D&D 5E Extra Attack +1 feat

[CleverNickName]

Well obviously this feat is unbalanced. But it would cut down on the number of characters who multiclass with Fighter for no reason other than the extra attack.

And for that alone, I'd probably allow it at 4th or 8th level.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Is there a character optimizer who wouldnt take a feat that grants an additional attack?

Sure. Polearm Master or Great Weapon Master is clearly better than getting an extra attack. Why accept a 60% chance of getting one weapon attack's worth of damage, when you can get a toggle-able +10 to the damage of each attack (literally the equivalent of tripling your maximum ability modifier)? Particularly if, as I have REPEATEDLY said and for some reason people keep ignoring it, you have to give up your Bonus Action in order to do so?

Like...this is literally already a thing 100% of characters can do in 5e, if they so choose, other than getting their ability modifier to the additional attack. Fighters can already make two attacks at 1st level, simply by spending their Bonus Action. A feat that lets you do that with non-Light weapons already exists, and provides other benefits (Dual Wielder.) A different feat which lets you do that with non-one-handed weapons and nothing else isn't doing anything meaningful that literally PHB 5e doesn't let you do, except in the specific case of a Fighter blowing Action Surge (since that would mean two bonus attacks, not just one as would be normal for two-weapon fighting.)

 

[ECMO3]

Yeah, it's unfortunately such a good Feat that I think a lot of people would consider it a "must have", which is a bad design for a Feat. I'm ignoring the fact that a few existing Feats toe this line already, of course.

I wonder what Action Surge as a Feat would be like, however. It's not omni-useful for everyone, though a lot of players would want it.

I am curious as to which feats you consider a "must have". Fey Touched is the only feat that I just about always seem to pick up. The only characters I don't get this on are races or classes that get misty step or a like ability already.

I think extra attack as a feat would not be op, especially if you made it actually extra attack and not one additional attack in addition to your extra attack. It would be very powerful for martials in tier 1, but less powerful later when they would already have extra attack anyway. For non martials its effectiveness is limited because they are generally not as good with weapons and this would not be much ahead of a cantrip (and behind it in tier 3).

I think action surge as a feat would be a LOT better than one extra attack (as you can use it to attack) and action surge is uber useful for any class. Frankley it is more useful for full casters (with a 2-level fighter dip) than it is for straight fighters.

 

[ECMO3]

Sure. Polearm Master or Great Weapon Master is clearly better than getting an extra attack.Why accept a 60% chance of getting one weapon attack's worth of damage, when you can get a toggle-able +10 to the damage of each attack (literally the equivalent of tripling your maximum ability modifier)? Particularly if, as I have REPEATEDLY said and for some reason people keep ignoring it, you have to give up your Bonus Action in order to do so?

I don't think Great Weapon Master is better than an extra attack at all. To be honest I think it is way overated and with how DMs handle most magic items is not really even better than an ASI. PAM could be better than an extra attack on some builds, but I don't think it is generally better.

In play the +10 damage is more like a +2 due to the penalty to the attack roll.

 

[James Gasik]

I am curious as to which feats you consider a "must have". Fey Touched is the only feat that I just about always seem to pick up. The only characters I don't get this on are races or classes that get misty step or a like ability already.

I think extra attack as a feat would not be op, especially if you made it actually extra attack and not one additional attack in addition to your extra attack. It would be very powerful for martials in tier 1, but less powerful later when they would already have extra attack anyway. For non martials its effectiveness is limited because they are generally not as good with weapons and this would not be much ahead of a cantrip (and behind it in tier 3).

I think action surge as a feat would be a LOT better than one extra attack (as you can use it to attack) and action surge is uber useful for any class. Frankley it is more useful for full casters (with a 2-level fighter dip) than it is for straight fighters.

Well, if you're asking me personally? Resilient is the only Feat I honestly think is "must have" for most characters. But based on my players?

The would likely say that Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Sharpshooter, and War Caster are "essential" Feats.

 

[ECMO3]

So Dual-Wielding is obviously the most powerful fighting style </sarcasm>

More seriously: the game already offers ways of getting additional attacks. Gate this with the same restrictions, and I cannot see how it is THAT powerful. Spending a whole feat to be able to make one additional attack without being restricted to dual-wielding light weapons, while still burning through one's Bonus Action, cannot be THAT bad.

If you are willing to give up your bonus action all the time and get the dual wielding feat, it is pretty competitive.

dual wielding morning stars with the fighting style and feat is going to give you two attacks a turn for 2d8+2xstrength in tier 1 and 3d8+3xstrength in tier 2. That is more damage on your turn then PAM and a Halberd in tier 1 and the same in tier 2.

The problem with two weapon fighting is you need to use your bonus action all the time to get the most out of it, which makes it a problem for Barbarians, Bonus-action intensive Fighters (Rune Knight) or Rangers who have a lot of bonus action spells or abilities.

