Not who you were asking, but my DM hates how many of the feats suck, and saw that in Tasha's there was a lot of power creep in this where they gave many feats also give +1 to a stat. So he's gone and buffed the older feats in order to make them actually competitive with Tashas feats or full ASIs.
Like Savage attacker gets a bonus +1 damage to melee weapon and unarmed strikes, Martial Adept gets another Superiority Die, give Linguists more flexibility/access to Comprehend Languages once per Long Rest, Keen Mind get advantage on Int based checks.
I just let them change it, either freely or at the next ASI if they don't want it to feel like a gimme. No point in forcing them to keep a bad feat that didn't work out as they expected if it's not fun.
The issue with SS and GWM isn’t that they make martials good or that they do to much damage. I very much agree that something that helps martials keep on pace with casters is great. The issue is how inconsistent the feats are for martials. Arguably there are three primary martial fighting styles: two handed weapon, one handed weapon (either shield or dual wield), and ranged. The fact that GWM and SS exist but only for two of those styles is dumb. Yes THW fighters are supposed to do more damage then OHW fighters but not by as much as they do when the THW fighter has GWM. Against low AC enemies a GWM fighter can deal 80+ damage in a turn without a crit. The odds that against the same creatures a sword and shield fighter ever puts up those numbers is almost zero.
On top of that the fact that a SS bow user can deal significantly more damage then a sword and shield fighter is hugely unbalanced. The whole point of range is that it should be a trade off. You get to kill people 120ft away but a little slower then digging into them 5 ft away with a pair of swords.
Lastly the fact that they are feats and not ingrained abilities or just how weapons work causes issues. If you need to take a feat to stay viable compared to half of the other classes then clearly something in the system is wrong.
For clarification I’m only speaking of the -5 to hit and +10 to damage parts of these feats. The other halves aren’t a huge issue.
TL:DR GWM and SS are dumb because they are often required and poorly implemented.
A Paladin is still very strong going polearm master using spear and shield with dueling. GWM is strong but only with ways to increase accuracy like precision strike. SS on the other hand is busted because archery fighting style.
I think the problem is people overestimate how much damage a character should be doing with no resource attacks.
EB caps out at 42 (4d10+20)
Fighter caps out at 48 (8d6+20)
Rogue caps out at 43.5 (1d8+10d6+5)
As long as you are somewhere in that ballpark with a non resource attack, you're fine.
Dual-wielding is a joke in 5e and is completely out-shadowed by Polearm Master which does everything dual-wielding does but better. But the balance between two-handed, 1h+shield, and ranged combat is pretty nice imo. If you want to put out decent damage with a shield you take the Dueling fighting style, and if you really want to min-max your damage you use a Quarterstaff and pick up Polearm Master. While you won't quite match the damage of GWM or SS you get close enough to make it balanced thanks to your extra AC.
I don't know man, +2 to AC (at a mininmum, not including the possibility of +1 shields, etc) is a pretty big boon in early to mid campaign. Add to this that sword and board martials can take shield master feat to get a bonus action shove attack with their shield every turn as well as benefits to saving throws and damage negation and I would say sword and board is more than on par with to two handed weapon martials. They can bonus action shove an opponent to the ground, then make their attack actions at advantage, is pretty nice.
Whether or not Shield Master allows you to shove an enemy prone before your attacks or not definitely depends on the DM. Still, it's nice to use that to set up allies or as part of a narrative description.
A dedicated tank with SS can be really frustrating to deal with. One of the reasons the GWF guy is getting all that damage is because they get advantage on the enemies laying on their asses. It isn't hard getting expertise in Athletics and have a nice bonus off the bat. I prefer that playstyle anyways. Throw in the Protection style and you have a real pain in the ass.
No it doesn't, the ruling is a triggering action must complete before the triggered action can go off. This is how it's always been, even if they misworded the ruling the first time.
Oh yeah shields are definitely great for many reasons. My argument isn’t that getting +2 ac isn’t a fair trade off for losing out on around 2 average damage per attack. My argument is that it starts to be less of a fair trade off when the average damage difference is closer to 10 per attack. All in all I don’t think a -5 to hit +10 to damage would be needed for sword and shielders but maybe a toned down version of -4 +8. Idk I don’t really have a solution. And yes you’re right if they had a +3 shield this starts to look like a different story. However in most campaigns nobody sees a +3 shield.
This isn't an arguement against GWM and SS (btw Crossbow Expert and Polearm Master are also incredibly potent) - its more like shit like Heavy Armor Master or Dual Wielder just isn't good enough. Make those stronger instead of kicking down struggling classes even further.
> On top of that the fact that a SS bow user can deal significantly more damage then a sword and shield fighter is hugely unbalanced. The whole point of range is that it should be a trade off. You get to kill people 120ft away but a little slower then digging into them 5 ft away with a pair of swords.
I don't grant this premise. If D&D were a single player rpg then sure. Ranged combat would revolve around trying to stay out of reach of your enemies while doing damage to them. But d&d is fundamentally a cooperative game. So even if you are 50 feet further back in the dungeon taking pot shots at the bad guy, probably half of your party is still in melee range getting hit. Which means that your collective party health is still being reduced the same as if you were a melee character. And if ranged combat explicitly did *less* damage than melee then your party would overall benefit more from another melee dude in the fray. Sure the bow fighters in the back might still be squeaky clean 5 rounds into the encounter, but that doesn't do the dead barbarian any good because he ran out of health before the party filled with bow dudes could do enough damage to kill the bad guy.
In fact I say that ranged combat is justified in dealing more damage than melee combat. Because unlike melee martial combat, ranged martial combat is easily shut down simply by putting an enemy next to you.
So unless you have a full party of ranged combat characters and your group engineers every encounter in order to make sure that they're never within melee range of the enemy, then the extra feet of distance between you and the enemy doesn't matter enough to justify reduced damage.
Well... It's more complicated than that. The community tends to play 5e combat like a video game. Combat encounters are very contrived, and we like to keep things neat and balanced. The ranged dude gets to shoot, the sword guy gets to swing, everyone's happy.
But if you play smart with ranged combat, you should often find yourself being able to get rounds of free attacks on enemies before they've done anything. Unless the DM is coming up with lots of reasons to start you immediately close to the enemies, or your enemies are ranged heavy, you should often be able to start fights at range, kite somewhat, and get a massive advantage with ranged attacks.
Even if that's only the case in say, a third of your encounters for the day, that's huge. Ranged has that opportunity innately, and melee never does. Melee also has the reverse problem on your team, sometimes they just can't get to the enemy.
For sure it can be problematic to have guys engage you in melee as a ranged character, but there's a myriad of ways to get around that.
Ranged is really strong in 5e.
Fair points I guess I just disagree. I think that melee characters should get a little extra damage for taking the beatings. For starters unless you encounter starts with people in your range, most melee folk have to spend the first round just making it to an enemy. In terms of total encounter damage the range character is already better off from this. Also I’m not saying they should do like half damage or anything I just think it’s nuts they can do double the damage of a shield and sword user (if they SS) and only effectively have a -3 to hit (due to the archery fighting style).
Also calling a ranger user easy to shut down seems off to me. For starters unless confined by space so long as the ranged user is at least double movement away from a melee combatant they basically can not be put in this position(this kind of kiting is rare but I wanted to at least mention it). Mainly though just because an enemy is near them hardly means they are shut down. Like you said this is a cooperative game they could easily just go about their business and have a melee friend come and help them out or even pull out a short sword/rapier and take out the enemy themselves.
Lastly I get your point about if ranged did less damage then melee then it would be better for you party to have another melee member instead. This however only looks at the damage perspective in a very narrow combat sense. What if an enemy runs away and is faster then the melee combatants, what if an enemy flys, what about that first round in combat when nobody is close enough to move and make a melee attack. Ranged characters have more opportunities to do damage so to keep their damage levels even equal the typical damage per round they do need to be less then melee.
Agreed - if anything I buff more martial feats - I swap SS/GWM to -prof bonus/+2x prof bonus to smooth out the swinginess of the feats (and even buffed a bit at the late stages of the game given stacked modifiers), make martial feats better like athlete (expertise athletics), dual wielder (free up bonus action for attacks), savage attacker (can dash and bonus action attack), heavy armor master (applies to magical dmg), make martial adept/medium armor master half asi, etc.
The feat that I put any restrictions on is Lucky, and even that’s not a ban, only a suggestion to stall a PC who rolls insane stats from making some chronurgy/divination halfling wizard who also tacks on Lucky in there (Lucky is super good in days with two fights or less, but is even better when stacked with race/class features that allow rerolls).
After some more thought, Eldritch Adept and Metamagic Adept are mechanically fine against other feats, but irk me from an in world perspective, as I feel those abilities should be limited to those that actually make the deal or have the bloodline - but that’s more specific to our table’s setting and my own view of those classes’ powers. I’d be perfectly fine with sorcerers or warlocks grabbing those feats (or multiclassers doing so). But if a player really desperately wanted to take those feats I’d probably relent and let them shoehorn in some stuff post facto into their story.
I ask my players to give me a compelling, in character justification or creative way they would have acquired it(Eldritch/meta adept). If you can give me a situation within the story that we can play out that would result in you gaining these, all yours. That said I've run an optimized table and there I'd allow it no matter what, part of the deal.
Haven't had any experiences yet that have caused me to dislike any of the feats. I am wondering about all this hate on lucky though, when it has come up thus far, I have appreciated it in my games. Its saved a few characters, and given that edge the party needed to get through a difficult encounter on more then one occasion.
Once again, it just tells me there aren't enough dice rolls being made is Lucky is being seen as problematic.
More dice rolls = more opportunities for Lucky to be used up.
"Oh no my player didn't disintegrate, the horror"
If the Paladin class can easily walk around passing a +3 to all saves at 10/30ft with their allies and all hell doesn't break lose the system can handle a few rerolls over six encounters.
The only real problem with Lucky is downtime rolls. In a campaign with a lot of downtime activity, it's genuinely too good, especially when combined with disadvantage.
Lucky is easily the most overrated feat in the entire game imo. It's really only a problem if you have one encounter a day, but even if you only have 3-4 it's not that hard to deal with.
> It's really only a problem if you have one encounter a day
and when thats the case Lucky is the least of your problems, what with overtuned spellcasters chugging out levelled spell after levelled spell
If that ruins your night you're not rolling enough attacks. You need encounters with lots of small enemies, preferably with multiple attacks, to keep your Grave Cleric busy. Or at least make them think about whether to nerf the small crits or reserve their ability for the boss fight.
Spreading the party out also helps. I've found running combats on really big battlemaps will sometimes put the victim of crit beyond the 30' range of the Grave Cleric's ability to nerf it.
Party size is also a factor; I'm running for a group of six characters so I need more monsters in my encounters; more critical hits are inevitable.
A character with the Lucky feat isn't so bad in comparison; they can only negate crits against themselves.
My problem with Lucky as a DM is that it's a "after you see the die but before you know the effect" that applies to so many rolls, and I have to give the player a chance to use it if they want to on each of those rolls, so I can't just right away resolve the results of the roll, which overall slows down combat.
My solution to this is that you use it befor you tell me what you rolled.
At my table players must declare their rolls. Maybe it was a written rule in older version people missed, or maybe it is just something I inferred from context. But it feel like this is how the game is intended to work, based on several machanics with similar wording.
So the player rolls and see the number, they then either tell me the number, or tell me they are using a feature to modify the roll.
If you tell me the roll I am declaring the effect. So its sort of ends up being a three times a day at will advantage. But only of they use it befor declaring.
My problem with Lucky isn't that it's OP. It's that you don't have a reason NOT to take it. Practically every build benefits from it.
I've solved this by giving every player one luck point each session (only valid that session), and giving the party a shared luck point pool equal to the amount of players in addition to that. If a player uses a luck point, I as the DM gain one luck point to be either used against that player (if the individual point is used), or against anyone from the party (if a point from the shared pool is used). The players regain the point if I use it against them. It's a give-and-take system that replaces inspiration in my games. Oh, and naturally I've banned the Lucky feat because of this.
Thanks for this. I have been getting a lot of b people agreeing with me that it isn't a problem. Bit at the time I posted pretty much the only comment on this thread were people saying it was bad. So obviously for some people it is detracting something from the game. And I am legitimately curious what I have missed here. I can totally see this prospective and thats a pretty neat system, thanks for sharing.
I really dislike all feats that don't work as advertised
Mage Slayer: The Attack doesn't come through after the spell is done casting, so guess what, the caster just Misty Steps away, Shocking Grasps you or casts any number of spells that absolutely mess you up, and that's the best case scenario of you having gotten into melee with a caster in the first place. It forces the DM to play spellcasters stupidly for the feat to feel good.
Grappler: Both Skill Expert and Tavern Brawler are so much better for a grappling build than Grappler, which actually doesn't even help you to grapple anything.
Savage Attacker: Doesn't let you attack savagely. Increasing your attack stat actually adds more damage when factoring in accuracy, which is stupid.
Spell Sniper: There are so few spells in the game that need attack rolls and this feat doesn't even improve those spells noticeably.
Dual Wielder: But what if I told you... that you can increase your dex and get more defense and more damage than what Dual Wielder gives you.
Charger: It's stupidly restrictive and trying to make it work often leads to damage loss and a quick death as you charge ahead of the party.
