D&D 5E Unearthed Arcana: 16 New Feats

"Today’s Unearthed Arcana presents a selection of new feats for Dungeons & Dragons. Each feat offers a way to become better at something or to gain a whole new ability."

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

The feats include Artificer Initiate, Chef, Crusher, Eldritch Adept, Fey Touched, Fighting Initiate, Gunner, Metamagic Adept, Poisoner, Piercer, Practiced Expert, Shadow Touched, Shield Training, Slasher, Tandem Tactician, and Tracker.

 

[Ramamoon_77]

If a non-human or non-half human Wizard or Fighter finally getting to be as good at Arcana or Athletics, respectively, as a Rogue or Bard is "power creep," then I welcome the power creep.

Instead of making feats to create munchkin characters like they are doing, they should have fixed small details in the classes, like giving expertise in arcana to the wizard class as a class feature at.. 10th level? 11th?, rather than fixed it with a feat that makes skill checks redundants for everybody.

 

[Horwath]

I understand what you mean, but if you want to replicate part of a class, I would rather not have that class at all. We should go back to the Warrior, Priest, Scoundrel, and Magic User, and then modifying them via feats to make them more warlock/sorcerer/wizard-ly like, rather than make some of the classes completely useless, and others more potent by exclusion. For example, there is a feat to partially mimic a warlock, but where is the feat to partially mimic the wizard? Now the wizard can be a warlock or a sorcerer, but not viceversa. Even worse for the sorcerer: two metas and 2 SP for a feat, it makes the sorcerer much less unique. I really hope they take away several of these feats that do not explain anything (how is it possible that the eldricht knight now can bend the rules of a magic he barely knows about?), or tone them down, because mixing and matching everything with everybody takes away the sense of uniqueness of the classes, and thus their purpose of existence.

well, my favorite would be warrior/expert/mage tri-class system, with bunch of sub-classes.

the UA with 3 classes of hirelings was great. those 3 classes could be expanded a little to be perfectly playable PC classes.

 

[Ramamoon_77]

..

 

[Ramamoon_77]

I also like how some of these feats can pretty much be given to their parent class if you want to. Like somebody mentioned before, Metamagic Adept would support/add on to a sorcerer. Fighter Initiate can change the Champion into a Battle Master lite or even help support a Battle Master even more.

The problem with the feats like Metamagic Initiate and Tracker is not only making classes that have several problems (like Sorcerers and Rangers) less unique, but also they do not create a true explanation of what is going on. How is it possible that an eldritch knight can bend the rules of magic, if they barely know magic? Wizards are scientists of magic, and like all scientists, use their knowledge to their advantage, and they know what they can do and they can't. Scientists know that water do not mix with oil, gravity is attractive, hotness moves from hotter bodies to colder. Wizards know that you need words, hands' movements, and guano to cast a fireball, it takes an action to create an Hypnotic pattern, and Disintegrate affects one creature. They use it to their advantage, but cannot change it. But now with just one feat, everything is solved, but nothing truly is. Giving access to everything to everybody makes choices less compelling: let's go back to play with Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue: whatever we want, we will pick it up. Let's wait for Rage adept, Wildshape initiate, and Paladin training, and then you will be everything you want to be. If you want to go this road, at least be coherent and make an Initiate for every existing class (Cleric, Wizards and Rogue are missing, for example), even if, IMHO, is not the way to go.
I agree that it would fix a lot of problems with the Sorcerer, but you cannot do it with a feat (that will become a feat tax) for some mistake in the design of the class: you take ownership of your mistake, and fix it IN THE CLASS, not outside it without giving a true explanation, mudding the waters between classes and making some of them much more powerful than the others: now the wizard can mimic the sorcerer and the warlock, but the viceversa does not hold. As somebody else said it, WotC is becoming more mechanic-oriented and less role-playing oriented, and this is even a bigger problem.
Luca

 

[dave2008]

I understand what you mean, but if you want to replicate part of a class, I would rather not have that class at all. We should go back to the Warrior, Priest, Scoundrel, and Magic User, and then modifying them via feats to make them more warlock/sorcerer/wizard-ly like, rather than make some of the classes completely useless, and others more potent by exclusion. For example, there is a feat to partially mimic a warlock, but where is the feat to partially mimic the wizard? Now the wizard can be a warlock or a sorcerer, but not viceversa. Even worse for the sorcerer: two metas and 2 SP for a feat, it makes the sorcerer much less unique. I really hope they take away several of these feats that do not explain anything (how is it possible that the eldricht knight now can bend the rules of a magic he barely knows about?), or tone them down, because mixing and matching everything with everybody takes away the sense of uniqueness of the classes, and thus their purpose of existence.

