Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Get Better At Skills With These Feats

The latest Unearthed Arcana from Jeremy Crawford and again featuring guest writer Robert J. Schwalb introduces a number of feats which make you better at skills. Each increases the skill's primary ability score, doubles your proficiency bonus, and gives you a little bonus ability. "This week we introduce new feats to playtest. Each of these feats makes you better at one of the game’s eighteen skills. We invite you to read them, give them a try in play, and let us know what you think in the survey we release in the next installment of Unearthed Arcana."

Screen Shot 2017-04-17 at 20.36.33.png
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Sorry for having jumped in, you were debating with someone else. I just saw your response to them and wanted to point out the meaning so you could debate on equal terms. :)

As far as the "I win" button, I can agree with there being huge issues with that. That said, there is a good reason this is play-test material. I would not let my players use this, or really anything in any of the books, without letting them know that I might want to adjust balance later. That is a trust thing though, not something that could apply in AL with random people.

No worries.

I think I said this before, but this is the first UA that I would not want to consider using as written.

A couple (Diplomat, Menacing) seem broken. I see certain types of gamers stating that every high charisma character should take those feats and then proceed to stomp all over every AL encounter. Then complain because the mods aren't tough enough. So the writers ratchet up the difficulty where in order to survive, you have to optimize your character.

For certain build such as grapplers, the Brawny feat feels like a feat tax. Some give you magical abilities like Stealthy which apparently turns you invisible for a short period of time under certain circumstances. With Perceptive, an 8th level human rogue or bard can have a passive perception of 30 and ignores light concealment.

Others? Others are just artificially jacking up the skills with little other benefit like Investigator. Search as a bonus action? Really? Have you ever had a character search during combat?

Tweak the rules so they don't stack with expertise, to change some of the benefits and maybe. But it's a pretty major rework where other articles where either fun (if a little rough) or just "meh".

[EDIT]I keep forgetting the no stacking proficiency - oops.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

log in or register to remove this ad


No worries.

I think I said this before, but this is the first UA that I would not want to consider using as written.

A couple (Diplomat, Menacing) seem broken. I see certain types of gamers stating that every high charisma character should take those feats and then proceed to stomp all over every AL encounter. Then complain because the mods aren't tough enough. So the writers ratchet up the difficulty where in order to survive, you have to optimize your character.

For certain build such as grapplers, the Brawny feat feels like a feat tax. Some give you magical abilities like Stealthy which apparently turns you invisible for a short period of time under certain circumstances. With Perceptive, an 8th level human rogue or bard can have a passive perception of 30 and ignores light concealment.

Others? Others are just artificially jacking up the skills with little other benefit like Investigator. Search as a bonus action? Really? Have you ever had a character search during combat?

Tweak the rules so they don't stack with expertise, change some of the benefits and maybe. But it's a pretty major rework where other articles where either fun (if a little rough) or just "meh".

I can see how they might be considered broken, but I also have a firm belief in the DMs right to just say No. It might seem like arbitrarily shutting players down, but sometimes something really is impossible. I would tell a Player no to climbing a wall made of unbreakable glass, unless they got creative about it. I would say no to shooting the moon. I would say no to intimidating some guy they have never met before, and know nothing about, unless they got more creative.

A feat tax is a different issue, but I honestly think that it would be better than how it is now. Currently, the only way to reach a higher level of "Grappler" is to multiclass into Rogue or Bard, which is an even bigger tax than a single feat.

Also, They already don't stack with expertise. Don't have a page number, but the PHB says that anytime you double your proficiency bonus for a skill, you can only double it once.

EDIT: Found the page, 174 of the PHB. You only add you proficiency bonus once, and only multiply or divide it once.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

I would say that they do not believe the Balor can be intimidated by mere mortals. Especially mortals that he has absolutely no reason to fear.

