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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[cbwjm]

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.

Well, since I don't know who those people are, you're right. I've never played with them. It doesn't change the fact that this is the feedback that WotC needs because for some players it spelled out to them that harmful actions against the charmed target breaks the charm.

 

[Oofta]

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.

Yet you can't tell my why my silly example would not work.

Then a realistic example

• Charlie gets The King into a room.
• Charlie locks the door behind him.
• Charlie talks to The King for a minute, charming him.
• Charlie casts silence on the room.
• Charlie kills The King.

Doesn't matter what level The King is. The King could have all sorts of protection against magic, epic saves, it doesn't matter. As long as the rogue can damage him, The King is dead.

 

[cbwjm]

Yet you can't tell my why my silly example would not work.

Then a realistic example

• Charlie gets The King into a room.
• Charlie locks the door behind him.
• Charlie talks to The King for a minute, charming him.
• Charlie casts silence on the room.
• Charlie kills The King.

Doesn't matter what level The King is. The King could have all sorts of protection against magic, epic saves, it doesn't matter. As long as the rogue can damage him, The King is dead.

Not that realistic, why hasn't the king called out to his guards when Charlie enters his room? Also, how much damage is the rogue doing? Probably no sneak attack damage and we don't know the relative levels of the two individuals. It's entirely possible that the king is an expert swordsman and Charlie finds himself dead at the end of this exchange.

 

[Corwin]

Yet you can't tell my why my silly example would not work.

Challenge accepted. Your silly example would not work.

Then a realistic example

• Charlie gets The King into a room.
• Charlie locks the door behind him.
• Charlie talks to The King for a minute, charming him.
• Charlie casts silence on the room.
• Charlie kills The King.

I'm not sure I'm getting the gist of your issue here. Assuming all that happens, in your example here, is true, your problem is what exactly? What are you mad at?

Doesn't matter what level The King is. The King could have all sorts of protection against magic, epic saves, it doesn't matter. As long as the rogue can damage him, The King is dead.

Wait. So the king has all these epic bennies and you set him up to be a fool and a sucker? Whose fault is that?

Look, you keep presenting everything in a very previous-edition framework, by my reading. Something about everything you are offering smacks to me of the player-empowerment style the last couple editions fostered. I'd start there if I were you.

 

[Gradine]

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.

The problem with these feats (and Diplomat and Menacing in particular) is that they provide spell-like power to skill contests, rather than to something like a spell save DC. Absent these two feats (which I am fully in support of in theory but not pleased with this specific execution of) I don't think there's any possible way you could compare the impact of skills on the game to the impact of spells (or any other abilities that function on a save DC basis). I'm not even sure I would put them in anywhere near the same category even with Diplomat and Menacing in play. Certainly not Observant. Auto-succeeding even passive Perception checks (universally regarded as the most important skill in the game) breaks absolutely nothing with a meaningful impact in actual play.

Feats should let PCs do awesome things. Something beyond the capabilities of a normal character. It seems to be that being one of the best people in the world at a particular skill (at a high enough level where the double proficiency bonus really gets wacky) is an appropriate thing for a feat to be able to do, and one I would consider well worth the investment given a particular character concept.

Apart from silly niche corner cases involved the Diplomat & Menacing powers, I've yet to see a single good example of how getting a huge bonus on a single skill, any skill, is supposed to break the game. I've ran many games and played many skill monkeys and I can't bring up a single example of how that would have ever even been possible in the first place.

 

[Corwin]

Not that realistic, why hasn't the king called out to his guards when Charlie enters his room? Also, how much damage is the rogue doing? Probably no sneak attack damage and we don't know the relative levels of the two individuals. It's entirely possible that the king is an expert swordsman and Charlie finds himself dead at the end of this exchange.

...cue Oofta explaining that the king has to stand there and let himself get repeatedly stabbed, until dead, because the playtest feat, from a UA offering, does not say the charm breaks for any reason.

Yeah. No, serious. That's coming. Brace for impact!

 

[Oofta]

Not that realistic, why hasn't the king called out to his guards when Charlie enters his room? Also, how much damage is the rogue doing? Probably no sneak attack damage and we don't know the relative levels of the two individuals. It's entirely possible that the king is an expert swordsman and Charlie finds himself dead at the end of this exchange.

How does Charlie find himself dead? The King can't attack Charlie. The King is charmed. Charlie can do whatever he wants to The King.

But seriously if "a rogue could never get a person into a room" is your best response, I literally have no response to how weak that argument is.

 

[Corwin]

How does Charlie find himself dead? The King can't attack Charlie. The King is charmed. Charlie can do whatever he wants to The King.

Called it!

 

[Oofta]

...cue Oofta explaining that the king has to stand there and let himself get repeatedly stabbed, until dead, because the playtest feat, from a UA offering, does not say the charm breaks for any reason.

Yeah. No, serious. That's coming. Brace for impact!

Unless you change the wording of the text or choose to ignore the wording of the feat, the charm cannot be broken unless the target is more than 60 feet away.

Glad I could be of service.

 

[Corwin]

Unless you change the wording of the text or choose to ignore the wording of the feat, the charm cannot be broken unless the target is more than 60 feet away.

I like how you used the words, "cannot be broken", like its some immutable truism spanning the multiverse. Darn. If only someone at the table had the authority to adjudicate and make rulings in the moment...