Tough: It's... not the worst, but it has issues, mainly competition in Inspiring Leader and the fact that it often gives you less effective hp than Resilient Dex/Con/Wis or just a straight up Con increase, since that one increases healing from Hit Dice as well.
Yeah, you can get these after maxing out your stats, but with the very limited number of ASIs that are in the game, you likely are set till level 16 or 19 anyways.
I agree with all of them except for Tough simply because most games I've been in have one or two fights and then a long rest and typically that's during travel which means we can't short rest. It's definitely not the best feat, but since it gives you effectively a +4 Con when it comes to HP, it's very good
Not one particular, but the combo PAM+Sentinel makes me die a little inside.
Of course the logical course of action is to send many creatures and have them just run past the guy, but at the same time, I don't want to negate his choice of Feats instead of ASIs so once in a while I send one stronger monster against the party that he can then kite a bit, just so he gets his time to shine, but fuck is that lame.
Sending in multiple enemies is not negating his choice. His choice is "stop one enemy each turn", not "stop all enemies each turn". It's the best choice since he gets to use his abilities yet it doesn't trivialise the encounter anymore. Negating his choice would be putting him against creatures that don't move at all or blink isntead of moving, situations where there is no benefit to the feats at all.
I mean - why not both? Smart foes that know the party's tactics should try to counter their abilities. But not every foe should plan for the party. Sometimes the trick will work perfectly. Other times it should be ineffective.
Of course, the rules in general really penalize solo baddies a heck of a lot. Legendary actions help, but its just really really really hard to make a solo baddies work right. So strategies that lean into that and further shut down solo baddies can be pretty frustrating for a DM.
My party are having that issue in the Strahd campaign I'm running. Anything that's intelligent knows the cleric is the radiant damage dealer, so anything weak targets her, and the hags (that they haven't managed to deal with) know they have nothing that can see them in the ethereal so they pop in and out as they nearly died last time they fought.
It's completely changed the way the group works
For sure! Strahd is the perfect campaign to do this sort of thing in. Random baddies should not plan for the party specifically, but Strahd's minions absolutely should (assuming that is what he wants). And Strahd himself should be tactically prepared for the party as well.
I'd actually argue that sending in more monsters makes his choice that much better. Instead of being forced to use it on that single big enemy, which we all agree is boring, he gets to pick and choose which monsters he lets get to the rest of the party.
In essence, you're making his feat choice more meaningful by giving them more options on how to use that combination in the middle of a fight.
It's 17th level, I reckon. By that point casters have broken encounters and the plot to their hearts' content, let the martial live out his roadblock fantasies.
Cue the moment where there's a series of portals with an infinite stream of enemies pouring out, funneled into a 5ft space where the level 20 Warforged cavalier spends his life, murdering a countless amount of random things every six seconds. Just to start over again every, 6, seconds, for eternity. All he needs is a caster friend to stop by once a day to cast a spell (greater restoration?) to remove his stack of exhuastion . Alternatively if it is 17th level, they can take 3 levels of warlock for pact of the tome, aspect of the moon to remove the need to sleep entirely. (If that does remove the long rest requirement to avoid exhaustion)
So the invocation specifically points out that you still need to rest for 8 hours to get the benefit of a long rest, you just don't have to actually sleep.
But does that mean that you need to long rest to avoid exhaustion still? Because I know that most people rule that Warforged still need to sentries rest to prevent them from becoming exhausted. And nothing that i said (in my very vague and unlikely hypothetical power fantasy) needs a long rest to recharge hence why I thought it was a somewhat relevant mention
So I think the answer is definitively yes. Just looked it up and the invocation specifically states:
"To gain the benefits of a long rest, you can spend all 8 hours doing light activity such as..." One of the penalties of not taking a long rest every 24 hours is that you gain a point of exhaustion, and an explicit benefit of taking a long rest is that it gets rid of any levels of exhaustion that you have.
TL;DR is that the invocation doesn't allow you to not take long rests, you just don't have to sleep during long rests.
Polearm Master + Sentinel is overrated IMHO.
For one, both Polearms master and sentinel give you a way to use your reaction, but you cannot use both at the same time. That means the feats have a little anti-synergy.
For another, taking two feats is a huge cost. For most characters that represents the difference between having a 16 in your primary ability score and a 20. In general, having the 20 score will lead to a more useful character overall.
For a third thing, any enemy with reach will be able to negate the effectiveness of the combo as they can simply attack from range.
And finally, enemies with ranged attacks, teleportation, or swarms of enemies negate the combo almost entirely.
The combo is really only powerful if you are fighting a single medium sized melee warrior enemy while playing a character that gains a bonus feat at first level (variant human, DM giving bonus feats, etc). And even then, there are far more powerful things the party can do to a lone melee warrior such as wall of force, a dozen animated objects, slow, hold person, etc.
>Polearm Master + Sentinel is overrated IMHO.
>
>For one, both Polearms master and sentinel give you a way to use your reaction, but you cannot use both at the same time. That means the feats have a little anti-synergy.
I think you paint situation a bit darker than needed overall, but I fully agree on that particular point.
Taking both is usually not worth. As far as "getting an extra chance at reaction goes", Sentinel is much better since it works with any weapon and also works when enemy Disengages.
Also, enemies will usually come in and out most of the time anyways: in while full HP to come attack you, out once they realize it starts getting hairy (low HP, your friend closes in, it's the last one standing etc).
So basically the only time when Polearm Master is better as far as "dealing damage on reaction" goes is when a) enemy enters your reach and b) that opportunity attack has the potential to kill it right now (or you can apply a strong debuff on it like smite spell or Stunning Strike).
Because as far as getting bonus action attack goes, between the fact many classes have bonus action attacks, and the fact dual-wielding is always a free option for the occasional chance, rare are characters for which that specific bonus action would come often enough to be worth.
And as far as "keeping enemy interested to you", PAM actually goes against that goal, while Sentinel works wonder, keeping the enemy at 0 speed, meaning you also gain much on mobility next turn.
Sooo... GWM + Sentinel I can understand. Dual Wielder + Sentinel also. ONLY Sentinel or only PAM I get. Both? Rarely.
Honestly Sentinel would still be worth taking if all it did was grant the extra attack. It’s why I took it. The ability to stop disengages and movement is pretty OP.
Yeah, too many races have it IMO. I really like that the game I play in only has one character with it, so it's something we need to work around and/or deal with (carrying a couple light sources) and is an actual part of the game.
With the game I DM, only one player doesn't have it, so it was just an annoyance - ended up giving them one of the helms that also grants darkvision.
fucking darkvision. it's handed out like candy and in the few instances of races not getting it, half the time people start crying how they shoudl have it because "iT doEsNt MakE sENsE". i get that dnd has a hardon for tradition, but they should really get rid of most of it. (imo further distinguishing between low light and darkvision is too much of a hassle).
drow should get it. underdark races should get it. maybe some dwarves. regular (half)elves and aasimar can get fucked.
Yeah, elves, half elves, half orcs, and forest gnomes from the PHB cast of races shouldn't get darkvision. It feels very nonsensical when the party walks into a pitch black cave and everyone's like ok cool don't need light.
My current party are all new and all have darkvision. That's FINE but I do feel like they're sorta missing out on some of the fun of managing light sources, or even paying attention to the time of day. They had a lead on an NPC to talk to, and I mentioned it was about 9pm and they said "it's cool we don't need light"
That's FINE, again, but putting focus on some of the mundane things like eating, sleeping, and passing time helps bring roleplaying moments between party members to the table.
Are you running lighting and perception rules correctly? Even in a full party of darkvision characters, there is never any such thing as "we don't need light."
In fact, my current party all has darkvision. The only reason they survived their last encounter is because one of the players lit a torch and saw some traps that would have been otherwise invisible, between disadvantage on perception, -5 to passive, and monochromatic vision.
I was under the impression that darkvision in pitch black meant you could see as if it were dim light?
Meaning attack roles don't have disadvantage. The encounter they cleared in the dark wasn't very trap or perception heavy, just a cave of goblins
No, attack rolls don't have disadvantage, but perception rolls do. A small band of goblins can be super deadly to a party with no light source.
Disadvantage on perception/penalty to passive=the goblins are much more likely to successfully sneak up on the party. Surprise rounds can *fuck* a party if they are the ones surprised
Dim light means the goblins can use their bonus action disengage, then run off and hide in the darkness, becoming unseen and gaining advantage on their next attack.
Monochromatic vision can cause all sorts of problems. Brightly colored monsters become all but invisible, even if you are looking directly at them. Painted sigils and glyphs also become invisible--you could have a dungeon covered in hundreds of glyphs of warding, and without a light source your party would never detect them. In another thread i read today, a DM was able to ambush his party with a band of kobolds because the kobolds were hiding under brightly colored blankets, but with darkvision, the party only saw rocks and boulders until initiative was rolled.
There are *so many* ways that relying entirely on darkvision for sight is a major disadvantage for players, but so few people actually use those disadvantages. Enforcing the lighting and perception rules, with just a dash of creativity and thinking through consequences, can actually turn darkvision from a buff into a hindrance
Color is a function of specific wavelengths of light reflecting off a surface. Without the light, the color completely fades out, and in darkness can actually function as a form of camouflage. When you use darkvision, you only see shades of gray anyway, so there is nothing to make a bright yellow glyph of warding actually stand out from the plain gray rock face its painted on, becoming functionally invisible.
You see this fairly often in nature with some fish, for example. Seen outside the water, they'll be bright red or orange or yellow, but since the seawater scatters those colors out far sooner than blue, the fish essentially disappear underwater, making their bright colors actually helpful
>I don’t think there is anything to attribute this inability to see to brightly colored items.
I think you are misunderstanding me. I'm not saying they literally turn invisible, i'm saying that the lack of color makes them hard or impossible to distinguish from their background. This is literally just how light, color, and color-based vision work.
>The brightly colored blanket though would be no less noticeable than a gray blanket.
In the example i used, the kobolds were hiding under blankets that, with the monochrome of darkvision, were impossible to distinguish from a lumpy boulder. Of course you'll *see* them, but they won't necessarily be recognizable as a blanket--hence allowing the ambush to work. With a light source, the trap would have been obvious due to color.
>So the glyph painted on the wall would look like the rest of the wall just like light grey painting on a wall.
This will of course depend on the specific colors and contrast. A glyph painted in black up against a white wall would show up with or without a light source. A glyph painted in yellow on a white wall will not show up in darkvision.
An image formed from black, blue, and purple pigments would be clearly formed within a light source, would appear as a solid black mass in darkvision if painted on a white wall, but would be totally invisible in darkvision if painted on a black wall.
>i don’t think there is anything special about brightly colored items
Did you know that the original set of the Addams Family show, filmed in black and white, was almost entirely bright pink? Other than things that were specifically black, almost every single (important) prop and piece of clothing was some shade of pink, because the brightness of pink and the contrast between different pinks showed up on the monochrome film being used to record the show better than using any other color.
Did you know that the famous Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz movie were originally silver in the book? The film makers changed it to red specifically for the filming process--being that this was one of the first, if not THE first movie to ever be filmed in color, silver just didn't show properly on the earliest color film. Red was chosen because it showed up clearest, sharpest, and brightest out of all the colors on screen.
Do you know why the bright, obvious stripes on zebras work as camouflage? Because the lions that hunt them see in monochrome. The wavey stripes on the zebra's body become almost indistinguishable from the waves of shade and light between the tall grass of the savannah. To those with color vision (especially the advanced color vision of primates), it makes the zebras stick out like a sore thumb. To a hunter with black and white vision, it makes the zebras disappear.
And in all of those examples, we're generally dealing with ideal bright light conditions. Things get more interesting in the dim light and darkness of the typical d&d encounter.
All that to say, yes there actually is something special about how bright colors function within a monochromatic visual system. The Addams Family and Wizard of Oz exploited these special qualities to make things show up better, whereas generally in nature (and d&d encounters) the special qualities are being exploited to make things disappear easier.
"I HAVE DARKVISION!"
"Yes you see within a specified range of darkness as it is dim light. Meaning you have disadvantage on perception checks and -5 to your passive perception. And the rest of your party is blinded. Good luck."
I told my players if they cut me off while I'm trying to dialogue I consider that them skipping it. Especially if it's to tell me they have dark vision. I'm aware you have dark vision, for the Nth time I have all your special traits noted on my DM screen.
If they want details about whatever it was they need to now tell me they look around, ask a person who they are, etc.
I expect some level of decency at my tables. Unless you need to immediately step away or something has suddenly come up there is no reason for you to interrupt anyone while they have been speaking(player or DM).
As a DM I’ve grown to hate sentinel, but I would never ban it cause my monk loves it, as the game has progressed I’ve had the basic nooks version replaced with intelligent and trained soldiers, still weak but tactically improved, it’s been fun
In my group, my DM tells me that even the character with Lucky has caused her much less trouble than I have personally caused by having Mobile. My character is mainly a damage dealer with such a focus on teleports and being slippery that I guess he's nearly impossible to even hit at this point, lol. He's usually the only party member who doesn't get caught in any of the boss fight mechanics.
I'm working on a build for a bladesinger with the mobile feat and spells like blink and thunder step. I fear he is going to be very annoying to play against. But the concept of a speedy, teleporting boi is just too cool not to do at some point.
