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."

​

 

[Oofta]

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

Your insults are becoming less and less logical.

If I've misread something and am incorrect I will retract /correct my statement. I've done it before ... heck I've probably done it a couple of times today.

My problems with this UA article:

• At a certain point PCs will always win opposed skill checks (depending on build).
• I dislike skills giving you supernatural abilities such as Charm or Fear or short term Invisibility. As written there's no limiting factor, no resource being used.
• These feats seem to be leading toward a 4E Power paradigm
• Several feats seem to be leading to power creep. Multiple people have stated "I'll just modify my monsters to counter or make the encounter tougher". That's a major red flag.

The rules aren't official yet, so I would like to discuss options to tell the devs how we can fix them before they become official. Instead all I get is "just change the way it works".

 

[Shasarak]

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.

I dont know about that. How many parties had someone jump into the Devil face in the Tomb of Horrors and that basically has Admiral Ackbar standing beside it screaming "TRAP"?

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

If you are worried about traps taking up more time then I suggest not using them because you know that if there is even one trap in the Adventure then play is going to slow to a crawl anyway as everyone pulls out their 11 foot poles and starts to prod every 5 foot square.

Personally I would much rather waste time with trying to solve the one obvious trap then have to waste time searching every pixel trying to find the one trap that is not even there.

 

[cbwjm]

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.

Well here's a response to how weak your DMing skills are.

The king just stood there for a minute doing nothing. There is a stranger in his room and he doesn't call for his guards? Weak. As a DM I would also make a ruling (I hear that ruling not rules is a ignore thing in 5e) that this is a now a combat encounter and no amount of diplomacy is going to work since guards are trying to read in and the king is reaching for his weapon to defend himself. Maybe he is the King of Cormyr. That means you now have a bunch of war wizards teleporting into the kings chamber ready to mess Charlie up.

Here's something else. Anything a PC can do an NPC could conceivably do as well. The king also has this feat. Congratulations Charlie, you're also charmed by the king and so can't attack him.

Assuming that the PC uses this feat because the king is a weak-minded simpleton who isn't creative enough to call for help, as he attacks the king, the charm is broken. If you and I were friends and you decided you wanted to stab me then I'm going to try and stop you, doesn't matter how much I may like you. Again, ruling not rules.

Honestly, you seem to be fixating on this feat and sound like one of those players that needs everything spelled out to them.

 

[Oofta]

Well here's a response to how weak your DMing skills are.

The king just stood there for a minute doing nothing. There is a stranger in his room and he doesn't call for his guards? Weak. As a DM I would also make a ruling (I hear that ruling not rules is a ignore thing in 5e) that this is a now a combat encounter and no amount of diplomacy is going to work since guards are trying to read in and the king is reaching for his weapon to defend himself. Maybe he is the King of Cormyr. That means you now have a bunch of war wizards teleporting into the kings chamber ready to mess Charlie up.

Here's something else. Anything a PC can do an NPC could conceivably do as well. The king also has this feat. Congratulations Charlie, you're also charmed by the king and so can't attack him.

Assuming that the PC uses this feat because the king is a weak-minded simpleton who isn't creative enough to call for help, as he attacks the king, the charm is broken. If you and I were friends and you decided you wanted to stab me then I'm going to try and stop you, doesn't matter how much I may like you. Again, ruling not rules.

Honestly, you seem to be fixating on this feat and sound like one of those players that needs everything spelled out to them.

No, the king did not "sit there" for a minute. The rogue had a discussion with him. After which the king is charmed and according to the charmed condition cannot attack the rogue.

Nothing in the feat says the charm can be broken by any means other than being more than 60 feet away from the rogue.

Before the feat becomes an official rule, the wording should be changed.

 

[Hussar]

Putting aside what should happen to intimidate checks against special NPCs for a moment.

If you take the feat as written you should be able to spend and action in combat to attempt to frighten a humanoid every round.

At a certain point the check will be virtually automatic (literally automatic for a rogue with reliable talent).

Assuming you're facing a run-of-the-mill melee brute, it means that certain characters will be able to remove the brute from combat since he cannot come any closer. The party can just kill them with ranged attacks while they stand there impotent and frightened.

For the cost of a single action every round. All day long. That seems broken to me.

