As I continue to make more and more homebrew items and abilities for my campaign using dndbeyond, I find that the absolute easiest way for them to fix the item creation process would just be to allow users to enable custom feats on items. As it stands when you create an item, you can enable the item to grant one of the standard feats from the new Player's Handbook. However, if item creation allowed you to enable custom feats, it would entirely bypass the need to add actions to items as you can already do that entirely through Feats. When I want to give my players a new ability I have to make a feat for it. If that Action or Bonus Action is tied to an item and I want it to show up on their character sheet under the applicable tab, I need to make a feat for it as items have no option to add new actions of any kind. If we could just make an item and add the homebrew feat it would immediately solve my biggest complaint.
I suspect that "easy" is relative, because those lists are hard coded, which is why Homebrew stuff won't appear. There's a massive set of work to be done to add things like Origin and Epic Boon feat categories etc.
Being able to add feats through magic items would open up a whole new world in terms of what you can create with magic items. I hope this is something they add.
Being able to add feats through magic items would open up a whole new world in terms of what you can create with magic items. I hope this is something they add.
That would cause game balance to disintegrate into nothingness.
"Here's 3 feats from 3 different attunement items. Have fun 1-turn nuking the Tarrasque!"
You'd have to make it so people can only have 1 item w/a feat, be a Very Rare-to-Legendary item that eats an attunement slot, & it'd have to have a Minor Detrimental Effect penalty, to even that out.
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DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Your response was pretty negative. I don’t mean feats in the traditional sense. Having a magic item give you the tough feat or something would be bonkers, but then again we have plenty of magic items that increase your max health anyway. I mean magic items kind of dipping their toes into what feats can give a character. We have new categories of feats now so you could call them magic item feats. Having a magic item add extra spells to a casters spell list would be fun and interesting. Currently that can only be accomplished through a feat. Adding that capability to magic items on its own would work as well but having magic items grant feats when it’s already kind of there but not working yet seems like the easier way to add this.
One problem with that:there are PLENTY of items that already do that, balanced out with charges.
Also, some magic items can & do have spells greater than 5th level. Warlocks, Half-casters & quarter-casters would be even further disadvantaged against Clerics, Druids, Bards, Sorcerers, Wizards (& Psions at this rate).
I'm just skeptical. Because this would further unbalance things.
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DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
If you’re worried about balance then just don’t include the homebrew at your table. I’m merely requesting the ability to homebrew things like this into dndbeyond. I’ve seen plenty of people wish that this was a feature you could add with homebrew.
Being able to add feats through magic items would open up a whole new world in terms of what you can create with magic items. I hope this is something they add.
That would cause game balance to disintegrate into nothingness.
"Here's 3 feats from 3 different attunement items. Have fun 1-turn nuking the Tarrasque!"
You'd have to make it so people can only have 1 item w/a feat, be a Very Rare-to-Legendary item that eats an attunement slot, & it'd have to have a Minor Detrimental Effect penalty, to even that out.
It really wouldn't do anything to game balance.
Items can be completely unbalancing as is. Homebrew items even more so. The balancing factor will remain what it already is: the GM not giving out items that will unbalance the game. (Yeah, yeah, I know.)
(Also, Feats just aren't as good as you're making them out to be, and the primary benefit of "item gives feat" is just not having to reimplement the feat in the homebrew editor. (Also, it means that if you already have the feat, it will be redundant instead of stacking.)
The purpose of adding feats to items would have nothing to do with game balance. That would obviously be up to the discretion of the DM in that situation. This isn't a competitive card game where you need to ban items to balance everything out. It would be for the sake of giving players custom items that have abilities and actions on them that actually pop up in your "Actions" tab.
Your response was pretty negative. I don’t mean feats in the traditional sense. Having a magic item give you the tough feat or something would be bonkers, but then again we have plenty of magic items that increase your max health anyway. I mean magic items kind of dipping their toes into what feats can give a character. We have new categories of feats now so you could call them magic item feats. Having a magic item add extra spells to a casters spell list would be fun and interesting. Currently that can only be accomplished through a feat. Adding that capability to magic items on its own would work as well but having magic items grant feats when it’s already kind of there but not working yet seems like the easier way to add this.
What you're asking for is a workaround through jury-rigged methods.
The correct method here would be to do it properly and allow items and abilities with a limited sandbox of development options, similar to how World of Warcraft uses a LUA sandbox to allow addons to write code to extend the game. This is likely not something DDB could do without a complete rebuild of the site which is required anyway.
Adding existing "feats" to magic items is still limited by what DDB can allow feats to do. And in that situation "adding them to a magic item" has zero mechanical difference to "giving a character an extra feat when they own a magic item". So just do that. Give your player an extra feat, listed in the item's description. If you're just trying to give them the feat, give them the feat and skip the magic item.
There are a lot of elements of DDB where you, as the player/DM can just say "You can have this feat" or "You can learn this spell" etc. None of this would require extra development, and the few actual developers they have working on the site (separate to the people/time spent implementing new products) is already stretched thin fixing bugs and adding features that are new.
Ultimately, the likely end result here is that someone is going to decide they can write a better character generator and homebrew engine, build it, have WOTC buy it off them and incorporate all the existing products. Until then, we're limited by what WOTC can afford to do, and what Hasbro is willing to invest.
I suggested the work around idea because I thought might be easier than overhauling the whole dang thing. Having the item be the thing to give you the feat would be great because then you can easily “equip” the feat, without having to go through the whole feat table and deselect or reselect the homebrew feat you made for said magic items ability every time you equip said magic item. This would also be a great to keep track of a magic item that has multiple different charges, like the occultant abacus.