Now ... add in some creative use of illusion, some RP, maybe a thaumaturgy spell along with some deception checks? Maybe they can convince the Balor that Darth Bader (or whoever is in charge of the place) is pissed at his subordinate that is daring to his lord why he's personally escorting prisoners. It's called having a fun creative solution to the problem.

So even if the Bard tries anyways, with just his words and actions alone with no magical effects, no matter what he said or what he rolled, he would fail?

That isn't quite what you are saying, but it is pretty close. Intimidation only works if the situation seems reasonable and they've set up an elaborate ruse, like lying to him... which is deception.

In fact, passing yourself off as something else is the sole domain of deception so that wouldn't be an intimidation check at all. I agree with wanting players to try more, but "I'm scary cause I'm your boss" or "I'm scary because I'm a Divine Being" is vastly different than "I'M SCARY" which is the point of Intimidation.



King of the barbarians? Pah. Human champion of the Lord of Darkness? My bitch. Lord Palpatine? His heart is palpitating.

No one should be that intimidating.


But the King of Barbarians is that scary, isn't he? He can walk into a room and silence it with his pure imposing presence.

Is it just his rep? I doubt it, that kind of character is scary even if you have no idea who he is. So, there's got to be something going on with his stats right? Because you don't cheat so if he's scary he had to get that high intimidatin score somehow.


I'm poking at this because I completely agree with the conclusion that I want those beings to be scary as all get out, and my players shouldn't just be able to walk up and intimidate them. So, once something gets to be of a certain status or power, I tend to just stop letting non-magical fear work, if the situation doesn't fit. But, I do it by giving them a minor immunity to fear, a character trait almost. And you declared that cheating, but your alternative solutions seem to just be cutting intimidation out of the game unless the players are stronger than the individual they are intimidating. Which I feel goes too far the other way.

Which is all well and good. However the feat clearly says the character makes an intimidation check opposed by an insight. If the character wins, the target is frightened. You're ignoring the text of the feat.

That's fine. In fact, I agree. That's my whole point.

Since I've been grabbing your stuff, wanted to throw this on here.

This, for me, isn't to prove your wrong about the feats. Personally, I think Intimidating one thing instead of attacking is relatively weak, though it being limitless is a problem.

For me, a lot of these discussions are kind of missing the elephant in the room of "The players can already do this". If the Frighten condition isn't imposed by Intimidation, what do you do? If the bard has Expertise in Intimidation, rolls incredibly high, and gives a short, brutal message that chills you a little, but he's doing it to the Lich King of a Tyranical State, what do you do?

I want my villains to be fearless, people who are afraid in literature are generally the weak ones. But, I don't want to tell the player they failed, when mechanically and acting wise (if you enforce that which can be problematic when you have players who can barely string a sentence together when you put them on the spot) they should totally succeed and be a bad@#% themselves. He put fear into the Demon of Black Fire, that's what a roll of 35 should do, the impossible.

I see auto-giving the frightened condition as problematic, but even if they change that, it doesn't change expertise in Intimidation and what it might mean for a situation.



A couple (Diplomat, Menacing) seem broken. I see certain types of gamers stating that every high charisma character should take those feats and then proceed to stomp all over every AL encounter. Then complain because the mods aren't tough enough. So the writers ratchet up the difficulty where in order to survive, you have to optimize your character.

Charm isn't that bad. Charm, per the rules, just gives them advantage on Charisma Checks and prevents the person from attacking them. Since it fails if they are in combat already and takes a minute to activate, it really just says "You spend a minute talking with someone and make a Persuasion check, if you succeed they won't attack you and you have advantage on all social checks with the target as long as they stay near you"

If that can possibly break an encounter, I'll say it was a poorly designed encounter, because this is not a compulsion. They like you, but they aren't going to put themselves in trouble for someone they just "like" without some fast talking and maybe some bribing.

With Perceptive, an 8th level human rogue or bard can have a passive perception of 30 and ignores light concealment.

