D&D 5E Ryrok's Feat Tweaks

[CapnZapp]

Assassins have bigbase damage, and +10 bonus does not double up on crit. So more or less they have a half feat waste. Reduced accuracy does not get replaced with +10 damage in rogues case.

I realized that was your point. And thank you for making it.

I was curious what you meant. When you talked about Sharpshooter, I assumed you were talking about a feat that gave -5/+10 and +1 Dex.

Now I realize you are indeed talking about the other side of the coin. I just needed to mental replace "GWM" as "Cleave" in my mind

Replacing -5/+10 with +1 Str or Dex (as has been suggested for GWM) sure does benefit Assassins. (And everyone else who wanted Cleave but didn't wield a greatweapon; and indeed there is no longer any reason for such a feat to be called GWM)

Not only was the previous benefit (of RAW GWM) actively harmful to them, the new feat (the GWM best renamed into "Cleave") can't be utilized much better by fighters than rogues, which all by itself considerably helps rogues to catch up in feat utilization visavi fighters (since fighters could gain the +10 part of the old GWM up to five times per round while rogues would have to struggle to gain it more than once).

Now the difference is just (half of) +1 to attacks and damage for up to four attacks. In the greater scheme of things, that's a negligible advantage.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Unless I'm missing something, with your proposed feats there's no way to remove the loading property from crossbows. This change will make it so that no character that gets 2 attacks will ever take a crossbow as their weapon of choice. That may be your intention but I'm not a fan of the change as I like crossbows. If it were me, I'd remove the ignore disadvantage in melee benefit and replace it with the removal of loading benefit. That way you will actually see players use your weapon butt attack benefit from time to time (instead of just taking a shot).

The elemental adept change is interesting but I still don't think it goes far enough. I've been playing with the idea for a while now of adding something along the lines of "choose 2 spells you can cast that deal damage of a type other than the one you have chosen. The chosen spells now deal your chosen damage type."

 

[bganon]

CS: I like the idea, but I don't see why the second property exists in light of the first. Why would anyone use it?

EA: Seems OK for what it is, but I agree with others in that it's not the way I'd do things. I'd rather have a slew of custom feats to differentiate each element.

GWM: Second the idea that the push should be free. Requiring a bonus action just punishes the Berserker Barb who doesn't deserve it. Making it free is most abusable by a Champion Fighter, and I'm pretty OK with that. Otherwise I really like the pseudo-Cleave.

MC: You've made the mount unkillable as long as the rider is alive... or basically a pile of temp hp that the rider can grab almost anytime. Making them useful is great, but I don't like the invincible bit.

PM: Feels weird to me to quickly flip a lance and use the butt end, but it's basically a longspear so I'll deal.

Sentinel/Taunted: seems like a heavy fix for what are basically edge cases, but I don't see anything wrong with it.

Sharpshooter: I like.

 

[Horwath]

Unless I'm missing something, with your proposed feats there's no way to remove the loading property from crossbows. This change will make it so that no character that gets 2 attacks will ever take a crossbow as their weapon of choice. That may be your intention but I'm not a fan of the change as I like crossbows. If it were me, I'd remove the ignore disadvantage in melee benefit and replace it with the removal of loading benefit. That way you will actually see players use your weapon butt attack benefit from time to time (instead of just taking a shot).

The elemental adept change is interesting but I still don't think it goes far enough. I've been playing with the idea for a while now of adding something along the lines of "choose 2 spells you can cast that deal damage of a type other than the one you have chosen. The chosen spells now deal your chosen damage type."

In my thread about weapon damage and properties I even made crossbow loading an action. So I support only one attack per round(even that is too much).

There is no way in nine hells that you can load a crossbow for "free" even an action is generous.

And longbow is more or less quarterstaff bent by a string. You can smack someone one the head real bad with a decent poundage bow.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

In my thread about weapon damage and properties I even made crossbow loading an action. So I support only one attack per round(even that is too much).

There is no way in nine hells that you can load a crossbow for "free" even an action is generous.

And longbow is more or less quarterstaff bent by a string. You can smack someone one the head real bad with a decent poundage bow.

I know that reloading a heavy crowssbow and firing it in the span of 6 seconds isn't possible but it's a fantasy game that isn't at all trying to be realistic. I personally don't mind the Hollywood physics of the game.
From a mechanical point of view, taking a feat to be able to step up ranged damage by one seems totally fair.

