BTW, for a game I'm in the dm allows me to use my action while mounted to give the mount (in this case a dragon) an action to multiattack. It seems balanced enough (the dragon has different damage types but doesn't really hit harder than the paladin.)

 

[Shiroiken]

Well, the title says it all. Do you think any of these adjustments to the feats in the PHB make them too good or powerful?

View attachment 126535
Most of these feats see very little use in our game and many of them seem weak to us, so these are our proposals.

I'm worried a couple might be too strong now. Thoughts?

Elemental Adept and Inspiring Leader don't need any adjustment IME. While Elemental Adept is very specific, you want to have some way of limiting that specialization (our dragon sorceress picked up animate object and other non-fire spells for this reason). Inspiring Leader is better as you level, so while not a good level 4 feat, it's really good at level 8 and higher.

I don't think any of these are necessarily overly powerful, but most probably still won't be taken. Feats are too scarce to waste on anything that doesn't directly enhance your primary character concept. This is why only a few feats get regularly chosen.

 

[Eltab]

I found that Inspiring Leader did not scale well, over the range L4 - L10*. At the lower end I could give my allies a 'buffer' that let them take one hit and shrug it off; the second hit would reach real HP. By the higher end any equal-level monster could chew up the THPs and get into real HP (usually via Multiattack) in the first round of melee, so it "felt" like the protection had faded. I was playing a Paladin with CHR as his second stat.

* In HotDQ, if that matters.

 

[DND_Reborn]

BTW, for a game I'm in the dm allows me to use my action while mounted to give the mount (in this case a dragon) an action to multiattack. It seems balanced enough (the dragon has different damage types but doesn't really hit harder than the paladin.)

Sorry to say this but then your DM is actually making it worse for you.

Independent mounts, such as a dragon, act normally on their own turn of initiative without any cost to you. So, if your DM is making you use your action so your mount can attack, they are taking away your action.

Dependent mounts (horses, mules, etc.) act on your initiative, but can only move and take the Dash, Disengage, and Dodge actions.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

So a few comments in this thread that are some good points, though I think people's mileage will vary on different feats usefulness.

I don't think anything you've suggested would be too powerful or break anything. My only suggestion is that I would suggest you let those who take Ritual Caster just be able to pick any mental ability stat to use for their ritual casting, rather than be forced to use the stat of the spell list they pick. If I've interpreted your words correctly for ritual caster I think you are kind of letting them do this backwardly, though I'd just suggest it in addition to your changes or as an alternative. The main people who benefit from the feat per RAW are noncasters and sorcerers (whom are limited to the bard list really if they actually want to get any spells) because the sorcerer list basically has no ritual spells.