Yo! so i was talking to my table and we all pretty much agreed that racial feats are pretty dope. Some of the ones from XGTE felt like band aid fixes or useless buffs while others felt amazing and made you stand out even more from say another dragonborn at the table. Personally id love to see a new book come out and add more racial feats. i wanted to get your guys thoughts on them. do you like them? hate them? want more? think there's enough? think they are useless and just band aid fixes and idk what im talking about?
One of 5e’s big problem is how many of your critical choices are done at the beginning of the game and progress fairly linearly thereafter. Species is probably the worst offender - you choose it when you first make your character, then pretty much get no cascading choices building on that pre-game decision. Racial feats are a great way to fix that issue, not only providing a bit more weight to your pre-game choice, but also an ability to customize your character in a way which grew out of that foundational decision.
Frankly, 5e’s entire feat system could use an overhaul—and a bigger one than is expected from the 2024 rules update. As things currently stand, it feels like the feat system has a high proportion of dead content due to the limited availability (and competition with ASI) for feat slots, funneling players toward the best feats for their few choices, instead of an actual system that allows you to flesh out the character you want to make.
Racial feats are a great way to players play too powerful races. Wand to make an illithid character? make a weakened level 1 version of them and throw in two or three feats to give them back some of their powers, get the rest via a class/subclass.
One of 5e’s big problem is how many of your critical choices are done at the beginning of the game and progress fairly linearly thereafter. Species is probably the worst offender - you choose it when you first make your character, then pretty much get no cascading choices building on that pre-game decision. Racial feats are a great way to fix that issue, not only providing a bit more weight to your pre-game choice, but also an ability to customize your character in a way which grew out of that foundational decision.
Frankly, 5e’s entire feat system could use an overhaul—and a bigger one than is expected from the 2024 rules update. As things currently stand, it feels like the feat system has a high proportion of dead content due to the limited availability (and competition with ASI) for feat slots, funneling players toward the best feats for their few choices, instead of an actual system that allows you to flesh out the character you want to make.
on the feat vs ASI note i had a DM who would allow you to train your ASIs up while in downtime or threw other means so taking them instead of a feat wasnt demanded for some characters. iv also had a DM who for the first three feats you got an ASI and feat.
The biggest barrier for more racial feats is that WotC tries to avoid a lot of cross referencing between secondary books, so they couldn’t really do the same thing they did in XGtE and release them separately for anything but the core races. Given that the feats were likely partly designed based on feedback for the races, that makes it difficult to set them up alongside a race. Probably the best time would be with the next MotM, but if that includes as many as the current one that might mean more feats than they want to tackle.
thats a fair point releasing a book that needs races from another book is a good way to make people mad. if they did make a book for that with a warning on the cover that youd need races from another book or add feats for those races along with more for the PHB so people arent fully missing out along with other subclasses and magic items and other goodies might make it worth it
I think racial feats can be nice, but there’s such a large difference between usefulness of them (feats are hard to balance in general imo). For example, you have Elven Accuracy, which is an absolutely amazing and broken feat. Then you have Dragon Hide, which gives you… worse lizardfolk features. Racial feats also kind of locks you into a playstyle too - like, Elven Accuracy requires you to be that standard DEX or spellcaster elf (and it’s advantage on attack rolls too, so not even spellcaster as much). Kind of blocks you off from trying things outside of Forgotten Realms lore species stereotypes.
There should definitely be more feats that are actually useful, but so many of the new ones are horrendously broken. And that kind of goes for racial feats, they’re likely gonna be a hit or miss. I do like the idea of races getting better abilities as time goes on but I think that maybe equalizing the power level of playable races would be a first step? Elves are like the golden child of WOTC or something man, there’s always like 20 new broken sub races we don’t need, and we don’t need more broken racial feats for them. But if we got actual cool dragonborn feats or maybe even changeling, warforged, dwarves, etc, then hell yea. Especially if those feats don’t lock you into a role but instead give you more freedom to play your character, like a changeling racial feat that allows you to change your creature type or something.
