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."

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[Oofta]

[MENTION=1560]Corwin[/MENTION]'s actually pushing for disarmament there

He's saying that keeping a melee bruiser at bay is weak. I disagree with him. From my experience, it has been a win button, for my gnome battlemaster using menacing strike - although it's only worked out so very well once; but then the save DC is only 13! If It was jacked up high my gnome would be a fearsome beast, all would tremble in fear at his approach . . . so long as his superiority dice last.

But regardless, I'll say it again for those who missed it: The feat looks far better than taking Martial Adept for Menacing Strike and its one! use per rest (if you don't spend the SD on Parry for a bit of healing instead).

That's been our experience with menacing strike as well.

In addition this is an opposed skill check and is therefore unaffected by Legendary Resistance.

 

[Geeknamese]

I'm struggling to understand the DM mindset that would be so arbitrary and capricious as to design an unwinnable encounter (for story reasons!) but refuse to arbitrarily or capriciously assign creatures in said encounter immunity to perfectly mundane character abilities that would make the encounter winnable. The sort of person who would "let the dice fall where they may" would never design such an encounter in the first place, and if they would they'd do so with a full understanding that they might have to kiss their BBEG good-bye. Because that's kind of how "recurring" villains work in RPGs; you don't put them in PCs' path without the expectation that they will find some to kill them.

So sorry, but I don't really buy this as a legitimate concern.

The real problem here is the fact that people tend to throw away the concept of "rulings over rules" as soon as actual rules exist. @Tony_Vargas has called 5e at various times the "DM Empowerment Edition" which either is or is close to the truest thing anybody has ever about 5e. There are arguments to be had about whether that's a bug or a feature but whether it exists or not is not in question. I happen to think of it as a feature myself.

The thing about "rulings over rules" is that people only tend to bring it up when 5e doesn't tell you how to do something. But it's not "rulings over the lack of rules"; it's "rulings over rules". The DM is [empowered to be] responsible for supporting and maintaining the internal consistency of their world. There is literally nothing stopping a DM from assigning disadvantage to Smuggy McTerrorpants's Menacing role and Dark Evilplans advantage on the opposing role, regardless of the printed stats. Or say that no roll is necessary, because it's not going to work.



Emphasis added. The implication is quite clear; when the outcome is certain (that is, the puny low level bard is ever going to actually terrify the mighty, nigh-immortal warlord), the dice do not determine the results; the DM does.

Rulings over rules.

This might seem arbitrary in a white room where a feat seems to give a PC an ability, but in actual play it's the only ruling that makes sense given the internal consistency of a world, which is something I think everyone here would agree on, and absolutely nobody with any sense in their head would fault you for the ruling.

This whole argument reminds me of another nonsensical anecdote from 4e days. See, in 4e days the rules explicitly stated that the only way to end ongoing fire damage (say, from being lit on fire) was to make a successful save. What happens when a character taking ongoing fire damage (from being lit on fire) decides to jump in a lake? Do you follow the RAW, absolutely? I suppose the answer depends on another question: what sort of game are you playing?

Couldn't have said it better myself.


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[Oofta]

Let's take a completely silly example. Charming Charlie the 13th level rogue has the Diplomat feat. He's +15 to his persuasion check and because he has reliable talent, cannot get anything less than a 25 on his persuasion check. So basically he can charm just about anything he talks to for a minute.

A completely stupid scenario:

• There's a group of balors in a cave. Thirty of them.
• Charlie casts alter self (he's a trickster and swapped out a spell at 8th level) and walks into the cave.
• Charlie talks to and automatically charms each balor in turn.
• Once the creature is charmed, there is nothing that can break the charm other than moving more than 60 feet away from the charmer.
• After half an hour Charlie's group blocks the entrance. Wall of Stone should do the trick.
• The room is less than 60 square feet so Charlie can now walk around killing each demon. They can't attack him because they're charmed.

A DM can always just say "that doesn't work". The DM could say that once the rogue attacks the charm is broken. They can change the rule.

