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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[Gradine]

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.

Simple.

"This was a clear and obvious oversight in the way this playtest feat was written. Of course the charm effect is broken and the king is capable of fighting back and protecting himself. Let me make a note of that for the UA feedback..."

How you'd resolve it from there would depend on your personal DMing style and relationship to the player. Personally I'd give the player a chance to rewind their actions to the point before the tried to initiate their cockamamie scheme in the first place. Or, because we've already had this discussion, we can nip it in the bud:

"Here's some playtest feats if you want to try them out. By the way, I know the Diplomat feat doesn't say it explicitly, but the charm effect is broken if you or your allies engage in hostile action against the person you've got charmed."

Really, at this point if you allow such a situation to unfold you really have only yourself to blame. I mean, you should know better, this is Jon we're talking about! Jon! You know how Jon is. Why you wouldn't think to address in advance with Jon at the table is beyond me.

 

[Oofta]

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...

So is it "DM empowerment" or "Rulings over Rules"?

 

[Corwin]

Simple.

"This was a clear and obvious oversight in the way this playtest feat was written. Of course the charm effect is broken and the king is capable of fighting back and protecting himself. Let me make a note of that for the UA feedback..."

How you'd resolve it from there would depend on your personal DMing style and relationship to the player. Personally I'd give the player a chance to rewind their actions to the point before the tried to initiate their cockamamie scheme in the first place. Or, because we've already had this discussion, we can nip it in the bud:

"Here's some playtest feats if you want to try them out. By the way, I know the Diplomat feat doesn't say it explicitly, but the charm effect is broken if you or your allies engage in hostile action against the person you've got charmed."

Really, at this point if you allow such a situation to unfold you really have only yourself to blame. I mean, you should know better, this is Jon we're talking about! Jon! You know how Jon is. Why you wouldn't think to address in advance with Jon at the table is beyond me.

I regret only that I have by one XP to give you on this. Well said.

 

[Corwin]

So is it "DM empowerment" or "Rulings over Rules"?

The fact that you think those are somehow at odds is probably one of the more frightening thing you've said in this thread. Yikes.

 

[Geeknamese]

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

This is one of the worst cases of "rollplaying" and if a DM enables that kind of play, that's a table problem and not the design intent of the "Rulings over Rules" system. There should be roleplaying involved in this persuasion attempt...it better be some epic roleplaying in order to keep 30 balors at bay for the DM to even believe there is a possibility of success in order to call for a Skill check and that's assuming that one of the other balors the PC isn't talking to doesn't decide to shut up the noisy insect interrupting their demonic mosh pit.

I agree that the Feats need some revision and clarification in the text but in no way are they completely broken or worthless. The problem isn't the system, it's the table and the min-maxing, loophole exploiting, theory-crafting to break the game, adversarial rules lawyers who think the DM's story is just a playground for them to show off system mastery. It's a DM problem if they allow their story to be beholden to the system. The PCs are playing in the DM's story which the DM happens to use 5e to facilitate. If the PCs' perception is that they're playing the wargaming/skirmish/board game called 5e and the job as a DM is to just throw encounters at them and be a RAW rules depository, then I don't that table is the target audience for WotC. Those players should be playing Warhammer or World of Warcraft or something else.


Sent from my iPhone using EN World mobile app

 

[Slit518]

Does anyone else feel the double proficiency bonus of the Skills Feats steps on the toes of the Bard & Rogue?

It's like buying Expertise!

If a character has Expertise in a skill, and you buy the feat for uses that skill, do you triple the proficiency bonus?

 

[Oofta]

Simple.

"This was a clear and obvious oversight in the way this playtest feat was written. Of course the charm effect is broken and the king is capable of fighting back and protecting himself. Let me make a note of that for the UA feedback..."

How you'd resolve it from there would depend on your personal DMing style and relationship to the player. Personally I'd give the player a chance to rewind their actions to the point before the tried to initiate their cockamamie scheme in the first place. Or, because we've already had this discussion, we can nip it in the bud:

"Here's some playtest feats if you want to try them out. By the way, I know the Diplomat feat doesn't say it explicitly, but the charm effect is broken if you or your allies engage in hostile action against the person you've got charmed."

Really, at this point if you allow such a situation to unfold you really have only yourself to blame. I mean, you should know better, this is Jon we're talking about! Jon! You know how Jon is. Why you wouldn't think to address in advance with Jon at the table is beyond me.

Huh. Here I thought UA articles were supposed to be discussed and criticized. Which is what I'm trying to do. Point out that the current feats as written have flaws. So multiple people can point it out in the feedback. To see if there's something I'm misreading.

If I'm just missing something, great! Let me know! Show me the error in my logic, please. Someone did that many pages ago when I didn't realize you couldn't benefit from triple proficiency bonuses.

 

[Oofta]

The fact that you think those are somehow at odds is probably one of the more frightening thing you've said in this thread. Yikes.

You keep cracking me up. The only disagreement you have with me is that you would overrule the text of the rules which is what I expected.

All I'm saying that we should raise the flaw in the wording of the feat as an issue to the developers.

Do I expect this feat to be fixed? I hope so. Will it be fixed if nobody points it out? Probably not.

But my pointing out that the text of the feat is flawed just brings out Corwin The Insult Machine(tm).

 

[Blue]

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.

Absolutely, the DM can, and should, work around absurdities. I just find it ... well, absurd, to discard every trap in written adventures and all the examples in the DMG because we can no longer use DCs reasonable because we're breaking bounded accuracy.

Oh, and you're making each trap take up more wall time, which may not be the right fit for all groups.

 

[Corwin]

Huh. Here I thought UA articles were supposed to be discussed and criticized. Which is what I'm trying to do. Point out that the current feats as written have flaws. So multiple people can point it out in the feedback. To see if there's something I'm misreading.

Is there a Backpedaling feat that gives expertise in it? Cuz I think you have it!