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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[Hussar]

I wish these had been the feats we received in the PHB instead of the ones we got. I really dislike how much more powerful combat feats are in most games and think combat feats do very little to make the game more enjoyable. At least the combat feats that don't accomplish anything other than numbers porn such as great weapon master and sharpshooter. These feats provide a variety of interesting and fairly balanced options instead of giving us cookie cutter "builds" that polearm master, great weapon master, crossbow expert, and sharpshooter lead to.

These feats do show us the flaws of 5e's lack of clear language keywords or typed bonuses. The game would be much easier to balance if they brought back just a few keywords to prevent bonus stacking. Right now it is unclear if these feats stack with expertise and if so, to what degree.

Sorry, but, isn't the PHB clear? If something doubles your bonus, and you get another thing that doubles your bonus, they don't stack. Page 173-174 of the PHB is pretty clear here:

PHB 173-174] Occasionally, your proficiency bonus might be multiplied or divided...If a circumstance suggests athat your proficiency bonus applies more than once to the same roll, you still only add it only once and multiply or divide it only once. (bold mine)

What's unclear here? Granted, it could be organized better, but, that's a different issue. (Never minding having a decent bloody index )

So, no, this would not stack with expertise. A raging barbarian would have advantage and double bonus to his Athletics when attempting to grapple, with this feat, which might be pretty cool, but, it would in no way stack with a Rogue's Expertise feature. Note, a thief is getting effectively two of these feats (sans the stat bump) for free at 1st level. And two more at 6th. Other PC's shouldn't see this until 4th at the earliest. Not a bad trade off.

Considering clerics can effectively grant you proficiency in any skill at will with Guidance, I'm not seeing the problem here. And, between a cleric and a bard, getting someone's skill into the stratosphere isn't all that tricky if that's what you want.

And, as a last thing, people are talking about 13th level characters having sky high skills. Ok, fair enough, but, this is a THIRTEENTH level character. This character is already pretty high up on the food chain. For me, this would take about a year or so of gaming to achieve. Ok, after playing for a year, you can finally automatically spot stuff. Cool. Congrats. Now what?

 

[cbwjm]

Yes, and that player has to wait until he hits that lock to even roll the dice at his speciality. I've actually seen this at the table, where a player becomes bored by their ability always succeeding, and then, at the big moment where they actually get to roll, they bomb it with a 2. That's not fun.

Further, I like to spice things up with actual consequences on a failure, or at least an increase in the risk. A recent example on a DC 15 lock described as very rusted, when the rogue failed her first check to pick the lock, I described the result as the lockpick becoming stuck and offered a choice: you can try to force the lock, but if you fail you break your lockpick, or you can recover your lockpick intact, but, on a fail, you break the lock. This kind of interesting choice is denied if the player can autosucceed at DC 15 rolls. (The player chose the latter, and failed the check, breaking the lock. The barbarian got a chance to SMASH, but with the uncertainty of setting off a possible trap within the chest by doing so. The chest was untrapped, but the moment was fun.)

That's cool, your players had fun and that was a cool way to run that lock.

Really speaking, it's just a difference in playstyle my players still have fun even if they are automatically making skill checks. I don't have any players that can make a DC 20 check automatically, at most it is just the DC 10 checks for stealth and lockpicking which only the rogue can make automatically at the moment although she isn't coming up against many enemies with a DC 10 passive perception, most seem to be a couple of points higher requiring her to roll and of course opposed checks can show up as well.

Yeah, a character that blew that many resources on being able to see stuff? More power to him or her. Hrm, character has a 16 starting Wis, meaning the character has dump statted something - probably Int, in all likelihood. So, while Father Genericus sees traps a mile away, he absolutely sucks at any information gathering.

Do people really worry about this stuff? Seriously? I LOVE it when players hyperfocus like this. It makes it so much easier to challenge the PC. Oh, you dump statted Str so your Dex monkey is fantastic? Cool. Good luck swimming in this dungeon that's half filled with water.

I get the feeling that DM's really don't like to design their adventures with equal focus on all three pillars.
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Back to the UA article. Me LIKIES. I'm running a very low caster game right now. NO full casters at all. Which makes things like the Medicine Feat a REALLY nice addition. Schweet!

Exactly, I see nothing wrong with someone spending that much on being super skilled at a single thing, if that's the concept they want then go for it. Besides, once they spot that trap, what do they do then?

 

[Sunsword]

Does anyone else find Silver-Tongued too good? Free movement AND Advantage?!

 

[The Human Target]

They all share a +1 Ability Score and proficiency/double proficiency. These are solid but boring numerical bonuses that really limit what the rest of the feat can do.

Acrobat- If your DM uses difficult terrain I think this is useful. But really pretty dull.

Animal Handler- Okay. Though I'm kind of against skill action stuff that doesn't require a roll.

Arcanist- Basically a feat for a little flavor.

Brawny- Really boring. I guess there is a certain play style that would go nuts for increased carrying capacity. But why waste the Athletics feat on it?

Diplomat- Good but one of those things that might fall into the normal use of the skill.

Empathic- Good idea, bad execution. One round of advantage is such a blunt and boring instrument. Advantage is overused.

Historian- A feat that makes you wonder why History is even a skill.

Investigator- Making stuff a bonus action is good. But a lot of the time when you are making a Search action, you aren't worrying about the action economy at all.

Medic- Alright. But if this is what the feat does, what does the skill normally get you? Why are skills even in the game if they are so ill defined?

