Favorite Feats

[seeker1]

So, I am using, as I said in another thread, several feat mods.

Let me start with one I really like that only does one thing: reworks some of the vanilla feats. It's called Feats Rebalance, and I really like some of its changes.

First off - I think these are obviously good ideas:
It remakes Crossbow Expert to Bow Expert, and changes it up slightly, but now makes its effects apply to use of all bows and crossbows (should be this way already).

For Great Weapon Master and Sharpshooter, the attack roll penalty and damage bonus are now adjusted based on proficiency.

Shield Master now gives you the ability to Shield Bash with your shield as a bonus action and not just a reaction, possibly proning the enemy. (This could also do some damage, depending on the shield.)

It redoes Tavern Brawler to make sure, even in Honor, the bonus to unarmed attacks applies to wild shape, slayer form, or any other shapeshifts.

Anyway, among vanilla feats, my favorites are Lucky, Alert (of course), Charger: Weapon Attack for Karlach or any barbarian, Mage Slayer, and Sentinel (combos nice with warriors with Protection fighting style). Tavern Brawler for monks, moon druids, and throwbarians. Spell Sniper for any caster. Really cool, if you have Mystra's Spells, Spell Sniper will let you pick the blade cantrips, nice for certain classes who don't normally have them on your spell list.

I'll just mention a few in the Essentials and Feats Extra I like. Ghost's are all homebrew he did himself, but Essentials and Feats Extra pull from "official" 5E sources.

Essentials:
Hell Touched -- gives the character Hellish Rebuke and one spell choice.
Metamagic Adept -- can give a wizard or other caster metamagic, now not just limited to sorcerers anymore. (There's a way to do this through cheats, but I kinda view this as more "legit". It's from "authorized" materials.)
Nimble Fingers - you can intercept and in some cases return a missile or ranged attack
War Magic - basically mandatory for a bladesinger/gish/spellblade/battlemage etc.

Feats Extra: some of these are only in the Nexus version, which I probably should keep using, but when it came to mod.io I switched over, though the mod.io conversion is a "WIP". What I don't get is somewhere along the way, Strike of the Giants had been converted over, but is missing in the latest release?

Elven Accuracy - awesome for your archers, particularly
Everybody's Friend - your "talker" Tav/protag MUST take this, makes them more charismatic and persuasive
Gift of the Gem Dragon - give it to Gale or any caster who's squishy, folks who attack will then be telekinetically pushed away as a reaction
Observant - give it to Tav - or Astarion - helps them succeed on Perception checks
Strike of the Giants - I'm so missing this but I want it back!

It's great for many martial characters,
Hill Giant Strike does extra damage and can knock enemies Prone.
Stone Giant Strike does extra damage can can push enemies away.
Other strikes do additional cold, fire, thunder, or lightning damage and sometimes impose conditions on the enemy.

I so want it back!

There's a variety of single (or "cluster") feat mods at Nexus and mod.io, almost all homebrew, too many to go into, and I won't go through Ghost's as they are all homebrew.

If you've played 5E TT, some of these additions by mods will be familiar.

Once you start expanding your feat list like I do, you are probably going to want the various mods that increase the frequency you can take feats at. (Plus, of course, ULC will let you choose a few more.)

[Popsicles]

The only feat I typically take is the Alert feat. Get Alert on all you characters and you pretty much always go first in combat.

[Raze]

I never used Alert until one day I kept hearing great things and tried it. Best decision I ever made.

[Popsicles]

Originally posted by Raze:

I never used Alert until one day I kept hearing great things and tried it. Best decision I ever made.

It's the only must have feat imho. Many of the other feats are fun and somewhat powerful, but I prefer ASI bonus.

[seeker1]

Sticking to vanilla as we all have those ...

Alert is definitely one of the best of the vanilla feats. If you have a character you want to never be surprised and almost always go first (or very earliy) in combat, take that Feat. (And, I guess, who doesn't)?

Charger: Weapon Attack lets you do a full damage charging attack, that can knock down the opponent, which is better than some other weapon actions and barbarian abilities. Only thing I like better is Zephyr Flash or Force Rush, which throws other people out of the way.

Shield Master is better the way Rebalance improved it. You should be able to bash with your shield as an action, not just a reaction. But heck, even the vanilla version has use, as if you're toting a shield, why not also use it to reduce some incoming damage?

Sharpshooter - mandatory for an archer not just because of attack/damage but because it gets rid of height and other penalties. (Bow Expert for shooting from fairly close to the target.)

Mage Slayer - because you just gotta hit the spellcaster dumb enough to cast right next to you you right in the face and break their concentration.

Lucky is the closest you can come to cheating your dice rolls in the vanilla, un-modded game.

[Mander]

Great weapon master for all melee classes (warlock pact of the blade too)
Improve ability for all in general.

Anything else is superfluous for me XD.
For example: with some min/max you can have dex at 16 for all your party, which is quite enough for almost always have first attack.

[seeker1]

Originally posted by Mander:

Great weapon master for all melee classes (warlock pact of the blade too)

Great for those who use 2H weapons, yah.

Not so great if you're using 1H + shield, just a 1H, or dual wielding. But yes, the damage crunching numbers overall favor GWM + 2H Fighting Style + 2H weapons, if you weren't looking at anything else (like weapon actions, properties, etc., etc.)

I always take it for Lae'Zel, seems all the (best) Githyanki weapons are 2 handers. You know what isn't? Voss' Silver Sword, though the player can't normally obtain that.

[Mander]

Originally posted by seeker1:

Originally posted by Mander:

Great weapon master for all melee classes (warlock pact of the blade too)

Great for those who use 2H weapons, yah.