But without changing the rule, without saying "it doesn't work because I said so" there's nothing stopping it.

Yes, this is a silly example. I know several people that would argue until they are blue in the face that it would work. According to the text of the feat, it should.

A less silly example of course is Charlie talking to virtually any individual on the planet that can understand them, charming them and then killing them. If the target can't get away or summon help, they're SOL.

And 3...2...1... the response is going to be "DM empowerment" and "Rules over Rules". All I can say is that if you think this loophole big enough to herd a tarrasque through won't be abused you've never played a public AL game. Or with Jon*, one of my players.

*Not his real name

 

[Obvious_Ninja]

It's actually my favorite part of these feats. Remember that a feat is an incredible investment; one that I think you can argue isn't really worth it just for just an extra skill proficiency and a +1 ASI. The double proficiency allows your character to specialize in such a way to short-circuit Bounded Accuracy in a small number of corner cases; nothing really game-breaking (except for maybe in the case of Perception).

This right here... I really liked what I saw it this UA and hope this becomes part of the game...

 

[cbwjm]

Let's take a completely silly example. Charming Charlie the 13th level rogue has the Diplomat feat. He's +15 to his persuasion check and because he has reliable talent, cannot get anything less than a 25 on his persuasion check. So basically he can charm just about anything he talks to for a minute.

A completely stupid scenario:

• There's a group of balors in a cave. Thirty of them.
• Charlie casts alter self (he's a trickster and swapped out a spell at 8th level) and walks into the cave.
• Charlie talks to and automatically charms each balor in turn.
• Once the creature is charmed, there is nothing that can break the charm other than moving more than 60 feet away from the charmer.
• After half an hour Charlie's group blocks the entrance. Wall of Stone should do the trick.
• The room is less than 60 square feet so Charlie can now walk around killing each demon. They can't attack him because they're charmed.

A DM can always just say "that doesn't work". The DM could say that once the rogue attacks the charm is broken. They can change the rule.

But without changing the rule, without saying "it doesn't work because I said so" there's nothing stopping it.

Yes, this is a silly example. I know several people that would argue until they are blue in the face that it would work. According to the text of the feat, it should.

A less silly example of course is Charlie talking to virtually any individual on the planet that can understand them, charming them and then killing them. If the target can't get away or summon help, they're SOL.

And 3...2...1... the response is going to be "DM empowerment" and "Rules over Rules". All I can say is that if you think this loophole big enough to herd a tarrasque through won't be abused you've never played a public AL game. Or with Jon*, one of my players.

*Not his real name

Honestly, that looks like they just need to correct the feat to say the same thing that the charm person spell does, which is "the effect ends if you or your companions do anything harmful to the target" which is the exact kind of feedback needed in the survey. Although, personally, I don't really need that line in the feat to tell a player that the charm is/will be broken if they attack the balors.

 

[Shasarak]

But when it's something like finding traps, the DM isn't going to want to let someone auto-succeed. Which means everyone without expertise is hosed.

Another option is to make the Traps something the party can interact with rather then a one shot "got'cha" so that finding the trap is just the first part of the puzzle.

 

[Corwin]

...completely silly example....completely stupid scenario...

When you, yourself, feel the need to put such adjectives on the thing you are worrying about, I think we're all good. I mean, name any similar piece of the game and I'm sure someone can come up with a "completely silly example" or "completely stupid scenario" to highlight potential abuse or ridiculousness. 5e's fine. Don't stress obnoxiously improbable niche cases. They aren't worth the hand wringing. Honest.

 

[Oofta]

Honestly, that looks like they just need to correct the feat to say the same thing that the charm person spell does, which is "the effect ends if you or your companions do anything harmful to the target" which is the exact kind of feedback needed in the survey. Although, personally, I don't really need that line in the feat to tell a player that the charm is/will be broken if they attack the balors.

All I can say is that you've never played with Jon. Or Chris. Or Jeff. Or ... well I could go on but you get the idea.