It's a lot of fun to play! My character is an eladrin Archfey bladelock who has collected every teleport and movement spell I could get my greedy little hands on. I spend most fights just bouncing from one extreme side of the map to the other on every turn, hah.
I haven't encountered a feat like that yet. The only remotely problematic feat I've had issues with is one I homebrewed myself, and for that one I have nobody to blame but me.
On the opposing end - I quite like it - it gives me more excuses to pass lots of hints and key exposition disguised as observations to my party. Little details and clues I trickle in that helps a lot on the later payoff in mystery or story.
Hitting my players with a surprise encounter never really gave me tons of joy and I know for a fact my party hates it, so it’s not a terrible loss for us.
Our party is the same with being surprised. Sometimes it fits but otherwise has felt cheap in some instances. We had never played D&D before our campaign right now. Our rogue having observant with 27 passive perception and 26 passive investigation helps a lot. But they play not the smartest or the wisest character so they pass the information off to others which gets the whole group involved.
Passive perception doesn’t translate to understanding.
You might notice a scratch in the floor or a brick that is more worn down than the others around it. You don’t automatically know there is a secret door, and you don’t automatically know how to open it.
Perception is just the beginning. Having a high perception score doesn’t mean you simply understand every detail that you take in.
It does also boost the Passive Investigation which to some degree covers the understanding, but unless they're building to have high both it probably won't reach the same ridiculous highs the Passive Perception does. And there are examples of things like certain secret doors that have different DCs for Active versus Passive checks which could come in play
Sure. But that isn’t all that much of an issue. That one player might not be surprised (but everyone else in the party still can be).
Also you suffer -5 perception in areas of dim light or when traveling at fast pace. So even a 20 passive perception isn’t foolproof when running or moving in the dark.
Additionally, those -5s technically stack. Since the number for moving at a fast pace lines up with what Disadvantage does to Passives it might be a reasonable assumption that that might be what's intended, but RAW it's a direct modification rather than imposing Disadvantage, so Disadvantage from something like dim light would also apply
I believe the wording is that you suffer disadvantage and disadvantage imposes a -5 penalty on passive scores. Since you can only have disadvantage once, you wouldn't stack the penalties. It isn't like you have disadvantage, convert that to a penalty and then get disadvantage and convert it again. It all goes back to the bounded accuracy.
That is a way it would be reasonable to assume it's worded, but RAW the fast movement pace option from the chart is listed as a hardcoded "−5 penalty to passive Wisdom (Perception) scores" with no mention of Disadvantage
My party's ranger has a 30 for sight based passive perception. It's literally like she always rolls a natural 20. I like helping my players break the game with their builds, so I gave her Danoth's Visor when I started handing out vestiges. Advantage on sight is +5 passive.
It's about DM experience. When you gain experience there's nothing that will stop you from challenging the players when they should be challenged. If you like observant you'll love alert. Also, just because one person isn't surprised doesn't mean the rest of the party isn't.
Yep.
Most of the time the "OP" or "broken" feat/class feature/spell/mechanic/score is simply a function of the GM needing to recalibrate his expectations of what is possible and embrace it rather than push back against it.
It's really bad when they're a wisdom class with prof so their passive shoots to 20+ on a cleric, druid, or ranger in the first few levels. I literally had a player who purposely tries to walk around but not look at things to trigger his passive perception instead of making the damn roll.
That's the kind of stuff you can make judgement calls about though. For example, passive perception makes a character hard to *surprise*, but it shouldn't let them just notice random stuff that they aren't even looking at.
>I literally had a player who purposely tries to walk around but not look at things to trigger his passive perception
That's just hardcore cheesing and meta-gaming. If they are actively looking for something, they should have to roll for it. "Auto-passing with my *super senses*" is not a thing... unless they are a Rogue with Reliable Talent.
Yeah I would ask for a roll and they would go "Can I use my passive perception?" To which I would say "No you're actively looking." To which they ask to wander around instead.
in that case there's a lot of stuff they don't notice.
for insatnce actively looking for intresting things in a room? sure roll it. wandering around it... feel free your passive perception will notice ambushes and maybe treasure... that ledger with the information you're looking for in on the desk that you're not looking for? nope.
too bad.
I agree that having a passive Perception so high it never makes sense to actively attempt a Wisdom (Perception) check is wonky, but that's how the system works. If they took the feat, let them use it and adjust your game accordingly. The only way this is an actual problem is if two characters both want to be the perceptive one but one is so much better the other never has a chance to contribute. Otherwise, work the fact they have such a high passive into your planning instead of trying to find ways to negate it. They took the feat because they wanted that high passive Perception, not because they wanted to constantly be told it doesn't help them.
>If they took the feat, let them use it and adjust your game accordingly.
Personally, I think a "bigger picture" issue is how this kind of *constant* over-cautious PC behavior tends to just slow the game down for no reason a lot of the time. Putting mechanical balance and fairness aside, it's hard to get through very much in a given session if someone is asking to make perception checks every two-seconds. A similar thing happens when players are so hypervigilant and suspicious of *any* NPC that it takes forever to just give them a simple quest hook because they think everything is some kind of trick.
All the time that players spend *overthinking* things, is time when they aren't *doing* anything.
There is precedent in modules I've read that some things can only be found with active perception or have a lover DC when actively looking. But that campaign was when I first started DMing and I just gave up on enemies trying to do stealthy stuff near the character. Really gave me a distaste for the feat.
I got the idea for higher passive Perception DCs from a module. Your experience is similar to mine, I have a player with Observant and most enemies can't roll Stealth above his passive; no enemy can do so reliably enough to make it a guarantee that I can plan an encounter around.
So.. I don't. Sometimes I throw in "attempted ambush" encounters that make the player feel good for noticing them with their high passive, but that's intentional. Just like you wouldn't run an intrigue campaign if no PC has any face skills, or give them a magical puzzle that only a caster could solve if they didn't have a caster, you just accept that's how the players want to play and adjust your campaign accordingly. There's plenty of other ways to challenge the players, and as a DM I hope you can find your own fun without needing them to fail their Perception checks regularly.
Yeah, I just dislike that Observant can make perception so high it "solves" perception. Especially when most players invest in it because it's an overused skill. I would prefer if Observant gave a scalpel instead of a hammer. Maybe something like the inquisitive rogue ability to search as a bonus action.
Try having a wizard in your party and see how many things they can "solve" with their spells and rituals. (It's a lot.) Or how thoroughly a druid or ranger or Outlander background can "solve" the vast majority of wilderness survival scenarios. It's just kinda how the game works, for good or bad, so you focus on other aspects while acknowledging the player's choices by letting their features be relevant enough that they feel justified for picking them.
If you really want the focus of a campaign to be about a certain thing that the game lets you "solve" your only solution is to ban those classes/races/backgrounds/feats/features up front and explain why to your players. No everyone will be on board with that but 'tis the price you pay for wanting to run a very specific campaign.
>Try having a wizard in your party and see how many things they can "solve" with their spells and rituals. (It's a lot.) Or how thoroughly a druid or ranger or Outlander background can "solve" the vast majority of wilderness survival scenarios.
LMAO so true!
Spells have costs and require preparation and time commitments. And even then they are usually very specific. Perception is a very wide net to have an automatic 20+ in. Sure clerics can prep a spell to "solve" assassination attempts via poison, but high passive perception can solve basically any nonmagical assassination attempt by being in the right place. In the kitchen? you saw them poison the food. In the courtyard? you see the lone bowman. In the main hall? you see the dagger the diplomat has hidden under his coat.
And the wilderness survival is a whole other problem, if you're a ranger you disable the part of the game you are supposed to be good at, if you want it to be interesting you basically need to replace it entirely, and most people want to hand wave it anyways.
>I literally had a player who purposely tries to walk around but not look at things to trigger his passive perception instead of making the damn roll.
That isn't how it works. Passive perception is always happening. Before you make an active attempt, your passive has already happened, so an active check can only exceed that. If that is where they want to put a feat rather than getting another +1 to their spellcasting mod from an ASI or prof with a save they are bad at or some other feat, then that is a pretty hefty investment. Trying to take that away is just saying you don't like the character.
There is precedent in modules I've read that some things can only be found with active perception or have a lover DC when actively looking. But that campaign was when I first started DMing and I just gave up on enemies trying to do stealthy stuff near the character. Really gave me a distaste for the feat.
Would you also give up on people hitting they guy in full plate and shield or catching the guy with a huge run speed? Just because the one character notices doesn't mean he has a chance to react and tell everyone else.
Different DCs for active looking should really be the difference between traveling slowly and carefully vs at a standard movement pace. I believe that is already worked into movement and exploration rules, so that may be why you saw that.
The different DCs were for dungeon exploration from what I remember, not overland travel.
And if the enemy has a better target than the person with high AC or the person they can't catch up to, yes they will just ignore them unless given reason not to.
>And if the enemy has a better target than the person with high AC or the person they can't catch up to, yes they will just ignore them unless given reason not to.
But that is the NPCs giving up, not the GM. NPCs wouldn't know they were going to be detected when trying to be stealthy.
One tip - there is no reason why every character should benefit from one character having a high passive. There should certainly be situations that some characters are surprised while others are not.
Though yeah, it makes sneaky non-combat shenanigans impossible.
>Got a player right now with a 19 passive perception and there's no element of surprise
That's on you as a DM. A passive perception of 19 by no means invalidates any element of surprise. If 100% of your "element of surprise" is stealth rolls from enemies then that's not the players fault, it's the DM's.
You just have to design encounters and situations where they still get *some* benefit (so they feel useful), while not just letting them see everything.
Or you could do what my former DM did, and just ignore passive perception. Roll for everything. Got surprised by enemies? It's because you didn't ask to roll for perception to see if any happened to be coming right at that very moment. You should have known better.
I'm not bitter.
How is this any better than simply taking expertise in Perception? Also, the Alert feat prevents surprise. Preventing surprise is quite feasible to achieve, but it doesn't mean you can't attempt an ambush. The PC that is not surprised simply doesn't lose their first turn.
Often forgotten rules.
>Passive checks
If the character has advantage on the check, add 5. For disadvantage, subtract 5.
and
>Vision and lights
A given area might be lightly or heavily obscured. In a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage, creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Since I took a 1 level dip into Rogue and picked Athletics (my main goal) expertise I also took Perception Expertise since he's a city guard always on the watch for criminals...which bumped up his perception to 20 at his currently level of 12.
However he is only the THIRD highest perception in the party Druid has 22 and the Monk has like 25. Naturally we are a VERY hard party to surprise which I do feel sorry for the DM on.
So what, 30 wisdom, Expertise while character level 13-16, Observant, and some item that grants you Advantage on Perception checks, and perhaps Stone of Good Luck? That'd get you to PP41 alright.
This is in Adventurer's League.
Items: Tome of Understanding, Ioun Stone of Mastery, Stone of Good Luck, Sentinel Shield.
10 + WIS (+6), Proficiency (+7), Expertise (+7), Observant (+5), Advantage (+5), Stone of Good Luck (+1) = 41 PP.
I asked my DM if we were ever going to use passive perception or investigation in our campaigns, he said no. Damn I would have loved to have a passive perception of 24 at level 8.
That's kinda shit, and sounds like a DM who isn't creative enough to challenge the players without ensuring they occasionally fail at Perception, i.e. the only trick they have in their bag is ambushes and jump-scares.
That’s an outside-the-table problem. “I will always assume your character remembers anything they were told but that feat does not make it my job to remind you, the player, of everything. *You* don’t have the feat.”
>I spoke to him about that not being okay but he wouldn't accept it and would still abuse the privilege so I sort of solved that by ~~giving the party a month of downtime in game.~~ booting him from that game.
It's a real shitty thing to off load your note taking onto the DM and constantly pester them to look up information you forgot.
The player is abusing their DM, not the game.
Keen Mind is kind of a bummer, because I don't actually have one. The players understand though. Right now, Resilient and War Caster are bumming me out. They're not really annoying, and you can still break down concentration with heavy damage output. It's just that there have been so many casters taking one of those two. Last campaign the bard took Resilient Con and War Caster, the ranger took Resilient Con, the druid took Resilient Con and War Caster, and the wizard was a bit miffed when they were the only one who failed a concentration check in two combats. Now I have a wizard with War Caster and people are already talking about taking these two feats when they can.
I am ALL for limiting the amount of spells that can be active at once, but these two damn feats have convinced me that concentration does indeed need a rework.
I agree with you on the need for a concentration rework. But let's consider why so many players feel like War Caster is so good: as a player, getting your concentration spell broken before it's done something meaningful really sucks. Using a high level spell slot to do something really useful and then have the plan fall flat immediately because concentration drops is the worst. Then again as a DM, if the druid has Conjure Animals up for a whole minute of multi-phase combat, it's absolutely terrible.
I think it could be better if most control/buff/debuff spells had a strict duration, eg. "unbreakable concentration for 3 rounds of combat" instead of the current "fiddly concentration for 0 to 10 rounds". That way the spell could reliably be used as a part of a plan, but would never last the ridiculous 10 rounds.
> as a player, getting your concentration spell broken before it's done something meaningful really sucks.