I also completely understand this is incredibly unrealistic and is wishful thinking, but I love expressing my opinions in several paragraphs on online forums :)
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— δ cyησ • τηε crσc mαsτεr • hε/hιm δ — “sᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ, ɪ ᴛᴇʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ, ɪɴ ᴀɴᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ʀᴇᴍᴇᴍʙᴇʀ ᴜs.” ——————| EXTENDED SIG |—————— Φ • happily married to • ☁️ℝ𝔼𝔻ℙ𝔼𝕃𝕋☁️ • As vast as the sun, stars, and the sky itself, so is my promise to you • Φ
You should check the BadEye community shared homebrew feats.
they did alot of good work for the races of that time tho i think they would need a little updating lol all of those races got moved to legacy now and most of the racial changes they made just ended up getting added tho theres still a few good ones i took
One of the largest problems people have with Racial Feats, it's that they're usually given to the players at the level their starting at, meaning unless the DM is running a intentionally hard campaign and want their players to be strong for it, it can make most of the characters strong enough to steamroll through any early game conflict. This doesn't always happen, since you can get Racial Feats the same way you would get other Feats, and this is the way some DMs run it. I personally love them, they have a lot of flavor, and they add a lot more versatility and options to your character, especially if they're given at level 1. The only problem with them ism when DMs and players don't communicate with each other.
But if we got actual cool dragonborn feats or maybe even changeling, warforged, dwarves, etc, then hell yea. Especially if those feats don’t lock you into a role but instead give you more freedom to play your character, like a changeling racial feat that allows you to change your creature type or something.
The issue is the same as what the Artificer has. It's not in the core book, so writers can't assume you have it. As a result, they never release new stuff for it. You could probably get some more stuff for Dwarves (and there is already stuff for Dragonborn, even if not explicitly listed for them, the feats naturally lend themselves to Dragonborn)., but you'll never get new stuff for Changelings or Warforged because they're not as appealing.
It does suck. It's how the free market works though.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to play D&D? Try the following resources first (each section withing vertical bars is a clickable link to find the resource).
But if we got actual cool dragonborn feats or maybe even changeling, warforged, dwarves, etc, then hell yea. Especially if those feats don’t lock you into a role but instead give you more freedom to play your character, like a changeling racial feat that allows you to change your creature type or something.
The issue is the same as what the Artificer has. It's not in the core book, so writers can't assume you have it. As a result, they never release new stuff for it. You could probably get some more stuff for Dwarves (and there is already stuff for Dragonborn, even if not explicitly listed for them, the feats naturally lend themselves to Dragonborn)., but you'll never get new stuff for Changelings or Warforged because they're not as appealing.
It does suck. It's how the free market works though.
Considering 4e managed to figure this out, and figure it out to a level that bordered on excessive, I think this is less of a real problem and more of a manufactured problem players just kind of accept.
Realistically, you probably need no more than 2-4 feats for any given species - that is enough to make you feel like you can further explore the species choice of the character, while still giving you room to explore other feats and without leading to the feat overload of 4e.
I do not think that is so many additional feats as to be overwhelming in a rulebook, especially when you do a cost benefit analysis of adding in the desperately needed individualization which species feats bring.
Additionally, Wizards always has the option of expanding feats by using monster categories better. Being a bit more liberal with things like “construct” would allow you to publish a catch all “constructs only” species trait—that way you do not need a specific race, but if you had either warforged or autognome (and both received construct classifications), it would be applicable. That gives Wizards a way to increase species customization, without the feats being tied to one species and one species alone.
But if we got actual cool dragonborn feats or maybe even changeling, warforged, dwarves, etc, then hell yea. Especially if those feats don’t lock you into a role but instead give you more freedom to play your character, like a changeling racial feat that allows you to change your creature type or something.