Menacing- Weird that it uses an attack action. Do you have to draw your weapon and actually swing at them to use this ability? Frightening is pretty powerful though, but humanoid really limits it.

Naturalist- Hate it. Want to be good at a skill? Here is some MAGIC.

Perceptive- I mean, this is really dependent on your DM even remembering that rule.

Performer- I really like this one. It probably should just be a use of the limited function Performance skill though.

Quick-Fingered- Now making Sleight of Hand a bonus action is really nice.

Silver-Tongued- Not to say this is bad, but making the Deception skill's ability combat only kind of stinks.

Stealthy- Kind of vaguely worded but I like the intent.

Survivalist- I always forget this is a separate skill from Nature. Also, MAGIC.

Theologian- MAGIC.

I'm totally on board for the idea of these feats, but the execution is very blah.

 

[Chaosmancer]

While agree with bonuses getting too high ruining the fun (I have a team of rogues and druid/monk who got staff of the woodlands for at-will Pass Without a Trace. I haven't heard a stealth check lower than 22 in weeks, and even the non-stealthy barbarian and wizard are getting 18's regularly [if you want to know why the druid has the staff, I straight up missed the text where pass without trace was at-will until after I gave it to him, abilities like that shouldn't be after all the flashy good stuff])

However, as other people have pointed out. Reliable Talent, or even a 1 level dip into rogue already accomplishes all of these exploits. Since the expertise doesn't stack, I don't think these are really going to add much, except that people don't need to dip rogue to be the best at the skills they are supposed to be the best at. Now your Bard Grappler is going to be in serious trouble against a Brawny Barbarian.


Still, I think a very good point is being made in that some of these abilities on the ribbons should have been stuff people could already do, or are kind of pointless.

Like Menacing, I can give up an attack to try and scare someone for 1 round? Why not make it against everyone within 10 ft or make it last for a minute or until they beat the roll I made (or set DC at passive). I want to like the ability, but my Half-Orc fighter is better off making those attacks 99% of the time rather than convince the guy to run away from me and make me chase him down.

Or Medic, man I wanted to love medic, I've got a Doctor Life Cleric on hiatus, and he's already got healer, but the ribbon just doesn't look that good and I've struggled to find times to use Medicine anyways, so expertise isn't all that good compared to other things I could spend a feat on.



Honestly, despite being wishy-washy on this, I like feats that give us skills and potentially expertise, that's great for so many people. I like the idea of more feats that give us +1 wisdom, charisma, or intelligence, because I always feel a little dirty taking a straight ASI when I could instead get a feat that lets me do something cool. However, the majority of the abilities are just bad, uninteresting, or things that I know realize I would have let people do if they ever asked (maybe). So, good start, but I think it needs to cook a little longer before serving

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

It is nice that so many people say "my play style this" and "my play style that" as a way to show these are badwrongnofun, but any rules that actually make it into print have to assume the strictest interpretation of the already existing rules, otherwise nothing new would ever get released. WotC needs to print stuff as if anyone using it will be running with the strictest, by-the-book rulings possible. And then after that, DMs are free to apply the "rulings not rules" philosophy to it and adjust as they see fit for their tables.

 

[Elon Tusk]

Could Animal Handler allow you to attack with your familar, animal companion, and/ir eild-shsped druid as a bonus action?

 

[machineelf]

Wow, Stealth for the win. Hide behind that tree, jump out for the attack and then return to the tree... still hidden or will the attack still blow your cover?

Great question. My guess is the intended idea behind the feat is that it only works as you are moving from one spot to the next, and an attack breaks stealth.

 

[Kobold Stew]

The issue of expertise can be framed two ways:

(a) there is a problem that needs fixing, and that problem is the distinctive Rogue ability of Expertise, shared to a lesser degree by the Bard and the Knowledge cleric. From that perspective, these feats weaken those specific classes, and dilute their niche. These classes are also less likely to draw on the skill specialization feats than any other class, having less choice.

(b) there is a problem that needs fixing, and the problem is character dipping into Rogue for 1 level in order to take advantage of Expertise and +1d6 Sneak Attack. From that perspective, these feats reduce the incentive to dip.

So, given that both of these views (or ones closely related to them) have been expressed in this thread, the question is, which of them better describes an issue faced by the majority of players?

In my experience there's no contest: I have seen very few 1-level Rogue dips in actual play (theory, sure, but not when people play through the levels). If that is generally true, then the net result of these feats is weakening the Rogue. Does this help in the long run? I would say no.

 

[The Human Target]

The issue of expertise can be framed two ways:

(a) there is a problem that needs fixing, and that problem is the distinctive Rogue ability of Expertise, shared to a lesser degree by the Bard and the Knowledge cleric. From that perspective, these feats weaken those specific classes, and dilute their niche. These classes are also less likely to draw on the skill specialization feats than any other class, having less choice.

(b) there is a problem that needs fixing, and the problem is character dipping into Rogue for 1 level in order to take advantage of Expertise and +1d6 Sneak Attack. From that perspective, these feats reduce the incentive to dip.

So, given that both of these views (or ones closely related to them) have been expressed in this thread, the question is, which of them better describes an issue faced by the majority of players?

In my experience there's no contest: I have seen very few 1-level Rogue dips in actual play (theory, sure, but not when people play through the levels). If that is generally true, then the net result of these feats is weakening the Rogue. Does this help in the long run? I would say no.

Well, you have another big problem- proficiency in a skill isn't by itself a huge bonus, making being trained in a skill not really very impressive. Especially at lower levels.

These feats do solve that.