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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 7285271" data-attributes="member: 71699">What you say is true. Most are good for more than I listed. A great example being a wide range of casters with Warcaster, as you say, or another being GWM and Precision Battlemaster. I wanted more to reiterate the idea of feats serving purposes for collections of archetypes.I feel you nail the reason for taking Blade Mastery in a mechanical sense: the character is already maxed out on their ability score. The designer narrative accompanying Blade Mastery read more like stream of consciousness than hard analysis. Did you get the same feeling? The designer narrative didn't even touch on the feat being for higher-tiers.My goals are all about making more of the design space relevantly available, and helping characters shine in their part of it without distorting the narrative. For me, a designer must minimax, so that players don't have to. There should be no trap feats, and lots of options that are solid and differentiated.There are many reasons why a feat can be less take-able -<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It serves archetypes that aren't played very often (we see the inverse of that with Dual Wielder, a feat that gets taken disproportionately more often than its mechanical strength would suggest)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For archetypes that want the feat, there is another, more narratively relevant way to spend the ASI (i.e. something that will come up more often in their campaign)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For archetypes that want the feat, there is another, more mechanically effective way to spend the ASI (i.e. something that will do the job better in their campaign)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The gravity well of another feat drags archetypes into it (players choose to play characters well served by the game mechanics, and avoid those less well served)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The value of the feat is obfuscated: it's hard to tell what it does or how it will feel in play</li> </ul>From 27 groups spending 239 ASIs, we saw GWM taken 16 times, Sharpshooter taken 10 times, and Defensive Duelist taken twice. I'm duly cautious about the survey. In the context of a dozen other feats being taken zero times, I feel like we have a strong tip that Defensive Duelist is in design space that players want to explore. It's clear that it's not exciting as much as other feats.I'm always designing for the community, not just my table. My intent is to pull together work I have done on campaign pillars and pacing and publish it as a free download on DMG. These feat revisions once tested will be part of that.More than that however, I would say that a jobs to be done approach is more relevant when designing for the broader community. The DM designing for their local meta can ignore swathes of mechanics that aren't appearing. The designer attempting work for the community has to ask wider questions. Do you see what I mean?Coming back to using Defensive Duelist with a shield. [MENTION=6795602]FrogReaver[/MENTION] raised a reasonable point about the feat being potentially conflicted by trying to serve opposed purposes. Fighters want to use their Extra Attack, so a feat that takes their Attack action is competing with that. Rogues want to use their Bonus action, similarly. Riposte Battlemasters, Polearm Masters, Sentinels, and 5th level Rogues want to use their Reaction. For sword-and-board Fighters, a defensive feat's job probably works more around efficiency as they take fewer hits anyway. For a Rogue it could work around fairly constant use, but that is a bit of a puzzle because of Uncanny Dodge and also the desire for second-bites of the Sneak Attack apple with Opportunity Attacks.My version is designed to address both sides of that equation by using and then giving back a reaction (once). Perhaps a cleaner version is thisDefensive DuelistWhen you are wielding a one-handed or Versatile melee weapon with which you are proficient and a creature hits you with a melee attack, once per round you can add your proficiency bonus to your AC against that attack, potentially causing the attack to miss you.Once per turn, when you roll damage for a melee weapon attack, you can reroll the damage dice and use either total.</blockquote>

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