The issue is the same as what the Artificer has. It's not in the core book, so writers can't assume you have it. As a result, they never release new stuff for it. You could probably get some more stuff for Dwarves (and there is already stuff for Dragonborn, even if not explicitly listed for them, the feats naturally lend themselves to Dragonborn)., but you'll never get new stuff for Changelings or Warforged because they're not as appealing.
It does suck. It's how the free market works though.
But if we got actual cool dragonborn feats or maybe even changeling, warforged, dwarves, etc, then hell yea. Especially if those feats don’t lock you into a role but instead give you more freedom to play your character, like a changeling racial feat that allows you to change your creature type or something.
The issue is the same as what the Artificer has. It's not in the core book, so writers can't assume you have it. As a result, they never release new stuff for it. You could probably get some more stuff for Dwarves (and there is already stuff for Dragonborn, even if not explicitly listed for them, the feats naturally lend themselves to Dragonborn)., but you'll never get new stuff for Changelings or Warforged because they're not as appealing.
It does suck. It's how the free market works though.
Considering 4e managed to figure this out, and figure it out to a level that bordered on excessive, I think this is less of a real problem and more of a manufactured problem players just kind of accept.
Realistically, you probably need no more than 2-4 feats for any given species - that is enough to make you feel like you can further explore the species choice of the character, while still giving you room to explore other feats and without leading to the fear overload of 4e.
I do not think that is so many additional feats as to be overwhelming in a rulebook, especially when you do a cost benefit analysis of adding in the desperately needed individualization which species feats bring.
Additionally, Wizards always has the option of expanding feats by using monster categories better. Being a bit more liberal with things like “construct” would allow you to publish a catch all “constructs only” species trait—that way you do not need a specific race, but if you had either warforged or autognome (and both received construct classifications), it would be applicable. That gives Wizards a way to increase species customization, without the feats being tied to one species and one species alone.
It depends what you're looking for in the feats, though. A sizeable portion of the XGtE ones are leveraging aspects unique to their race: you get various magics in line with their background for the elves, tieflings get some of the resistances of devils or basically turn their fire into hellfire, dragonborn can do a fear effect like dragons, half orcs got a bonus feature to their endurance trait, etc. A couple of these were specifically tied to core race features. The thing about casting wider is that then you get people wondering why they can't just be regular feats so everyone can play with them. It's not an awful or unworkable idea, but the aim of the iteration we've seen was often to tailor the feat to the particular race.
Honestly, if you want more general flexibility for the races, I'd say do what I believe Pathfinder did at one point and give some different options on the baseline traits; like dwarves could have resistance to poison damage and advantage on saves against the condition or they could have +1 hp/level. Allows for customization without spending a feat/ASI, and on the development end it keeps it all sync'd up at release rather than ending up in different books or chapters.
It's not a problem, it's just a marketing strategy. If they're trying to sell Fizban's to players, it's more likely to appeal to more people if they have something everyone can use, like a Ranger subclass than something that only a subset can use like an Artificer subclass. That's why it bothers me a bit that the Artificer didn't make it into the new PHB. They will only realistically release new subclasses simultaneously with the whole class - which does give some scope for additional subclasses, but the other classes gets the opportunity to release new subclasses with every book.
It's possible they'll release racial feats alongside the races, but that's already put paid to the ones in MotM and the pattern seems to be to release them afterwards as a tuning mechanism. We're unlikely to see them for autognomes because you have to have Spelljammer for it to be valid. Having wider nets like Constructs as mentioned are more viable...but Tasha's is far more widespread than construct races... and we never saw more love for the Artificer, most likely because, again, more people have the PHB than Tasha's.
I'm not overly happy about it... but there's not a lot I can do, and no one is willing to start a Twitter firestorm over it.
I should have clarified--it is not too much additional to add to a rulebook which already contains any given race. 2-4 feats per race is not an overly large commitment in terms of space and is probably worth it when you do a cost-benefit analysis of what can fit in a book. Making this choice moving forward would be a solid improvement to the game and do a good job at adding depth to the feat system (one of the stated goals of the 2024 rules update).