 

[RCanine]

Thanks guys, really great advice all around, and I'll try to address it by feat.


Combat Shooter

However, you would never use the actual crossbow as a weapon.

I disagree; the idea here is that you're hitting the opponent with the grip or stock of the crossbow, or wapping someone with a loaded sling. It's not uncommon for characters in movies and TV to use a pistol or rifle in this manner, and since D&D hand-waves weapon wear-and-tear anyway, I don't see a problem with it. It's definitely suboptimal (because of the smaller damage dice), but that's intentional.

Unless I'm missing something, with your proposed feats there's no way to remove the loading property from crossbows. This change will make it so that no character that gets 2 attacks will ever take a crossbow as their weapon of choice. … That way you will actually see players use your weapon butt attack benefit from time to time (instead of just taking a shot).

That's exactly the intent; it keeps crossbows mechanically distinct from bows; if you want a high rate of fire, use a bow -- that's their shtick. The idea here is that an Xbow can still be used in melee with a multiattacker firing one shot and then striking with the butt/stock/etc. Removing the loading properties makes Xbows an strongly optimal choice over bows because they also do more damage. I don't like optimal choices in my games.

CS: I like the idea, but I don't see why the second property exists in light of the first. Why would anyone use it?

It allows you to use the weapon without reloading.

 

[RCanine]

Elemental Adept

I'm afraid any design that refuses to see that the elements aren't equal cannot succeed.

This is great insight that I hadn't considered. I'm going to take this back to the drawing board.

Great Weapon Master

Second, I would grant a free push. Not merely a free push attempt. You did roll a critical after all.

Initially I had this, but considered it a narrative problem when fancing large, strong creatures that might have abilities that negates shoves; most PCs taking this feat, however, will have high strength scores to make success likely.

GWM: Second the idea that the push should be free. Requiring a bonus action just punishes the Berserker Barb who doesn't deserve it. Making it free is most abusable by a Champion Fighter, and I'm pretty OK with that.

Fair point; I'll remove the bonus action requirement here. The idea of a champion blasting away several enemies on the same turn is exactly what I'm going for.


Mounted Combat

MC: You've made the mount unkillable as long as the rider is alive... or basically a pile of temp hp that the rider can grab almost anytime. Making them useful is great, but I don't like the invincible bit.

I think this critique is really fair, and I'd like to see how it playtests. The idea here is that a mounted rider could take double damage from a fireball (ouch). But I think the invincible mount is OK if the mount isn't powerful on its own and you've given up an ASI for this feat.


It breaks if you're riding a dragon though, so I'll see if I can tweak the language to fix that.


Polearm Mastery

Even with your design note, I'm unsure what you're fixing here.

Two things:


* It makes spears, tridents and lances polearms; I believe it was silly to omit them.
* It removes one-handed polearms as a thing. I'll table how OP the quaterstaff is in this edition and just stick on the idea that it requires two hands to get the leverage and reach required to benefit from this feat.

PM: Feels weird to me to quickly flip a lance and use the butt end, but it's basically a longspear so I'll deal.

Same with a pike or halberd really. I'll think about a better solution; the bonus action attack already eats up some design space making this unattractive to monks, which is a bummer since they're all about spears and staffs.


The other direction I could go is the allow a reaction to increase your AC against melee attacks (like defensive duelist), the idea being that the haft of the weapon is good for parrying.

 

[bganon]

I think this critique is really fair, and I'd like to see how it playtests. The idea here is that a mounted rider could take double damage from a fireball (ouch). But I think the invincible mount is OK if the mount isn't powerful on its own and you've given up an ASI for this feat.

It breaks if you're riding a dragon though, so I'll see if I can tweak the language to fix that.

I was more thinking about the opposite, where with your feat a mid/high-level halfling barbarian can ride a completely unarmored dog right into multiple breath weapon blasts from a dragon without the dog taking so much as a scratch. The mental image there is just a bit jarring to me. Maybe at least add the standard language about how the "retargeted" damage can't be reduced in any way?

 

[RCanine]

I was more thinking about the opposite, where with your feat a mid/high-level halfling barbarian can ride a completely unarmored dog right into multiple breath weapon blasts from a dragon without the dog taking so much as a scratch. The mental image there is just a bit jarring to me. Maybe at least add the standard language about how the "retargeted" damage can't be reduced in any way?

HP are an abstraction; that's no less silly to me than the barbarian himself surviving — humans are fragile creatures.