I'm considering giving a free feat at the beginning of a future campaign. Human Variants would be able to select a feat as normal, but I was considering allowing the players to select a free feat from the following:
These seem to be among the worst feats in the game with the exception of skilled for skill monkeys. The options that are decent have much better options available or are far too niche/DM dependent. I'd like to see what really comes up when these choices are available.
Are there any options that you think are obvious takes from this list? Are there any other feats that should be added for consideration (ie. feats that wouldn't see play time if they weren't offered like this)?
Finally, tell me which option you would use in a generic game along with the 1st level build and brief backstory of the character (including the backstory on the feat, be it extra training or how they discovered this special ability).
Edit: If you would choose Skilled and either a bard or rogue, please also tell me what your second choice would be.
I enjoy the feats, so throwing more in seems fun to me. I might add resilient and inspiring leader to the list. While both are very useful I'm not very tempted to take them in a "normal" build.
As for which I would take and why, it completely depends on the character I'm playing. Charger or Savage Attacker for a melee character. Moderately armored bladesinger?
As I said, I enjoy feats and try to work them in, cool idea. It does amp up the power level of the players, but in more heroic games that can be fun and easy to keep balanced.
In our group we always run the "free bonus feat" and we don't limit the options - with one exception (the Luck feat,- we can take this later but DM said he'd up the difficulty if we do). None of the feats prove overpowered, especially since everyone gets one. We have found it gives us more freedom to customise our characters.
Since I play spellcasters, the Magic Initiate feats are useful.
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I'm considering giving a free feat at the beginning of a future campaign. Human Variants would be able to select a feat as normal, but I was considering allowing the players to select a free feat from the following:
These seem to be among the worst feats in the game with the exception of skilled for skill monkeys. The options that are decent have much better options available or are far too niche/DM dependent. I'd like to see what really comes up when these choices are available.
Are there any options that you think are obvious takes from this list? Are there any other feats that should be added for consideration (ie. feats that wouldn't see play time if they weren't offered like this)?
Finally, tell me which option you would use in a generic game along with the 1st level build and brief backstory of the character (including the backstory on the feat, be it extra training or how they discovered this special ability).
Edit: If you would choose Skilled and either a bard or rogue, please also tell me what your second choice would be.
well... heavily armored. Suddenly makes rangers less ******. As now a ranger can always wear plate, and be “disadvantaged” at stealth. Because once they learn pass without a Trace. It won’t matter again. Particularly Gloomstalker sand hunter will benefit the most from heavily armored. Since rangers can then wade into horde breaking situations, with their multi attack defense. And between plate and a shield +that have 26 ac after being hit once. If they dipped any spellcaster. Which is not rare for rangers. Haste, shield spell, etc. and that’s lot including stuff their teammates do to. All of a sudden the ranger is a perfect tank. That can operate up close and far away beautifully.
Durable is only a useless feat if your GM/game/party diminish the value of short rests by either not taking them, or not creating situations to do so. The people that’s benefit the most from it for free would obviously be classes that benefit from short rests a lot like Fighters and Warlocks.
Charger is a great feat for spellcasters, who are having their distance closed by the enemy. And want to push them back into the midst of their melee friends while maintaining distance. Or for a monk, to give the monk even more utility of what they can do in combat for their crowd control.
Lightly armored and moderately armored are self explanatory for the squishy spellcaster classes it will save lives of in early levels from significant (for them) ac boosts as well as the bonus half feat stat.
Savage attacker- I can’t agree more that as feats go it’s underwhelming- could find some small usefulness for if you are making a mounted combatant variant human fighter cavalier or paladin or ranger beast master who itends to use the lance a lot. And you just want to make sure you’re not wasting all this flavor for a 1-3 roll on your lances Damage dice.