Now, that does leave existing species in a bit of a lurch--but it is not like species features are necessary to play a species. Those species would still have other feats to choose from, so their ability to interact with the system might be a bit more limited in choice, but not unfunctionally so.
It's not a problem, it's just a marketing strategy. If they're trying to sell Fizban's to players, it's more likely to appeal to more people if they have something everyone can use, like a Ranger subclass than something that only a subset can use like an Artificer subclass. That's why it bothers me a bit that the Artificer didn't make it into the new PHB. They will only realistically release new subclasses simultaneously with the whole class - which does give some scope for additional subclasses, but the other classes gets the opportunity to release new subclasses with every book.
It's possible they'll release racial feats alongside the races, but that's already put paid to the ones in MotM and the pattern seems to be to release them afterwards as a tuning mechanism. We're unlikely to see them for autognomes because you have to have Spelljammer for it to be valid. Having wider nets like Constructs as mentioned are more viable...but Tasha's is far more widespread than construct races... and we never saw more love for the Artificer, most likely because, again, more people have the PHB than Tasha's.
I'm not overly happy about it... but there's not a lot I can do, and no one is willing to start a Twitter firestorm over it.
the fact that artificers are going into the new PHB is weird when we all know it will just get added again eventually like it always does
I loved all the racial feats for 4e, and I think with a digital-first approach you can minimize the impact of feature bloat by restricting available options to those that can apply to your character (or your filters if you're looking through a compendium).
But I do think 5e's more minimalist approach to feats was a reaction to criticisms of 4e, which most people either hate or pretend it never existed. I'm not surprised to see racials and feat trees creeping back in though, simply because they are fun and really help to put more mechanical weight behind your character's flavor in a way that not many other features can.
Yo! so i was talking to my table and we all pretty much agreed that racial feats are pretty dope. Some of the ones from XGTE felt like band aid fixes or useless buffs while others felt amazing and made you stand out even more from say another dragonborn at the table. Personally id love to see a new book come out and add more racial feats. i wanted to get your guys thoughts on them. do you like them? hate them? want more? think there's enough? think they are useless and just band aid fixes and idk what im talking about?
One of 5e’s big problem is how many of your critical choices are done at the beginning of the game and progress fairly linearly thereafter. Species is probably the worst offender - you choose it when you first make your character, then pretty much get no cascading choices building on that pre-game decision. Racial feats are a great way to fix that issue, not only providing a bit more weight to your pre-game choice, but also an ability to customize your character in a way which grew out of that foundational decision.
Frankly, 5e’s entire feat system could use an overhaul—and a bigger one than is expected from the 2024 rules update. As things currently stand, it feels like the feat system has a high proportion of dead content due to the limited availability (and competition with ASI) for feat slots, funneling players toward the best feats for their few choices, instead of an actual system that allows you to flesh out the character you want to make.
Racial feats are a great way to players play too powerful races. Wand to make an illithid character? make a weakened level 1 version of them and throw in two or three feats to give them back some of their powers, get the rest via a class/subclass.
on the feat vs ASI note i had a DM who would allow you to train your ASIs up while in downtime or threw other means so taking them instead of a feat wasnt demanded for some characters. iv also had a DM who for the first three feats you got an ASI and feat.
The biggest barrier for more racial feats is that WotC tries to avoid a lot of cross referencing between secondary books, so they couldn’t really do the same thing they did in XGtE and release them separately for anything but the core races. Given that the feats were likely partly designed based on feedback for the races, that makes it difficult to set them up alongside a race. Probably the best time would be with the next MotM, but if that includes as many as the current one that might mean more feats than they want to tackle.
thats a fair point releasing a book that needs races from another book is a good way to make people mad. if they did make a book for that with a warning on the cover that youd need races from another book or add feats for those races along with more for the PHB so people arent fully missing out along with other subclasses and magic items and other goodies might make it worth it
You should check the BadEye community shared homebrew feats.