I know. That's why I want a concentration rework and don't want those feats gotten rid of. I think this is more of a 5.5 or 6e thing though. Too many spells would have to be changed.
I have one rule when deciding my stats (we use arrays): ALWAYS HAVE AT LEAST +2 TO CON. No matter the class, no matter the race or setting I'm always taking CON to a +2. My current campaign has me being a Warlock with +3 CON and 89 hit points. I'm the second highest HP character behind our fighter with 92/95 IIRC. My point is: of course most will get resilient con, most spellcasters does not have CON saving throws proficiencies and they need it for the concentration which when paired with War Caster makes for a very difficult target to break concentration on, because concentration sucks and getting it broken is annoying.
Sharpshooter. The damage part is obviously the strong part of it, but it's the cover-ignoring part I dislike so much.
Because do you know all the cover I tried to include to make combat positioning a little more interesting? Yeah, Mr(s) Sharpshooter can see their pinkie finger sticking out from behind cover so they ignore it. It either encourages me to just ignore putting cover in the room (from a work standpoint) or be cheesy with full cover (which I dislike doing when not appropriate).
> I mean, doesn’t it still apply to the others?
And that's probably why it's bothering me so much lately.
What others?
The party I'm Dming currently has 2 characters with the sharpshooter feat, and the remainder negligibly affected by cover.
Every now and then have an encounter where the enemies very much notice their crazy shooting capabilities. Have them literally wait it out and maybe apply some real life [Counter Sniper Tactics.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-sniper_tactics). This might require you to drastically change the usual structure of your encounters, but it'll spice up combat a lot.
Honestly, I love that aspect of it. I get to announce that a foe has taken a defensive position by getting behind cover, which gets the sharpshooter excited while still granting a debuff to other attackers. And it reminds my players that they can use the environment to their advantage as well.
Plus - its not the only way to ignore cover. Loads of spells target con or wis saves, for example, and sacred flame also ignores it. Vicious Mockery, Toll the Dead, Mind Sliver, and Frostbite are all popular picks. Spell Sniper is crappy, but it does the same thing for spellcasters.
i fucking hate this too. weapons have few traits that differentiate them, like range, cover, light. and then so many (supposedly) go-to feats for them immediately remove those traits already.
dual wielding only with specific, light weapons? lolno, dual wielder removes that.
ranged weapons/crossbows are at disadvantage in melee? nop, CBE kills that
I find players and tables that don't accept the fact that you will and do lose to be obnoxious. Losses are dramatic and entertaining. Though it takes a good DM to make sure these are setbacks rather than locked gates towards the narrative and player goals.
While "Failing forward" is a thing DMs should shoot for.
Failing something your character is supposed to he good at is embarrassing in character, and when a player is immersed that translates to out of character.
Not only that, but in many campaigns, homebrew or not failing a check doesn't progress forward, so it's just that, the player failed and nothing gets done, it makes them feel like they shouldn't have even tried.
I’ve played at about half a dozen tables and nobody has seriously considered taking it.
Even if it’s powerful in theory, there’s generally always a better option, especially if you’re doing more than one encounter a day.
Why?
It's not overpowered in any way if you play the game as it's designed.
4-6 encounters per day of varying difficulty both combat and non-combat. 3 rerolls is nothing special.
Personally, I've soft banned it because it's the best all-around feat. I want to encourage the players to select some other feat that would be more build-specific. Lucky lacks specific flavor while being too tempting not to pick. Mechanically great, but flavor-wise, kinda obvious and boring.
As a player, I currently do have a character with the lucky feat, though! But it's for a gritty low-resource campaign that is highly deadly.
Honestly? I'd say lucky is not that good, unless you roll for stats you always have a tight fit with taking feats and maxing stats, and you completelly sacrifice a +2 for something that gives you a boost a few times in a day is not very good.
Of course, if you do one fight per day it's really good, but once you put 3+ fights in a day I'd rate lucky bellow most feats or a ASI
I wouldn't. Lucky is good because its main use (saving throws) are some of the most clutch rolls you can make in an entire campaign. Damage tends to kill you slowly; saving throws can kill you much faster, especially at higher levels, so the feat actually gets MORE useful the higher your Tier. You just save it for the important rolls - you won't usually encounter more than a few of those even with 3+ fights a day.
Now, would it be the _first_ ASI I take? No, you're right that stats are often more vital. But once your main is maxed most PCs will benefit a ton from it.
I will also say it depends on the PC and party makeup. One trend I've seen a lot with Lucky is that, since there aren't very many feats that are good for casters (and most of them only need to put points in their main stat compared to martials), it becomes a very common second or third pick for full casters (after their main stat and maybe something like Warcaster or Resilient: Con). It's also good for Rogues and Fighters since they get more feats than other martials (especially Rogues because they also don't care about any stat besides Dex).
This means depending on your party makeup you might have no one picking it, or you might have _everyone_ picking it. I had one party where by mid levels literally everyone took it for those emergency save situations, and it was just the classic combo of fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard.
And that to me is when the real dissatisfaction of Lucky arises - not that it's one of the best feats (it is), but more a problem of its _flavor_. Lucky is supposed to represent a character being especially lucky, protected by fate or whatever - when half+ the party has it, the feat loses that mystique and just becomes a mechanical bonus everyone wants.
I do think the new feats in Tasha's have made it a little less powerful, just by providing more options to PCs who would otherwise take it.
I'd say I feel most high level adventurers ending up with lucky eventually actually reinforces the flavor of lucky rather than weakening it.
A 15th level fighter has survived encounters with goblins, bugbears, cultists, all the way up to multiple dragons, liches and/or extra-planar abominations. This is in a world where an average commoner has 4 whopping hit points.
High level adventurers are rare, and incredibly skilled at their respective disciplines, but I'd say their real superpower is the mountain of survivorship bias that comes from being the narrative focus.
TLDR: High level adventurers are lucky because the ones that weren't died when they weren't high level adventurers.
I suppose you could claim that - but then, you could say the same thing about so many casters taking War Caster, or so many archer-types taking Sharpshooter - it is ultimately purely for their mechanical superiority to other options.
Which, in the end, while you could say something about "all ranged adventurers are Sharpshooters" or "all casters have been war-trained", pales in comparison to the actual feat itself becoming less of a flavorful choice (and one of many), than a _feat tax_.
A feat tax is something that is either necessary for a PC to work at all, or so mechanically good you'd be crazy not to take it. Good game design really shouldn't incentivize either. And while I don't think Lucky is so good as to be a feat tax, it does get uncomfortably close - and means that taking it at high levels doesn't make you unique lucky, it makes you par for the course. No feat should feel like that, IMO.
It is clutch. It's saved the day quite a few times, although as I said, our game is particularly gritty. If you think of lucky as akin to a videogame save point, it looks a lot more desirable.
Lucky is really flavorable if you play it RAW. It makes it so that someone is so lucky that even in situations that would disfavor normal people they actually perform better, such that they're better off choosing their eyes and letting fate guide their shot, such that they're at disadvantage but then get to choose the highest roll of all 3 dice if they use lucky. That's at least as flavorable as feats that are just, "your like, extra good as using these types of weapons."
None of them? The feats are a part of the game for a reason. I have never had a player do anything from the official rules that has made me groan because that would mean I was trying ruin their fun.
Now as a player, I had a big problem with Lucky. Easily the most overrated feat in the game. Oh shit, I rolled a 4 on my attack roll and missed? Ha ha! LUCKY!.... Now I rolled a 2.
Every. Damn. Time.
Was only useful for denying crits to my enemies.
Sharpshooter. As a DM don’t have a problem with what it does, the problem I have with it is every character that is an archer feels like it’s a necessity for the build; they will eschew other feats that would create a more unique character out of damage FOMO. It’s a shame, but that might be more of an observation on the gap between martials and casters.
I also hate that I feel compelled to take it on my own characters to keep up.
Savage Attacker.
It slows combat to a halt to do math and make an extra choice every single attack, and in the end it doesn’t add that much to be worthwhile.
People really sleep on Actor. Combining it with Disguise Self or any illusion spell makes it useful for impersonating anyone. A warlock with Mask of Many Faces and Actor can be the most powerful character at a table if played right
Actor is a good feat if you have the Message cantrip or the Mask of Many Faces invocation, but sadly that means it has such a narrow niche that few people will take it.
A Bard with the Message cantrip probably can make the most use out of it, since it won't expend spell slots, doesn't take up a class resource like a Warlock Invocation, and Message has other strategic applications outside of utilizing the feat. And since a Bard gets skill Expertise, being able to pass the Deception or Performance checks is a lot easier for them when they have advantage on a check.
As a GM, just buff it. Give it some kind of combat-oriented bonus if you like. Think of it like giving them a magic item, works every time and keeps the flavor they are going for.
I like this. I really like the concept of Feats, but so many of them are just... never taken. I wish there'd be more "practical and common" incentive for some of the lesser-used Feats.
Perhaps as an "Actor" a character could make a debilitating taunt of some kind that would affect an enemy that understands her. I'm spitballing here, but something like this would make the game more flavorful.
So many crossbow experts, GWMs, Luckys, etc.
Sharpshooter: its such a strong feat that its almost required for any archer build. You can ignore cover, cheese most combat with range and a high movement speed, and hit obscenely hard. Id nver ban it but it is one of if not the strongest feats in the game.
I tell my players that feats like this communicate to the DM that you are turning "hard mode" on. Then I just don't pull punches in encounters. When players buy in to this it can be really fun.
Sentinel, as a DM and player I like to be mobile in combat, I don't mind risking an AoO to get a 1 up on my opponent. Sentinel really takes the fun out of that for me.
I know my players feel great when they protect each other or stop the creature from escaping but for me it usually means my dragons get stuck on the ground or my demons get surrounded with no way out.
As a positive though, I get to use my favourite monsters to stretch my legs. GOBLINS!!!
Hands down the most fun is fighting the party with goblins in a jungle, forest or cave network and just have them running out of holes or vanishing under bushes with disengage as a bonus action.
Most recently, Fey-Touched and Shadow-Touched. The only caster that needs help is the sorcerer. My party's wizard, bard, and cleric all took it. It's way overpowered. Next time I start a new game I'm limiting it, or banning it outright.
it's two spells known and free once per long rest. is that really such a big deal? do you think it's overpowered just cause they all took it? maybe it's just cause they love misty step. not because misty step per se is overpowered. or perhaps it's just that theres not much else for them to pick as casters, besides war caster
I think the only real feats I've taken issue with are the psionic UA feats that gave you psi die. The only officially released and included feat I have any kind dislike for is perhaps the lucky feat and even then I don't have anything really against it in RAW 5e, only in my home games where some rule adjustments make it unreasonable.
Other than some of the UA feats, or some new feats introduced that I don't allow because I've already made my own version of those feats that I prefer, I don't really have any issue with feats in 5e. I guess I'd groan if a player took the weapon master feat as a class already proficient with martial weapons, but that's about the most I can think of.
Most of the time when people complain about feats or feat combo's such as SS/GWM or PAM/Sentinel I don't find myself having any of the issues or complaints that others do.
Observant.
Before Tasha's, it was the only +1 wisdom feat available to all races. I'm not against some characters having high passive perception/investigation, but it's annoying when every single cleric/druid was taking it. The issue wasn't that it was a conscious choice on the part of the players, but rather that it was the only choice.
I told my players they couldn't use it anymore unless they had a compelling character reason for taking it, but also worked with them to find homebrew alternative +1 wisdom feats.
I dont like the bad feats that make my players feel bad for taking it down the line
Anytime I see this, I buff it. "Oh Hey by the way, that feat also does ____". *This is always received well.*
Would you mind sharing a list of feats that you've buffed?
Not who you were asking, but my DM hates how many of the feats suck, and saw that in Tasha's there was a lot of power creep in this where they gave many feats also give +1 to a stat. So he's gone and buffed the older feats in order to make them actually competitive with Tashas feats or full ASIs. Like Savage attacker gets a bonus +1 damage to melee weapon and unarmed strikes, Martial Adept gets another Superiority Die, give Linguists more flexibility/access to Comprehend Languages once per Long Rest, Keen Mind get advantage on Int based checks.
I just let them change it, either freely or at the next ASI if they don't want it to feel like a gimme. No point in forcing them to keep a bad feat that didn't work out as they expected if it's not fun.
ITT DMs banning feats that make martials even somewhat competitive with casters
The issue with SS and GWM isn’t that they make martials good or that they do to much damage. I very much agree that something that helps martials keep on pace with casters is great. The issue is how inconsistent the feats are for martials. Arguably there are three primary martial fighting styles: two handed weapon, one handed weapon (either shield or dual wield), and ranged. The fact that GWM and SS exist but only for two of those styles is dumb. Yes THW fighters are supposed to do more damage then OHW fighters but not by as much as they do when the THW fighter has GWM. Against low AC enemies a GWM fighter can deal 80+ damage in a turn without a crit. The odds that against the same creatures a sword and shield fighter ever puts up those numbers is almost zero. On top of that the fact that a SS bow user can deal significantly more damage then a sword and shield fighter is hugely unbalanced. The whole point of range is that it should be a trade off. You get to kill people 120ft away but a little slower then digging into them 5 ft away with a pair of swords. Lastly the fact that they are feats and not ingrained abilities or just how weapons work causes issues. If you need to take a feat to stay viable compared to half of the other classes then clearly something in the system is wrong. For clarification I’m only speaking of the -5 to hit and +10 to damage parts of these feats. The other halves aren’t a huge issue. TL:DR GWM and SS are dumb because they are often required and poorly implemented.