It's only frightened for one round.

From the pdf:

When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can replace one attack with an attempt to demoralize one humanoid you can see within 30 feet of you that can see and hear you. Make a Charisma (Intimidation) check contested by the target’s Wisdom (Insight) check. If your check succeeds, the target is frightened until the end of your next turn. If your check fails, the target can’t be frightened by you in this way for 1 hour.

So, no, what you are saying doesn't actually work that way. You could potentially frighten ONE target for the duration of the fight, but, you'd have to give up an attack every round. And, all it has to do is move away from you.

 

[cbwjm]

No, the king did not "sit there" for a minute. The rogue had a discussion with him. After which the king is charmed and according to the charmed condition cannot attack the rogue.

Nothing in the feat says the charm can be broken by any means other than being more than 60 feet away from the rogue.

Before the feat becomes an official rule, the wording should be changed.

1. You called it a realistic situation but instead it sounds like a silly situation. The king isn't just going to sit there and have a conversation for a minute.
2. I've already said, twice now I think, that spelling out that hostile actions against the target break the charm should be given as feedback.

 

[Oofta]

It's only frightened for one round.

From the pdf:



So, no, what you are saying doesn't actually work that way. You could potentially frighten ONE target for the duration of the fight, but, you'd have to give up an attack every round. And, all it has to do is move away from you.

There's no limit to how many times it can be frightened. Several builds would still allow you to do one or more attacks in addition to . The target may or may not be able to leave combat, but if they waste their turn leaving nothing stops the PC from repeating next round.

This is would be a particularly useful tactic if the target is the commander of a bunch of lower-level support type folks.

 

[Hussar]

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

You make your players play up against a wall? Wow, that's hardcore man. Gives new meaning to sudden death traps.

 

[Oofta]

1. You called it a realistic situation but instead it sounds like a silly situation. The king isn't just going to sit there and have a conversation for a minute.

Really? You can't imagine this scenario? A minute is not that long, I've known people who could RP themselves introducing themselves to the king and letting him know how grateful they are for the opportunity for an entire minute.

2. I've already said, twice now I think, that spelling out that hostile actions against the target break the charm should be given as feedback.

I missed it then, you didn't state it in any of your recent posts.

In any case you're just nitpicking details. It appears we're in agreement - the wording of the feat should change to make it clear that hostile actions towards the target break the charm.

 

[Hussar]

There's no limit to how many times it can be frightened. Several builds would still allow you to do one or more attacks in addition to . The target may or may not be able to leave combat, but if they waste their turn leaving nothing stops the PC from repeating next round.

This is would be a particularly useful tactic if the target is the commander of a bunch of lower-level support type folks.

Umm, so, why aren't the bunch of lower level mooks mobbing our intimidating hero, forcing him away from the commander so, that he cannot intimidate him next round? Remember, you have to be within 30 feet. Should be a pretty simple thing for the mob to block the PC while the NPC moves away (most humanoids DO have at least 30 feet of movement).

And, why does our commander NPC not have proficiency in Insight? Seems like a pretty common thing to have for leaders. Looking over some of the humanoid NPC's in the MM, we see the Cult Fanatic and the Knight both have advantage on fear saves (which I'd argue should apply), and our NPC Noble is trained in Insight.

Now, at the point where you're talking about this becoming an auto-success (because, remember, we're only talking a +2-5 on a skill check), we cannot really use ANY of the MM humanoids straight out of the book. Certainly not for any of the leaders. They just don't have enough CR to make an interesting encounter.

.... hang on a tick. How exactly are we getting intimidate scores that high? Even with a 20 Charisma, you're only talking about a +15 on the check with this feat at the absolute maximum. What else bumps Intimidate checks? It's not like perception where you can stack a bunch of other stuff on there.

So, using a standard array human, we're talking MINIMUM 8th level fighter or 10th level rogue or 12th level anything else to do this. 2ASI's in Cha and this feat. And, at that point, they're still only +11-13 on the check. Which is not an auto success. Unless they take 11 levels of Rogue to get Reliable Talent. At which point they are giving up sneak attacks (they only get one attack) to potentially frighten a single humanoid NPC 1/round.

And you think this is broken? Seriously?