How to: Replace DEX in your AC | Jump & Suffocation stats | Build a (Spell & class effect buff system | Wild Shape effect system) | Tool Proficiencies as Custom Skills | Spells at higher levels explained | Superior Fighting/Martial Adept Fix | Snippet Codes Explored - Subclasses | Snippet Math Theory | Homebrew Weapons Explained
Check out my: FEATS | MAGIC ITEMS | MONSTERS | SUBCLASSES Artificer Specialist: Weaveblade
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I think racial feats can be nice, but there’s such a large difference between usefulness of them (feats are hard to balance in general imo). For example, you have Elven Accuracy, which is an absolutely amazing and broken feat. Then you have Dragon Hide, which gives you… worse lizardfolk features. Racial feats also kind of locks you into a playstyle too - like, Elven Accuracy requires you to be that standard DEX or spellcaster elf (and it’s advantage on attack rolls too, so not even spellcaster as much). Kind of blocks you off from trying things outside of Forgotten Realms lore species stereotypes.
There should definitely be more feats that are actually useful, but so many of the new ones are horrendously broken. And that kind of goes for racial feats, they’re likely gonna be a hit or miss. I do like the idea of races getting better abilities as time goes on but I think that maybe equalizing the power level of playable races would be a first step? Elves are like the golden child of WOTC or something man, there’s always like 20 new broken sub races we don’t need, and we don’t need more broken racial feats for them. But if we got actual cool dragonborn feats or maybe even changeling, warforged, dwarves, etc, then hell yea. Especially if those feats don’t lock you into a role but instead give you more freedom to play your character, like a changeling racial feat that allows you to change your creature type or something.
I also completely understand this is incredibly unrealistic and is wishful thinking, but I love expressing my opinions in several paragraphs on online forums :)
— δ cyησ • τηε crσc mαsτεr • hε/hιm δ —
“sᴏᴍᴇᴏɴᴇ, ɪ ᴛᴇʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ, ɪɴ ᴀɴᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ʀᴇᴍᴇᴍʙᴇʀ ᴜs.”
——————| EXTENDED SIG |——————
Φ • happily married to • ☁️ℝ𝔼𝔻ℙ𝔼𝕃𝕋☁️ • As vast as the sun, stars, and the sky itself, so is my promise to you • Φ
they did alot of good work for the races of that time tho i think they would need a little updating lol all of those races got moved to legacy now and most of the racial changes they made just ended up getting added tho theres still a few good ones i took
One of the largest problems people have with Racial Feats, it's that they're usually given to the players at the level their starting at, meaning unless the DM is running a intentionally hard campaign and want their players to be strong for it, it can make most of the characters strong enough to steamroll through any early game conflict. This doesn't always happen, since you can get Racial Feats the same way you would get other Feats, and this is the way some DMs run it. I personally love them, they have a lot of flavor, and they add a lot more versatility and options to your character, especially if they're given at level 1. The only problem with them ism when DMs and players don't communicate with each other.
The issue is the same as what the Artificer has. It's not in the core book, so writers can't assume you have it. As a result, they never release new stuff for it. You could probably get some more stuff for Dwarves (and there is already stuff for Dragonborn, even if not explicitly listed for them, the feats naturally lend themselves to Dragonborn)., but you'll never get new stuff for Changelings or Warforged because they're not as appealing.
It does suck. It's how the free market works though.
Want to play D&D? Try the following resources first (each section withing vertical bars is a clickable link to find the resource).
|The free Basic Rules.|
|Some free short adventures| and |some more here too.| |Here is a series of encounters, some of which link together form a mini-adventure|.
You've played a few games and now want to buy materials? |Here's my guide on what to buy next|.
Considering 4e managed to figure this out, and figure it out to a level that bordered on excessive, I think this is less of a real problem and more of a manufactured problem players just kind of accept.