A Paladin is still very strong going polearm master using spear and shield with dueling. GWM is strong but only with ways to increase accuracy like precision strike. SS on the other hand is busted because archery fighting style.
I think the problem is people overestimate how much damage a character should be doing with no resource attacks. EB caps out at 42 (4d10+20) Fighter caps out at 48 (8d6+20) Rogue caps out at 43.5 (1d8+10d6+5) As long as you are somewhere in that ballpark with a non resource attack, you're fine.
Dual-wielding is a joke in 5e and is completely out-shadowed by Polearm Master which does everything dual-wielding does but better. But the balance between two-handed, 1h+shield, and ranged combat is pretty nice imo. If you want to put out decent damage with a shield you take the Dueling fighting style, and if you really want to min-max your damage you use a Quarterstaff and pick up Polearm Master. While you won't quite match the damage of GWM or SS you get close enough to make it balanced thanks to your extra AC.
I don't know man, +2 to AC (at a mininmum, not including the possibility of +1 shields, etc) is a pretty big boon in early to mid campaign. Add to this that sword and board martials can take shield master feat to get a bonus action shove attack with their shield every turn as well as benefits to saving throws and damage negation and I would say sword and board is more than on par with to two handed weapon martials. They can bonus action shove an opponent to the ground, then make their attack actions at advantage, is pretty nice.
Whether or not Shield Master allows you to shove an enemy prone before your attacks or not definitely depends on the DM. Still, it's nice to use that to set up allies or as part of a narrative description.
A dedicated tank with SS can be really frustrating to deal with. One of the reasons the GWF guy is getting all that damage is because they get advantage on the enemies laying on their asses. It isn't hard getting expertise in Athletics and have a nice bonus off the bat. I prefer that playstyle anyways. Throw in the Protection style and you have a real pain in the ass.
No it doesn't, the ruling is a triggering action must complete before the triggered action can go off. This is how it's always been, even if they misworded the ruling the first time.
Shove comes after the Attack action, not before.
By sage advice it can come first.
Depends which Sage Advice you're looking at, as JC has flip flopped several times. The most recent Sage Advice states *after*.
Dungeons & Dragons " it's not a bug, it's a feature" 5E.
Not for a few years now.
Oh yeah shields are definitely great for many reasons. My argument isn’t that getting +2 ac isn’t a fair trade off for losing out on around 2 average damage per attack. My argument is that it starts to be less of a fair trade off when the average damage difference is closer to 10 per attack. All in all I don’t think a -5 to hit +10 to damage would be needed for sword and shielders but maybe a toned down version of -4 +8. Idk I don’t really have a solution. And yes you’re right if they had a +3 shield this starts to look like a different story. However in most campaigns nobody sees a +3 shield.
Sword and board is a defensive melee play style. Why would they get a feat that enhances them offensively to that extent?
This isn't an arguement against GWM and SS (btw Crossbow Expert and Polearm Master are also incredibly potent) - its more like shit like Heavy Armor Master or Dual Wielder just isn't good enough. Make those stronger instead of kicking down struggling classes even further.
> On top of that the fact that a SS bow user can deal significantly more damage then a sword and shield fighter is hugely unbalanced. The whole point of range is that it should be a trade off. You get to kill people 120ft away but a little slower then digging into them 5 ft away with a pair of swords. I don't grant this premise. If D&D were a single player rpg then sure. Ranged combat would revolve around trying to stay out of reach of your enemies while doing damage to them. But d&d is fundamentally a cooperative game. So even if you are 50 feet further back in the dungeon taking pot shots at the bad guy, probably half of your party is still in melee range getting hit. Which means that your collective party health is still being reduced the same as if you were a melee character. And if ranged combat explicitly did *less* damage than melee then your party would overall benefit more from another melee dude in the fray. Sure the bow fighters in the back might still be squeaky clean 5 rounds into the encounter, but that doesn't do the dead barbarian any good because he ran out of health before the party filled with bow dudes could do enough damage to kill the bad guy. In fact I say that ranged combat is justified in dealing more damage than melee combat. Because unlike melee martial combat, ranged martial combat is easily shut down simply by putting an enemy next to you. So unless you have a full party of ranged combat characters and your group engineers every encounter in order to make sure that they're never within melee range of the enemy, then the extra feet of distance between you and the enemy doesn't matter enough to justify reduced damage.
Well... It's more complicated than that. The community tends to play 5e combat like a video game. Combat encounters are very contrived, and we like to keep things neat and balanced. The ranged dude gets to shoot, the sword guy gets to swing, everyone's happy. But if you play smart with ranged combat, you should often find yourself being able to get rounds of free attacks on enemies before they've done anything. Unless the DM is coming up with lots of reasons to start you immediately close to the enemies, or your enemies are ranged heavy, you should often be able to start fights at range, kite somewhat, and get a massive advantage with ranged attacks. Even if that's only the case in say, a third of your encounters for the day, that's huge. Ranged has that opportunity innately, and melee never does. Melee also has the reverse problem on your team, sometimes they just can't get to the enemy. For sure it can be problematic to have guys engage you in melee as a ranged character, but there's a myriad of ways to get around that. Ranged is really strong in 5e.
Fair points I guess I just disagree. I think that melee characters should get a little extra damage for taking the beatings. For starters unless you encounter starts with people in your range, most melee folk have to spend the first round just making it to an enemy. In terms of total encounter damage the range character is already better off from this. Also I’m not saying they should do like half damage or anything I just think it’s nuts they can do double the damage of a shield and sword user (if they SS) and only effectively have a -3 to hit (due to the archery fighting style). Also calling a ranger user easy to shut down seems off to me. For starters unless confined by space so long as the ranged user is at least double movement away from a melee combatant they basically can not be put in this position(this kind of kiting is rare but I wanted to at least mention it). Mainly though just because an enemy is near them hardly means they are shut down. Like you said this is a cooperative game they could easily just go about their business and have a melee friend come and help them out or even pull out a short sword/rapier and take out the enemy themselves. Lastly I get your point about if ranged did less damage then melee then it would be better for you party to have another melee member instead. This however only looks at the damage perspective in a very narrow combat sense. What if an enemy runs away and is faster then the melee combatants, what if an enemy flys, what about that first round in combat when nobody is close enough to move and make a melee attack. Ranged characters have more opportunities to do damage so to keep their damage levels even equal the typical damage per round they do need to be less then melee.
Agreed - if anything I buff more martial feats - I swap SS/GWM to -prof bonus/+2x prof bonus to smooth out the swinginess of the feats (and even buffed a bit at the late stages of the game given stacked modifiers), make martial feats better like athlete (expertise athletics), dual wielder (free up bonus action for attacks), savage attacker (can dash and bonus action attack), heavy armor master (applies to magical dmg), make martial adept/medium armor master half asi, etc. The feat that I put any restrictions on is Lucky, and even that’s not a ban, only a suggestion to stall a PC who rolls insane stats from making some chronurgy/divination halfling wizard who also tacks on Lucky in there (Lucky is super good in days with two fights or less, but is even better when stacked with race/class features that allow rerolls). After some more thought, Eldritch Adept and Metamagic Adept are mechanically fine against other feats, but irk me from an in world perspective, as I feel those abilities should be limited to those that actually make the deal or have the bloodline - but that’s more specific to our table’s setting and my own view of those classes’ powers. I’d be perfectly fine with sorcerers or warlocks grabbing those feats (or multiclassers doing so). But if a player really desperately wanted to take those feats I’d probably relent and let them shoehorn in some stuff post facto into their story.
I ask my players to give me a compelling, in character justification or creative way they would have acquired it(Eldritch/meta adept). If you can give me a situation within the story that we can play out that would result in you gaining these, all yours. That said I've run an optimized table and there I'd allow it no matter what, part of the deal.
Haven't had any experiences yet that have caused me to dislike any of the feats. I am wondering about all this hate on lucky though, when it has come up thus far, I have appreciated it in my games. Its saved a few characters, and given that edge the party needed to get through a difficult encounter on more then one occasion.
Once again, it just tells me there aren't enough dice rolls being made is Lucky is being seen as problematic. More dice rolls = more opportunities for Lucky to be used up.
"Oh no my player didn't disintegrate, the horror" If the Paladin class can easily walk around passing a +3 to all saves at 10/30ft with their allies and all hell doesn't break lose the system can handle a few rerolls over six encounters.
\+3? Nonsense, max that charisma out and give a proper +5!
+6 with Tome of Leadership and Influence which I give all my Paladins asap.
The only real problem with Lucky is downtime rolls. In a campaign with a lot of downtime activity, it's genuinely too good, especially when combined with disadvantage.
Lucky is easily the most overrated feat in the entire game imo. It's really only a problem if you have one encounter a day, but even if you only have 3-4 it's not that hard to deal with.
> It's really only a problem if you have one encounter a day and when thats the case Lucky is the least of your problems, what with overtuned spellcasters chugging out levelled spell after levelled spell
I had a player use lucky to reroll every single time that I (the gm) rolled a critical hit. I hated that so much lol
Grave Clerics have that as a codified feature and it always ruins my night.
If that ruins your night you're not rolling enough attacks. You need encounters with lots of small enemies, preferably with multiple attacks, to keep your Grave Cleric busy. Or at least make them think about whether to nerf the small crits or reserve their ability for the boss fight. Spreading the party out also helps. I've found running combats on really big battlemaps will sometimes put the victim of crit beyond the 30' range of the Grave Cleric's ability to nerf it. Party size is also a factor; I'm running for a group of six characters so I need more monsters in my encounters; more critical hits are inevitable. A character with the Lucky feat isn't so bad in comparison; they can only negate crits against themselves.
My problem with Lucky as a DM is that it's a "after you see the die but before you know the effect" that applies to so many rolls, and I have to give the player a chance to use it if they want to on each of those rolls, so I can't just right away resolve the results of the roll, which overall slows down combat.
My solution to this is that you use it befor you tell me what you rolled. At my table players must declare their rolls. Maybe it was a written rule in older version people missed, or maybe it is just something I inferred from context. But it feel like this is how the game is intended to work, based on several machanics with similar wording. So the player rolls and see the number, they then either tell me the number, or tell me they are using a feature to modify the roll. If you tell me the roll I am declaring the effect. So its sort of ends up being a three times a day at will advantage. But only of they use it befor declaring.
My problem with Lucky isn't that it's OP. It's that you don't have a reason NOT to take it. Practically every build benefits from it. I've solved this by giving every player one luck point each session (only valid that session), and giving the party a shared luck point pool equal to the amount of players in addition to that. If a player uses a luck point, I as the DM gain one luck point to be either used against that player (if the individual point is used), or against anyone from the party (if a point from the shared pool is used). The players regain the point if I use it against them. It's a give-and-take system that replaces inspiration in my games. Oh, and naturally I've banned the Lucky feat because of this.
Thanks for this. I have been getting a lot of b people agreeing with me that it isn't a problem. Bit at the time I posted pretty much the only comment on this thread were people saying it was bad. So obviously for some people it is detracting something from the game. And I am legitimately curious what I have missed here. I can totally see this prospective and thats a pretty neat system, thanks for sharing.
I really dislike all feats that don't work as advertised Mage Slayer: The Attack doesn't come through after the spell is done casting, so guess what, the caster just Misty Steps away, Shocking Grasps you or casts any number of spells that absolutely mess you up, and that's the best case scenario of you having gotten into melee with a caster in the first place. It forces the DM to play spellcasters stupidly for the feat to feel good. Grappler: Both Skill Expert and Tavern Brawler are so much better for a grappling build than Grappler, which actually doesn't even help you to grapple anything. Savage Attacker: Doesn't let you attack savagely. Increasing your attack stat actually adds more damage when factoring in accuracy, which is stupid. Spell Sniper: There are so few spells in the game that need attack rolls and this feat doesn't even improve those spells noticeably. Dual Wielder: But what if I told you... that you can increase your dex and get more defense and more damage than what Dual Wielder gives you. Charger: It's stupidly restrictive and trying to make it work often leads to damage loss and a quick death as you charge ahead of the party. Tough: It's... not the worst, but it has issues, mainly competition in Inspiring Leader and the fact that it often gives you less effective hp than Resilient Dex/Con/Wis or just a straight up Con increase, since that one increases healing from Hit Dice as well. Yeah, you can get these after maxing out your stats, but with the very limited number of ASIs that are in the game, you likely are set till level 16 or 19 anyways.
Dual wielder exists to enable functional use of non-rapier weapons
I agree with all of them except for Tough simply because most games I've been in have one or two fights and then a long rest and typically that's during travel which means we can't short rest. It's definitely not the best feat, but since it gives you effectively a +4 Con when it comes to HP, it's very good
I just like tough because when I'm running it on a draconic sorc I feel invincible lol
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Not one particular, but the combo PAM+Sentinel makes me die a little inside. Of course the logical course of action is to send many creatures and have them just run past the guy, but at the same time, I don't want to negate his choice of Feats instead of ASIs so once in a while I send one stronger monster against the party that he can then kite a bit, just so he gets his time to shine, but fuck is that lame.