Skilled: people forget about the tool proficiency portion of it. Wizards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, warlocks, artifcers. Could really benefit by just being skilled in herbalism kits, healers kits, alchemist supplies, etc. As a GM if they did that. And took the time and money to collect the supplies and the components and etc. are you going to stop them from constantly making their own potions of healing, restoration, alchemist fire, etc.? —- there’s more you can do than just being a skill monkey.
and lastly- weaponmaster. weaponmaster is a beautiful thing. Picture any spellcaster. With the ability to cast fly. Or levitate. Or feather fall and dimension door.
now also being able to use longbows/heavy crossbows/firearms. And just picking apart combats where there’s no dense foliage or ceiling restrictions, limited cover. From aerial heights and distances, with your encounter meekly able to respond at all.
now imagine from weaponmaster- dips into fighter 1 level total to get complimentary fighting style enhancements to the weapons chosen. Now all of a sudden, the pact of the blade GWM greatsword wielding also has GWF. And doesn’t have to be a Hexblade. Granted they won’t have the armor or shield benefit of a hexblade, but they would essentially have “all martial weapons” as they’ll choose 4 weapons they’d be likely to use.
giving away feats for free sounds good in practice and fun and all that. But for the DM it’ll make your job harder as now the balances and everything are out of whack and you’ll have to constantly need to readjust more than you thought.
and for the players, in my experiences in games where the dm did this, there’s varying levels of powergame was the players will do with their free feat for themselves so you get divided between players if all the players aren’t on the same stance regarding play styles on some of that stuff. BUT. And more importantly. The added starting badassery, makes things easier to get boring from the get go, and you can lose engagement.
You could just give everyone savage attacker and call it a day. And that would have the least butterfly effect of anything negative. As savage attacker has very limited use. And is not guaranteed to even be an upgrade.
I allow all characters to pick a single feat at creation. The restriction is that is cannot be a combat feat (Dual Wielder, armor stuff, warcaster etc). Basically any racial or feat that would be part of your naturally born ability.
My first pass over the racial feats led me to believe that they were more powerful than they actually are. Thinking that they'd be in line with Elven Accuracy, I focused more on the ability than how frequently they'd be usable or, in the case of Prodigy, thinking that there were more options involved. I didn't want to have feats that I thought would be auto-selected because I wanted to see what kind of a difference the feats actually made when chosen. The second more careful pass made it clear that some of the abilities might be powerful, but they are very niche. Just the type of stuff that I was thinking of using.
I enjoy the feats, so throwing more in seems fun to me. I might add resilient and inspiring leader to the list. While both are very useful I'm not very tempted to take them in a "normal" build.
As for which I would take and why, it completely depends on the character I'm playing. Charger or Savage Attacker for a melee character. Moderately armored bladesinger?
As I said, I enjoy feats and try to work them in, cool idea. It does amp up the power level of the players, but in more heroic games that can be fun and easy to keep balanced.
I didn't want to use the Resilient feats as a free feat simply because that would take the decision between starting in one of two classes because of a save off the table. Resilient (Con) and Resilient (Wis) seem like the most likely candidates from that perspective. As for Inspiring Leader, I'd just participated in a recent forum discussion that led me to see the value that those temporary HP actually have. I passed on it because of that view, but considering my initial reaction to the reading, maybe I'll add it onto the list as well and see if anyone chooses it.
In our group we always run the "free bonus feat" and we don't limit the options - with one exception (the Luck feat,- we can take this later but DM said he'd up the difficulty if we do). None of the feats prove overpowered, especially since everyone gets one. We have found it gives us more freedom to customise our characters.
Since I play spellcasters, the Magic Initiate feats are useful.
I didn't want to have Magic Initiate as an initial option just because of the experience level of my players (newer) and the breadth of options that are available. It's something that I might consider at another time. I do like the idea of being able to customize characters more. In my current campaign, I allowed my players to select one of the common magic items from XGTE. I didn't allow a few choices that made sense to me at the time, but I don't recall what they are. I've also played around with giving the party a handful of magic items before. It's fun to see what difference the different choices can make for the story telling.
well... heavily armored. Suddenly makes rangers less ******. As now a ranger can always wear plate, and be “disadvantaged” at stealth. Because once they learn pass without a Trace. It won’t matter again. Particularly Gloomstalker sand hunter will benefit the most from heavily armored. Since rangers can then wade into horde breaking situations, with their multi attack defense. And between plate and a shield +that have 26 ac after being hit once. If they dipped any spellcaster. Which is not rare for rangers. Haste, shield spell, etc. and that’s lot including stuff their teammates do to. All of a sudden the ranger is a perfect tank. That can operate up close and far away beautifully.