Already essentially possible with per PHB. In fact, a level 8 Rogue or bard with Darkvision can have a passive perception of 26 (actually how did you get 30? Did you forget Expertise doesn't stack again?) and can see perfectly under all darkness conditions except magical darkness. Just need Skulker and Observant.

Again, not a lot of things being added that weren't already possible.

Though invisi-Rogue with Stealthy seems new, depending on the situation, the architecture, and how clever the player is. I could totally see someone with acrobatics just spidering across a high beamed ceiling in a dark hallway with deep shadows to get past that same 10 ft gap. So, it's only something that couldn't reasonably be done is highly specific circumstances. And despite that, movie and shows do show exactly that sort of thing occurring upon occasion, which is where I think it got drawn from
 

This. You BBEG should be immune, or at least really hard to frighten. And if the PCs are outgunned and/or outnumbered, they should be intimidating with disadvantage.

All my BBEGs have an "Elite" or "Leader" template applied to them, if they aren't Legendary. Some have it even though they are also Legendary.

Either case, they have expertise in 2 saves, and proficiency in all saves, and resistance to at least one damage type, two bonus actions, and 1 attack ability that is a bonus action, and one healing/support/command action that is a bonus action.
And they can use 1 bonus action even if stunned.

It makes them stand out, makes it much harder to stun-lock them, and makes boss fights more challenging, and interesting.
This is exactly the type of stuff WotC desperately needs to provide to us.

High level play simply breaks down otherwise.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app
 

These feats widen the gulf between PCs and NPCs, as you point out. With these feats, PCs are able to do more and achieve much higher numbers than monsters. Even an Ancient Red Dragon's Intimidation is only +6, for crying out loud.

This is power creep, plain and simple. These feats lead to ridiculous scenarios like this, where a low-level character can be 4 times as fearsome as a Pit Fiend. Sure, we can start giving monsters class levels just so they can keep up with PCs, a la 3rd Edition, but we all know how fun THAT was.
Or issue an Advanced Monster Manual that contains properly challenging versions of monsters for well-played characters using optional feats, multiclassing and magic items.

Like, you know, Dungeons & Dragons characters have used for at least seventeen years.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app
 

For me, the worst part of Menacing for me is that it seems to wildly outshine the battlemaster's Menacing Strike maneuver, which provides the same effect, plus a bit of damage - and is severely limited in uses per rest in comparison.

This kind of comparison may be technically correct but substantially misleading, because this would be a problem only if in your group of PCs there is one with Menacing Strike and another with the Menacing feat.

Considering the amount of options available, the odds are low enough so that this case should eventually be 'fixed' by the DM, instead of asking WotC to modify their design. Otherwise by this principle it's hard to design anything.
 


This kind of comparison may be technically correct but substantially misleading, because this would be a problem only if in your group of PCs there is one with Menacing Strike and another with the Menacing feat.

Considering the amount of options available, the odds are low enough so that this case should eventually be 'fixed' by the DM, instead of asking WotC to modify their design. Otherwise by this principle it's hard to design anything.
You are certainly right in that there is tecnhically nothing wrong with, say, a Ranger getting a +1 bonus vs Giants, while the Giantslayer gets a +2 bonus vs Giants. The +1 bonus isn't inherently worthless simply because it is upstaged by a +2 bonus.

On the other hand: what the game certainly does not need are several implementations of similar-themed and similar-sounding things.

It would certainly be preferable if all designers are on the same boat, and all "menacing" designs are sychronized to use the same mechanism wherever possible.

By that last part I mean: the game should certainly not feel constrained to only do a thing in One True Way™, ever. But then there should be a good reason for the branching out.

I feel the complaint in this case could be rephrased: "Menacing works differently from Menacing Strike for no good reason."

Whether the complaint still holds up even after this rephrasing, I can't say.
 


Trending content

Remove ads

Trending content

Remove ads

Top