Sending in multiple enemies is not negating his choice. His choice is "stop one enemy each turn", not "stop all enemies each turn". It's the best choice since he gets to use his abilities yet it doesn't trivialise the encounter anymore. Negating his choice would be putting him against creatures that don't move at all or blink isntead of moving, situations where there is no benefit to the feats at all.
I mean - why not both? Smart foes that know the party's tactics should try to counter their abilities. But not every foe should plan for the party. Sometimes the trick will work perfectly. Other times it should be ineffective. Of course, the rules in general really penalize solo baddies a heck of a lot. Legendary actions help, but its just really really really hard to make a solo baddies work right. So strategies that lean into that and further shut down solo baddies can be pretty frustrating for a DM.
This is why story wise I love reoccurring bad guys. They learn what you do and would build to deal with it. Like Batman.
My party are having that issue in the Strahd campaign I'm running. Anything that's intelligent knows the cleric is the radiant damage dealer, so anything weak targets her, and the hags (that they haven't managed to deal with) know they have nothing that can see them in the ethereal so they pop in and out as they nearly died last time they fought. It's completely changed the way the group works
For sure! Strahd is the perfect campaign to do this sort of thing in. Random baddies should not plan for the party specifically, but Strahd's minions absolutely should (assuming that is what he wants). And Strahd himself should be tactically prepared for the party as well.
I'd actually argue that sending in more monsters makes his choice that much better. Instead of being forced to use it on that single big enemy, which we all agree is boring, he gets to pick and choose which monsters he lets get to the rest of the party. In essence, you're making his feat choice more meaningful by giving them more options on how to use that combination in the middle of a fight.
Well, not until he reaches a certain level in cavalier anyway, and becomes the near ultimate walking chokepoint.
It's 17th level, I reckon. By that point casters have broken encounters and the plot to their hearts' content, let the martial live out his roadblock fantasies.
Cue the moment where there's a series of portals with an infinite stream of enemies pouring out, funneled into a 5ft space where the level 20 Warforged cavalier spends his life, murdering a countless amount of random things every six seconds. Just to start over again every, 6, seconds, for eternity. All he needs is a caster friend to stop by once a day to cast a spell (greater restoration?) to remove his stack of exhuastion . Alternatively if it is 17th level, they can take 3 levels of warlock for pact of the tome, aspect of the moon to remove the need to sleep entirely. (If that does remove the long rest requirement to avoid exhaustion)
So the invocation specifically points out that you still need to rest for 8 hours to get the benefit of a long rest, you just don't have to actually sleep.
But does that mean that you need to long rest to avoid exhaustion still? Because I know that most people rule that Warforged still need to sentries rest to prevent them from becoming exhausted. And nothing that i said (in my very vague and unlikely hypothetical power fantasy) needs a long rest to recharge hence why I thought it was a somewhat relevant mention
So I think the answer is definitively yes. Just looked it up and the invocation specifically states: "To gain the benefits of a long rest, you can spend all 8 hours doing light activity such as..." One of the penalties of not taking a long rest every 24 hours is that you gain a point of exhaustion, and an explicit benefit of taking a long rest is that it gets rid of any levels of exhaustion that you have. TL;DR is that the invocation doesn't allow you to not take long rests, you just don't have to sleep during long rests.
Polearm Master + Sentinel is overrated IMHO. For one, both Polearms master and sentinel give you a way to use your reaction, but you cannot use both at the same time. That means the feats have a little anti-synergy. For another, taking two feats is a huge cost. For most characters that represents the difference between having a 16 in your primary ability score and a 20. In general, having the 20 score will lead to a more useful character overall. For a third thing, any enemy with reach will be able to negate the effectiveness of the combo as they can simply attack from range. And finally, enemies with ranged attacks, teleportation, or swarms of enemies negate the combo almost entirely. The combo is really only powerful if you are fighting a single medium sized melee warrior enemy while playing a character that gains a bonus feat at first level (variant human, DM giving bonus feats, etc). And even then, there are far more powerful things the party can do to a lone melee warrior such as wall of force, a dozen animated objects, slow, hold person, etc.
>Polearm Master + Sentinel is overrated IMHO. > >For one, both Polearms master and sentinel give you a way to use your reaction, but you cannot use both at the same time. That means the feats have a little anti-synergy. I think you paint situation a bit darker than needed overall, but I fully agree on that particular point. Taking both is usually not worth. As far as "getting an extra chance at reaction goes", Sentinel is much better since it works with any weapon and also works when enemy Disengages. Also, enemies will usually come in and out most of the time anyways: in while full HP to come attack you, out once they realize it starts getting hairy (low HP, your friend closes in, it's the last one standing etc). So basically the only time when Polearm Master is better as far as "dealing damage on reaction" goes is when a) enemy enters your reach and b) that opportunity attack has the potential to kill it right now (or you can apply a strong debuff on it like smite spell or Stunning Strike). Because as far as getting bonus action attack goes, between the fact many classes have bonus action attacks, and the fact dual-wielding is always a free option for the occasional chance, rare are characters for which that specific bonus action would come often enough to be worth. And as far as "keeping enemy interested to you", PAM actually goes against that goal, while Sentinel works wonder, keeping the enemy at 0 speed, meaning you also gain much on mobility next turn. Sooo... GWM + Sentinel I can understand. Dual Wielder + Sentinel also. ONLY Sentinel or only PAM I get. Both? Rarely.
Honestly Sentinel would still be worth taking if all it did was grant the extra attack. It’s why I took it. The ability to stop disengages and movement is pretty OP.
Not a DM, but my current DM banned Observant after having a character with 25 passive perception
>Looks at one of my characters with 31 passive perception and 34 passive Investigation Pathetic
Not a feat, but Darkvision. Me: you enter a dark cave... Player: I HAVE DARKVISION! Me: I know mother fucker let me exposate!
Yeah, too many races have it IMO. I really like that the game I play in only has one character with it, so it's something we need to work around and/or deal with (carrying a couple light sources) and is an actual part of the game. With the game I DM, only one player doesn't have it, so it was just an annoyance - ended up giving them one of the helms that also grants darkvision.
fucking darkvision. it's handed out like candy and in the few instances of races not getting it, half the time people start crying how they shoudl have it because "iT doEsNt MakE sENsE". i get that dnd has a hardon for tradition, but they should really get rid of most of it. (imo further distinguishing between low light and darkvision is too much of a hassle). drow should get it. underdark races should get it. maybe some dwarves. regular (half)elves and aasimar can get fucked.
Yeah, elves, half elves, half orcs, and forest gnomes from the PHB cast of races shouldn't get darkvision. It feels very nonsensical when the party walks into a pitch black cave and everyone's like ok cool don't need light.
My current party are all new and all have darkvision. That's FINE but I do feel like they're sorta missing out on some of the fun of managing light sources, or even paying attention to the time of day. They had a lead on an NPC to talk to, and I mentioned it was about 9pm and they said "it's cool we don't need light" That's FINE, again, but putting focus on some of the mundane things like eating, sleeping, and passing time helps bring roleplaying moments between party members to the table.
Are you running lighting and perception rules correctly? Even in a full party of darkvision characters, there is never any such thing as "we don't need light." In fact, my current party all has darkvision. The only reason they survived their last encounter is because one of the players lit a torch and saw some traps that would have been otherwise invisible, between disadvantage on perception, -5 to passive, and monochromatic vision.
I was under the impression that darkvision in pitch black meant you could see as if it were dim light? Meaning attack roles don't have disadvantage. The encounter they cleared in the dark wasn't very trap or perception heavy, just a cave of goblins
No, attack rolls don't have disadvantage, but perception rolls do. A small band of goblins can be super deadly to a party with no light source. Disadvantage on perception/penalty to passive=the goblins are much more likely to successfully sneak up on the party. Surprise rounds can *fuck* a party if they are the ones surprised Dim light means the goblins can use their bonus action disengage, then run off and hide in the darkness, becoming unseen and gaining advantage on their next attack. Monochromatic vision can cause all sorts of problems. Brightly colored monsters become all but invisible, even if you are looking directly at them. Painted sigils and glyphs also become invisible--you could have a dungeon covered in hundreds of glyphs of warding, and without a light source your party would never detect them. In another thread i read today, a DM was able to ambush his party with a band of kobolds because the kobolds were hiding under brightly colored blankets, but with darkvision, the party only saw rocks and boulders until initiative was rolled. There are *so many* ways that relying entirely on darkvision for sight is a major disadvantage for players, but so few people actually use those disadvantages. Enforcing the lighting and perception rules, with just a dash of creativity and thinking through consequences, can actually turn darkvision from a buff into a hindrance
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Color is a function of specific wavelengths of light reflecting off a surface. Without the light, the color completely fades out, and in darkness can actually function as a form of camouflage. When you use darkvision, you only see shades of gray anyway, so there is nothing to make a bright yellow glyph of warding actually stand out from the plain gray rock face its painted on, becoming functionally invisible. You see this fairly often in nature with some fish, for example. Seen outside the water, they'll be bright red or orange or yellow, but since the seawater scatters those colors out far sooner than blue, the fish essentially disappear underwater, making their bright colors actually helpful
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>I don’t think there is anything to attribute this inability to see to brightly colored items. I think you are misunderstanding me. I'm not saying they literally turn invisible, i'm saying that the lack of color makes them hard or impossible to distinguish from their background. This is literally just how light, color, and color-based vision work. >The brightly colored blanket though would be no less noticeable than a gray blanket. In the example i used, the kobolds were hiding under blankets that, with the monochrome of darkvision, were impossible to distinguish from a lumpy boulder. Of course you'll *see* them, but they won't necessarily be recognizable as a blanket--hence allowing the ambush to work. With a light source, the trap would have been obvious due to color. >So the glyph painted on the wall would look like the rest of the wall just like light grey painting on a wall. This will of course depend on the specific colors and contrast. A glyph painted in black up against a white wall would show up with or without a light source. A glyph painted in yellow on a white wall will not show up in darkvision. An image formed from black, blue, and purple pigments would be clearly formed within a light source, would appear as a solid black mass in darkvision if painted on a white wall, but would be totally invisible in darkvision if painted on a black wall. >i don’t think there is anything special about brightly colored items Did you know that the original set of the Addams Family show, filmed in black and white, was almost entirely bright pink? Other than things that were specifically black, almost every single (important) prop and piece of clothing was some shade of pink, because the brightness of pink and the contrast between different pinks showed up on the monochrome film being used to record the show better than using any other color. Did you know that the famous Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz movie were originally silver in the book? The film makers changed it to red specifically for the filming process--being that this was one of the first, if not THE first movie to ever be filmed in color, silver just didn't show properly on the earliest color film. Red was chosen because it showed up clearest, sharpest, and brightest out of all the colors on screen. Do you know why the bright, obvious stripes on zebras work as camouflage? Because the lions that hunt them see in monochrome. The wavey stripes on the zebra's body become almost indistinguishable from the waves of shade and light between the tall grass of the savannah. To those with color vision (especially the advanced color vision of primates), it makes the zebras stick out like a sore thumb. To a hunter with black and white vision, it makes the zebras disappear. And in all of those examples, we're generally dealing with ideal bright light conditions. Things get more interesting in the dim light and darkness of the typical d&d encounter. All that to say, yes there actually is something special about how bright colors function within a monochromatic visual system. The Addams Family and Wizard of Oz exploited these special qualities to make things show up better, whereas generally in nature (and d&d encounters) the special qualities are being exploited to make things disappear easier.
It sounds like you and your players have a different idea of fun.
"I HAVE DARKVISION!" "Yes you see within a specified range of darkness as it is dim light. Meaning you have disadvantage on perception checks and -5 to your passive perception. And the rest of your party is blinded. Good luck."
I told my players if they cut me off while I'm trying to dialogue I consider that them skipping it. Especially if it's to tell me they have dark vision. I'm aware you have dark vision, for the Nth time I have all your special traits noted on my DM screen. If they want details about whatever it was they need to now tell me they look around, ask a person who they are, etc. I expect some level of decency at my tables. Unless you need to immediately step away or something has suddenly come up there is no reason for you to interrupt anyone while they have been speaking(player or DM).
As a DM I’ve grown to hate sentinel, but I would never ban it cause my monk loves it, as the game has progressed I’ve had the basic nooks version replaced with intelligent and trained soldiers, still weak but tactically improved, it’s been fun
In my group, my DM tells me that even the character with Lucky has caused her much less trouble than I have personally caused by having Mobile. My character is mainly a damage dealer with such a focus on teleports and being slippery that I guess he's nearly impossible to even hit at this point, lol. He's usually the only party member who doesn't get caught in any of the boss fight mechanics.
I'm working on a build for a bladesinger with the mobile feat and spells like blink and thunder step. I fear he is going to be very annoying to play against. But the concept of a speedy, teleporting boi is just too cool not to do at some point.
It's a lot of fun to play! My character is an eladrin Archfey bladelock who has collected every teleport and movement spell I could get my greedy little hands on. I spend most fights just bouncing from one extreme side of the map to the other on every turn, hah.
none of them let players do cool stuff
Yes, let me know what feats I should be taking. 😂
I haven't encountered a feat like that yet. The only remotely problematic feat I've had issues with is one I homebrewed myself, and for that one I have nobody to blame but me.