If you are playing something like a Champion or a Battlemaster it can work pretty well though, if you have a good reaction but no bonus action I would say it actually works better than PAM. It also works well on a high level (11+) Eldritch Knight who has spells for his reaction. It does not work well at lower levels on an EK though because it conflicts with War Magic.

 

[ECMO3]

Well, if you're asking me personally? Resilient is the only Feat I honestly think is "must have" for most characters. But based on my players?

The would likely say that Polearm Master, Great Weapon Master, Sharpshooter, and War Caster are "essential" Feats.

Different tables play different I guess.

I can't say I have seen any fearts that are must haves as in the last 2 years I have only seen a few feats taken more than once. The top 5 are probably PAM, GWM, Lucky, Sharpshooter, Fey Touched, Martial Adept and Magic Initiate. I have seen those taken multiple times by multiple players. Other players might take resilient too, I probably would not know or remember that one.

Personally I have never taken PAM or resilient. I have taken GWM and SS but found GWM underwhelming and probably would not take it again. I took War Caster one time on a Cleric who used a shield.

 

[James Gasik]

Wow, never needed Resilient? That's impressive. After my first fight with an enemy that I needed to roll a 19 on a save against it's effect (dragon fear), I realized my Fighter really should have Wis saves proficient.

Con is an equally good save, made better due to concentration for spellcasters.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The problem with two weapon fighting is you need to use your bonus action all the time to get the most out of it, which makes it a problem for Barbarians, Bonus-action intensive Fighters (Rune Knight) or Rangers who have a lot of bonus action spells or abilities.

Yes... that's why I said you should make it cost the user's Bonus Action. Several classes and subclasses don't want to give that up. As a result, this "Extra Attack +1" feat would be directly comparable to Dual Wielder. You would be trading 1 point of AC and the other minor benefits of dual-wielding for getting 1 additional regular attack, presumably using a heavy weapon. That means, at absolute most, you'd be looking at (hit rate)×(1d8) extra damage per round vs (HR)×(2d6 w/GWF) extra damage per round, factoring out ability modifier since those should be the same (abbreviating hit rate as HR.) Roughly (HR)×(3.83) extra damage. Champions would get (hit rate+0.05n)×(3.83), where n is either 1 or 2 depending on level. So, for a typical attack that has around a 65% chance to hit, you'd be looking at almost exactly 2.5 extra damage per round, or 2.87 per round for Champions.

By comparison, getting GWM or SS would give you +10 damage per successful attack, but -20% hit rate. Having crunched the numbers, when you can only make 1 attack, "Extra Attack+1" is worth 6 extra damage per round. As N goes up, the benefit of "EA+1" goes down, to a minimum of 1 damage per round at 4 attacks.

So, yes, this would start out contextually better than GWM/SS at very early levels, but quickly becomes essentially identical: doing ~3 extra damage (on average) for an entire round is not a massive difference at level 11. Ironically, having low chance to hit is somewhat beneficial to GWM: the closer to maximum hit rate, the more damage "EA+1" gets over GWM, but this also causes the two to converge more slowly as N increases. High hit rate puts "EA+1" ahead early on, but quickly erases or even eliminates all benefit once you get to N=3 or 4.

Thus, my proposed restriction of requiring a moderately high level (my original proposal was 11, which is when the gap between "EA+1" and GWM essentially vanishes),and costing the user's Bonus Action to activate, seems to be perfectly in keeping with other powerful feats like GWM.

Note that I technically left out crit damage for both things, so the numbers above are very, very slightly off. But not by much. Edit: At 1 baseline attack, 65% hit rate, "EA+1" is worth +7.25 average damage per round, accounting for crits, which is pretty high at that point. This falls to ~5.42 average damage gained per round (not per attack, per round) at 2 baseline attacks, ~3.58 bonus DPR at 3 baseline attacks, and 1.75 bonus DPR at 4 baseline attacks.

Furthermore, note that GWM itself also grants a bonus action extra attack, albeit under conditions (critting or reducing an enemy to 0 HP.) So there's at least a portion of the time where GWM gives you everything "EA+1" does and also the optional extra damage.

So...yeah. This is not a crazy strong feat (after level 5-6, once martial characters all get at least 1 EA.) It's just not. If this paltry amount of bonus damage per round is horrendous, then numerous other parts of RAW 5e are brokenly powerful already. When enemies may have hundreds of HP, which isn't at all unlikely once you hit level 11, doing less than 3 extra damage per round more than GWM is laughable.

 

[Li Shenron]

This is just a stray thought I had that will have no follow through on it but how powerful would you consider a one-time feat that just gave you an additional extra attack? How often would you consider taking said feat for a character if it existed?

It's an interesting proposal...

I would rather restrict it so that the feat requires level 5 if you don't get Extra Attack from class, and level 11 if you do get Extra Attack from class. In other words, I'd rather allow the feat for someone without Extra Attack to get it (or for non-Fighters to get 3 attacks at level 11), so that nobody really breaks the usual limits. I am not sure if I'd let Fighters to get the feat at all or maybe let them be the exception.