 

[Gradine]

Let's take a completely silly example. Charming Charlie the 13th level rogue has the Diplomat feat. He's +15 to his persuasion check and because he has reliable talent, cannot get anything less than a 25 on his persuasion check. So basically he can charm just about anything he talks to for a minute.

A completely stupid scenario:

• There's a group of balors in a cave. Thirty of them.
• Charlie casts alter self (he's a trickster and swapped out a spell at 8th level) and walks into the cave.
• Charlie talks to and automatically charms each balor in turn.
• Once the creature is charmed, there is nothing that can break the charm other than moving more than 60 feet away from the charmer.
• After half an hour Charlie's group blocks the entrance. Wall of Stone should do the trick.
• The room is less than 60 square feet so Charlie can now walk around killing each demon. They can't attack him because they're charmed.

A DM can always just say "that doesn't work". The DM could say that once the rogue attacks the charm is broken. They can change the rule.

But without changing the rule, without saying "it doesn't work because I said so" there's nothing stopping it.

Yes, this is a silly example. I know several people that would argue until they are blue in the face that it would work. According to the text of the feat, it should.

A less silly example of course is Charlie talking to virtually any individual on the planet that can understand them, charming them and then killing them. If the target can't get away or summon help, they're SOL.

And 3...2...1... the response is going to be "DM empowerment" and "Rules over Rules". All I can say is that if you think this loophole big enough to herd a tarrasque through won't be abused you've never played a public AL game. Or with Jon*, one of my players.

*Not his real name

I was going to argue that this is complete and utter nonsense but then I re-read the feat and re-read the Charmed condition and... okay yeah, by RAW the effect only fails if you or your allies are attacking them at the time, and there's no condition about the charm status breaking once you begin attacking. That's a horrible oversight and poor writing. Of course, any suggestion that that would be the feat working as intended would be laughable. I'm confident that'll be fixed in a second pass. At the very least, it should probably carry the restrictions that Menacing has (humanoid only, if you fail the check they're immune from the effect for a set length of time).

In any case, if you feel so enslaved by the RAW that you would allow such a thing to pass at your table, there's absolutely nothing that I can say to you. You are playing a fundamentally different game than I am, a game that I refuse to believe is supported by the stated design intentions or actual written rules of the system. It's fundamentally not 5e as intended. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that, but it's why there's no way we're going to see eye to eye about it. Which is fine.

FWIW I agree that both feat abilities are broken, but I feel that has everything to do with it being an opposed kill roll (in a system that disadvantages NPCs and creatures in that regard), and nothing to do with half-baked absurd situations that either misunderstand the nature of ability checks or would otherwise never be allowed to happen in an actual, sensibly run game.

You're also correct in that I have no experience with Adventurer's League play. Others with actual experience can verify or debunk how widespread that style of play is in AL, but if that's the typical way D&D is played in 5e I can say that I'm ecstatic to have never had the experience.

 

[Prakriti]

Let's take a completely silly example. Charming Charlie the 13th level rogue has the Diplomat feat. He's +15 to his persuasion check and because he has reliable talent, cannot get anything less than a 25 on his persuasion check. So basically he can charm just about anything he talks to for a minute.

I blame the developers for breaking their own design philosophy. Expertise cannot co-exist with bounded accuracy; the two are mutually exclusive. And tying more combat maneuvers to skill contests, which are already polluted by expertise, just exacerbates the problem.

To see just how broken these feats are, imagine a feat that gives you "expertise" in your spell save DC. Then imagine that the game already HAS a feat that also gives you +5 to your DC, allowing low-level characters to achieve a spell save DC of 25 or higher. Every Hold Person, Dominate Monster, or other spell is an auto-success.

Broken, right? Yet that's exactly what we have now with Observant and these UA feats.

Yes, absolutely broken. But I can hear the responses already... "What do you mean a 25 spell save DC is broken? The player INVESTED in it!" -- as if that had any relevance at all.