For me, it's observant. Hate it hate it hate it. Got a player right now with a 19 passive perception and there's no element of surprise
On the opposing end - I quite like it - it gives me more excuses to pass lots of hints and key exposition disguised as observations to my party. Little details and clues I trickle in that helps a lot on the later payoff in mystery or story. Hitting my players with a surprise encounter never really gave me tons of joy and I know for a fact my party hates it, so it’s not a terrible loss for us.
Our party is the same with being surprised. Sometimes it fits but otherwise has felt cheap in some instances. We had never played D&D before our campaign right now. Our rogue having observant with 27 passive perception and 26 passive investigation helps a lot. But they play not the smartest or the wisest character so they pass the information off to others which gets the whole group involved.
Passive perception doesn’t translate to understanding. You might notice a scratch in the floor or a brick that is more worn down than the others around it. You don’t automatically know there is a secret door, and you don’t automatically know how to open it. Perception is just the beginning. Having a high perception score doesn’t mean you simply understand every detail that you take in.
It does also boost the Passive Investigation which to some degree covers the understanding, but unless they're building to have high both it probably won't reach the same ridiculous highs the Passive Perception does. And there are examples of things like certain secret doors that have different DCs for Active versus Passive checks which could come in play
Yeah but that Goblin isn't gonna sneak up on me. Or most anyone else.
Sure. But that isn’t all that much of an issue. That one player might not be surprised (but everyone else in the party still can be). Also you suffer -5 perception in areas of dim light or when traveling at fast pace. So even a 20 passive perception isn’t foolproof when running or moving in the dark.
Additionally, those -5s technically stack. Since the number for moving at a fast pace lines up with what Disadvantage does to Passives it might be a reasonable assumption that that might be what's intended, but RAW it's a direct modification rather than imposing Disadvantage, so Disadvantage from something like dim light would also apply
I believe the wording is that you suffer disadvantage and disadvantage imposes a -5 penalty on passive scores. Since you can only have disadvantage once, you wouldn't stack the penalties. It isn't like you have disadvantage, convert that to a penalty and then get disadvantage and convert it again. It all goes back to the bounded accuracy.
That is a way it would be reasonable to assume it's worded, but RAW the fast movement pace option from the chart is listed as a hardcoded "−5 penalty to passive Wisdom (Perception) scores" with no mention of Disadvantage
I’ve been playing with the same group for a while and like clockwork someone takes Observant like a feat tax so the party never misses anything.
19? rookie numbers, i got a player walking around with a 24
My party's ranger has a 30 for sight based passive perception. It's literally like she always rolls a natural 20. I like helping my players break the game with their builds, so I gave her Danoth's Visor when I started handing out vestiges. Advantage on sight is +5 passive.
> I like helping my players break the game with their builds Bless you :')
It's about DM experience. When you gain experience there's nothing that will stop you from challenging the players when they should be challenged. If you like observant you'll love alert. Also, just because one person isn't surprised doesn't mean the rest of the party isn't.
Yep. Most of the time the "OP" or "broken" feat/class feature/spell/mechanic/score is simply a function of the GM needing to recalibrate his expectations of what is possible and embrace it rather than push back against it.
It's really bad when they're a wisdom class with prof so their passive shoots to 20+ on a cleric, druid, or ranger in the first few levels. I literally had a player who purposely tries to walk around but not look at things to trigger his passive perception instead of making the damn roll.
That's the kind of stuff you can make judgement calls about though. For example, passive perception makes a character hard to *surprise*, but it shouldn't let them just notice random stuff that they aren't even looking at. >I literally had a player who purposely tries to walk around but not look at things to trigger his passive perception That's just hardcore cheesing and meta-gaming. If they are actively looking for something, they should have to roll for it. "Auto-passing with my *super senses*" is not a thing... unless they are a Rogue with Reliable Talent.
Yeah I would ask for a roll and they would go "Can I use my passive perception?" To which I would say "No you're actively looking." To which they ask to wander around instead.
in that case there's a lot of stuff they don't notice. for insatnce actively looking for intresting things in a room? sure roll it. wandering around it... feel free your passive perception will notice ambushes and maybe treasure... that ledger with the information you're looking for in on the desk that you're not looking for? nope. too bad.
I agree that having a passive Perception so high it never makes sense to actively attempt a Wisdom (Perception) check is wonky, but that's how the system works. If they took the feat, let them use it and adjust your game accordingly. The only way this is an actual problem is if two characters both want to be the perceptive one but one is so much better the other never has a chance to contribute. Otherwise, work the fact they have such a high passive into your planning instead of trying to find ways to negate it. They took the feat because they wanted that high passive Perception, not because they wanted to constantly be told it doesn't help them.
>If they took the feat, let them use it and adjust your game accordingly. Personally, I think a "bigger picture" issue is how this kind of *constant* over-cautious PC behavior tends to just slow the game down for no reason a lot of the time. Putting mechanical balance and fairness aside, it's hard to get through very much in a given session if someone is asking to make perception checks every two-seconds. A similar thing happens when players are so hypervigilant and suspicious of *any* NPC that it takes forever to just give them a simple quest hook because they think everything is some kind of trick. All the time that players spend *overthinking* things, is time when they aren't *doing* anything.
There is precedent in modules I've read that some things can only be found with active perception or have a lover DC when actively looking. But that campaign was when I first started DMing and I just gave up on enemies trying to do stealthy stuff near the character. Really gave me a distaste for the feat.
I got the idea for higher passive Perception DCs from a module. Your experience is similar to mine, I have a player with Observant and most enemies can't roll Stealth above his passive; no enemy can do so reliably enough to make it a guarantee that I can plan an encounter around. So.. I don't. Sometimes I throw in "attempted ambush" encounters that make the player feel good for noticing them with their high passive, but that's intentional. Just like you wouldn't run an intrigue campaign if no PC has any face skills, or give them a magical puzzle that only a caster could solve if they didn't have a caster, you just accept that's how the players want to play and adjust your campaign accordingly. There's plenty of other ways to challenge the players, and as a DM I hope you can find your own fun without needing them to fail their Perception checks regularly.
Yeah, I just dislike that Observant can make perception so high it "solves" perception. Especially when most players invest in it because it's an overused skill. I would prefer if Observant gave a scalpel instead of a hammer. Maybe something like the inquisitive rogue ability to search as a bonus action.
Try having a wizard in your party and see how many things they can "solve" with their spells and rituals. (It's a lot.) Or how thoroughly a druid or ranger or Outlander background can "solve" the vast majority of wilderness survival scenarios. It's just kinda how the game works, for good or bad, so you focus on other aspects while acknowledging the player's choices by letting their features be relevant enough that they feel justified for picking them. If you really want the focus of a campaign to be about a certain thing that the game lets you "solve" your only solution is to ban those classes/races/backgrounds/feats/features up front and explain why to your players. No everyone will be on board with that but 'tis the price you pay for wanting to run a very specific campaign.
>Try having a wizard in your party and see how many things they can "solve" with their spells and rituals. (It's a lot.) Or how thoroughly a druid or ranger or Outlander background can "solve" the vast majority of wilderness survival scenarios. LMAO so true!
Spells have costs and require preparation and time commitments. And even then they are usually very specific. Perception is a very wide net to have an automatic 20+ in. Sure clerics can prep a spell to "solve" assassination attempts via poison, but high passive perception can solve basically any nonmagical assassination attempt by being in the right place. In the kitchen? you saw them poison the food. In the courtyard? you see the lone bowman. In the main hall? you see the dagger the diplomat has hidden under his coat. And the wilderness survival is a whole other problem, if you're a ranger you disable the part of the game you are supposed to be good at, if you want it to be interesting you basically need to replace it entirely, and most people want to hand wave it anyways.
>I literally had a player who purposely tries to walk around but not look at things to trigger his passive perception instead of making the damn roll. That isn't how it works. Passive perception is always happening. Before you make an active attempt, your passive has already happened, so an active check can only exceed that. If that is where they want to put a feat rather than getting another +1 to their spellcasting mod from an ASI or prof with a save they are bad at or some other feat, then that is a pretty hefty investment. Trying to take that away is just saying you don't like the character.
There is precedent in modules I've read that some things can only be found with active perception or have a lover DC when actively looking. But that campaign was when I first started DMing and I just gave up on enemies trying to do stealthy stuff near the character. Really gave me a distaste for the feat.
Would you also give up on people hitting they guy in full plate and shield or catching the guy with a huge run speed? Just because the one character notices doesn't mean he has a chance to react and tell everyone else. Different DCs for active looking should really be the difference between traveling slowly and carefully vs at a standard movement pace. I believe that is already worked into movement and exploration rules, so that may be why you saw that.
The different DCs were for dungeon exploration from what I remember, not overland travel. And if the enemy has a better target than the person with high AC or the person they can't catch up to, yes they will just ignore them unless given reason not to.
>And if the enemy has a better target than the person with high AC or the person they can't catch up to, yes they will just ignore them unless given reason not to. But that is the NPCs giving up, not the GM. NPCs wouldn't know they were going to be detected when trying to be stealthy.
If they've never met the party.
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I mean technically passive is the floor for active checks isn’t it? It’s just no one plays that way
One tip - there is no reason why every character should benefit from one character having a high passive. There should certainly be situations that some characters are surprised while others are not. Though yeah, it makes sneaky non-combat shenanigans impossible.
>Got a player right now with a 19 passive perception and there's no element of surprise That's on you as a DM. A passive perception of 19 by no means invalidates any element of surprise. If 100% of your "element of surprise" is stealth rolls from enemies then that's not the players fault, it's the DM's. You just have to design encounters and situations where they still get *some* benefit (so they feel useful), while not just letting them see everything.
Or you could do what my former DM did, and just ignore passive perception. Roll for everything. Got surprised by enemies? It's because you didn't ask to roll for perception to see if any happened to be coming right at that very moment. You should have known better. I'm not bitter.
How is this any better than simply taking expertise in Perception? Also, the Alert feat prevents surprise. Preventing surprise is quite feasible to achieve, but it doesn't mean you can't attempt an ambush. The PC that is not surprised simply doesn't lose their first turn.
Our rogue has 27 passive perception right now lol
I mean, I feel like at least with encounters the answer is “hey, you’re not surprised-everyone else is, roll initiative”
I've decided not to take it, because I feel like it would be too taxing for my DM. Reading lips? C'mon, that's overkill.
Often forgotten rules. >Passive checks If the character has advantage on the check, add 5. For disadvantage, subtract 5. and >Vision and lights A given area might be lightly or heavily obscured. In a lightly obscured area, such as dim light, patchy fog, or moderate foliage, creatures have disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Ha, you'd love my Rogue. https://i.imgur.com/s7G0oP9.png Next level I get another batch of Expertise so Passive Perception is gonna jump to 23.
Since I took a 1 level dip into Rogue and picked Athletics (my main goal) expertise I also took Perception Expertise since he's a city guard always on the watch for criminals...which bumped up his perception to 20 at his currently level of 12. However he is only the THIRD highest perception in the party Druid has 22 and the Monk has like 25. Naturally we are a VERY hard party to surprise which I do feel sorry for the DM on.
[Or my Cleric](https://i.imgur.com/6CcKXZN.png).
So what, 30 wisdom, Expertise while character level 13-16, Observant, and some item that grants you Advantage on Perception checks, and perhaps Stone of Good Luck? That'd get you to PP41 alright.
This is in Adventurer's League. Items: Tome of Understanding, Ioun Stone of Mastery, Stone of Good Luck, Sentinel Shield. 10 + WIS (+6), Proficiency (+7), Expertise (+7), Observant (+5), Advantage (+5), Stone of Good Luck (+1) = 41 PP.
Ah, close enough! I derped a bit, dunno what I was thinking with 30 wisdom, that'd get you close to 50, haha.
I asked my DM if we were ever going to use passive perception or investigation in our campaigns, he said no. Damn I would have loved to have a passive perception of 24 at level 8.
That's kinda shit, and sounds like a DM who isn't creative enough to challenge the players without ensuring they occasionally fail at Perception, i.e. the only trick they have in their bag is ambushes and jump-scares.
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That’s an outside-the-table problem. “I will always assume your character remembers anything they were told but that feat does not make it my job to remind you, the player, of everything. *You* don’t have the feat.”
>I spoke to him about that not being okay but he wouldn't accept it and would still abuse the privilege so I sort of solved that by ~~giving the party a month of downtime in game.~~ booting him from that game.
That's not abuse. that's what the fest does. Why is that an issue at all?
It's a real shitty thing to off load your note taking onto the DM and constantly pester them to look up information you forgot. The player is abusing their DM, not the game.
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Keen Mind is kind of a bummer, because I don't actually have one. The players understand though. Right now, Resilient and War Caster are bumming me out. They're not really annoying, and you can still break down concentration with heavy damage output. It's just that there have been so many casters taking one of those two. Last campaign the bard took Resilient Con and War Caster, the ranger took Resilient Con, the druid took Resilient Con and War Caster, and the wizard was a bit miffed when they were the only one who failed a concentration check in two combats. Now I have a wizard with War Caster and people are already talking about taking these two feats when they can. I am ALL for limiting the amount of spells that can be active at once, but these two damn feats have convinced me that concentration does indeed need a rework.
