Heroes of Shadow's Feat Preview

[Neverfate]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Shadows Feats)

I believe all the feats in the book are listed there.

20 Feat altogether. 7 Previewed. 3 of the 20 are Revenant (all reprints albeit possibly retooled).

Ki Focus Expertise & Holy Symbol Expertise. (One day we'll get support for the Flail . . .)

Also, the one feat Born of Shadows, was previewed on a PAX East HoS character and it changes your origin to Shadow if it isn't already and gives you +1 bonus to saving throws when in dim light or darkness. I originally read Spectral Step incorrectly. It appears the same as it did on the PAX character sheet. Insubstantial until end of CURRENT turn with an Action Point. Much less useful.

 

[Aegeri]

I don't believe that's all the feats in the book personally. Okay, I don't want to believe that's all the feats in the book. Surely the Vryloka would have got a few racial feats at least? Either way though some of those feats aren't too bad. Tainted wounds is pretty cool if your DM likes regenerating monsters, things that gain temp HP and annoying creatures like trolls.

It is good to see at least holy symbol and ki focus expertise. Gives me hope that totems and other missing expertise feats will be addressed in future.

Edit: Spectral step being insubstantial on your own turn is okay if you need to flee provoking a ton of OAs at least. Well okay, it's pretty marginal but at least it is there.

 

[Neverfate]

I don't believe that's all the feats in the book personally. Okay, I don't want to believe that's all the feats in the book. Surely the Vryloka would have got a few racial feats at least? Either way though some of those feats aren't too bad. Tainted wounds is pretty cool if your DM likes regenerating monsters, things that gain HP and annoying creatures like trolls.

It is good to see at least holy symbol and ki focus expertise. Gives me hope that totems and other missing expertise feats will be addressed in future.

Edit: Spectral step being insubstantial on your own turn is okay if you need to flee provoking a ton of OAs at least.

The HoS Table of contents (PDF download from the first preview) show feats for only pages 156, 157 and 158. With 156 being the categories page (likely the list we view here). I find it hard to believe there could be more than 20 feats on the 2 pages, but that's my assumption.

 

[Mengu]

I think insubstantial until end of next turn would be too powerful, possibly more powerful than feats like Toughness and Disciple of Stone. Monsters do most of their damage during the alpha strike, and if you get your action point out before that, this could trivialize the monster alpha.

But insubstantial until end of current turn is too weak. I think they missed the mark on this one. Perhaps they could add free 3 squares of movement with an action point, but then it starts to read like a PP action point feature.

Overall, I think there is one serious design issue with the previewed conditional feats. If you pick one of those feats, your feat is at the mercy of the DM. If the DM never uses an insubstantial creature, you are basically playing with one less feat than everyone else who was smarter and picked DM independent feats.

In one of our games, the paladin picked Pelor's Radiance as a feat. The last 6 levels we have not fought a single undead. He finally decided to retrain it to something more useful like Superior Will, we get dazed and stunned all the time. Per Murphy's law, we'll probably fight some undead this level, and he won't get dazed or stunned for a while.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I remember reading that the book had 20 feats in it a while back. The preview showed 20 feats.

I really hope I was remembering wrong. Most of them are decent-sounding, though highly situational. I see a theme developing with the mechanics in this book... and it isn't good.

I guess I'll find out in a couple weeks.

 

[Aegeri]

I think insubstantial until end of next turn would be too powerful, possibly more powerful than feats like Toughness and Disciple of Stone. Monsters do most of their damage during the alpha strike, and if you get your action point out before that, this could trivialize the monster alpha.

Actually monsters can do a lot of really consistent damage now in 4E. They aren't all about piling it on in one shot - they can consistently wear down a party as well. 1 turn of resilience that requires you using an AP - possibly not even at the best time to use that AP - isn't that strong. On your own turn has too limited a benefit unless you're going to suffer a LOT of OAs.

Overall, I think there is one serious design issue with the previewed conditional feats. If you pick one of those feats, your feat is at the mercy of the DM. If the DM never uses an insubstantial creature, you are basically playing with one less feat than everyone else who was smarter and picked DM independent feats.

Well that in fairness applies to a lot of feats in the game, like a resistance negating feat or an undead related feat. Ideally your DM should be sort of letting you know about things a bit - so if insubstantial creatures aren't very common (not that they are very common anyway) perhaps take something else?

Like in my Eberron game I've had 1 encounter with undead out of around 20ish encounters (and they were only a small part of that encounter anyway). For the majority of that campaign there will basically be no undead anywhere. The thing is my PCs happen to know this ahead of time and so can make logical decisions.

In my Dark Sun game though it will poop undead from the heavens. They will be more than common opponents: So a bit of necrotic negation and poison immunity feats will be more than useful for PCs who want those damage types.

 

[Obryn]

Surely the Vryloka would have got a few racial feats at least?

Naah. None of the PC races got any racial feats in the Heroes Of... books. I expect all the feats in this one to be fairly general in nature, just like those, and for expanded vampkoala support online.

-O

 

[Mengu]

Actually monsters can do a lot of really consistent damage now in 4E. They aren't all about piling it on in one shot - they can consistently wear down a party as well. 1 turn of resilience that requires you using an AP - possibly not even at the best time to use that AP - isn't that strong. On your own turn has too limited a benefit unless you're going to suffer a LOT of OAs.

Well, in round one, you have 5-6 PC's worth of monsters that can pile on the damage, they have encounter powers/recharge powers, as well as action points. That's the alpha strike I'm talking about. For a defender, it could certainly be strong. Too strong or not is debatable, I'd have to see it in action with a player who knows what they're doing. In it's current state, the benefit is rather minor.

Well that in fairness applies to a lot of feats in the game, like a resistance negating feat or an undead related feat.

Yeah, I eluded to that with the Pelor's Radiance example. I don't think they are in general very good design, unless there is some foreknowledge of things to come. Most of my DM's like to keep things secret, or even mislead our expectations to make things a surprise. And for playing LFR or the like, I have no idea what's coming down the pipe, unless as a group you want to cherry pick adventures with undead in them, their frequency of making an appearance will be fairly random. However being dazed and/or blinded seems to be just about guaranteed in half the adventures.

For instance, if the feat that lets you reroll a damage die against undead, was written such that it let you reroll a damage die against creatures vulnerable to radiant damage, then suddenly control comes back to the player, since inflicting radiant vulnerability is an option, and there are several ways to go about it.

Of course if a DM told me, they are running an undead slaying campaign, then sure, I might make my choices accordingly, and it's not a bad thing to have these tools. But I guess I wanted something a little more widely usable out of HoS, and so far the book is of very narrow use. Maybe that was the intent, I don't know.

 

[Incenjucar]

Meh to conditional abilities and things that will become obsolete through feat taxes, but hurrah for the excruciatingly slow introduction of the improved tax feats.

Soulstealer of Moil is pretty nice for summon-heavy builds, at least, and I wonder what the Winter feats will do for frostcheese... I'm guessing and frankly hoping nothing, but we'll see.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Some of the feats look pretty good. I was hoping for more anti-undead feats and it looks like they are there. Also, a couple of more playstyle feats (summoners) instead of build or class (or race) feats is good.

On of th main problems with the feat bloat is all the marginal feats that are further marginalized by being for a certain race, or class, or build or .... ad nauseum.

Feats built of racial abilities are fine as long as there are only a few. Essentials did a good job of making fewer feats available to more classes, races and such.