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]

I suggest a more careful consideration of the frightened condition and how it plays in practice. Have you played 5e? With the frightened condition making an appearance? Because I have. And as much as it can occasionally offer a substantive benefit, briefly IMX, it is not as grand a "win button" as you seem to be making it out to be.

Um, how many actions do you get a round?

Have you played 5E? Read the frightened condition?

FRIGHTENED
A frightened creature has disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is within line of sight.
The creature can't willingly move closer to the source of its fear,​

So a melee based humanoid could be kept at bay, possibly for the rest of their lives.

Although I did state that it requires an action - which is incorrect. It's an attack action. A high level fighter gets IIRC around a bazillion.

I'm pretty sure, as a DM, if one of the PCs was doing this every round, all day, I'd have to reconsider the party strength for encounter difficulty purposes. Turn a 5 man party into, like, 4.5 or something. I'd probably have to start shaving encounters down. After all, the party would be weakened by such a thing. Not fair to punish the whole group for a single player choosing to gimp himself.

So you are starting an arms race. Power escalation is one of the things that killed 3.x, I'd rather not see it in 5E.

A lot of untested, white-room hand wringing has being going on lately around here. So I am not surprised to see someone say something like this before even seeing the thing in question in play.

The whole point of the UA articles is to consider the impact of the proposed rules. I have. This is not white-room hand wringing. This is analysis based on the fact that over the past few decades running hundreds of game sessions with dozens if not hundreds of players I see major issues with the feat.

You seem to be basing your position on

• hand waving and ignoring the effects of fear (target cannot move closer).
• altering the feat based on what you think should happen. It may not cause issues with your players and I'm happy for you. It won't be the case for a significant percentage of people.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Eh, all this intimidate and menace stuff just needs a simple limit placed on it, say it works on a number of hit dice of creatures equal to the character's total level, with maybe a small bonus depending on how well the check succeeds. With this, a 10th level barbarian could menace a similarly leveled BBEG or could intimidate 10 1HD orcs or some such. And like others have said, I just cannot see a little squishy level 3 or 4 bard being menacing at all to a 10+ HD enemy, no matter how high they might get on a check. Alternately, I could allow the BBEG to be so amused and taken off-guard by the attempt that the rest of the party gets a free shot at him.

For this feat to really do any of the auto-success stuff with high modifiers that people seem to want it to do, it really needs more fluff than just "you become fearsome to others." Does this affect the character's appearance? Does he now give off some sort of aura or vibe that just makes others uncomfortable around him? Yes, the DM and player can make this up for their game, but I would be more accepting in general of the feat if this were part of the description to begin with.

And on a totally different note about these feats, this may make me different than most other players, but I would be more likely to take one these to boost an ability with a mid-range score and to get the neat effects for a skill I already have, rather than to take one of these just to get one of my top scores closer to 20. but I can see a lot of the arguments here are coming from the viewpoints of min-maxers and players for whom stats are more important than roleplaying.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This drastically misses the points made.

Thanks

Does it? Rereading, I'm 90% sure it doesn't. It just disagrees with your point.

 

[Corwin]

The whole point of the UA articles is to consider the impact of the proposed rules.

Are you sure? Please provide a link indicating as much. I highly doubt that is their "whole point".

Because, if that's true, I've been doing it wrong. I will have to apologize to WotC for actually playtesting their UA material at the table, rather than just provide speculation.

 

[Corwin]

Have you played 5E? Read the frightened condition?

Both. Frequently.

So a melee based humanoid could be kept at bay, possibly for the rest of their lives.

Oh noes! An insurmountable win button!

Again, if you actually saw the effects of frightened in actual play, you might see things differently than that nebulous, misleading claim of yours is hoping to imply.

 

[Oofta]

Are you sure? Please provide a link indicating as much. I highly doubt that is their "whole point".

Because, if that's true, I've been doing it wrong. I will have to apologize to WotC for actually playtesting their UA material at the table, rather than just provide speculation.

LOL! I'm so glad you are providing valuable feedback instead of my worthless drivel.

I've explained why I have a problem with the feat as written and will provide feedback when the survey comes out.

Have a day!

 

[Satyrn]

So you are starting an arms race. Power escalation is one of the things that killed 3.x, I'd rather not see it in 5E.

[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).

 

[Corwin]

LOL! I'm so glad you are providing valuable feedback instead of my worthless drivel.

I think its generally very important to quash untruths. So, yeah, thanks!

I've explained why I have a problem with the feat as written and will provide feedback when the survey comes out.

Congrats. That's the process. Too bad they won't get actual playtest feedback from you like they will from me, though. I'm fairly certain that's their favorite.

 

[Corwin]

@Corwin'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...

Not exactly, but close. It's not always a "win button" in this case because its against a single humanoid. I'm not sure what this "melee bruiser" humanoid is. In 5e, even primarily strength focused humanoids can achieve passable ranged capability (thank you, bounded accuracy!). Not to mention the humanoid can always choose to either retreat or even potentially attack one of the feat user's allies. What I'm saying is, in play, its a nice thing to pull. Its not a "win button", IMX, all-day-every-day (Oofta's claim). It just isn't. Can it be a strong tactic? In some cases, of course. I should hope so. Otherwise why have it?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

As a separate point, made as such to avoid any finger pointing, there seems to be a large theme of argument that boils down as such: "These new feats are fine as is, just nerf them as needed if they ever cause a problem." The idea that any issues with the design of the feats don't exist because you have a plan on how you'll houserule those issues away doesn't really strike me as actually engaging with the content of a playtest. If they were rules already, sure, but this approach seems more suited to shutting down discussion than honest engagement of possible problems with playtest material.

To be clear, my suggestions exist before and regardless of these feats.

Just like I'm reluctant to use brutes without giving them ranged attacks, my "fearless badass" enemies impose disadvantage to attempts to intimidate them.

All that aside, I do think these effects should have clear language that they don't stack with expertise, and some other clarifications.