Not so great if you're using 1H + shield, just a 1H, or dual wielding. But yes, the damage crunching numbers overall favor GWM + 2H Fighting Style + 2H weapons, if you weren't looking at anything else (like weapon actions, properties, etc., etc.)

I always take it for Lae'Zel, seems all the (best) Githyanki weapons are 2 handers. You know what isn't? Voss' Silver Sword, though the player can't normally obtain that.

It procs for crit hit too, which for Wyll at least, especially with his special rapier, is very often.
I also happened on a Dark Urge Barbarian dual wielder that was… strangely functional with great weapon master, thanks to the bonus from armor and invisibility. I kept it from Orin to Ansur, where I switched to the big GS.

[Raz]

Everyone already mentioned a lot of the good ones, here is one of my favorites; Polearm Master. Positioning Wyll 3 Warlocks 9 Fighter with Devil Sight + Polearm master in front of the squishies stops enemy advances cold. I like to put the Skinburster + Shimmering Force. Quite a bit of a tank at that point who has a built in ranged attack with Eldritch Blast.

[Baronpretzels]

I like mage slayer for close range combat.

[jonnin]

without mods...
the damage improvers like 2h or bows +10 / -5 to hit, ASI of course, the one where you roll damage dies twice (good if you have a half dozen +1d4 on every hit), dual weapons for that build, element resist negate for some caster builds.

I don't usually have room for alert and having everyone go first is overrated -- it helps to have a 'slowpoke' or two who can react to what the AI did.

The lack of good feats is extra frustrating coming in from old D&D where you often had 10+ candidates to pick from, now you are lucky to have 2(3 with ASI) and some classes/builds have ZERO other than ASI. There is not a single +1 int / minor effect, and other than element resist nothing at all for a wizard - you end up with spell sniper and eldrich blast just because there isn't anything else.

The lack of zen archery for a shooting cleric or druid is a huge miss, to name another gap.

[seeker1]

I agree there is a definite shortage of feats for wizards and casters in vanilla. It's exactly one of the reasons why I use the additional feat mods like Essential Feats and Feats Extra.

[Detective Costeau]

I'm not sure the problem is so much there not being many good feats for casters as there just not being that many good feats, period.
Or, more accurately, not enough feats that are competitive with the ASI. (I personally think making feats and increased ability scores mutually exclusive was a pretty poor decision)

So, sure, the only (non-modded) caster feats worth taking are Spell Sniper and Elemental Affinity- but for non-casters, the only ones worth taking are GWM, Sharpshooter, and Tavern Brawler. GWM/Tavern Brawler are just good enough to conceal the fact there's really only a handful of worthwhile martial feats.
(my understanding is that Alert can also be good on almost any character on honor mode, but I wouldn't take it in a regular game)

[seeker1]

There are also good choices for martials in the Essential and Feats Extra mods, too.

Notably - as I said above - and yay, it's back in Feats Extra at mod.io! - is Strike of the Giants, whose variants allow you to use a "SoG" charge (I think you get 2-3 per LR) to do a strike that does additional damage to the enemy, and can push it back, prone it, etc. It's a smite of a sort without using a spell slot.

And if you are an archer, you'll want to add Elven Accuracy to Sharpshooter and Bow Expert.

The good news is a lot of the additional feats in those mods carry an ASI AS WELL AS whatever other benefits they provide (and that's no cheat, it's from the 5E rules).

[Raz]

Originally posted by Detective Costeau:

I'm not sure the problem is so much there not being many good feats for casters as there just not being that many good feats, period.
Or, more accurately, not enough feats that are competitive with the ASI. (I personally think making feats and increased ability scores mutually exclusive was a pretty poor decision)

So, sure, the only (non-modded) caster feats worth taking are Spell Sniper and Elemental Affinity- but for non-casters, the only ones worth taking are GWM, Sharpshooter, and Tavern Brawler. GWM/Tavern Brawler are just good enough to conceal the fact there's really only a handful of worthwhile martial feats.
(my understanding is that Alert can also be good on almost any character on honor mode, but I wouldn't take it in a regular game)

Ugh, disagree.

Casters get War Caster for Advantage on saving throws on Concentration spells. That has come in massively clutch in keeping things like Haste or Hold Person/Monster up early game. There is Resilient --> Constitution Resilient to further make them better at holding Concentration.

Alert is absolutely good on everyone if you're trying to control the turn order.

Dual Wielder for double Quarterstaffs (usually an endgame thing; Mourning Frost + Markoheshkir for example, or The Spellsparkler with whatever other staff works for your build).

Charger in Non-Honour Mode can work quite well in just shoving enemies off ledges. Though, even on Honour mode it can still have its uses in shoving enemies from a high platform to a lower level while not giving up damage.

Polearm Master can halt melee enemies from getting near your backline, or just near your melee fighter themselves, and gives a bonus attack action if your Great Weapon Master didn't kill someone/critical hit.

Mobile is actually pretty good in avoiding Opportunity attacks after attacking. Even without using it for that function, another 3m/10ft of movement is great for just controlling the battlefield. Throw on Longstrider with a Barbarian/Monk? Maaaannn, ain't no one far enough away for you not to pummel with your fist.

I've gotten more outta my characters through the combination of the feats mentioned, than I would have for a +1 or +2 in a stat by Lv8 or Lv12 taking Ability Score Improvement. People not thinking outside the box is the problem, and why ASI is looked at as the be all end all.

Even the Armoured traits can have their uses. Heavy Armor master for an Eldritch Knight that charms enemies into attacking it, but reduces all physical damage it takes. Giving the Mages Medium Armor if you're turning them into Melee Casters.