Durable is only a useless feat if your GM/game/party diminish the value of short rests by either not taking them, or not creating situations to do so. The people that’s benefit the most from it for free would obviously be classes that benefit from short rests a lot like Fighters and Warlocks.
Charger is a great feat for spellcasters, who are having their distance closed by the enemy. And want to push them back into the midst of their melee friends while maintaining distance. Or for a monk, to give the monk even more utility of what they can do in combat for their crowd control.
Lightly armored and moderately armored are self explanatory for the squishy spellcaster classes it will save lives of in early levels from significant (for them) ac boosts as well as the bonus half feat stat.
Savage attacker- I can’t agree more that as feats go it’s underwhelming- could find some small usefulness for if you are making a mounted combatant variant human fighter cavalier or paladin or ranger beast master who itends to use the lance a lot. And you just want to make sure you’re not wasting all this flavor for a 1-3 roll on your lances Damage dice.
Skilled: people forget about the tool proficiency portion of it. Wizards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, warlocks, artifcers. Could really benefit by just being skilled in herbalism kits, healers kits, alchemist supplies, etc. As a GM if they did that. And took the time and money to collect the supplies and the components and etc. are you going to stop them from constantly making their own potions of healing, restoration, alchemist fire, etc.? —- there’s more you can do than just being a skill monkey.
and lastly- weaponmaster. weaponmaster is a beautiful thing. Picture any spellcaster. With the ability to cast fly. Or levitate. Or feather fall and dimension door.
now also being able to use longbows/heavy crossbows/firearms. And just picking apart combats where there’s no dense foliage or ceiling restrictions, limited cover. From aerial heights and distances, with your encounter meekly able to respond at all.
now imagine from weaponmaster- dips into fighter 1 level total to get complimentary fighting style enhancements to the weapons chosen. Now all of a sudden, the pact of the blade GWM greatsword wielding also has GWF. And doesn’t have to be a Hexblade. Granted they won’t have the armor or shield benefit of a hexblade, but they would essentially have “all martial weapons” as they’ll choose 4 weapons they’d be likely to use.
Weaponmaster is redundant with a fighter 1 dip.
giving away feats for free sounds good in practice and fun and all that. But for the DM it’ll make your job harder as now the balances and everything are out of whack and you’ll have to constantly need to readjust more than you thought.
and for the players, in my experiences in games where the dm did this, there’s varying levels of powergame was the players will do with their free feat for themselves so you get divided between players if all the players aren’t on the same stance regarding play styles on some of that stuff. BUT. And more importantly. The added starting badassery, makes things easier to get boring from the get go, and you can lose engagement.
You could just give everyone savage attacker and call it a day. And that would have the least butterfly effect of anything negative. As savage attacker has very limited use. And is not guaranteed to even be an upgrade.
those ones tend to not be selected as often either. And some are super niche.
I appreciated the analysis from the 1st post and considered many of the options from the second post. I won't include Mounted combatant simply because I don't want one player to have a character concept that includes mounts right from level 1 with a feat that may not see action for a few levels. Either the player will be disappointed that their feat is not seeing action right away or they'll try to coerce the party to help them buy a mount early. I'd rather that they had some levels and funding to support that option at level 4. I think that I would also dissuade a Human Variant from taking that feat at level 1. I'll have to take another closer look through the options that you suggested to see if the reason that I didn't choose them was because of the niche nature of the feat, or that they'd be pretty powerful in the right character concept.
I allow all characters to pick a single feat at creation. The restriction is that is cannot be a combat feat (Dual Wielder, armor stuff, warcaster etc). Basically any racial or feat that would be part of your naturally born ability.
How do you feel that your approach is appreciated from your players? Do you feel that it helps them to get an idea about who their character is better? Do you feel that they gravitate to certain feats more when the restriction is to non combat oriented feats?
As for me, part of what got me interested in this idea was a half-orc that I was playing around with during theorycrafting. He would start as a barbarian with a fisher background (just because I've been trying to play around with the Saltmarsh backgrounds to see what they offer). The idea would be work on maximizing crits, so Champion would be added in later. I started playing around with Orcish Fury and with Savage Attacker to see what the damage could look like. Neither feat is spectacular on its own, but I felt like there were some builds where they could really stand out. It seemed like crit builds centered around a d12 would get the most benefit from Savage attacker, since the bigger dice get more benefit from the reroll and the returns diminish rapidly for too many dice.
With that in mind, I focused on the half-orc that wanted to be able to just go out and fish, but was forced to fight from factors outside of his control. At first, he's angry that he can't simply do what he wants to do and channels that rage into his fighting. Later, he learns to adapt his fighting style to incorporate that rage into a style that helps him to deal quite a bit of harm to his enemies more frequently than before. The character doesn't have a free Savage Attacker, but I did incorporate it early into the build. I do feel that it felt natural that the rage inherent to barbarians and the nature of half-orcs lent quite well into the thought process behind the design of Savage Attacker, and would have chosen that feat if I were given the freebie.
honestly Jhffan, more than anything. the problem with mounted combatant in the sense of "abuse" is, if 2 players coordinate, to where you have 1 player intentionally be a centaur, so that another player, is intentionally a halfling/gnome/small race char, with mounted combatant feat, using their centaur other PC character friend as the mount.
• You have advantage on melee attack rolls against any unmounted creature that is smaller than your mount. • You can force an attack targeted at your mount to target you instead. • If your mount is subjected to an effect that allows it to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, it instead takes no damage if it succeeds on the saving throw, and only half damage if it fails.
I'll focus on bullet 2 and 3.
bullet 3. centaur rogues or centaur monks or centaur barbarians all already do pretty good for dex saving reduced damage stuff, added effect of this just by having someone else mounted on them, pretty boss.
bullet 2. wizards/clerics. very easy for them to early levels, have AC's as high as high 20s with the aid of a shield spell. pretty nice to force things away from the mount to target you instead. (i would rule it as you have to declare doing this before seeing the roll, to lessen shenanigans)
and bullet 1. while is a lesser thing, can still address. shocking grasp, booming blade, green flame blade. Booming blade can be especially fun in this sense. as the "mount" the centaur, especially if its a rogue. can attack, disengage, move away, and now that enemy still has booming blade effected on him.
My games, and the games run by other people in our group, use a very similar rule. Everybody gets one free feat, which started as "racial feat if applicable", but since half the species in the game have no such feats, it morphed into "any non-combat feat". Things like Great Weapon Meunster, Polearm Meunster, Sharp Cheddar Shooter, Goudabow Expert, and the like are off the list. So are borderline cases like Mobile, and Lucky is right out. The general rule is "if you'd take it during normal progression as part of your regular build, it doesn't qualify for starter freat."
It's proven awesome. Letting people select any whacky offbeat feat they want so long as it's not a beat-people-up feat has added a ton to our games. A couple examples, as per your request.
Seriph, Oath of Heroism aasimar paladin (played by Rize, not me) Starter feat: Keen Mind A smith's daughter who'd worked to learn her father's trade, content with working metal and serving her hometown...until a mysterious crone appeared in her town and revealed the secrets of her divine blood to her. Charged with tales of heroism and Doing The Gods' Work, Seriph forged a pair of swords and a suit of armor for herself and set out to follow the omens of the gods and find the destiny the fortune teller had sworn was in her blood. Feat: Seriph's Keen Mind feat combines with her 8 Intelligence; she's a rustic farm girl (Folk Hero background) with a poor education for everything but metal working and farm life, but that doesn't mean she's stupid. In matters that pertain more to tracking the sun and knowing her surroundings and past, Seriph is the equal of any of those high-minded wizardy types in their citified ivory towers. Her poor knowledge checks are counterweighted by excellent skills of wilderness navigation and keen recall; it was an awesome combination to watch Rize play.
Starlight Through Driving Rain, tiefling artificer Starter feat: Linguist 'Star', as she prefers to be known, is an inquisitive and well-regarded archaeologist, tracking the lost histories of the world and restoring knowledge lost to time to those who need it...or can pay well enough to fund her expeditions for it. Feat: Star exists in a homebrew setting with dozens of different countries and cultures, all of which have their own languages. Common is still Common, but knowing the 'Official' language of a given area can be the difference between getting that excavation permit you need and being stonewalled by a dicky bureaucrat. Linguist also allows her to know the extra languages one might expect of a woman who studies the past, and the ciphers she creates are a fun and useful hobby brought about through study of ancient, long-dead languages.
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I'm considering giving a free feat at the beginning of a future campaign. Human Variants would be able to select a feat as normal, but I was considering allowing the players to select a free feat from the following:
Charger, Durable, Heavily Armored, Lightly Armored, Moderately Armored, Savage Attacker, Skilled, & Weapon Master
These seem to be among the worst feats in the game with the exception of skilled for skill monkeys. The options that are decent have much better options available or are far too niche/DM dependent. I'd like to see what really comes up when these choices are available.
Are there any options that you think are obvious takes from this list? Are there any other feats that should be added for consideration (ie. feats that wouldn't see play time if they weren't offered like this)?
Finally, tell me which option you would use in a generic game along with the 1st level build and brief backstory of the character (including the backstory on the feat, be it extra training or how they discovered this special ability).
Edit: If you would choose Skilled and either a bard or rogue, please also tell me what your second choice would be.
I would use the racial feats as free feat options
I enjoy the feats, so throwing more in seems fun to me. I might add resilient and inspiring leader to the list. While both are very useful I'm not very tempted to take them in a "normal" build.
As for which I would take and why, it completely depends on the character I'm playing. Charger or Savage Attacker for a melee character. Moderately armored bladesinger?
As I said, I enjoy feats and try to work them in, cool idea. It does amp up the power level of the players, but in more heroic games that can be fun and easy to keep balanced.
Everyone is the main character of their story
In our group we always run the "free bonus feat" and we don't limit the options - with one exception (the Luck feat,- we can take this later but DM said he'd up the difficulty if we do). None of the feats prove overpowered, especially since everyone gets one. We have found it gives us more freedom to customise our characters.
Since I play spellcasters, the Magic Initiate feats are useful.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
well... heavily armored. Suddenly makes rangers less ******.
As now a ranger can always wear plate, and be “disadvantaged” at stealth. Because once they learn pass without a Trace. It won’t matter again. Particularly Gloomstalker sand hunter will benefit the most from heavily armored. Since rangers can then wade into horde breaking situations, with their multi attack defense. And between plate and a shield +that have 26 ac after being hit once. If they dipped any spellcaster. Which is not rare for rangers. Haste, shield spell, etc. and that’s lot including stuff their teammates do to. All of a sudden the ranger is a perfect tank. That can operate up close and far away beautifully.
Durable is only a useless feat if your GM/game/party diminish the value of short rests by either not taking them, or not creating situations to do so. The people that’s benefit the most from it for free would obviously be classes that benefit from short rests a lot like Fighters and Warlocks.
Charger is a great feat for spellcasters, who are having their distance closed by the enemy. And want to push them back into the midst of their melee friends while maintaining distance. Or for a monk, to give the monk even more utility of what they can do in combat for their crowd control.
Lightly armored and moderately armored are self explanatory for the squishy spellcaster classes it will save lives of in early levels from significant (for them) ac boosts as well as the bonus half feat stat.
Savage attacker- I can’t agree more that as feats go it’s underwhelming- could find some small usefulness for if you are making a mounted combatant variant human fighter cavalier or paladin or ranger beast master who itends to use the lance a lot. And you just want to make sure you’re not wasting all this flavor for a 1-3 roll on your lances Damage dice.
Skilled: people forget about the tool proficiency portion of it. Wizards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, warlocks, artifcers. Could really benefit by just being skilled in herbalism kits, healers kits, alchemist supplies, etc. As a GM if they did that. And took the time and money to collect the supplies and the components and etc. are you going to stop them from constantly making their own potions of healing, restoration, alchemist fire, etc.? —- there’s more you can do than just being a skill monkey.
and lastly- weaponmaster.
weaponmaster is a beautiful thing. Picture any spellcaster. With the ability to cast fly. Or levitate. Or feather fall and dimension door.
now also being able to use longbows/heavy crossbows/firearms. And just picking apart combats where there’s no dense foliage or ceiling restrictions, limited cover. From aerial heights and distances, with your encounter meekly able to respond at all.
now imagine from weaponmaster- dips into fighter 1 level total to get complimentary fighting style enhancements to the weapons chosen. Now all of a sudden, the pact of the blade GWM greatsword wielding also has GWF. And doesn’t have to be a Hexblade. Granted they won’t have the armor or shield benefit of a hexblade, but they would essentially have “all martial weapons” as they’ll choose 4 weapons they’d be likely to use.
giving away feats for free sounds good in practice and fun and all that. But for the DM it’ll make your job harder as now the balances and everything are out of whack and you’ll have to constantly need to readjust more than you thought.
and for the players, in my experiences in games where the dm did this, there’s varying levels of powergame was the players will do with their free feat for themselves so you get divided between players if all the players aren’t on the same stance regarding play styles on some of that stuff. BUT. And more importantly. The added starting badassery, makes things easier to get boring from the get go, and you can lose engagement.
You could just give everyone savage attacker and call it a day. And that would have the least butterfly effect of anything negative. As savage attacker has very limited use. And is not guaranteed to even be an upgrade.
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As to the other part of what other ones for players to pick from that they might not otherwise pick:
skulker, dungeon delver, athlete, Defensive duelist, healer, linguist, Martial adept, Mounted combatant.
those ones tend to not be selected as often either. And some are super niche.
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I allow all characters to pick a single feat at creation. The restriction is that is cannot be a combat feat (Dual Wielder, armor stuff, warcaster etc). Basically any racial or feat that would be part of your naturally born ability.
My first pass over the racial feats led me to believe that they were more powerful than they actually are. Thinking that they'd be in line with Elven Accuracy, I focused more on the ability than how frequently they'd be usable or, in the case of Prodigy, thinking that there were more options involved. I didn't want to have feats that I thought would be auto-selected because I wanted to see what kind of a difference the feats actually made when chosen. The second more careful pass made it clear that some of the abilities might be powerful, but they are very niche. Just the type of stuff that I was thinking of using.
I didn't want to use the Resilient feats as a free feat simply because that would take the decision between starting in one of two classes because of a save off the table. Resilient (Con) and Resilient (Wis) seem like the most likely candidates from that perspective. As for Inspiring Leader, I'd just participated in a recent forum discussion that led me to see the value that those temporary HP actually have. I passed on it because of that view, but considering my initial reaction to the reading, maybe I'll add it onto the list as well and see if anyone chooses it.
I didn't want to have Magic Initiate as an initial option just because of the experience level of my players (newer) and the breadth of options that are available. It's something that I might consider at another time. I do like the idea of being able to customize characters more. In my current campaign, I allowed my players to select one of the common magic items from XGTE. I didn't allow a few choices that made sense to me at the time, but I don't recall what they are. I've also played around with giving the party a handful of magic items before. It's fun to see what difference the different choices can make for the story telling.
I appreciated the analysis from the 1st post and considered many of the options from the second post. I won't include Mounted combatant simply because I don't want one player to have a character concept that includes mounts right from level 1 with a feat that may not see action for a few levels. Either the player will be disappointed that their feat is not seeing action right away or they'll try to coerce the party to help them buy a mount early. I'd rather that they had some levels and funding to support that option at level 4. I think that I would also dissuade a Human Variant from taking that feat at level 1. I'll have to take another closer look through the options that you suggested to see if the reason that I didn't choose them was because of the niche nature of the feat, or that they'd be pretty powerful in the right character concept.
How do you feel that your approach is appreciated from your players? Do you feel that it helps them to get an idea about who their character is better? Do you feel that they gravitate to certain feats more when the restriction is to non combat oriented feats?
As for me, part of what got me interested in this idea was a half-orc that I was playing around with during theorycrafting. He would start as a barbarian with a fisher background (just because I've been trying to play around with the Saltmarsh backgrounds to see what they offer). The idea would be work on maximizing crits, so Champion would be added in later. I started playing around with Orcish Fury and with Savage Attacker to see what the damage could look like. Neither feat is spectacular on its own, but I felt like there were some builds where they could really stand out. It seemed like crit builds centered around a d12 would get the most benefit from Savage attacker, since the bigger dice get more benefit from the reroll and the returns diminish rapidly for too many dice.
With that in mind, I focused on the half-orc that wanted to be able to just go out and fish, but was forced to fight from factors outside of his control. At first, he's angry that he can't simply do what he wants to do and channels that rage into his fighting. Later, he learns to adapt his fighting style to incorporate that rage into a style that helps him to deal quite a bit of harm to his enemies more frequently than before. The character doesn't have a free Savage Attacker, but I did incorporate it early into the build. I do feel that it felt natural that the rage inherent to barbarians and the nature of half-orcs lent quite well into the thought process behind the design of Savage Attacker, and would have chosen that feat if I were given the freebie.
honestly Jhffan, more than anything. the problem with mounted combatant in the sense of "abuse" is, if 2 players coordinate, to where you have 1 player intentionally be a centaur, so that another player, is intentionally a halfling/gnome/small race char, with mounted combatant feat, using their centaur other PC character friend as the mount.
• You have advantage on melee attack rolls against any unmounted creature that is smaller than your mount.
• You can force an attack targeted at your mount to target you instead.
• If your mount is subjected to an effect that allows it to make a Dexterity saving throw to take only half damage, it instead takes no damage if it succeeds on the saving throw, and only half damage if it fails.
I'll focus on bullet 2 and 3.
bullet 3. centaur rogues or centaur monks or centaur barbarians all already do pretty good for dex saving reduced damage stuff, added effect of this just by having someone else mounted on them, pretty boss.
bullet 2. wizards/clerics. very easy for them to early levels, have AC's as high as high 20s with the aid of a shield spell. pretty nice to force things away from the mount to target you instead. (i would rule it as you have to declare doing this before seeing the roll, to lessen shenanigans)
and bullet 1. while is a lesser thing, can still address. shocking grasp, booming blade, green flame blade. Booming blade can be especially fun in this sense. as the "mount" the centaur, especially if its a rogue. can attack, disengage, move away, and now that enemy still has booming blade effected on him.
but again: Niche
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Magic Initiate for a level 1 Warlock can go super far, for that one level.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
In terms of the original question:
My games, and the games run by other people in our group, use a very similar rule. Everybody gets one free feat, which started as "racial feat if applicable", but since half the species in the game have no such feats, it morphed into "any non-combat feat". Things like Great Weapon Meunster, Polearm Meunster, Sharp Cheddar Shooter, Goudabow Expert, and the like are off the list. So are borderline cases like Mobile, and Lucky is right out. The general rule is "if you'd take it during normal progression as part of your regular build, it doesn't qualify for starter freat."
It's proven awesome. Letting people select any whacky offbeat feat they want so long as it's not a beat-people-up feat has added a ton to our games. A couple examples, as per your request.
Seriph, Oath of Heroism aasimar paladin (played by Rize, not me)
Starter feat: Keen Mind
A smith's daughter who'd worked to learn her father's trade, content with working metal and serving her hometown...until a mysterious crone appeared in her town and revealed the secrets of her divine blood to her. Charged with tales of heroism and Doing The Gods' Work, Seriph forged a pair of swords and a suit of armor for herself and set out to follow the omens of the gods and find the destiny the fortune teller had sworn was in her blood.
Feat: Seriph's Keen Mind feat combines with her 8 Intelligence; she's a rustic farm girl (Folk Hero background) with a poor education for everything but metal working and farm life, but that doesn't mean she's stupid. In matters that pertain more to tracking the sun and knowing her surroundings and past, Seriph is the equal of any of those high-minded wizardy types in their citified ivory towers. Her poor knowledge checks are counterweighted by excellent skills of wilderness navigation and keen recall; it was an awesome combination to watch Rize play.
Starlight Through Driving Rain, tiefling artificer
Starter feat: Linguist
'Star', as she prefers to be known, is an inquisitive and well-regarded archaeologist, tracking the lost histories of the world and restoring knowledge lost to time to those who need it...or can pay well enough to fund her expeditions for it.
Feat: Star exists in a homebrew setting with dozens of different countries and cultures, all of which have their own languages. Common is still Common, but knowing the 'Official' language of a given area can be the difference between getting that excavation permit you need and being stonewalled by a dicky bureaucrat. Linguist also allows her to know the extra languages one might expect of a woman who studies the past, and the ciphers she creates are a fun and useful hobby brought about through study of ancient, long-dead languages.
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