I would be fine with two classes: Martial and Magic. However, we are never going to get that. Also, after seeing PF2 I think making everything feats is not the right idea anymore. Now I prefer the middle road with some classes & subclasses and then feats and/or variant class features to customize a class. Personally I don't see much of a difference conceptually of having a few classes and customizing with a bunch of subclasses and have many classes and customizing with feats. The advantage with the feats is that it gives the player more flexibility.

 

[Li Shenron]

The problem with feats like Metamagic Initiate and Tracker is not only making classes that have several problems (like Sorcerers and Rangers) less unique, but also they do not create a true explanation of what is going on. How is it possible that an eldritch knight can bend the rules of magic, if they barely know magic? Wizards are scientists of magic, and like all scientists, use their knowledge to their advantage, and they know what they can do and they can't. Scientists know that water does not mix with oil, gravity is attractive, hotness moves from hotter bodies to colder. Wizards know that you need words, hands' movements, and guano to cast a fireball, it takes an action to create an Hypnotic pattern, and Disintegrate affects one creature. They use it to their advantage, but cannot change it. But now with just one feat, everything is solved, but nothing truly is. Giving access to everything to everybody makes choices less compelling: let's go back to play with Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, and Rogue: whatever we want, we will pick it up. Let's wait for Rage adept, Wildshape initiate, and Paladin training, and then you will be everything you want to be. If WotC want to go down this road, I hope they would be coherent and make an Initiate for every existing class (Cleric, Wizards and Rogue are missing, for example), even if, IMHO, is not the way to go.
Even worse, some of these become feat taxes for that very same class: a sorcerer would kill his/her mother to have one more metamagic, let alone two, and two more SP. And feat taxes, again, kill the diversity of the game, IMHO.
Have a great day you all!
Luca
Show less


REPLY

Agree wholeheartedly.

Personally I don't like multiclassing. I don't even necessarily ban it, typically I play with casual gamers who often don't even have the PHB and they don't know about multiclassing, so I I just have to avoid mentioning it until someone brings it up.

Anyway the reason why I don't like it is because I like classes to be strong archetypes themselves. During 5e playtest I liked early versions of spellcasters where each class had a slightly different mechanic. Of course eventually they were made more equal specifically to make multiclassing easy... but for me separation is GOOD.

On the other hand I love feats as a way to differentiate individuals within the same class. I like generic feats that everyone can take, as well as class-restricted feats (which don't exist in 5e).

I have a problem with "multiclassing feats" because they re-introduce the blending of classes I don't like in the first place.

 

[CapnZapp]

I would be fine with two classes: Martial and Magic.

The soul of D&D lies in the specifics. The quirks of individual classes. The way you can't build exactly like you want.

There are versions of the D&D that go classless, or with just three generic classes. None are successful.

Why? Read my first paragraph again

 

[Minigiant]

However, the mechanically optimal way of doing things is to take a different proficiency at character creation, and then take Chef at level 4 (or whatever), then all of a sudden bang, I'm a wonderful cook, but I've also got an additional proficiency.

If you gain a skill or tool proficiency from two different sources, you can choose a different proficiency of the same kind (skill or tool). PHB 125

A lot of people are missing proficiencies.

 

[jmartkdr2]

I think everyone should always get 1d6 (or whatever) sneak attack damage if they actually catch someone with a sneaky attack, such as a backstab. Being able to do it consistently and much better should be the Rogue hallmark. It always seems a little odd when the party decides to kill some enemies in their sleep and most of those who aren't Rogues can't do enough single hit damage (even with the autocrit) to just kill them.

Maybe make it only work if you have advantage, so that only real rogues can use the "or within 5 ft of an ally" clause?

I'm trying to imagine it on my old dex-pally, and +1d6 per turn just because were' teaming up would be fantastic for a feat. If I needed actual advantage it would be much more reasonable.

 

[dalisprime]

The only "Dread" I'm familiar with was the"Dread" enhancement. It was basically "Bane times two" when it hit something it was designed to be used against.

But that was in the Epic Level Handbook. So I could be off on that.

Sorry my bad, i was thinking about Heroes of Horror. That's where dread as a mechanic showed up although I'm also confusing that for the class ability of the Dread Witch PrC which allowed fear effects to ignore fear immunity.