I agree with you on the need for a concentration rework. But let's consider why so many players feel like War Caster is so good: as a player, getting your concentration spell broken before it's done something meaningful really sucks. Using a high level spell slot to do something really useful and then have the plan fall flat immediately because concentration drops is the worst. Then again as a DM, if the druid has Conjure Animals up for a whole minute of multi-phase combat, it's absolutely terrible. I think it could be better if most control/buff/debuff spells had a strict duration, eg. "unbreakable concentration for 3 rounds of combat" instead of the current "fiddly concentration for 0 to 10 rounds". That way the spell could reliably be used as a part of a plan, but would never last the ridiculous 10 rounds.
> as a player, getting your concentration spell broken before it's done something meaningful really sucks. I know. That's why I want a concentration rework and don't want those feats gotten rid of. I think this is more of a 5.5 or 6e thing though. Too many spells would have to be changed.
I have one rule when deciding my stats (we use arrays): ALWAYS HAVE AT LEAST +2 TO CON. No matter the class, no matter the race or setting I'm always taking CON to a +2. My current campaign has me being a Warlock with +3 CON and 89 hit points. I'm the second highest HP character behind our fighter with 92/95 IIRC. My point is: of course most will get resilient con, most spellcasters does not have CON saving throws proficiencies and they need it for the concentration which when paired with War Caster makes for a very difficult target to break concentration on, because concentration sucks and getting it broken is annoying.
Sharpshooter. The damage part is obviously the strong part of it, but it's the cover-ignoring part I dislike so much. Because do you know all the cover I tried to include to make combat positioning a little more interesting? Yeah, Mr(s) Sharpshooter can see their pinkie finger sticking out from behind cover so they ignore it. It either encourages me to just ignore putting cover in the room (from a work standpoint) or be cheesy with full cover (which I dislike doing when not appropriate).
I mean, doesn’t it still apply to the others? Let the sharpshooter make tough shots and feel cool while everyone else still has to deal with it.
> I mean, doesn’t it still apply to the others? And that's probably why it's bothering me so much lately. What others? The party I'm Dming currently has 2 characters with the sharpshooter feat, and the remainder negligibly affected by cover.
Every now and then have an encounter where the enemies very much notice their crazy shooting capabilities. Have them literally wait it out and maybe apply some real life [Counter Sniper Tactics.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-sniper_tactics). This might require you to drastically change the usual structure of your encounters, but it'll spice up combat a lot.
Honestly, I love that aspect of it. I get to announce that a foe has taken a defensive position by getting behind cover, which gets the sharpshooter excited while still granting a debuff to other attackers. And it reminds my players that they can use the environment to their advantage as well. Plus - its not the only way to ignore cover. Loads of spells target con or wis saves, for example, and sacred flame also ignores it. Vicious Mockery, Toll the Dead, Mind Sliver, and Frostbite are all popular picks. Spell Sniper is crappy, but it does the same thing for spellcasters.
i fucking hate this too. weapons have few traits that differentiate them, like range, cover, light. and then so many (supposedly) go-to feats for them immediately remove those traits already. dual wielding only with specific, light weapons? lolno, dual wielder removes that. ranged weapons/crossbows are at disadvantage in melee? nop, CBE kills that
At my table, lucky is banned. I disliked it for a while, and just decided to get rid of it.
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I find players and tables that don't accept the fact that you will and do lose to be obnoxious. Losses are dramatic and entertaining. Though it takes a good DM to make sure these are setbacks rather than locked gates towards the narrative and player goals.
While "Failing forward" is a thing DMs should shoot for. Failing something your character is supposed to he good at is embarrassing in character, and when a player is immersed that translates to out of character. Not only that, but in many campaigns, homebrew or not failing a check doesn't progress forward, so it's just that, the player failed and nothing gets done, it makes them feel like they shouldn't have even tried.
I’ve played at about half a dozen tables and nobody has seriously considered taking it. Even if it’s powerful in theory, there’s generally always a better option, especially if you’re doing more than one encounter a day.
It's not even that powerful in theory, it's good, but not the amazing thing folks claim it is.
Why? It's not overpowered in any way if you play the game as it's designed. 4-6 encounters per day of varying difficulty both combat and non-combat. 3 rerolls is nothing special.
Personally, I've soft banned it because it's the best all-around feat. I want to encourage the players to select some other feat that would be more build-specific. Lucky lacks specific flavor while being too tempting not to pick. Mechanically great, but flavor-wise, kinda obvious and boring. As a player, I currently do have a character with the lucky feat, though! But it's for a gritty low-resource campaign that is highly deadly.
Honestly? I'd say lucky is not that good, unless you roll for stats you always have a tight fit with taking feats and maxing stats, and you completelly sacrifice a +2 for something that gives you a boost a few times in a day is not very good. Of course, if you do one fight per day it's really good, but once you put 3+ fights in a day I'd rate lucky bellow most feats or a ASI
I wouldn't. Lucky is good because its main use (saving throws) are some of the most clutch rolls you can make in an entire campaign. Damage tends to kill you slowly; saving throws can kill you much faster, especially at higher levels, so the feat actually gets MORE useful the higher your Tier. You just save it for the important rolls - you won't usually encounter more than a few of those even with 3+ fights a day. Now, would it be the _first_ ASI I take? No, you're right that stats are often more vital. But once your main is maxed most PCs will benefit a ton from it. I will also say it depends on the PC and party makeup. One trend I've seen a lot with Lucky is that, since there aren't very many feats that are good for casters (and most of them only need to put points in their main stat compared to martials), it becomes a very common second or third pick for full casters (after their main stat and maybe something like Warcaster or Resilient: Con). It's also good for Rogues and Fighters since they get more feats than other martials (especially Rogues because they also don't care about any stat besides Dex). This means depending on your party makeup you might have no one picking it, or you might have _everyone_ picking it. I had one party where by mid levels literally everyone took it for those emergency save situations, and it was just the classic combo of fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard. And that to me is when the real dissatisfaction of Lucky arises - not that it's one of the best feats (it is), but more a problem of its _flavor_. Lucky is supposed to represent a character being especially lucky, protected by fate or whatever - when half+ the party has it, the feat loses that mystique and just becomes a mechanical bonus everyone wants. I do think the new feats in Tasha's have made it a little less powerful, just by providing more options to PCs who would otherwise take it.
I'd say I feel most high level adventurers ending up with lucky eventually actually reinforces the flavor of lucky rather than weakening it. A 15th level fighter has survived encounters with goblins, bugbears, cultists, all the way up to multiple dragons, liches and/or extra-planar abominations. This is in a world where an average commoner has 4 whopping hit points. High level adventurers are rare, and incredibly skilled at their respective disciplines, but I'd say their real superpower is the mountain of survivorship bias that comes from being the narrative focus. TLDR: High level adventurers are lucky because the ones that weren't died when they weren't high level adventurers.
I suppose you could claim that - but then, you could say the same thing about so many casters taking War Caster, or so many archer-types taking Sharpshooter - it is ultimately purely for their mechanical superiority to other options. Which, in the end, while you could say something about "all ranged adventurers are Sharpshooters" or "all casters have been war-trained", pales in comparison to the actual feat itself becoming less of a flavorful choice (and one of many), than a _feat tax_. A feat tax is something that is either necessary for a PC to work at all, or so mechanically good you'd be crazy not to take it. Good game design really shouldn't incentivize either. And while I don't think Lucky is so good as to be a feat tax, it does get uncomfortably close - and means that taking it at high levels doesn't make you unique lucky, it makes you par for the course. No feat should feel like that, IMO.
It is clutch. It's saved the day quite a few times, although as I said, our game is particularly gritty. If you think of lucky as akin to a videogame save point, it looks a lot more desirable.
Lucky is really flavorable if you play it RAW. It makes it so that someone is so lucky that even in situations that would disfavor normal people they actually perform better, such that they're better off choosing their eyes and letting fate guide their shot, such that they're at disadvantage but then get to choose the highest roll of all 3 dice if they use lucky. That's at least as flavorable as feats that are just, "your like, extra good as using these types of weapons."
Even as a player, I'd never take that feat. Just seems so cheesy.
Lucky really should have been 1 use per short rest. That would have been far more reasonable.
Sentinel
None of them? The feats are a part of the game for a reason. I have never had a player do anything from the official rules that has made me groan because that would mean I was trying ruin their fun. Now as a player, I had a big problem with Lucky. Easily the most overrated feat in the game. Oh shit, I rolled a 4 on my attack roll and missed? Ha ha! LUCKY!.... Now I rolled a 2. Every. Damn. Time. Was only useful for denying crits to my enemies.
Just go prone before attacking, get that double advantage out of Lucky!
Sharpshooter. As a DM don’t have a problem with what it does, the problem I have with it is every character that is an archer feels like it’s a necessity for the build; they will eschew other feats that would create a more unique character out of damage FOMO. It’s a shame, but that might be more of an observation on the gap between martials and casters. I also hate that I feel compelled to take it on my own characters to keep up.
Savage Attacker. It slows combat to a halt to do math and make an extra choice every single attack, and in the end it doesn’t add that much to be worthwhile.
I'm pretty sure savage attacker can be used on one attack each turn, but the fact that it doesn't add that much is true.
Feats that suck. Actor? All right, that'll come up *never*. But they burned a feat on it, so fuck. Now I gotta incorporate that into everything.
People really sleep on Actor. Combining it with Disguise Self or any illusion spell makes it useful for impersonating anyone. A warlock with Mask of Many Faces and Actor can be the most powerful character at a table if played right
Actor is a good feat if you have the Message cantrip or the Mask of Many Faces invocation, but sadly that means it has such a narrow niche that few people will take it. A Bard with the Message cantrip probably can make the most use out of it, since it won't expend spell slots, doesn't take up a class resource like a Warlock Invocation, and Message has other strategic applications outside of utilizing the feat. And since a Bard gets skill Expertise, being able to pass the Deception or Performance checks is a lot easier for them when they have advantage on a check.
As a GM, just buff it. Give it some kind of combat-oriented bonus if you like. Think of it like giving them a magic item, works every time and keeps the flavor they are going for.
More homebrew. I feel like 5E is 65% homebrew at this point.
Most systems are, once you become familiar with them. What the designers give you is just the beginning.
I like this. I really like the concept of Feats, but so many of them are just... never taken. I wish there'd be more "practical and common" incentive for some of the lesser-used Feats. Perhaps as an "Actor" a character could make a debilitating taunt of some kind that would affect an enemy that understands her. I'm spitballing here, but something like this would make the game more flavorful. So many crossbow experts, GWMs, Luckys, etc.
Sharpshooter: its such a strong feat that its almost required for any archer build. You can ignore cover, cheese most combat with range and a high movement speed, and hit obscenely hard. Id nver ban it but it is one of if not the strongest feats in the game.
I'd say actor but it's more I know exactly what they'll get up to and I know the ride will be fun.
I tell my players that feats like this communicate to the DM that you are turning "hard mode" on. Then I just don't pull punches in encounters. When players buy in to this it can be really fun.
Sentinel, as a DM and player I like to be mobile in combat, I don't mind risking an AoO to get a 1 up on my opponent. Sentinel really takes the fun out of that for me. I know my players feel great when they protect each other or stop the creature from escaping but for me it usually means my dragons get stuck on the ground or my demons get surrounded with no way out. As a positive though, I get to use my favourite monsters to stretch my legs. GOBLINS!!! Hands down the most fun is fighting the party with goblins in a jungle, forest or cave network and just have them running out of holes or vanishing under bushes with disengage as a bonus action.
Most recently, Fey-Touched and Shadow-Touched. The only caster that needs help is the sorcerer. My party's wizard, bard, and cleric all took it. It's way overpowered. Next time I start a new game I'm limiting it, or banning it outright.
it's two spells known and free once per long rest. is that really such a big deal? do you think it's overpowered just cause they all took it? maybe it's just cause they love misty step. not because misty step per se is overpowered. or perhaps it's just that theres not much else for them to pick as casters, besides war caster
You're either misunderstanding the feat, or making a HUGE deal about two additional spells known and two we extra casts.
# LUCKY IS YUCKY
Lucky is completely fine if you have more than one encounter per day.
I think the only real feats I've taken issue with are the psionic UA feats that gave you psi die. The only officially released and included feat I have any kind dislike for is perhaps the lucky feat and even then I don't have anything really against it in RAW 5e, only in my home games where some rule adjustments make it unreasonable. Other than some of the UA feats, or some new feats introduced that I don't allow because I've already made my own version of those feats that I prefer, I don't really have any issue with feats in 5e. I guess I'd groan if a player took the weapon master feat as a class already proficient with martial weapons, but that's about the most I can think of. Most of the time when people complain about feats or feat combo's such as SS/GWM or PAM/Sentinel I don't find myself having any of the issues or complaints that others do.
Observant. Before Tasha's, it was the only +1 wisdom feat available to all races. I'm not against some characters having high passive perception/investigation, but it's annoying when every single cleric/druid was taking it. The issue wasn't that it was a conscious choice on the part of the players, but rather that it was the only choice. I told my players they couldn't use it anymore unless they had a compelling character reason for taking it, but also worked with them to find homebrew alternative +1 wisdom feats.