I suggested the work around idea because I thought might be easier than overhauling the whole dang thing. Having the item be the thing to give you the feat would be great because then you can easily “equip” the feat, without having to go through the whole feat table and deselect or reselect the homebrew feat you made for said magic items ability every time you equip said magic item. This would also be a great to keep track of a magic item that has multiple different charges, like the occultant abacus.
Sure, but what you're proposing will be far more effort for the website than just "Let the users add a feat normally". It's not "easy".
So what I do is create a Feat that does the thing I Can't get the Magic Item to do. Then when they use the feature they can go to Features and Traits>Feats>Manage Feats. On the side bar all the feats become available you just at the feat there. If it has a time limit. You delete when it ends.
Pretty simple.
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As I continue to make more and more homebrew items and abilities for my campaign using dndbeyond, I find that the absolute easiest way for them to fix the item creation process would just be to allow users to enable custom feats on items. As it stands when you create an item, you can enable the item to grant one of the standard feats from the new Player's Handbook. However, if item creation allowed you to enable custom feats, it would entirely bypass the need to add actions to items as you can already do that entirely through Feats. When I want to give my players a new ability I have to make a feat for it. If that Action or Bonus Action is tied to an item and I want it to show up on their character sheet under the applicable tab, I need to make a feat for it as items have no option to add new actions of any kind. If we could just make an item and add the homebrew feat it would immediately solve my biggest complaint.
I suspect that "easy" is relative, because those lists are hard coded, which is why Homebrew stuff won't appear. There's a massive set of work to be done to add things like Origin and Epic Boon feat categories etc.
Being able to add feats through magic items would open up a whole new world in terms of what you can create with magic items. I hope this is something they add.
That would cause game balance to disintegrate into nothingness.
"Here's 3 feats from 3 different attunement items. Have fun 1-turn nuking the Tarrasque!"
You'd have to make it so people can only have 1 item w/a feat, be a Very Rare-to-Legendary item that eats an attunement slot, & it'd have to have a Minor Detrimental Effect penalty, to even that out.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Your response was pretty negative. I don’t mean feats in the traditional sense. Having a magic item give you the tough feat or something would be bonkers, but then again we have plenty of magic items that increase your max health anyway. I mean magic items kind of dipping their toes into what feats can give a character. We have new categories of feats now so you could call them magic item feats. Having a magic item add extra spells to a casters spell list would be fun and interesting. Currently that can only be accomplished through a feat. Adding that capability to magic items on its own would work as well but having magic items grant feats when it’s already kind of there but not working yet seems like the easier way to add this.
One problem with that:there are PLENTY of items that already do that, balanced out with charges.
Also, some magic items can & do have spells greater than 5th level. Warlocks, Half-casters & quarter-casters would be even further disadvantaged against Clerics, Druids, Bards, Sorcerers, Wizards (& Psions at this rate).
I'm just skeptical. Because this would further unbalance things.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
If you’re worried about balance then just don’t include the homebrew at your table. I’m merely requesting the ability to homebrew things like this into dndbeyond. I’ve seen plenty of people wish that this was a feature you could add with homebrew.
It really wouldn't do anything to game balance.
Items can be completely unbalancing as is. Homebrew items even more so. The balancing factor will remain what it already is: the GM not giving out items that will unbalance the game. (Yeah, yeah, I know.)
(Also, Feats just aren't as good as you're making them out to be, and the primary benefit of "item gives feat" is just not having to reimplement the feat in the homebrew editor. (Also, it means that if you already have the feat, it will be redundant instead of stacking.)
The purpose of adding feats to items would have nothing to do with game balance. That would obviously be up to the discretion of the DM in that situation. This isn't a competitive card game where you need to ban items to balance everything out. It would be for the sake of giving players custom items that have abilities and actions on them that actually pop up in your "Actions" tab.
What you're asking for is a workaround through jury-rigged methods.
The correct method here would be to do it properly and allow items and abilities with a limited sandbox of development options, similar to how World of Warcraft uses a LUA sandbox to allow addons to write code to extend the game. This is likely not something DDB could do without a complete rebuild of the site which is required anyway.
Adding existing "feats" to magic items is still limited by what DDB can allow feats to do. And in that situation "adding them to a magic item" has zero mechanical difference to "giving a character an extra feat when they own a magic item". So just do that. Give your player an extra feat, listed in the item's description. If you're just trying to give them the feat, give them the feat and skip the magic item.
There are a lot of elements of DDB where you, as the player/DM can just say "You can have this feat" or "You can learn this spell" etc. None of this would require extra development, and the few actual developers they have working on the site (separate to the people/time spent implementing new products) is already stretched thin fixing bugs and adding features that are new.
Ultimately, the likely end result here is that someone is going to decide they can write a better character generator and homebrew engine, build it, have WOTC buy it off them and incorporate all the existing products. Until then, we're limited by what WOTC can afford to do, and what Hasbro is willing to invest.
I suggested the work around idea because I thought might be easier than overhauling the whole dang thing. Having the item be the thing to give you the feat would be great because then you can easily “equip” the feat, without having to go through the whole feat table and deselect or reselect the homebrew feat you made for said magic items ability every time you equip said magic item. This would also be a great to keep track of a magic item that has multiple different charges, like the occultant abacus.
Sure, but what you're proposing will be far more effort for the website than just "Let the users add a feat normally". It's not "easy".
So what I do is create a Feat that does the thing I Can't get the Magic Item to do. Then when they use the feature they can go to Features and Traits>Feats>Manage Feats. On the side bar all the feats become available you just at the feat there. If it has a time limit. You delete when it ends.
Pretty simple.