Feats are an optional rule that many D&D campaigns choose to use to let players customize their characters even more deeply than just choosing a race, class, background, and subclass. The feats in the Player’s Handbook give characters the ability to improve their skills as a combat master, social savant, or exploration expert in various specific ways—and the new feats in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything continue this tradition.

Check out these fifteen new feats! How can you use them to enhance your character’s story, or grant them explosive new powers?

Artificer Initiate

It takes a long road of grueling training to become an artificer. You’ve only just taken a first step down that path, and have learned how to cast some basic artificer spells, as well as gaining proficiency in a type of artisan’s tools that you use to craft your artificer spells.

Remember, artificers “cast spells” not by waving wands and mouthing incantations, but by rapidly creating magical gadgets. If you take this feat, think about how you cast your artificer spells—do you create a pocketwatch that covertly shoots a beam of destructive magical energy like a fire bolt? Or perhaps you know how to whip up an alchemical phial that explodes into a grease trap.

Feats or Multiclassing?

Feats and multiclassing are both optional rules presented in the Player’s Handbook that allow a player to give their character gain powers normally inaccessible to their class, and to give their character narrative depth and nuance through new mechanics. Some gaming groups use both optional rules for maximum customizability, while other groups allow one, the other, or neither, to keep their game simpler or more focused.

The Magic Initiate and Martial Adept feats in the Player’s Handbook are both feats that give characters a taste of another class by granting access to basic spells and martial maneuvers. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything includes several new feats that work this way: Artificer Initiate, Eldritch Adept, Fighting Initiate, and Metamagic Adept, allowing you to gain a little bit of the power of the artificer, warlock, fighter, and sorcerer classes respectively. If you want to get just a little flavor or power from one of these classes, but don’t want to multiclass (or your group doesn’t use multiclassing rules), these feats are a great way to do so.

Also, if you decide to take one of these feats and ultimately decide you want to multiclass into that class later, you can keep this feat and just have a few extra spells. However, if you want to diversify your skillset, you can also ask your Dungeon Master if they'll allow you to swap this feat out when you gain your first level in that class. They could let you trade your feat for any other feat, or for two +1 bonuses to any ability score.

Chef

You are a master chef! Not only do you have a knack for creating world-class meals, but your culinary creations are so good that they fill all who eat them with enhanced fortitude. They can heal more when they consume your cooking during a short rest, and you can make treats that give them a morale-boosting surge of temporary hit points.

Crusher

This feat is one of a trio of feats that improves your skill with a certain type of physical damage. As a crusher, you are a master of inflicting heavy wounds with bludgeoning weapons and knocking foes around the battlefield as you pummel them silly. This feat synergizes particularly well with monks’ ability to make many unarmed strikes in a single turn.

Eldritch Adept

Have you ever been tempted by magical secrets beyond your ken? Most spellcasters study hard to master the magic of their ancestors, or the magic within them, or magic they found in ancient tomes—but the temptation to take the quick and easy route, to find an otherworldly patron who will gift them untold power, is omnipresent. This feat grants a spellcaster one Eldritch Invocation from the warlock class, which they can change as they level up.

Fey Touched

You have been exposed to raw power from the Feywild, a plane of powerful and tempestuous emotions. This feat represents your connection to the capricious power of the fey by granting you a small bonus to one of your ability scores and the ability to cast misty step and another spell from a particularly fey list.

Fighting Initiate

You’ve undergone rigorous martial training in your downtime, though not enough to become a full-fledged fighter. Instead, you’ve learned how to fight with a particular weapon, allowing you to gain a Fighting Style from the fighter class. Don’t forget that there are a handful of brand-new Fighting Styles in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything including options for fighting bare-handed, fighting blind, and fighting with thrown weapons.

Gunner

Want the rakish fantasy of being a stylish gunslinger? In addition to granting similar bonuses to the Crossbow Expert feat from the Player’s Handbook, this feat grants you proficiency with firearms, which are described in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

Metamagic Adept

Sorcerers are masters of using their internal power to modify their spells. You, too, have a small wellspring of this power that allows you to exert your will to twist the nature of your spells. You now have a small pool of sorcery points and two Metamagic options from the sorcerer class to spend them on.

Piercer

Another member of the trio of physical damage feats, this one makes you a master at delivering deadly wounds with piercing weapons by allowing you to reroll damage dice and dealing more damage on a critical hit. A great tool for rogues who use piercing weapons like shortswords and rapiers to deal deadly sneak attacks!

Feats a la Carte

You can gain access to all of these feats by purchasing Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything on the D&D Marketplace, but did you know you can also buy just a single feat—and have the cost of that feat discounted from the book’s full cost if you decide to buy it later? Check out the Marketplace page for Tasha’s and scroll down to see all of the options you can get a la carte if you don’t want the full book now.

Or, consider getting Tasha’s as a gift for the D&D players in your life. Check out the D&D Beyond 2020 Gift Guide and discover how to give the gift of D&D Beyond!

Poisoner

Poison is a tricky thing to use properly, especially when beings like dwarves have constitutions hardy enough to cause even deadly poisons to just give them an aching hangover. This feat lets you ignore resistance to poison damage, poison your weapons rapidly, and even create deadly poisons with a poisoner’s kit. Just beware, creatures with magical biologies like undead, constructs, and most fiends are still immune to poison—no amount of masterful skill can bypass that!

Shadow Touched

Akin to the Fey Touched feat mentioned earlier, a character might gain the Shadow Touched feat from being lost in the drab and ghastly landscape of the Shadowfell. In addition to improving one of your ability scores, you also gain the ability to cast invisibility, as well as another shadowy spell.

Skill Expert

This is a mighty skill for any adventurer to have, but it’s especially useful for bards, rogues, and any other talented expert that might be lovingly called a “skill monkey.” By granting you proficiency in an extra skill and expertise in any skill you’re proficient in, it makes you a master of whatever craft you choose to specialize in.

Slasher

The final of this book’s trio of physical damage-enhancing feats, Slasher makes you a master of slashing weapons. It’s a particularly powerful tool for anyone with natural claws like tabaxi monks or Path of the Beast barbarians, since it lets you hamstring foes to reduce their speed and grievously wound them with critical hits to impose disadvantage on their attacks.

Telekinetic

Anyone studying to be a Psi Warrior would do well to embrace the power of telekinesis, the ability to move things with your mind—and even use that power to shove creatures with your mental force. Combine this feat with a variant human who gains a feat at 1st-level to represent a character born with latent psychic power!

Telepathic

The sister feat to Telekinetic, above, the Telepathic feat gives you the ability to speak to other creatures with your mind. Your powers of telepathy allow you to communicate in a language you know, and to read their thoughts. Great for communicating secrets silently with your party members in tense scenarios—or for spooking patrolling guards and learning your foes’ deepest secrets!

These fifteen feats all provide great ways to enhance your characters’ power and deepen their stories. Check them all out in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, available now in the D&D Beyond Marketplace!

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James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.