Realistically, you probably need no more than 2-4 feats for any given species - that is enough to make you feel like you can further explore the species choice of the character, while still giving you room to explore other feats and without leading to the feat overload of 4e.
I do not think that is so many additional feats as to be overwhelming in a rulebook, especially when you do a cost benefit analysis of adding in the desperately needed individualization which species feats bring.
Additionally, Wizards always has the option of expanding feats by using monster categories better. Being a bit more liberal with things like “construct” would allow you to publish a catch all “constructs only” species trait—that way you do not need a specific race, but if you had either warforged or autognome (and both received construct classifications), it would be applicable. That gives Wizards a way to increase species customization, without the feats being tied to one species and one species alone.
It depends what you're looking for in the feats, though. A sizeable portion of the XGtE ones are leveraging aspects unique to their race: you get various magics in line with their background for the elves, tieflings get some of the resistances of devils or basically turn their fire into hellfire, dragonborn can do a fear effect like dragons, half orcs got a bonus feature to their endurance trait, etc. A couple of these were specifically tied to core race features. The thing about casting wider is that then you get people wondering why they can't just be regular feats so everyone can play with them. It's not an awful or unworkable idea, but the aim of the iteration we've seen was often to tailor the feat to the particular race.
Honestly, if you want more general flexibility for the races, I'd say do what I believe Pathfinder did at one point and give some different options on the baseline traits; like dwarves could have resistance to poison damage and advantage on saves against the condition or they could have +1 hp/level. Allows for customization without spending a feat/ASI, and on the development end it keeps it all sync'd up at release rather than ending up in different books or chapters.
It's not a problem, it's just a marketing strategy. If they're trying to sell Fizban's to players, it's more likely to appeal to more people if they have something everyone can use, like a Ranger subclass than something that only a subset can use like an Artificer subclass. That's why it bothers me a bit that the Artificer didn't make it into the new PHB. They will only realistically release new subclasses simultaneously with the whole class - which does give some scope for additional subclasses, but the other classes gets the opportunity to release new subclasses with every book.
It's possible they'll release racial feats alongside the races, but that's already put paid to the ones in MotM and the pattern seems to be to release them afterwards as a tuning mechanism. We're unlikely to see them for autognomes because you have to have Spelljammer for it to be valid. Having wider nets like Constructs as mentioned are more viable...but Tasha's is far more widespread than construct races... and we never saw more love for the Artificer, most likely because, again, more people have the PHB than Tasha's.
I'm not overly happy about it... but there's not a lot I can do, and no one is willing to start a Twitter firestorm over it.
Want to play D&D? Try the following resources first (each section withing vertical bars is a clickable link to find the resource).
|The free Basic Rules.|
|Some free short adventures| and |some more here too.| |Here is a series of encounters, some of which link together form a mini-adventure|.
You've played a few games and now want to buy materials? |Here's my guide on what to buy next|.
I should have clarified--it is not too much additional to add to a rulebook which already contains any given race. 2-4 feats per race is not an overly large commitment in terms of space and is probably worth it when you do a cost-benefit analysis of what can fit in a book. Making this choice moving forward would be a solid improvement to the game and do a good job at adding depth to the feat system (one of the stated goals of the 2024 rules update).
Now, that does leave existing species in a bit of a lurch--but it is not like species features are necessary to play a species. Those species would still have other feats to choose from, so their ability to interact with the system might be a bit more limited in choice, but not unfunctionally so.
the fact that artificers are going into the new PHB is weird when we all know it will just get added again eventually like it always does
I loved all the racial feats for 4e, and I think with a digital-first approach you can minimize the impact of feature bloat by restricting available options to those that can apply to your character (or your filters if you're looking through a compendium).
But I do think 5e's more minimalist approach to feats was a reaction to criticisms of 4e, which most people either hate or pretend it never existed. I'm not surprised to see racials and feat trees creeping back in though, simply because they are fun and really help to put more mechanical weight behind your character's flavor in a way that not many other features can.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm