It’s interesting to note that, by your system, an ASI comes in at 50 points, which is the bottom of A tier. Which would suggest that if you’re looking at any feats of B tier or lower and you don’t have a very specific purpose for your build, you might want to consider just taking the ASI.
I would agree that in most instances I prefer ASIs in limited levels and in point buy. So I would agree with it. VHuman and CL really allow more of those lower ones to shine without sacrificing too much mechanical weight.
Something my brother and I are testing is what happens if you give an extra feature at the beginning of the game. So if you are playing a vh or cl then you start with two additional features. I am still running my two year campaign in a more typical fashion al by comparison, but with the extra time we both have to DM we're both experimenting. The idea, hopefully, is that it gives more room to try out quirkier builds. I will point out, however, that I suspect it will only serve to get builds online faster, and then focus on ASI earlier. If you've optimized properly and your build is complete then those ASI increases are typically the only factor left to boost your potential, when if it is just a 5%.
I think Chris is assuming that the +1 bumps your modifier though, and that it’s your primary ability score being increased. +2 to one ability score that only increases its modifier by 1 would probably be worth like 30-35 points. So to get the largest effect you would want to boost two ability scores that are both odd, but both of those scores would need to also be your primary ability scores to justify valuing them at a full 50. A wizards bumping their Int mod by one and their wisdom mod, or even their Con, by one would be hard to justify valuing at a full 50 points.
It was pointed out to me that most of the time, the choice is between something that helps you in a lot of situations (the ASI) versus something that's applicable to more specific situations (the feat). That's more generalization than a hard-and-fast rule--obviously something like Lucky is pretty helpful in almost any situation--but overall I think it's an accurate observation.
To be fair the reason why the third feature of Skulker doesn’t come up is because DMs don’t enforce it. You have parties full of people making Perception checks in the dark without disadvantage.
Exactly. It’s so disappointing when DMs miss this! It makes Darkvision seem way more powerful than it is. Whenever I ask my players passive Perception, then tell them it’s minus 5 for relying on darkvision, suddenly they start actually making decisions, balancing the risk of giving away their position vs. blundering into a trap. If a DM plays by the rules, that third bullet on Skulker is worth more.
More importantly, they don't enforce the -5 penalty for passive perception checks. It's a good feat in that it removes the penalty, but one that I'd consider less useful than concentration protection.
@@jeffreycarlson1523Yeah, darkvision as a trait in DnD is less powerful than IRL darkvision, in that while it does allow you to see things, you still take disadvantage on perception checks, whereas a lot of IRL animal species like lions would not have this drawback.
I am super thankful that my DM has house ruled Magic Initiate to work more like modern design. We still use the set ability scores for casting based on the class you take from, but can use spell slots to cast the spell too.
@@nickm9102 tomelock is best for it, but I could see myself going for it with a monk. Especially if the party doesn't otherwise have all those utilities available.
Funnily, my wife took Skilled with her lvl16 Arcane Trickster. Getting those 3 additional Skills she basically cannot fail due to Reliable Talent seemed worth it. - skills are really important/come up often in my DM style.
What’s more that tends to get overlooked is that this lets you pickup tool proficiencies, too. The Artificer gains expertise at level 6 in ALL tools with which they are proficient in. Skilled shouldn’t be slept on
@@MelandBLT Tool proficiencies are surely the ribbon of all ribbons. The part of the game they are usually used in is the bit that isn't the campaign. That is F tier but it doesn't mean F tier can't be fun.
@@apjapkiThanks to Xanathar's Guide of Everything, there are a lot more uses for tools, and while skills will come up more often than tools, if you have a feature that grants you expertise in tools, it's reasonable to take a tool proficiency now. Poisoner's Kit and Thieves' Tools are very good examples of when I'd pick a tool proficiency, since these have consistently useful effects.
@@sharmakefarah2064 Thieves tools are obviously good beyond what other tools can do. Poisoner's kit is pretty much the same. It's the others I am referring to. +2 on lockpick attempts for a feat seems pretty bad when things like Aid exist. Yes of course I am aware of the Xge expanded tool rules and it's still completely minimal. It's FUN as all hell but it's clearly F.
@@apjapki It depends on the tool, but IMO Xanathar's has buffed most tools enough beyond my examples, like say Cooking Utensil's or Mason's Tools by healing more hit points when short resting and finding traps better in very common building types respectively that I'd give tool proficiencies in general a solid C-B tier, though different tools vary wildly in quality for proficiency here. Not the most useful proficiency, but is pretty reasonable to pick them up, and while not game-changing, XGtE made them surprisingly useful in real adventures. Agree to disagree here.
Since druids generally get screwed on cantrip ranges, this can be one of my favorite feats for druids, as I *REALLY* don't like the Circle of the Moon subclass. And it's especially nice for Circle of Stars and (~cough~ bugbear ~cough~) Circle of Wildfire druids, both of which have *INTERESTING* ranged spell attack options. 😁
I only just now realized Ritual Caster seems to allow non-spellcasting classes to cast higher-level rituals, provided you find them and are of appropriate level...
I really expected a higher score for ritual caster. I get that it is somewhat DM dependent, but it can give a player the ability to cast a dozen good spells: alarm, detect magic, identify, unseen servant, comprehend languages, find familiar, augury, skywrite, tiny hut, water breathing, phantom steed, divination, and telepathic bond. Surely it should be in high S tier. That's definitely why it got nerfed in the OneDND UA.
Even without that nuance, it’s an amazing feat for martial classes. Imagine a feat that allowed you to have advantage on roughly half of your attacks, whether ranged or melee; and allowed you to do aerial scouting. It would be S-tier without question. That’s JUST Find Familiar from Ritual Caster.
@@davec1 An owl with flyby doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks. So opponents would have to use actions to attack the familiar, which is as valuable if not more valuable than advantage.
One additional note for Sharpshooter: the existence of the Archery fighting style, which makes the third clause quite a bit better than GWM, due to the increased hit chance and the ease of availability of that fighting style.
This is commonly brought up, but it made me think today about how much easier it is to generate advantage for GWM (melee). There are so many effective ways to get something Prone, and then of course there's Reckless Attack. XBE muddies this a bit with also being able to take advantage of Prone targets by cutting the disadvantage that can be imposed within 5ft of ranged attackers, but that's still requiring two feats working in tandem. Along with sometimes awkward positioning. I also think the BA attack of GWM never gets enough credit. It's a lot more potent than additional accuracy, and comes up a ton. For many tables/combats, the increased range SS and bypassing partial cover may rarely if ever come up. Ranged combat being vastly superior to getting up close and personal means SS will pretty much always "win", but I think it's pretty cool how closely these two can compete for offensive capability.
@@Guyoverthere07in my opinion the BA attack of GWM is more of a ribbon feature. Scoring a crit doesn’t not happen, but with advantage making two attacks per turn it’ll only happen about once every other fight. If you have a BA that competes with it that’s an opportunity cost, if you’re a barbarian (the best class for GWM) you’ll be using your BA to rage on your first turn ever combat, and if your combats average less than 5 turns, that means your BA will be spoken for more often than you crit. If you’re a barb subclass that uses their BA, then that’s further competition for it.
@@grayson9124 It'd be a ribbon to me too if it was just bound by how often you crit, but kills are so common. Barbs are great to talk about since they've got the perfect pairing for GWM--Reckless Attack, and potentially have some BAs. Everyone uses Rage round 1, but at some tables that resource does run out. A lot of Barbs have another BA through the PAM feat, but not all! More importantly, they may not have that feat before GWM and in that case PAM isn't online until level 4 or 8. Two big gaps there in play. Now, if we're starting from level 1, PAM is best to start. Technically. Most tables blaze through levels 1 and 2, where Barbs are quite front loaded anyhow. Many just start from level 3 or higher. Once we're level 5, GWM takes priority over PAM. If you're Custom Lineage or Variant Human, this doesn't matter, but for most Barbs it's a big decision. Then let's look at the Barb subs with BAs. There's three awful ones that almost no one plays--Battle Rager, Berserker, and Tempest. Frenzy has some chops at some tables or one shots, but it's normally too big a detriment. Then there's a niche one in Totem Eagle, Wild Magic, and some level 10 and 14 features. Many of these BAs are used in niche situations, and/or don't see much if any play. Giant's Mighty Impel being the latest and greatest, but it's online too late for most builds/tables. More importantly, PAM with Elemental Cleaver is often stronger...on paper. I think this feature is both powerful and fun, but how many characters, let alone Barbs, making it to level 10+ and playing much beyond that is rare. The only real one I think worth our concern is Wild Magic. HALF of the 8 Wild Surges result in another way to use our BA round after round. That makes GWM a little more redundant for sure, but it makes PAM a lot more redundant. PAM is stronger than most Surge BAs, yes, but not strong enough. Picking a different feat is best. Where we don't already have solid BAs between Rage, GWM, and half our baseline subclass feature. Not to mention any BAS from our race, multiclass, or items we may pick up. Bolstering Magic also improves GWM--basically giving it the Archery Fighting Style--so that more kills with it are possible. Anytime we fail to kill/crit, we are still likely to have a BA to utilize. This is one of the strongest subs for Barbs imo now. Often overlooked, because people focus on the random table. The other one that also sings with just GWM is the Beast Barb. Claws give us 3 attacks to proc a crit or secure a kill instead of 2 before using our BA. For reference, that's 26.49% of one crit instead of the typical 18.54%. Pretty nice, and Claws are really good at finishing off low hp enemies that don't need a risky power attack behind em. PAM is not viable on this sub since to make the BA attack we have to use the Attack Action only with our polearm. So we can't mix in claws. A lot of people like to try to make TWF, the DBS, Longtooth Shifter, or Soul Knife to squeeze out a 4th attack with this sub, but the classic GWM Barb beats them all for streamlined DPR. These two Tasha subs can take great advantage of the martial half feats from Tasha's (Crusher/Slasher/Piercer).
@@Guyoverthere07 creatures dying happens often, but it being you who gets the killing blow isn’t something you can guarantee. It’s the same issue necromancy wizard suffers from. If you’re playing with 4 players, you’re probably only gonna get 25% of the kills, and if you’re a GWM barbarian, you should be targeting the biggest baddest monster in the encounter, which means the BA from killing isn’t going to be usable against the most meaningful target, and it’s definitely not a good idea to change up your targeting just to swing more.
Moderately Armored basically being "+3 AC" for warlocks, rogues, some bards, and other characters that get light armor proficiency... it really can't be understated how impactful that is. Glad it's in S-tier here.
Should be High A. Good but Ac is really not that important in 5e compared to prior systems. Moderately Armoured is good but is really on par with the mobile feat as avoiding potential damage all together by bonus action disengage on a rogue is far more useful then an extra 3 ac. is good but is really on par with the mobile feat as avoiding potential damage all together by bonus action disengage on a rogue is far more useful then an extra 3 ac. Mobile should be higher then ritual caster as well for the former infuriates the DM while the latter doesn't. ''Moderately Armoured'' above 'sentinel' is just wrong. I'd say the ranking are about right but think about how these work in play from experience & observation at the table?
Thing is though, I can get medium armor proficiency from a single level in the right class. I get way more levels than I do feats. It’s not always going to be the correct decision, but it makes it a harder choice than it would a feat that gives me something only a feat could give.
@@daracaexVery valid point! I might even lower ''moderately armoured'' a tad more from high A to mid or even low A with that taken into consideration. it's still good but overrated.
@@daracaex I'd say the exact opposite. Feats don't slow down spell level / spell slot progression, so I'll always prioritize a feat over a multiclass dip on a full caster (or Warlock). Also, Moderately Armored is more than a +3 to AC, because attributes are a finite resource. For a Bard/Warlock, it's at least a +4 AC in practice, and it opens up better stats in other attributes (primarily Wis).
I'd say that the reaction element of shield master is worth at least 5 more points - so many really really deadly AOE effects are so because even on a save you take a bucketful of die, and usually they are only going to come up once per round - often being something like the lair boss monster's breath weapon. Not taking that damage is huge, and in the sort of fights that reaction can be spent comes up often you probably don't get to use your reaction for much else anyway. Not saying it is super powerful for everyone, but for the folks that don't just get evasion type effects anyway its a really big gain, and being able to add the shield's AC means usually 2+ on the save as well, which is really good and would stack with Bless for a pretty huge modifier to the save...
I feel martial adept could have a scaling option, that you get a number of superior dice equal to half of your pb. Not big, but gives your technique more flexibility, as your progress.
I’ve seen people argue that the Tough feat is bottom of F tier because any character that would need more HP is terribly built. I am in agreement with Treantmonk though that HP is a limited resource and increasing it could be paramount to your survival.
Tough is so close to the value of an ASI in my opinion as +2 to constitution is worth just the slightest bit more in my eyes but it's a close call. Totem Barbarian as rage makes it double effectively or if a lower HP build like wizard perhaps but even on wizard I'd take +2 con. people that argue tough is F think 'defensive duellist' is good which it is not as a +2dexderity is twice as valuable if one ignores rule of cool for flat figures.
If you've built yourself not to get hit or to always take reduced damage, Tough is even better. I feel like anybody who argues that Tough isn't worth it isn't needs to up their encounter difficulty to 2xDeadly, 3xDeadly, etc, so they'll give Tough some respect. There are a lot of bad feats if you have 1 combat every few sessions and it lasts 1 round.
Sentinel is amazing on melee rogues. The Reaction attack lets them Sneak Attack twice per round. At my tables, this comes up more than Opportunity Attacks and is more impactful than reducing speed to 0 (since the backline is already well protected), thus, I would rate the third bullet much higher than the first (unless paired with PAM and a reach weapon).
@@matthewtopping Most do forget that rogues have ranged weapons. Even a few newer DM's I had were flummoxed when I stated I throw or loose such at the said enemy. Arcane trickster with find familiar to give advantage through the help action at range is one of the most reliable ways to get off sneak attack while avoiding any damage. Still rogues are probably the 9 or 10th of the 13 class in power but they are fun. More what I use in short campaigns as they get a tad reparative.
@@TespriTrue but with Pole arm master & valid melee options it is very good. A paladin & barbarian for instance has no reliable ranged options baring multiclassing which is often not worth it for range.
I agree. To a degree. I think the first bullet point should hold a lot less weight, the third a bit more, but also Sentinel is a C tier feat in my opinion. It just doesn't come up nearly as often as other powerhouse feats that churn out functionality. Rogues aren't exactly safe in melee. They're built around skirmishing and avoiding the front line. Even still, OAs are rare for most tables, and they can miss. This Reaction attack is more likely to occur, but still needs some stars to align. Advantage on these attacks are incredibly rare. Speeds don't get zeroed when we miss, and if we do zero speeds...most monsters don't care! They're usually built around melee, and can just attack us. If they had to Disengage or Dash to get to a more vulnerable ally, that is them wasting their turn and buying the PCs precious time and action economy. Now, if a dragon is swooping into attack before risking some damage to retreat back into the skies, then Sentinel can shine, but that's a very specific scenario. All the other S and A tier feats are crushing it round after round. This feat also works worse and worse when we get better Reactions. It even has to compete with OAs to an extent. When an enemy dies to Sneak Attack because they tried to slip past the Rogue, this feat does nothing. PAM with Glaive does make it pretty darn nice, but sword and board is also great for PAM. GWM is great for PAM. Resilient, ASIs, or just multiclassing cutting into these builds makes fitting in Sentinel real hard to actualize. Especially since most characters are playing within Tier 1-2.
Spell Sniper is funny if you take it as a Warlock alongside Eldritch Spear, since it means you can throw Eldritch Blasts at targets 600 feet away with no penalty as long as they are not behind full cover.
Yeah, that's enough to actually make them competitive with Firearms in the modern day, because most firearms that aren't rifles have range limits well under 600 feet. Admittedly, 200 yards is unfortunately close in modern combat, but that's still enough to reach almost rifle range, and handily beats out all carbine and pistol ranges.
I agree that the last feature of the Skulker feat probably isn't that impactful, but nontheless I like the idea of a character with darkvision (or even better Superior darkvision) and the Skulker feat, without penalty to their perception while being in total darkness. Imagine Drow scouts like that lurking in the Underdark. Sounds pretty scary tbh. 😊
One thing that stands out to me is that a couple of the feats I really like for specific builds don't fare too well. Skilled is definitely surpassed by Skill Expert, but both are useful for a rogue once you get Reliable Talent. Skill Expert is my first pick, but if I have the chance, I'll take Skilled to give me 3 more important skills that I can't roll lower than a 10, if i have 3 skills I still want. While I agree that Magic Initiate is made obsolete by feats like Strixhaven Initiate, there are a lot of spells on the Wizard list that don't really rely on your casting ability but can be important for certain builds. I wouldn't take it for Shield (for example), but Find Familiar and Goodberry are both good choices as 1/day castings. Of course, that does make both of these feats the definition of situational.
Agreed. Savage Attacker can be better on a high level rogue as well, and Martial Adept is stronger on a battlemaster who has plenty of fuel for the added versatility of those maneuvers. I think Chris is right to assess these in a vacuum, but players should be mindful to apply their own situational context.
Martial adept synergizes really well with the superior technique fighting style and the battle master subclass. I wouldn't mind two dice from it, though. Savage attacker synergizes really well with rogues and paladins, if we interpret it to allow a boost on sneak attack dice and smites.
I was a little surprised too. I will say that on the right build, Moderately Armored is S-Tier, but I think it's a lot more niche than most of the other S-tiers, which wouldn't be my definition of S-Tier.
@@KevinVideo Plus it's effect can be accomplished with a 1 level dip in cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, fighter, artificer, hexblade or barbarian* [*if you start as barbarian]. Acknowledging that levels aren't free, but neither are feats, and you certainly get more levels than feats, in addition to the other features from a level dip.
Unless you really want to get those 20th level features, a dip in fighter is better. But the limitation on what characters can actually benefit from the feat is limited anyway. Bard (non-Valor), Warlock (non-Hex), and Rogue can take advantage of the feat with out taking Lightly Armored, but I don’t know if my Wizard or Sorcerer want to take two feats instead of dip. I personally can only imagine taking this on a Rogue so you can still Stroke of Luck or multiclass into Sorc/Wizard. Although, if you really wanted to use sub-par legacy Hobgoblin to get Light Armor as a Sorc/Wiz, you only need one feat!… it’s a good feat, IF you can take advantage of it
I mentioned it a comment in the previous video, but one caveat when comparing Crossbow Expert versus Polearm Master is that the bonus action attack for the latter is on paper worse because it's melee and deals reduced damage, but it's also way more lenient than the former because it applies to four types of weapons instead of just one, which can make a big difference once magical gear gets introduced. Basically unless your DM is planning to hand out a magical hand crossbow, the Crossbow Expert will be confronted with the choice of accepting a magical light or heavy crossbow and losing the bonus action attack, or keeping the attack at the cost of continuing to use a non-magical weapon. For the Polearm Master, they are good as long as the magical polearm is a glaive, halberd, quarterstaff, or spear.
Telling that PAM is worse than XBE because "it's melee" is ridiculous (or weird at best). You are fighting with a melee weapon, where are you supposed to be? If you are taking PAM it's obvious that your build is optimized for melee fighting.
@@parheliaa There is a logic to it, in the sense that ranged is "better" than melee because someone who can fight at range can generally deal damage more reliably and, since most potential enemies are melee-focused, usually takes damage less frequently. Player characters who rely on melee can have their damage drop off sharply if faced with enemies who are more mobile than them, unless they have a way to boost their own mobility or hinder their enemies'. Ranged characters just need the enemies to be visible and somewhere in their general area to deal damage.
@@parheliaa You are missing the point. Polearm Master is just as powerful for melee characters as Crossbow Expert is for ranged characters, but melee and ranged are not equal. Crossbow Expert scored higher because, given equal levels of skill and optimization, a ranged character is going to be stronger in most scenarios because the very nature of melee's stricter positioning requirements makes melee characters deal damage less reliably and take damage more frequently, simply due to how 5E works. That doesn't make melee or its associated feats useless. A party without someone who can fight well in melee is usually going to struggle. But if the party already has a good balance between melee and ranged and has all of the critical party roles covered, adding more ranged characters is going to increase their effectiveness a lot more than adding more melee characters, and that means feats that boost the power of ranged characters are generally going to be considered more powerful than equivalent feats that boost the power of melee characters.
I can finally think of a use case for weapon master!!! It only took me...9 years? You need to be a straight classed monk, and either be a custom lineage starting with 18 DEX, or a race other than variant human/custom lineage who starts with 17 DEX. Then take weapon master as your half-feat, and use the Monk's Dedicated weapon feature to use a d10 weapon instead of a d8 weapon. (The idea of a Monk that takes a DEX half feat has been bouncing around in my head for a while, but I never thought too hard about which DEX half feat makes the most sense. Totally forgot that weapon master is a half feat, I have to admit I basically never think about that feat).
To be fair, it wasn't as viable until Tasha's. It's also nice since Monks can benefit from more than just a d10 weapon. They can weaponize Whips better than most with the Martial Arts die, and then attempt Stunning Strikes safely from 10ft reach. A Long Bow cannot be a Dedicated Weapon, but we could only dedicate one at a time anyways so it doesn't hurt to have it for long distance pot shots when nothing is in range of a BA melee attack. Then they could get something squirrely like Net proficiency. If nothing else, grabbing two d10 Versatile weaps instead of one offers different damtypes for Crusher/Slasher/Piercer, potential vulns, resists, immunities, or most impactful could be qualifying for stock adventure/campaign magic weapons. Definitely neat that weak feats can look nice when they're pitted against other weak feats that accomplish mostly the same thing. This is an interesting option for Rogues who also lack proficiency with Whips, Longbows, Nets, and certain magical Longswords slap on the Finesse property like the Sun Blade. A classic for the Rogue is the Scimitar of Speed to make a Bonus Action attack without needing to take the Attack Action. Thus allowing us to Ready an Attack for two Sneak Attacks per round...but while Rogues like Monks do get proficiency in Shortswords, they don't get the very mechanically similar cousin that is Scimitars!
Tavern Brawler really highlights a downside of quantifying abilities. By cramming together a bunch of mediocre things, it gets a higher score than its actual utility warrants. It just isn’t an A tier feat imo.
I was going to caution that the right feat for your character might not be the right feat for all characters, but my current PC has 2 S tier feats and a racial feat that I am sure will also be S tier, so I really can't argue with the methodology. For my 4th feat I really like C tier Mage Slayer as the perfect way to round out my Sentinel Rogue for the end of campaign boss fight, but that's my 4th feat and I definitely strongly considered a few more feats first. C tier being a good 4th pick option for the right build in the right situation seems like you really nailed these rankings so far. Excellent analysis as always, Treantmonk. Been a fan since the Pathfinder God Wizard guide. Keep up the good work.
This video got me thinking that for my campaign I'm starting this week I might take Ritual Caster. There's no wizard in the group, I am a fighter with enough Int, and I'm going with the idea/theme of a mage hunter. So what better than someone that can't quite get spells to work, but uses spells he finds off of wizards he kills. Also I just get more feats as a fighter, here's hoping I roll well enough for this MAD build this week.
Out of combat ... Gives a fighter something to do. However save your slot and take 1 level of fighter. Instant ritual casting and all the spells you can find .. or gain
Something I realized about ritual caster when watching this: it doesn't require spellcasting, just the int or wisdom. I think it would synergize really well with a monk, since wisdom adds to their unarmored defense and ki saves (and int doesn't matter for wizard ritual spells). Could also be good on a rogue, or literally any martial. Free horse for an hour, access to find familiar for the help action or scouting.
It seems like Heavy Armor Master should be higher than tough. Aside from the +1S, at level 10, after being hit 7 times by qualifying damage type you've negated more than what tough has provided, [until/unless they are healed to full health anyway] Also, what is up with Mounted Combatant being so high? For any of it to work you have to be in a mount accessible environment, for one. Your mount has to still be alive, for 2 [Find Steed's war horse has 11 ac and 19 hp, in encounters for characters level 5+; or 12 ac/59 hp for FGS at level 13+]; and for 3 the enemy has to be medium or smaller and also within your reach from the ground [until FGS comes online anyway]
Martial adepts superiority dice have the small bonus of being upgraded by grabbing it as a battle master, as the Superiority dice is added to the pool you have and gets upgrade with its features, probably not the best but adding more fuel to battle masters skill set sounds good to me.
Battlemasters are the only characters I like the feat on. Expanding their already good pool of maneuvers and superiority dice just feels better than knowing two maneuvers and only being able to use one per short rest.
On these kinds of lists, generally D and F tiers are traps, and you don't take them. On this list, there are builds and/or campaigns where the D and F tiers are actually good. Dungeon Delver in the last third of Tomb of Annihilation has been mentioned before as S-tier. I think Skilled is probably decent if your DM is planning a campaign where ALL of the proficiencies are going to come up all the time. I'd argue that Heavily Armored and Magic Intiate are also good on the right builds. Savage Attacker comes up every round of combat, and if you're wielding that Great Axe, advantage on swingy d12s is going to feel good. I think, as always, you've got to think about how often you might use the feat and how much it actually boosts you when you do.
Can anyone name me a Spell or Effect that targets only a single target (i.e. not AOE) that causes a DEX Saving Throw besides "Finger of Death", because I'd like to know it? Otherwise, I think that portion of Shield Master should have been rated +5 points at best.
@@catastropheoverclock Woof, gonna see that in a lot of high tier play. Definitely worth the feat. Sarcasm at the game, not you, aside, I appreciate the help. So with that, it looks like the count is at a whopping three spells. Finger of Death, Disintegrate, and Sacred Flame. Really makes me wonder why that feature of the feat was added instead of just giving it a flat bonus to all DEX-saves to damage. Why not let an armored knight really be able to go toe-to-toe with a fire-breathing dragon. As if that's going to up his damage capabilities. Because they'd still take damage, they just have a better one to save for half.
It's worth noting that the war caster feat doesn't bypass the non-material somatic free hand requirement, so if you want to cast S or VS spells, you need a free hand without a spell focus in it. War caster allows you to consider weapons or a shield as this free hand, but not anything else
@@tommihommi1 so basically if you have a spell focus in one hand, and you have something like a rope, or a potion bottle in the other hand, then you are unable to cast a whole bunch of spells due to somatic component rules. War caster doesn’t help you to bypass this at all, despite some claims to the contrary.
@@ethans9379 You could store something like a potion or a spellcasting focus with your free object interaction as part of the spellcasting action. An instance where both hands are being occupied by something you can't drop/store, at a time when you would want to cast a spell, seems pretty rare.
A bigger issue is needing the free hand for material components for M spells. So it works with a shield or weapon in one hand and a free hand or you’re limited to spells without a material component. Even the spell focus doesn’t substitute for M spells with consumed material components.
Savage Attacker, I believe, would be best utilized on characters that polymorph or transform into other creatures as part of their regular strategy (such as a moon druid). Many of the higher CR creatures you can transform into use a lot more damage dice than a basic sword or axe, and so the feat's ability to re-roll the dice and use either total is more valuable to them.
interesting to have tough above HAM. Even ignoring HAM +1 STR, you can directly compare by level how many non-magical weapon hits youd need to take per day to make HAM better, and its not much-- esp for your (6-8) encounters (ofc not all are combat!) That said, Tough also stacks well (marginal gain) with Resistance from any soirce, and HAM does the exact opposite, and is more versatile
Thanks for this series, I love it! I have to say I think the lip reading portion of Observant is criminally undervalued here. Yeah, in combat?....pretty useless. But from a campaign perspective, social situations, intrigue, scouting....it's incredibly useful.
You have a point as I have taken observant unlike athlete which both are out of combat roles that have use. Observant is very Dm dependant as it fluctuates from high D to low A depending on agreed interpretation. Low B or high C as very finicky but a flat ASI is usually a better choice.
I don't think it's incredibly useful in social or scouting situations either. You're still limited to languages you understand. You also need to be able to see the creature talking, but not hear them speak, to get value out of the feat. It's nice when you need it, but overall still rather situational.
@@deathpacito8702 Comprehend Languages is a must ritual spell for ''observant''. Really it is wither a wizard, artificer or arcane trickster or pact of the tome warlock as they are ritual casters as well. Observant is not a feat most classes should even consider but it has niece use.
Out of curiosity - what would you rate a straight ability score improvement? Is it just 25+25 for 50pts? Or does possibly getting to round out two stats to even numbers increase its value somewhat?
By the end of this, were there any scores that surprised you? In other words, did you have an initial opinion of a feat that was lower (or higher, I suppose) than it turned out to be based on how you score the individual components or turned out to be more or less than the sum of its parts?
Surprisingly, reading lips comes up much more often then one would think, especially in a plot-heavy campaign, so I believe that Observant might actually deserve a higher place. Although it might just be how my table rolls.
For the Skulker feat you mentioned that dim light imposing disadvantage almost never comes up, but wouldn’t it be super useful for any race with darkvision?
The main benefit of skilled feat is to grab tool proficiencies that are otherwise quite difficult to get. A dex based fighter or ranger could pick skilled and choose thieves' tools, poisoner's kit and whatever skill they still need, potentially increasing both their utility and damage. Herbalist's kit and disguise kit could also be quite useful for many a character. Still not hugely powerful, but I would rank each proficiency with option to choose a tool at high end of the ribbon category.
You could get 2 of those tool proficiencies from your background, a far smaller price to pay. It's wild that you don't get extra skills as you level up. Skilled shouldn't even need to exist, make it at least a half feat.
Admittedly, it's suboptimal compared to stuff like getting it from your background or class, but yes this can be helpful, thanks to Xanathar's Guide of Everything finally making quite a bit of tools go from trash to decently helpful for adventurers, like Mason's tools or Cooking Utensils.
I myself don’t ignore components just the role play of pulling them out and using them, but I always assume I need a free hand unless it’s something like a holy symbol on your shield.
The silly thing is, rules as written, your spell focus doesn't count as a free hand unless the spell being cast has a material component, so you can't cast spells with a somatic component but no material component (there's a lot of these) unless you have a hand without the spell focus in it free.
I appreciate the way you break down the information into quantitative information rather than your opinion… even still, your opinion , in my opinion, is Equivalent to an “expert opinion”.. this is a great list you have. It would be cool to use during a campaign to give a free feat at level 1 of B ranking or below, or whatever the DM decides
It is. It allowed my swords bard to gain 18 armor class from half plate with shield proficiency, the shield spell, and bardic inspiration. With ring of protection and cloak of protection, I was hitting 40 ac
Nah, it's a bad feat, it's not underrated at all. It's an anti-feat. You can go 1 level dip in fighter and get the equivalent power of 4 to 5 feats and still retain your full ASI progression. And, for casters (which are the only ones that can benefit from this), basically all 20th level features are garbage. So, without a dip in fighter, you gain a 7th level spell slot and a useless feature, but you sacrifice a feat. If you dip 1 level in fighter, you sacrifice a functionally useless feature and a 7th level spell slot, but you gain the equivalent power of 4 to 5 feats AND you get to keep your full ASI progression, since you don't have to waste an ASI on Moderately Armored. There's literally no contest. Moderately Armored is absolute garbage IF mutliclassing is allowed.
He is but he did core rule book feats in 2 part video as you have 40 odd in the core players hand book. I assume you didn't watch Treantmonks set up video explaining his criteria & scope for the coming feat videos at present. You have 104 feats last I checked so about another 60 await. Colour coding is to come in short for Xanathar's, tasha's & so forth! Kind regards!
Mounted combatant - "evasion is good, the problem is it doesn't come up that much" ... I'd have to say that seems very wrong, when you have 2 targets at a minimum the mount and rider and likely another PC in the radius much of the time you will be a magnet to every AOE effect going, even more so as loss of the mount will probably put a big crimp in your effectiveness and mounts are generally quite soft targets...
I agree with you that it will come up often in practice since you've pluralized your character and Dex saves are common. What I feel like I could say for Treantmonk though is that the mount often won't utilize Evasion as well as say a Monk or Rogue would. Most mounts lack the health and Dex saving throw mod to capitalize on Evasion. They'll rarely make their saves to ignore damage, and even if they succeed they might still get one shot or now be one more blast away from that. While it definitely provides value to this feat and build concept, it may not get as much mileage as we like. I actually think Shield Master has the exact same problem, but in reverse. Sure, bullet point two doesn't do anything for bullet point three, but...the two bullet points offer something against every type of Dex save! Also, bullet point two being weak doesn't detract from bullet point three being strong. Yes, it costs a Reaction, but getting a form of Evasion for a PC over say an NPC like a mount is a much bigger deal. Another reason that may ring true is that a PC is more likely to have a bonus they can add to a save, from an ally, than the mount would get. Be that from Bardic Inspiration, Bless, Bond, Flash of Genius, etc.
@@Guyoverthere07 I can mostly agree with that, though even if the mount only gets one extra round of survival that is pretty huge for your total effectiveness if you have built around being mounted, rather than just happened to have a mount for now. (In which case a feat to boost your mounted prowess...) And the Feat means you probably get many many more than just one or two rounds more life out of the mount, as you end up targeted (and probably not hit nearly as much as your AC is likely higher) and the AOE effects powerful enough to take a mount down in one or two hits are generally not going to fire off every round. If the mount survives just one of them it may well survive the entire fight.
i think it's interesting that many of the level 1 feats in 5.5 are in F tier here. In a much smaller pool they make a lot more sense. Also because they're 'free'.
Hey Chris, I have a few objections to your scoring xD First, the PAM vs CBE: You seem to take into consideration the fact that attacking from range is safer and thus gave CBE more points than PAM (also because of the slightly higher damage die), but there's quite a few more things you didn't take into consideration. First, while it is true that you're stuck in melee, melee characters have way more options to augment their melee attacks, mainly with different spells, which are not available to ranged users. Second, while it is true that you're attacking from range, the Hand Crossbow only has about 30 feet of range, this making it barely a ranged weapon, and you basically need Sharpshooter to make this an actual, full-fledged ranged weapon. So I think it's not exactly fair to give PAM less points than CBE for the extra attack. Second, Skulker: I've tried to make this feat work really, really hard, cause I absolutely adore the idea of it. But, in reality, the wording really messes the feat up. It's not that you can hide in Dim Light, it's that you can hide in Light Obscurement, which kind of makes the feat fairly useless, unless you build for it specifically. As soon as an enemy has Darkvision or Blindsight, then you're not able to hide from them, basically ever. Most DMs don't make encounters in complete darkness that happens to be non-magical, and monsters increasingly have at least Darkvision or Blindsight, if not True/Devil's sight at higher levels, so it becomes even less useful the higher you go. And even at low levels, when you fight lowly goblins and kobolds, it's not even really useful then. It's an extremely disappointing feat that needs a rework in my opinion. I'd honestly rate it as a ribbon feat completely, since you're probably gonna be able to use it like....twice in a campaign (a little exaggerated, but not too far off), unless your DM specifically makes situations to allow you to use it. And, finally Moderately Armored: This feat is probably one that almost nobody is going to take. There's only 3 classes that actually can take it out the gate - Bard, Warlock and Rogue. Rogues don't need it in 99.99999% of cases, while Warlocks will probably not take it in 100% of the cases. One single level dip in fighter provides to casters the same benefit as 4, maybe even 5 feats in one. And casters generally don't need their 20th level features, since most of them are functionally useless. And delaying your spellcasting by 1 level is literally nothing when you compare to what you get for it - you get to keep all your feat progression and sacrifice no feats, you start with equivalent power of 4-5 extra feats. Moderately Armored, if we look at it honestly, is functionally useless and actively harms your character if you take it. It's literally an anti-feat xD And we're not even talking from an optimizer's standpoint, we're talking from common sense. I'd actually rate this quite near the bottom of F-tier, probably even at the bottom. Other than that, the list is quite spot-on.
Moderately Armored is very very underrated. 1. Reducing your dex required to max AC is MASSIVE and saves you multiple feats/ASI - which matters the most in a pointbuy scenario - the expected default. 2. Those armors and shields will be upgradeable at least a little in almost every setting. The ceiling is a +5 from a shield alone. 3. You can occasionally pick up the light armor proficiency from RACES not just classes - which pushes V.Human down the list of Moderately Armored feat users. 4. Moderately Armored is strong af on classes that are balanced around mage armor. Every point of AC makes Shield/Absorb Elements Spell and HP more effective. People like trying to raise the ceiling of power - in ideal scenarios. I like consistency. Give me the tanky wizard/bard/sorcerer who is as/more durable than the warriors - while single-classed - over some niche gimmick "trick" any day.
Tanky spellcasters seem to be the standard for powergaming in 5e. And honestly I don’t like them too much in my mind theatre. Maybe it’s oldschool, but powerful wizards in lord of the rings for example wear robes, not platemail. Heavy or medium armored arcane spellcasters is something I’d honestly hope WotC would disincentivize or put some penalty on in the 2024 PHB. But probably that won’t happen from what I’ve seen so far.
I'd take Skilled over Weapon Master anyday. Yes Skilled is ribbon but it can give a character access to Perception, Insight, or Stealth that it otherwise would not have. And the second feature of Weapon Master is so fracking useless it's functionally just a broken ASI (or rather you're better off just taking an ASI). I can see a player choosing Skilled, I can't see anyone ever choosing Weapon Master.
I'm currently playing a polearm master with spear and shield combined with Dueling, and being the Tank in the party, I've found the Opportunity attack very useful. Most fights I'd get to use it at least 1 or 2 times, sometimes way more. Just thought it deserved more points.
I think the first bullet point of sharpshooter is less impactful than the second (except with hand crossbows), cover is everywhere, especially indoors and tight caves and dungeons. But that wouldn't affect the score so whatever, here's a comment for the video nonetheless! And with Skulker, dim light not imposing disadvantage on perception checks comes up all the time. What the hell. A party sneaking through darkness not carrying or casting light will benefit greatly from that feature. There are so many darkvision races that often don't use light when sneaking around, that feature negates the -5 passive perception which is just huge. I guess it comes down to the style of play (and if there are variant humans who require light in the party).
I really don't see how Magic initiate can come off so much worse than spell sniper... As you said yourself there are not many spells that Spell Sniper applies to, and it gives you only one cantrip, which is nice, but if you are picking this feat you probably already have at least one good attack cantrip as you must be able to cast a spell to take the feat, and spell casting classes come with cantrips, that are on your primary stat too - so that bonus cantrip is comparatively valueless. Great for a few builds, giving a Bard Eldritch Blast or a Cleric Thorn Whip for instance but mostly very mediocre as already being a spell caster you already have access to a good cantrip... So when compared to entirely free choice of two cantrips and a first level spell from a classes list of your choice for Magic Initiate - that is pure flexibility, and in many ways better than Ritual caster too! As you gain magic you can just use in combat at need, not just stuff you must spend over 10 mins preparing every time, that may well consume your concentration and only starts with 1st level spells... Ritual caster is very useful, especially if you need/want to order off your own classes spell list, but as there is so little certainty on getting more ritual spells...
I like feats they add variety, but many become essential for many builds to stay anywhere close to other characters (melee v casters) Feats, should they be used to flavour your character or increase its power? If you play a character that doesnt get a feat at 1st level, then it takes 4 levels to get one. A multiclass dip is just one level, so a feat like heavily armoured or moderatly armoured really isnt worth it, unless you want to max out your your character to 20th level in one class. Taking 1 or 2 level dips brings alot to your character without needing a feat. If however theirs isnt multiclassing in your game, then a feat becomes so much more useful, such as heavily armoured etc. Also, a feat taken at 1st level, such as PAM, with a variety human etc, is way more powerful than taling it at 4th level.
It's interesteing. I've always heard that "Lucky" was. "THE strongest" feat... but XBE... you make some good points... Also, I usually take fey touched before lucky... so what does that say?
Lucky is universally pretty good three times a day while stuff like XBE, Sharpshooter, GWM, are a gargantuan power bump that is active all day long to the specific builds they go on, so in a way Lucky is "THE feat" but just not always.
There's one thing that's about impossible to quantify, and I think comparing feats to ASIs is a good example. If you start with point buy, and are playing a MAD build like Monk or Paladin, the potential value of ASIs is extremely high. Conversely, if you're rolling for stats and playing a more SAD build like a control caster, those ASIs have relatively low value. Since value is always relative, the value of the ASI raises and lowers the value of all feats. Then you've got the situational features, where a feat that would normally rank low gives a character something that benefits a specific build far more than its general value. The Skulker feat, in a stealth focused game comes to mind. It would seem appropriate to give a "non situational" boost to those few feats whose value seems to be fairly static across a wide variety of conditions. I think Lucky, Resilient, and Healer are examples that have about the same value in any setting.
I really hope that the Mobile feat be redesigned to be on the new PHB. I understand if the design team doesn't want a feat to make you complete imune to opportunity attacks but the other parts of the feat are really cool and can be easily redesigned as a +1dex halfeat that give you more speed of movement, perhaps even a dash as bonus action feature
My main issue is any feat that could be replicated by one multiclass needs to have its value reduced. You get 4x as many levels as feats(roughly). I can’t imagine ever getting ritual caster when I can get wizard -1, and get so much more. Same with the armor, cleric-1. Unique feats should be more valued than “dip-able” feats. So some of these ritual caster, I would put a 50% penalty on. Pretty good list but feats are more “valuable” than 1 level. However shadow/fet-touched etc is like “3-levels”, but is also a half feat..
Dipping means you don't get higher level class abilities. For some classes it doesn't matter but for others it absolutely does, especially lower level play.
You also don't get many feats al low levels. Grabbing one level in something means you can take a better feat as well. Ritual Caster lets you pick up things like Water Breathing and Rary's Telepathic Bond at higher levels, so not exactly a Wizard-1 situation.
I agree, one correction though. Ritual caster can't really be replaced by a level 1 wizard dip if you gain access to future higher level ritual spells, which is the majority of the feats potential value IMO. To add higher than level 1 rituals to their book the wizard would need to have the class level investment for the spell, so 5 wizard levels for phantom steed, 9 for contact other plane etc
Savage Attacker being once per turn isn't just disappointing power wise, it's also annoying when you have multiple attacks and have to consider if it's worth using on your first attack, especially when you end up rolling better damage on the second attack anyway or miss with the second attack. Unless the DM lets you retroactively choose which damage roll to reroll.
This is easily one of the best D&D series on RUclips! Well reasoned, data based analysis that gives a relative guide to how to evaluate feats. Chef’s kiss. 😊
As always, the point value per feature is a nice way to rate things and shift perspective a little. I liked it in the racial tier list and I'm liking it here 👍🏻. That said, it's interesting that the bonus hp from tough gets more points than just increasing con with ASI just to get the hp (20+20).. Okay let's assume we get the choice bonus of physical attributes (23+23). And it gets more points than -5 to hit / +10 dmg. 😅
@@abcrasshadow9341 I'm always the DM at my table ^^, but I had a player who picked this feat, with a Elf bladesinger. So obviously I said 'If you want a +1 INT, Fey Touched or Shadow Touched are better". But she didn't like those feats because they didn't fit her character concept. And so she took Observant, which is way better than Keen Mind imo. It has helped her on several crucial moments.
My current bounty hunter runs with Observant. Nice thematically and mechanically. Most of the traps and hidden monsters are spotted without even making active perception check. Even passive investigation comes up from time to time
By their rules (Half Feat gets 25 points if it lets you put the point in any stat), a full asi should be 50 points (low A tier). Puts into perspective how important an asi can be
Skilled could be an insane top tier feat if it gave you a +1 in any score, 3 or 2 skills, and expertise in one skill of your choice that you are proficient in (obviously including potentially a skill you chose with this feat)
ב"ה Do you value feat abilities the same way you valued them at race ranking? I mean, a free cantrip here is valued the same as a free cantrip there, extra ability scores here valued the same as extra ability scores there, speed bonus here valued the same as speed bonus there, etc.
I wonder about 46 points for Tough. If a half feat is worth 20, that means a +1 in Constitution is worth 20, and you're really only ever building for a half feat if you've got an odd number the half feat pushes to even. That makes it 20 points for +1hp/level with +1 CON saves including concentration. How does doubling the health gains while dropping the save improvement amount to more than double the value?
Medium Armor Master is probably a net +2 to AC for any character that would actually take it. That said, the set of characters who 1) care about Stealth and 2) have access to Medium armors is of course rather small, and the subset of that who have a Feat to spare is even smaller.
If you take your dex to 16 you are most likely taking it to 20. At which point studded leather is only 1 AC less than half plate with MAM. Might as well take Fighting Initiate: Defense at that point.
As far as the saving throw benefit for Shield Master goes, unless I'm mistaken there are exactly *TWO* single-target spells that provide a DEX saving throw, and one of those is a cantrip. Honestly, I'd have called this a ribbon feature. On the other hand, I'd likely have rated the shove bonus action and the almost-Evasion feature higher, so it probably all evens out in the end. 😉
Excluding monster saves, there are a fair number of qualifying spells. Disintegrate, enervation, immolation, catapult, sacred flame, hellish rebuke, snare, cordon of arrows, acid splash*, grasping vine, guardian of faith, light, resilient sphere, maybe others. Do you think by RAW it would be applicable as well in scenarios where you are the only target within a dex save's AOE? Regardless, Tavern Brawler has no business ranking higher than it...
I think resilient should be downgraded on account that I think the vast majority of its use case is resilient con to boost constitution saving throws for casters, and the half feat synergy with boosting constitution is not as good as other locked in half feats. Part of the charm of half feats is being able to chain them together to pick up an ability boost plus a couple nice features. Much easier to do with say heavy armor master and say crusher on a front liner than resilient con and durable? on a caster.
A number or racial feats can bump con, as well as Skill Expert, Crusher and a number of the newer setting feats Resilient Wisdom is also a contender, super useful for maintaining concentration or rage when an incapacitating situation arises, though character that lack resilient wisdom are probably less likely to benefit much from boosting wisdom further. Excluding scenarios like rangers, monks that won't get to diamond soul, or a normally wisdom prof classes that started as something else for a different save proficiency. Resilient Dex could be good for building a dex based character that lacks the proficiency, given the ample selection of dex half feats Also resilient is still valuable for building with an odd stat for that score, negating the need to further chain feats
Mounted Combatant probably needs to lose points. How often do adventures largely take place where you can be on a mount? Unless you are burning spell slots for find steed
i think the reason is that spellcasters are often seen as so strong. for a class that doesn't have shield and medium armor proficiency, this is quite huge because defense is very important
@@gabrielcross1062 You need proficiency with light armor in order to qualify for this feat. This really limits who can use it and it doesn't boost any spellcasting ability scores.
@@amonlewis6500 ya know, this just made me remember multiclassing. Starting off as fighter, artificer, paladin, or cleric is so common that I think you're right, it isn't all that common that this would be used with any kind of optimization. Yeah this might be way worse than I was thinking
I've always found Savage Attacker (SA) slightly underrated. People often just calculate the avarage increase of damage and leave out the fact you can choose when to apply it. What they are bassically calculating is how good SA is if you always reroll your first damage die even if you rolled max on it. In practice it adds quite a bit more damage then theory would suggest. Especially if you look for ways to make attacks out of your turn like with sentinal to trigger SA more It doesn't come close to what Great Weapon Master does obviously but it's not nearly as bad as people think it is Had a character with SA and sentinel and a bard party member who would trigger oppertunity attacks with dissonant whispers and the extra damage SA gave quickly stacked up. It wasn't uncommon to trigger it twice a round
@@foolsgold5588 according to Jerremy Crawford "The movement in dissonant whispers can provoke opportunity attacks, since it uses your reaction (PH, 195). #DnD" So it's more of a dm call as the rules aren't superclear on it. My dm allowed it
Great video. Can I request seeing both a version of the tier chart for just xanathar's guide to everything as well as the version with all of the feats up until that point? I think it would help show the difference in the general shape of the feat spread.
6:50 as someone who plays in a campaign with a lot of spells that require Dex saves, I was surprised by the lowballing for Evasion! Guess it’s one of those features that’s setting specific because it’s a huge bonus in my opinion since it adds a staple Rogue feature to your mount
"Skilled is the worst feat in Dungeons and Dragons" Lightly Armored, Moderately Armored (fight me), Heavily Armored, Chef, Weapon Master, and Linguist would like a word. I'm mostly joking, everyone's welcome to their opinions.
I’ve always thought it was a bit odd that we have medium and heavy armor master feats, but nothing official for light armor. Do you have any ideas for a hypothetical Light Armor Master feat?
@@apjapki Something other than a simple +1 AC. Medium ignores stealth disadvantage, and heavy grants damage reduction. I’m wondering what sort of additional feature could be granted if the character has already capped their DEX
Why is proficiency in a skill merely 5 points when expertise in a skill is 17? I understand that Bounded Accuracy makes stacked bonuses better, but 3.4x better?
I think for a couple feats, it seems like you scored them with your tier brackets in mind. Like scoring a feature with 37 or 38 points to decide if it fits into S or A tier is definitely odd, because S and A at a glance are noticeably different, but 37 and 38 are so close to each other, and so random to choose. So I felt like that stood out to me a couple times, Like it felt like you had scored something just enough to points to put it within a specific tier. That being said, I do think most rankings are fairly decent. I think some situational feats were a bit underscored because yes they are situational, but under those situations they can be pretty good. But yea, that becomes more down to the individual to decide; but I do think it means people will just look at the final tier list at a glance, and get the wrong idea for some of these feats. Some of these feats are just... always bad, and some of them are bad on the wrong build, or very good on the right build, but because most builds aren't the right build, they scored similarly. The main feat I think I would have scored differently would be the Tough feat. You gave it 40 something points and I think that is quite dramatically too much. I would say that Tough tends to scale with creature's damage, and most of the time, it's gonna be roughly around the same amount of extra hit points as 1 monster attack. So in the long run, at most levels, you are surviving 1 additional monster attack on average. Like, yea that's good, but that to me is worth like 20 points. Being able to survive 1 additional attack per combat (assuming you reach full hitpoints before the start of each combat) is not on the same level as like proficiency in a saving throw, or the ability to add 10 damage to every attack you hit. And honestly sometimes, it isn't even going to be one additional attack. Or, that 1 additional attack isn't going to afford you an additional turn due to multiattack or multiple monsters. It's definitely decent, but I do think you really overscored that feat
I wonder ... How would you rate Mounted Combatant feat ... when taken by spellcaster who casts Enlarge/Reduce, who Enlarges Tank of the Party ... just so he can mount him? :D I know its not purpose of this video ... And i totally realize its very specific situation ... But it feels like A++ at worse in such case to me. :D
Great work, here. I would like to talk about four of them: Magic initiate, skulker, savage attacker, martial adept, and ritual caster. I really expected a higher score for ritual caster. I get that it is somewhat DM dependent, but it can give a player the ability to cast a dozen good spells: alarm, detect magic, identify, unseen servant, comprehend languages, find familiar, augury, skywrite, tiny hut, water breathing, phantom steed, divination, and telepathic bond. Surely it should be in high S tier. That's definitely why it got nerfed in the OneDND UA. Martial adept synergizes really well with the superior technique fighting style and the battle master subclass. I wouldn't mind two dice from it, though. Savage attacker synergizes really well with rogues and paladins, if we interpret it to allow a boost on sneak attack dice and smites. Skulker got short-changed a bit. You said that the dimlight condition doesn't happen often, but dark vision turns darkness into dim light for every character that has it. Every party that doesn't bring light should be rolling disadvantage on perception checks in the dark, RAW. Magic initiate is just so beautifully flavorful. It just makes me sad to see it so weakly scored.
I think you overrated spell sniper’s first two bullet points because there are so few attack roll spells unless you are a warlock, and EB already has 120ft range so you don’t need the doubling.
rly minor point, but Sharpshooters -5/+10 thing should be valued higher than GWM's, as it's ranged which is just better than being in melee, and also the Archery Fighting Style exists.
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It’s interesting to note that, by your system, an ASI comes in at 50 points, which is the bottom of A tier. Which would suggest that if you’re looking at any feats of B tier or lower and you don’t have a very specific purpose for your build, you might want to consider just taking the ASI.
I would agree that in most instances I prefer ASIs in limited levels and in point buy. So I would agree with it. VHuman and CL really allow more of those lower ones to shine without sacrificing too much mechanical weight.
Something my brother and I are testing is what happens if you give an extra feature at the beginning of the game. So if you are playing a vh or cl then you start with two additional features. I am still running my two year campaign in a more typical fashion al by comparison, but with the extra time we both have to DM we're both experimenting. The idea, hopefully, is that it gives more room to try out quirkier builds.
I will point out, however, that I suspect it will only serve to get builds online faster, and then focus on ASI earlier. If you've optimized properly and your build is complete then those ASI increases are typically the only factor left to boost your potential, when if it is just a 5%.
If you only have one relevant stat at an odd number then you probably want a decent half feat over the ASI.
I think Chris is assuming that the +1 bumps your modifier though, and that it’s your primary ability score being increased.
+2 to one ability score that only increases its modifier by 1 would probably be worth like 30-35 points.
So to get the largest effect you would want to boost two ability scores that are both odd, but both of those scores would need to also be your primary ability scores to justify valuing them at a full 50.
A wizards bumping their Int mod by one and their wisdom mod, or even their Con, by one would be hard to justify valuing at a full 50 points.
It was pointed out to me that most of the time, the choice is between something that helps you in a lot of situations (the ASI) versus something that's applicable to more specific situations (the feat). That's more generalization than a hard-and-fast rule--obviously something like Lucky is pretty helpful in almost any situation--but overall I think it's an accurate observation.
To be fair the reason why the third feature of Skulker doesn’t come up is because DMs don’t enforce it. You have parties full of people making Perception checks in the dark without disadvantage.
Exactly. It’s so disappointing when DMs miss this! It makes Darkvision seem way more powerful than it is. Whenever I ask my players passive Perception, then tell them it’s minus 5 for relying on darkvision, suddenly they start actually making decisions, balancing the risk of giving away their position vs. blundering into a trap.
If a DM plays by the rules, that third bullet on Skulker is worth more.
@@jeffreycarlson1523 Agreed. And on a Gloomstalker it's even better.
More importantly, they don't enforce the -5 penalty for passive perception checks. It's a good feat in that it removes the penalty, but one that I'd consider less useful than concentration protection.
@@jeffreycarlson1523Yeah, darkvision as a trait in DnD is less powerful than IRL darkvision, in that while it does allow you to see things, you still take disadvantage on perception checks, whereas a lot of IRL animal species like lions would not have this drawback.
Agreed, my rogue has expertise in Perception but is still failing a lot of checks because of dim light!
I am super thankful that my DM has house ruled Magic Initiate to work more like modern design. We still use the set ability scores for casting based on the class you take from, but can use spell slots to cast the spell too.
It is an easy feat to fix with just some minor tweaks
@@TreantmonksTempleI suspect that if it wasn't for the update this would have been an errata.
Ritual Caster "Choose Wizard."
Wizard: Okay.
Wizard: I did that a while ago
Ritual Caster is largely redundant on Wizards specifically
@@SortKaffeit's totally redundant for a wizard. If you are going to try to be a ritualist you have to be a Tomelok.
@@nickm9102 tomelock is best for it, but I could see myself going for it with a monk. Especially if the party doesn't otherwise have all those utilities available.
@@nickm9102 As a tomelock, I'm probably taking the Book of Ancient Secrets invocation and taking a different feat or boosting my ability score
Funnily, my wife took Skilled with her lvl16 Arcane Trickster. Getting those 3 additional Skills she basically cannot fail due to Reliable Talent seemed worth it. - skills are really important/come up often in my DM style.
What’s more that tends to get overlooked is that this lets you pickup tool proficiencies, too. The Artificer gains expertise at level 6 in ALL tools with which they are proficient in. Skilled shouldn’t be slept on
@@MelandBLT Tool proficiencies are surely the ribbon of all ribbons. The part of the game they are usually used in is the bit that isn't the campaign. That is F tier but it doesn't mean F tier can't be fun.
@@apjapkiThanks to Xanathar's Guide of Everything, there are a lot more uses for tools, and while skills will come up more often than tools, if you have a feature that grants you expertise in tools, it's reasonable to take a tool proficiency now.
Poisoner's Kit and Thieves' Tools are very good examples of when I'd pick a tool proficiency, since these have consistently useful effects.
@@sharmakefarah2064 Thieves tools are obviously good beyond what other tools can do. Poisoner's kit is pretty much the same. It's the others I am referring to.
+2 on lockpick attempts for a feat seems pretty bad when things like Aid exist.
Yes of course I am aware of the Xge expanded tool rules and it's still completely minimal.
It's FUN as all hell but it's clearly F.
@@apjapki It depends on the tool, but IMO Xanathar's has buffed most tools enough beyond my examples, like say Cooking Utensil's or Mason's Tools by healing more hit points when short resting and finding traps better in very common building types respectively that I'd give tool proficiencies in general a solid C-B tier, though different tools vary wildly in quality for proficiency here.
Not the most useful proficiency, but is pretty reasonable to pick them up, and while not game-changing, XGtE made them surprisingly useful in real adventures.
Agree to disagree here.
It may not give a lot more points, but Spell Sniper works with Thorn Whip, giving it a 60' "melee" range...
Since druids generally get screwed on cantrip ranges, this can be one of my favorite feats for druids, as I *REALLY* don't like the Circle of the Moon subclass. And it's especially nice for Circle of Stars and (~cough~ bugbear ~cough~) Circle of Wildfire druids, both of which have *INTERESTING* ranged spell attack options. 😁
I only just now realized Ritual Caster seems to allow non-spellcasting classes to cast higher-level rituals, provided you find them and are of appropriate level...
I really expected a higher score for ritual caster. I get that it is somewhat DM dependent, but it can give a player the ability to cast a dozen good spells: alarm, detect magic, identify, unseen servant, comprehend languages, find familiar, augury, skywrite, tiny hut, water breathing, phantom steed, divination, and telepathic bond. Surely it should be in high S tier. That's definitely why it got nerfed in the OneDND UA.
Even without that nuance, it’s an amazing feat for martial classes. Imagine a feat that allowed you to have advantage on roughly half of your attacks, whether ranged or melee; and allowed you to do aerial scouting. It would be S-tier without question. That’s JUST Find Familiar from Ritual Caster.
@@DukeTrout I'm not sure a familiar used to grant Advantage in combat would survive very long, but yes, it's a fantastic spell to have.
@@davec1 An owl with flyby doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks. So opponents would have to use actions to attack the familiar, which is as valuable if not more valuable than advantage.
One additional note for Sharpshooter: the existence of the Archery fighting style, which makes the third clause quite a bit better than GWM, due to the increased hit chance and the ease of availability of that fighting style.
This is commonly brought up, but it made me think today about how much easier it is to generate advantage for GWM (melee). There are so many effective ways to get something Prone, and then of course there's Reckless Attack. XBE muddies this a bit with also being able to take advantage of Prone targets by cutting the disadvantage that can be imposed within 5ft of ranged attackers, but that's still requiring two feats working in tandem. Along with sometimes awkward positioning.
I also think the BA attack of GWM never gets enough credit. It's a lot more potent than additional accuracy, and comes up a ton. For many tables/combats, the increased range SS and bypassing partial cover may rarely if ever come up.
Ranged combat being vastly superior to getting up close and personal means SS will pretty much always "win", but I think it's pretty cool how closely these two can compete for offensive capability.
@@Guyoverthere07in my opinion the BA attack of GWM is more of a ribbon feature.
Scoring a crit doesn’t not happen, but with advantage making two attacks per turn it’ll only happen about once every other fight. If you have a BA that competes with it that’s an opportunity cost, if you’re a barbarian (the best class for GWM) you’ll be using your BA to rage on your first turn ever combat, and if your combats average less than 5 turns, that means your BA will be spoken for more often than you crit. If you’re a barb subclass that uses their BA, then that’s further competition for it.
@@grayson9124 Yup the crit triggering it is really rare. But “Reducing a creature to zero hit points? That is likely to be triggered much more often.
@@grayson9124 It'd be a ribbon to me too if it was just bound by how often you crit, but kills are so common. Barbs are great to talk about since they've got the perfect pairing for GWM--Reckless Attack, and potentially have some BAs. Everyone uses Rage round 1, but at some tables that resource does run out. A lot of Barbs have another BA through the PAM feat, but not all! More importantly, they may not have that feat before GWM and in that case PAM isn't online until level 4 or 8. Two big gaps there in play. Now, if we're starting from level 1, PAM is best to start. Technically. Most tables blaze through levels 1 and 2, where Barbs are quite front loaded anyhow. Many just start from level 3 or higher. Once we're level 5, GWM takes priority over PAM. If you're Custom Lineage or Variant Human, this doesn't matter, but for most Barbs it's a big decision.
Then let's look at the Barb subs with BAs. There's three awful ones that almost no one plays--Battle Rager, Berserker, and Tempest. Frenzy has some chops at some tables or one shots, but it's normally too big a detriment. Then there's a niche one in Totem Eagle, Wild Magic, and some level 10 and 14 features. Many of these BAs are used in niche situations, and/or don't see much if any play. Giant's Mighty Impel being the latest and greatest, but it's online too late for most builds/tables. More importantly, PAM with Elemental Cleaver is often stronger...on paper. I think this feature is both powerful and fun, but how many characters, let alone Barbs, making it to level 10+ and playing much beyond that is rare.
The only real one I think worth our concern is Wild Magic. HALF of the 8 Wild Surges result in another way to use our BA round after round. That makes GWM a little more redundant for sure, but it makes PAM a lot more redundant. PAM is stronger than most Surge BAs, yes, but not strong enough. Picking a different feat is best. Where we don't already have solid BAs between Rage, GWM, and half our baseline subclass feature. Not to mention any BAS from our race, multiclass, or items we may pick up. Bolstering Magic also improves GWM--basically giving it the Archery Fighting Style--so that more kills with it are possible. Anytime we fail to kill/crit, we are still likely to have a BA to utilize.
This is one of the strongest subs for Barbs imo now. Often overlooked, because people focus on the random table. The other one that also sings with just GWM is the Beast Barb. Claws give us 3 attacks to proc a crit or secure a kill instead of 2 before using our BA. For reference, that's 26.49% of one crit instead of the typical 18.54%. Pretty nice, and Claws are really good at finishing off low hp enemies that don't need a risky power attack behind em. PAM is not viable on this sub since to make the BA attack we have to use the Attack Action only with our polearm. So we can't mix in claws. A lot of people like to try to make TWF, the DBS, Longtooth Shifter, or Soul Knife to squeeze out a 4th attack with this sub, but the classic GWM Barb beats them all for streamlined DPR. These two Tasha subs can take great advantage of the martial half feats from Tasha's (Crusher/Slasher/Piercer).
@@Guyoverthere07 creatures dying happens often, but it being you who gets the killing blow isn’t something you can guarantee. It’s the same issue necromancy wizard suffers from. If you’re playing with 4 players, you’re probably only gonna get 25% of the kills, and if you’re a GWM barbarian, you should be targeting the biggest baddest monster in the encounter, which means the BA from killing isn’t going to be usable against the most meaningful target, and it’s definitely not a good idea to change up your targeting just to swing more.
Moderately Armored basically being "+3 AC" for warlocks, rogues, some bards, and other characters that get light armor proficiency... it really can't be understated how impactful that is. Glad it's in S-tier here.
Should be High A.
Good but Ac is really not that important in 5e compared to prior systems.
Moderately Armoured is good but is really on par with the mobile feat as avoiding potential damage all together by bonus action disengage on a rogue is far more useful then an extra 3 ac. is good but is really on par with the mobile feat as avoiding potential damage all together by bonus action disengage on a rogue is far more useful then an extra 3 ac. Mobile should be higher then ritual caster as well for the former infuriates the DM while the latter doesn't. ''Moderately Armoured'' above 'sentinel' is just wrong.
I'd say the ranking are about right but think about how these work in play from experience & observation at the table?
Thing is though, I can get medium armor proficiency from a single level in the right class. I get way more levels than I do feats. It’s not always going to be the correct decision, but it makes it a harder choice than it would a feat that gives me something only a feat could give.
@@daracaexVery valid point!
I might even lower ''moderately armoured'' a tad more from high A to mid or even low A with that taken into consideration.
it's still good but overrated.
Highly overvalued, given how useful it might be for say a warlock to multi-class into something like a paladin.
@@daracaex I'd say the exact opposite. Feats don't slow down spell level / spell slot progression, so I'll always prioritize a feat over a multiclass dip on a full caster (or Warlock). Also, Moderately Armored is more than a +3 to AC, because attributes are a finite resource. For a Bard/Warlock, it's at least a +4 AC in practice, and it opens up better stats in other attributes (primarily Wis).
I'd say that the reaction element of shield master is worth at least 5 more points - so many really really deadly AOE effects are so because even on a save you take a bucketful of die, and usually they are only going to come up once per round - often being something like the lair boss monster's breath weapon. Not taking that damage is huge, and in the sort of fights that reaction can be spent comes up often you probably don't get to use your reaction for much else anyway. Not saying it is super powerful for everyone, but for the folks that don't just get evasion type effects anyway its a really big gain, and being able to add the shield's AC means usually 2+ on the save as well, which is really good and would stack with Bless for a pretty huge modifier to the save...
You know that scene in Wonder Woman where she bats a mortar aside with her shield? I did that with a Meteor Swarm. S tier for me.
I just wanna know who the fun hating jerk was that decided you should only get the shield’s AC to Dex save bonus if the effect only targets you.
Savage attacker getting 20 and sentinels reaction attack getting 17 irks me.
Well it's about situationality.
@@apjapki Savage Attacker sucks in every situation, though.
I feel martial adept could have a scaling option, that you get a number of superior dice equal to half of your pb. Not big, but gives your technique more flexibility, as your progress.
The only issue with that is, that would pretty much make the entire Battle Master subclass obsolete.
I’ve seen people argue that the Tough feat is bottom of F tier because any character that would need more HP is terribly built. I am in agreement with Treantmonk though that HP is a limited resource and increasing it could be paramount to your survival.
It’s not bad on a variant human monk since monks need help with survivability.
Tough is so close to the value of an ASI in my opinion as +2 to constitution is worth just the slightest bit more in my eyes but it's a close call.
Totem Barbarian as rage makes it double effectively or if a lower HP build like wizard perhaps but even on wizard I'd take +2 con.
people that argue tough is F think 'defensive duellist' is good which it is not as a +2dexderity is twice as valuable if one ignores rule of cool for flat figures.
"Any character that ever gets hit is built poorly" is a pretty insane take, but it's definitely one of them.
you can get tough from a spelljammer background , if you are allowed them at your table
If you've built yourself not to get hit or to always take reduced damage, Tough is even better. I feel like anybody who argues that Tough isn't worth it isn't needs to up their encounter difficulty to 2xDeadly, 3xDeadly, etc, so they'll give Tough some respect. There are a lot of bad feats if you have 1 combat every few sessions and it lasts 1 round.
Sentinel is amazing on melee rogues. The Reaction attack lets them Sneak Attack twice per round. At my tables, this comes up more than Opportunity Attacks and is more impactful than reducing speed to 0 (since the backline is already well protected), thus, I would rate the third bullet much higher than the first (unless paired with PAM and a reach weapon).
But melee rogues are highly sub-optimal. He's rating these as if they are being used in the most effective way.
@@matthewtopping Most do forget that rogues have ranged weapons.
Even a few newer DM's I had were flummoxed when I stated I throw or loose such at the said enemy.
Arcane trickster with find familiar to give advantage through the help action at range is one of the most reliable ways to get off sneak attack while avoiding any damage.
Still rogues are probably the 9 or 10th of the 13 class in power but they are fun. More what I use in short campaigns as they get a tad reparative.
@@arnijulian6241 sentinel doesn't work with ranged.
@@TespriTrue but with Pole arm master & valid melee options it is very good.
A paladin & barbarian for instance has no reliable ranged options baring multiclassing which is often not worth it for range.
I agree. To a degree. I think the first bullet point should hold a lot less weight, the third a bit more, but also Sentinel is a C tier feat in my opinion. It just doesn't come up nearly as often as other powerhouse feats that churn out functionality. Rogues aren't exactly safe in melee. They're built around skirmishing and avoiding the front line. Even still, OAs are rare for most tables, and they can miss. This Reaction attack is more likely to occur, but still needs some stars to align. Advantage on these attacks are incredibly rare. Speeds don't get zeroed when we miss, and if we do zero speeds...most monsters don't care! They're usually built around melee, and can just attack us. If they had to Disengage or Dash to get to a more vulnerable ally, that is them wasting their turn and buying the PCs precious time and action economy.
Now, if a dragon is swooping into attack before risking some damage to retreat back into the skies, then Sentinel can shine, but that's a very specific scenario. All the other S and A tier feats are crushing it round after round. This feat also works worse and worse when we get better Reactions. It even has to compete with OAs to an extent. When an enemy dies to Sneak Attack because they tried to slip past the Rogue, this feat does nothing. PAM with Glaive does make it pretty darn nice, but sword and board is also great for PAM. GWM is great for PAM. Resilient, ASIs, or just multiclassing cutting into these builds makes fitting in Sentinel real hard to actualize. Especially since most characters are playing within Tier 1-2.
Spell Sniper is funny if you take it as a Warlock alongside Eldritch Spear, since it means you can throw Eldritch Blasts at targets 600 feet away with no penalty as long as they are not behind full cover.
Yeah, that's enough to actually make them competitive with Firearms in the modern day, because most firearms that aren't rifles have range limits well under 600 feet.
Admittedly, 200 yards is unfortunately close in modern combat, but that's still enough to reach almost rifle range, and handily beats out all carbine and pistol ranges.
I agree that the last feature of the Skulker feat probably isn't that impactful, but nontheless I like the idea of a character with darkvision (or even better Superior darkvision) and the Skulker feat, without penalty to their perception while being in total darkness. Imagine Drow scouts like that lurking in the Underdark. Sounds pretty scary tbh. 😊
One thing that stands out to me is that a couple of the feats I really like for specific builds don't fare too well. Skilled is definitely surpassed by Skill Expert, but both are useful for a rogue once you get Reliable Talent. Skill Expert is my first pick, but if I have the chance, I'll take Skilled to give me 3 more important skills that I can't roll lower than a 10, if i have 3 skills I still want.
While I agree that Magic Initiate is made obsolete by feats like Strixhaven Initiate, there are a lot of spells on the Wizard list that don't really rely on your casting ability but can be important for certain builds. I wouldn't take it for Shield (for example), but Find Familiar and Goodberry are both good choices as 1/day castings.
Of course, that does make both of these feats the definition of situational.
Agreed. Savage Attacker can be better on a high level rogue as well, and Martial Adept is stronger on a battlemaster who has plenty of fuel for the added versatility of those maneuvers.
I think Chris is right to assess these in a vacuum, but players should be mindful to apply their own situational context.
Martial adept synergizes really well with the superior technique fighting style and the battle master subclass. I wouldn't mind two dice from it, though.
Savage attacker synergizes really well with rogues and paladins, if we interpret it to allow a boost on sneak attack dice and smites.
I believe Magic Initiate is still the only feat to give you booming blade/greenflame blade though, which can be super valuable on certain builds.
@@jeffreycarlson1523 Savage Attacker only lets you reroll the *weapon's* damage dice. It does not do anything for the rogue and its sneak attack.
The only one I'm really surprised about is Moderately Armored being in S rank.
I was a little surprised too. I will say that on the right build, Moderately Armored is S-Tier, but I think it's a lot more niche than most of the other S-tiers, which wouldn't be my definition of S-Tier.
It's an objectively good feat that I'm unlikely to take due to aesthetic/roleplaying reasons.
Same. It's not worth that many points. Middle of A, at best.
@@KevinVideo Plus it's effect can be accomplished with a 1 level dip in cleric, druid, paladin, ranger, fighter, artificer, hexblade or barbarian* [*if you start as barbarian]. Acknowledging that levels aren't free, but neither are feats, and you certainly get more levels than feats, in addition to the other features from a level dip.
Unless you really want to get those 20th level features, a dip in fighter is better.
But the limitation on what characters can actually benefit from the feat is limited anyway. Bard (non-Valor), Warlock (non-Hex), and Rogue can take advantage of the feat with out taking Lightly Armored, but I don’t know if my Wizard or Sorcerer want to take two feats instead of dip.
I personally can only imagine taking this on a Rogue so you can still Stroke of Luck or multiclass into Sorc/Wizard.
Although, if you really wanted to use sub-par legacy Hobgoblin to get Light Armor as a Sorc/Wiz, you only need one feat!… it’s a good feat, IF you can take advantage of it
Mounted Combatant feels like the dark horse. Hearing it read out loud for the first time made me seriously reconsider it for some future builds.
I mentioned it a comment in the previous video, but one caveat when comparing Crossbow Expert versus Polearm Master is that the bonus action attack for the latter is on paper worse because it's melee and deals reduced damage, but it's also way more lenient than the former because it applies to four types of weapons instead of just one, which can make a big difference once magical gear gets introduced.
Basically unless your DM is planning to hand out a magical hand crossbow, the Crossbow Expert will be confronted with the choice of accepting a magical light or heavy crossbow and losing the bonus action attack, or keeping the attack at the cost of continuing to use a non-magical weapon. For the Polearm Master, they are good as long as the magical polearm is a glaive, halberd, quarterstaff, or spear.
Telling that PAM is worse than XBE because "it's melee" is ridiculous (or weird at best). You are fighting with a melee weapon, where are you supposed to be? If you are taking PAM it's obvious that your build is optimized for melee fighting.
@@parheliaa There is a logic to it, in the sense that ranged is "better" than melee because someone who can fight at range can generally deal damage more reliably and, since most potential enemies are melee-focused, usually takes damage less frequently. Player characters who rely on melee can have their damage drop off sharply if faced with enemies who are more mobile than them, unless they have a way to boost their own mobility or hinder their enemies'. Ranged characters just need the enemies to be visible and somewhere in their general area to deal damage.
@@CivilWarMan If you are optimizing for melee this is irrelevant.
Because in that case some of your other feats like Sentinel would also be useless.
@@parheliaa You are missing the point. Polearm Master is just as powerful for melee characters as Crossbow Expert is for ranged characters, but melee and ranged are not equal. Crossbow Expert scored higher because, given equal levels of skill and optimization, a ranged character is going to be stronger in most scenarios because the very nature of melee's stricter positioning requirements makes melee characters deal damage less reliably and take damage more frequently, simply due to how 5E works.
That doesn't make melee or its associated feats useless. A party without someone who can fight well in melee is usually going to struggle. But if the party already has a good balance between melee and ranged and has all of the critical party roles covered, adding more ranged characters is going to increase their effectiveness a lot more than adding more melee characters, and that means feats that boost the power of ranged characters are generally going to be considered more powerful than equivalent feats that boost the power of melee characters.
I can finally think of a use case for weapon master!!!
It only took me...9 years?
You need to be a straight classed monk, and either be a custom lineage starting with 18 DEX, or a race other than variant human/custom lineage who starts with 17 DEX. Then take weapon master as your half-feat, and use the Monk's Dedicated weapon feature to use a d10 weapon instead of a d8 weapon.
(The idea of a Monk that takes a DEX half feat has been bouncing around in my head for a while, but I never thought too hard about which DEX half feat makes the most sense. Totally forgot that weapon master is a half feat, I have to admit I basically never think about that feat).
To be fair, it wasn't as viable until Tasha's. It's also nice since Monks can benefit from more than just a d10 weapon. They can weaponize Whips better than most with the Martial Arts die, and then attempt Stunning Strikes safely from 10ft reach. A Long Bow cannot be a Dedicated Weapon, but we could only dedicate one at a time anyways so it doesn't hurt to have it for long distance pot shots when nothing is in range of a BA melee attack. Then they could get something squirrely like Net proficiency. If nothing else, grabbing two d10 Versatile weaps instead of one offers different damtypes for Crusher/Slasher/Piercer, potential vulns, resists, immunities, or most impactful could be qualifying for stock adventure/campaign magic weapons.
Definitely neat that weak feats can look nice when they're pitted against other weak feats that accomplish mostly the same thing. This is an interesting option for Rogues who also lack proficiency with Whips, Longbows, Nets, and certain magical Longswords slap on the Finesse property like the Sun Blade. A classic for the Rogue is the Scimitar of Speed to make a Bonus Action attack without needing to take the Attack Action. Thus allowing us to Ready an Attack for two Sneak Attacks per round...but while Rogues like Monks do get proficiency in Shortswords, they don't get the very mechanically similar cousin that is Scimitars!
Tavern Brawler really highlights a downside of quantifying abilities. By cramming together a bunch of mediocre things, it gets a higher score than its actual utility warrants. It just isn’t an A tier feat imo.
I was going to caution that the right feat for your character might not be the right feat for all characters, but my current PC has 2 S tier feats and a racial feat that I am sure will also be S tier, so I really can't argue with the methodology. For my 4th feat I really like C tier Mage Slayer as the perfect way to round out my Sentinel Rogue for the end of campaign boss fight, but that's my 4th feat and I definitely strongly considered a few more feats first. C tier being a good 4th pick option for the right build in the right situation seems like you really nailed these rankings so far. Excellent analysis as always, Treantmonk. Been a fan since the Pathfinder God Wizard guide. Keep up the good work.
This video got me thinking that for my campaign I'm starting this week I might take Ritual Caster.
There's no wizard in the group, I am a fighter with enough Int, and I'm going with the idea/theme of a mage hunter. So what better than someone that can't quite get spells to work, but uses spells he finds off of wizards he kills. Also I just get more feats as a fighter, here's hoping I roll well enough for this MAD build this week.
It's an obvious choice for an eldritch knight! :)
Out of combat ... Gives a fighter something to do. However save your slot and take 1 level of fighter. Instant ritual casting and all the spells you can find .. or gain
Great analysis! I did chuckle a bit when you said the feats in the phb need a redesign. If only WOTC would address this somehow...😂
I still can't believe Chris looked at this project and thought he could wrap it up quickly LOL love the in depth content! Keep it up!
Something I realized about ritual caster when watching this: it doesn't require spellcasting, just the int or wisdom. I think it would synergize really well with a monk, since wisdom adds to their unarmored defense and ki saves (and int doesn't matter for wizard ritual spells). Could also be good on a rogue, or literally any martial. Free horse for an hour, access to find familiar for the help action or scouting.
I think the sharpshooter damage should be worth more points since it's ranged
And the Archery fighting style makes in easier to hit with than GWM.
@@ElJefeRules GWM is a lot easier to get advantage with though.
Commenting for the algorithm - good work!!
It seems like Heavy Armor Master should be higher than tough. Aside from the +1S, at level 10, after being hit 7 times by qualifying damage type you've negated more than what tough has provided, [until/unless they are healed to full health anyway]
Also, what is up with Mounted Combatant being so high? For any of it to work you have to be in a mount accessible environment, for one. Your mount has to still be alive, for 2 [Find Steed's war horse has 11 ac and 19 hp, in encounters for characters level 5+; or 12 ac/59 hp for FGS at level 13+]; and for 3 the enemy has to be medium or smaller and also within your reach from the ground [until FGS comes online anyway]
Awesome series really love your evaluations and explanations for each feat
Martial adepts superiority dice have the small bonus of being upgraded by grabbing it as a battle master, as the Superiority dice is added to the pool you have and gets upgrade with its features, probably not the best but adding more fuel to battle masters skill set sounds good to me.
I have a feeling this was erataed out but that might be the fighting style in particular that was hit with that errata.
@@abcrasshadow9341 You gain one superiority die, which is a d6 (this die is added to any superiority dice you have from another source).
Battlemasters are the only characters I like the feat on. Expanding their already good pool of maneuvers and superiority dice just feels better than knowing two maneuvers and only being able to use one per short rest.
On these kinds of lists, generally D and F tiers are traps, and you don't take them. On this list, there are builds and/or campaigns where the D and F tiers are actually good. Dungeon Delver in the last third of Tomb of Annihilation has been mentioned before as S-tier. I think Skilled is probably decent if your DM is planning a campaign where ALL of the proficiencies are going to come up all the time. I'd argue that Heavily Armored and Magic Intiate are also good on the right builds. Savage Attacker comes up every round of combat, and if you're wielding that Great Axe, advantage on swingy d12s is going to feel good. I think, as always, you've got to think about how often you might use the feat and how much it actually boosts you when you do.
That's true and it shows what a good game this is, that one man's trash is another man's treasure.
Savage Attacker is best on a Rogue's Sneak Attack.
Can anyone name me a Spell or Effect that targets only a single target (i.e. not AOE) that causes a DEX Saving Throw besides "Finger of Death", because I'd like to know it? Otherwise, I think that portion of Shield Master should have been rated +5 points at best.
disintegrate, i guess?
Sacred Flame?
@@catastropheoverclock Woof, gonna see that in a lot of high tier play. Definitely worth the feat.
Sarcasm at the game, not you, aside, I appreciate the help. So with that, it looks like the count is at a whopping three spells.
Finger of Death, Disintegrate, and Sacred Flame.
Really makes me wonder why that feature of the feat was added instead of just giving it a flat bonus to all DEX-saves to damage. Why not let an armored knight really be able to go toe-to-toe with a fire-breathing dragon. As if that's going to up his damage capabilities. Because they'd still take damage, they just have a better one to save for half.
It's worth noting that the war caster feat doesn't bypass the non-material somatic free hand requirement, so if you want to cast S or VS spells, you need a free hand without a spell focus in it. War caster allows you to consider weapons or a shield as this free hand, but not anything else
can you clarify what you mean? What exactly doesn't it do?
@@tommihommi1 so basically if you have a spell focus in one hand, and you have something like a rope, or a potion bottle in the other hand, then you are unable to cast a whole bunch of spells due to somatic component rules. War caster doesn’t help you to bypass this at all, despite some claims to the contrary.
@@ethans9379 You could store something like a potion or a spellcasting focus with your free object interaction as part of the spellcasting action. An instance where both hands are being occupied by something you can't drop/store, at a time when you would want to cast a spell, seems pretty rare.
A bigger issue is needing the free hand for material components for M spells. So it works with a shield or weapon in one hand and a free hand or you’re limited to spells without a material component. Even the spell focus doesn’t substitute for M spells with consumed material components.
Savage Attacker, I believe, would be best utilized on characters that polymorph or transform into other creatures as part of their regular strategy (such as a moon druid). Many of the higher CR creatures you can transform into use a lot more damage dice than a basic sword or axe, and so the feat's ability to re-roll the dice and use either total is more valuable to them.
interesting to have tough above HAM. Even ignoring HAM +1 STR, you can directly compare by level how many non-magical weapon hits youd need to take per day to make HAM better, and its not much-- esp for your (6-8) encounters (ofc not all are combat!)
That said, Tough also stacks well (marginal gain) with Resistance from any soirce, and HAM does the exact opposite, and is more versatile
Observant ability to read lips can be huge in an urban, espionage, or more RP flavored campaign.
Thanks for this series, I love it! I have to say I think the lip reading portion of Observant is criminally undervalued here. Yeah, in combat?....pretty useless. But from a campaign perspective, social situations, intrigue, scouting....it's incredibly useful.
You have a point as I have taken observant unlike athlete which both are out of combat roles that have use.
Observant is very Dm dependant as it fluctuates from high D to low A depending on agreed interpretation.
Low B or high C as very finicky but a flat ASI is usually a better choice.
I don't think it's incredibly useful in social or scouting situations either. You're still limited to languages you understand. You also need to be able to see the creature talking, but not hear them speak, to get value out of the feat. It's nice when you need it, but overall still rather situational.
@@deathpacito8702 Comprehend Languages is a must ritual spell for ''observant''.
Really it is wither a wizard, artificer or arcane trickster or pact of the tome warlock as they are ritual casters as well.
Observant is not a feat most classes should even consider but it has niece use.
Out of curiosity - what would you rate a straight ability score improvement? Is it just 25+25 for 50pts? Or does possibly getting to round out two stats to even numbers increase its value somewhat?
"proficiency in a skill is a ribbon" I'm starting to think Treantmonk may have never played D&D before
By the end of this, were there any scores that surprised you? In other words, did you have an initial opinion of a feat that was lower (or higher, I suppose) than it turned out to be based on how you score the individual components or turned out to be more or less than the sum of its parts?
Surprisingly, reading lips comes up much more often then one would think, especially in a plot-heavy campaign, so I believe that Observant might actually deserve a higher place. Although it might just be how my table rolls.
For the Skulker feat you mentioned that dim light imposing disadvantage almost never comes up, but wouldn’t it be super useful for any race with darkvision?
He ignore rules i think
Yep, that's the big use case here, and this can be very, very important. I think at least one character should have the skulker feat for a party.
It would be nice to have the tier list accessible to view on a webpage
The main benefit of skilled feat is to grab tool proficiencies that are otherwise quite difficult to get.
A dex based fighter or ranger could pick skilled and choose thieves' tools, poisoner's kit and whatever skill they still need, potentially increasing both their utility and damage. Herbalist's kit and disguise kit could also be quite useful for many a character.
Still not hugely powerful, but I would rank each proficiency with option to choose a tool at high end of the ribbon category.
You could get 2 of those tool proficiencies from your background, a far smaller price to pay.
It's wild that you don't get extra skills as you level up. Skilled shouldn't even need to exist, make it at least a half feat.
Admittedly, it's suboptimal compared to stuff like getting it from your background or class, but yes this can be helpful, thanks to Xanathar's Guide of Everything finally making quite a bit of tools go from trash to decently helpful for adventurers, like Mason's tools or Cooking Utensils.
I also dont like how features like tough that are easily A or even S tier are locked to lower rankings because theyre 1 feature.
I think if Weapon Master wants to not suck, they should give players the ability to use their associated Weapon Mastery options from the playtest.
Well they designed a whole feat around just that.
I myself don’t ignore components just the role play of pulling them out and using them, but I always assume I need a free hand unless it’s something like a holy symbol on your shield.
The silly thing is, rules as written, your spell focus doesn't count as a free hand unless the spell being cast has a material component, so you can't cast spells with a somatic component but no material component (there's a lot of these) unless you have a hand without the spell focus in it free.
I appreciate the way you break down the information into quantitative information rather than your opinion… even still, your opinion , in my opinion, is Equivalent to an “expert opinion”.. this is a great list you have. It would be cool to use during a campaign to give a free feat at level 1 of B ranking or below, or whatever the DM decides
Glad to see some appreciation for ritual caster, a lot of people really undervalue that feat.
I really hope the 2024 version is better than the playtest. They slaughtered my boy.
Yeah you take it on basically any character (a Fighter for example) and you suddenly increase their out of combat utility dramatically.
Moderately Armored might be the most underrated feat honestly
It is. It allowed my swords bard to gain 18 armor class from half plate with shield proficiency, the shield spell, and bardic inspiration. With ring of protection and cloak of protection, I was hitting 40 ac
Nah, it's a bad feat, it's not underrated at all. It's an anti-feat. You can go 1 level dip in fighter and get the equivalent power of 4 to 5 feats and still retain your full ASI progression. And, for casters (which are the only ones that can benefit from this), basically all 20th level features are garbage. So, without a dip in fighter, you gain a 7th level spell slot and a useless feature, but you sacrifice a feat. If you dip 1 level in fighter, you sacrifice a functionally useless feature and a 7th level spell slot, but you gain the equivalent power of 4 to 5 feats AND you get to keep your full ASI progression, since you don't have to waste an ASI on Moderately Armored. There's literally no contest. Moderately Armored is absolute garbage IF mutliclassing is allowed.
Should give the feats from each video their own colour
He is but he did core rule book feats in 2 part video as you have 40 odd in the core players hand book.
I assume you didn't watch Treantmonks set up video explaining his criteria & scope for the coming feat videos at present.
You have 104 feats last I checked so about another 60 await.
Colour coding is to come in short for Xanathar's, tasha's & so forth!
Kind regards!
Thanks Treantmonk! ❤️
Mounted combatant - "evasion is good, the problem is it doesn't come up that much" ...
I'd have to say that seems very wrong, when you have 2 targets at a minimum the mount and rider and likely another PC in the radius much of the time you will be a magnet to every AOE effect going, even more so as loss of the mount will probably put a big crimp in your effectiveness and mounts are generally quite soft targets...
I agree with you that it will come up often in practice since you've pluralized your character and Dex saves are common. What I feel like I could say for Treantmonk though is that the mount often won't utilize Evasion as well as say a Monk or Rogue would. Most mounts lack the health and Dex saving throw mod to capitalize on Evasion. They'll rarely make their saves to ignore damage, and even if they succeed they might still get one shot or now be one more blast away from that.
While it definitely provides value to this feat and build concept, it may not get as much mileage as we like. I actually think Shield Master has the exact same problem, but in reverse. Sure, bullet point two doesn't do anything for bullet point three, but...the two bullet points offer something against every type of Dex save! Also, bullet point two being weak doesn't detract from bullet point three being strong. Yes, it costs a Reaction, but getting a form of Evasion for a PC over say an NPC like a mount is a much bigger deal. Another reason that may ring true is that a PC is more likely to have a bonus they can add to a save, from an ally, than the mount would get. Be that from Bardic Inspiration, Bless, Bond, Flash of Genius, etc.
@@Guyoverthere07 I can mostly agree with that, though even if the mount only gets one extra round of survival that is pretty huge for your total effectiveness if you have built around being mounted, rather than just happened to have a mount for now. (In which case a feat to boost your mounted prowess...)
And the Feat means you probably get many many more than just one or two rounds more life out of the mount, as you end up targeted (and probably not hit nearly as much as your AC is likely higher) and the AOE effects powerful enough to take a mount down in one or two hits are generally not going to fire off every round. If the mount survives just one of them it may well survive the entire fight.
Finally! Somome who knows the real Value of feats. (Lucky isn’t broken! And I'm tired of people pretending it is!)
i think it's interesting that many of the level 1 feats in 5.5 are in F tier here. In a much smaller pool they make a lot more sense. Also because they're 'free'.
Hey Chris, I have a few objections to your scoring xD
First, the PAM vs CBE: You seem to take into consideration the fact that attacking from range is safer and thus gave CBE more points than PAM (also because of the slightly higher damage die), but there's quite a few more things you didn't take into consideration. First, while it is true that you're stuck in melee, melee characters have way more options to augment their melee attacks, mainly with different spells, which are not available to ranged users. Second, while it is true that you're attacking from range, the Hand Crossbow only has about 30 feet of range, this making it barely a ranged weapon, and you basically need Sharpshooter to make this an actual, full-fledged ranged weapon. So I think it's not exactly fair to give PAM less points than CBE for the extra attack.
Second, Skulker: I've tried to make this feat work really, really hard, cause I absolutely adore the idea of it. But, in reality, the wording really messes the feat up. It's not that you can hide in Dim Light, it's that you can hide in Light Obscurement, which kind of makes the feat fairly useless, unless you build for it specifically. As soon as an enemy has Darkvision or Blindsight, then you're not able to hide from them, basically ever. Most DMs don't make encounters in complete darkness that happens to be non-magical, and monsters increasingly have at least Darkvision or Blindsight, if not True/Devil's sight at higher levels, so it becomes even less useful the higher you go. And even at low levels, when you fight lowly goblins and kobolds, it's not even really useful then. It's an extremely disappointing feat that needs a rework in my opinion. I'd honestly rate it as a ribbon feat completely, since you're probably gonna be able to use it like....twice in a campaign (a little exaggerated, but not too far off), unless your DM specifically makes situations to allow you to use it.
And, finally Moderately Armored: This feat is probably one that almost nobody is going to take. There's only 3 classes that actually can take it out the gate - Bard, Warlock and Rogue. Rogues don't need it in 99.99999% of cases, while Warlocks will probably not take it in 100% of the cases. One single level dip in fighter provides to casters the same benefit as 4, maybe even 5 feats in one. And casters generally don't need their 20th level features, since most of them are functionally useless. And delaying your spellcasting by 1 level is literally nothing when you compare to what you get for it - you get to keep all your feat progression and sacrifice no feats, you start with equivalent power of 4-5 extra feats. Moderately Armored, if we look at it honestly, is functionally useless and actively harms your character if you take it. It's literally an anti-feat xD And we're not even talking from an optimizer's standpoint, we're talking from common sense. I'd actually rate this quite near the bottom of F-tier, probably even at the bottom.
Other than that, the list is quite spot-on.
Moderately Armored is very very underrated.
1. Reducing your dex required to max AC is MASSIVE and saves you multiple feats/ASI - which matters the most in a pointbuy scenario - the expected default.
2. Those armors and shields will be upgradeable at least a little in almost every setting. The ceiling is a +5 from a shield alone.
3. You can occasionally pick up the light armor proficiency from RACES not just classes - which pushes V.Human down the list of Moderately Armored feat users.
4. Moderately Armored is strong af on classes that are balanced around mage armor. Every point of AC makes Shield/Absorb Elements Spell and HP more effective.
People like trying to raise the ceiling of power - in ideal scenarios.
I like consistency. Give me the tanky wizard/bard/sorcerer who is as/more durable than the warriors - while single-classed - over some niche gimmick "trick" any day.
Tanky spellcasters seem to be the standard for powergaming in 5e. And honestly I don’t like them too much in my mind theatre. Maybe it’s oldschool, but powerful wizards in lord of the rings for example wear robes, not platemail. Heavy or medium armored arcane spellcasters is something I’d honestly hope WotC would disincentivize or put some penalty on in the 2024 PHB. But probably that won’t happen from what I’ve seen so far.
I'd take Skilled over Weapon Master anyday. Yes Skilled is ribbon but it can give a character access to Perception, Insight, or Stealth that it otherwise would not have. And the second feature of Weapon Master is so fracking useless it's functionally just a broken ASI (or rather you're better off just taking an ASI). I can see a player choosing Skilled, I can't see anyone ever choosing Weapon Master.
I'm currently playing a polearm master with spear and shield combined with Dueling, and being the Tank in the party, I've found the Opportunity attack very useful. Most fights I'd get to use it at least 1 or 2 times, sometimes way more. Just thought it deserved more points.
I think the first bullet point of sharpshooter is less impactful than the second (except with hand crossbows), cover is everywhere, especially indoors and tight caves and dungeons. But that wouldn't affect the score so whatever, here's a comment for the video nonetheless!
And with Skulker, dim light not imposing disadvantage on perception checks comes up all the time. What the hell. A party sneaking through darkness not carrying or casting light will benefit greatly from that feature. There are so many darkvision races that often don't use light when sneaking around, that feature negates the -5 passive perception which is just huge.
I guess it comes down to the style of play (and if there are variant humans who require light in the party).
I really don't see how Magic initiate can come off so much worse than spell sniper... As you said yourself there are not many spells that Spell Sniper applies to, and it gives you only one cantrip, which is nice, but if you are picking this feat you probably already have at least one good attack cantrip as you must be able to cast a spell to take the feat, and spell casting classes come with cantrips, that are on your primary stat too - so that bonus cantrip is comparatively valueless. Great for a few builds, giving a Bard Eldritch Blast or a Cleric Thorn Whip for instance but mostly very mediocre as already being a spell caster you already have access to a good cantrip...
So when compared to entirely free choice of two cantrips and a first level spell from a classes list of your choice for Magic Initiate - that is pure flexibility, and in many ways better than Ritual caster too! As you gain magic you can just use in combat at need, not just stuff you must spend over 10 mins preparing every time, that may well consume your concentration and only starts with 1st level spells... Ritual caster is very useful, especially if you need/want to order off your own classes spell list, but as there is so little certainty on getting more ritual spells...
I like feats they add variety, but many become essential for many builds to stay anywhere close to other characters (melee v casters)
Feats, should they be used to flavour your character or increase its power?
If you play a character that doesnt get a feat at 1st level, then it takes 4 levels to get one.
A multiclass dip is just one level, so a feat like heavily armoured or moderatly armoured really isnt worth it, unless you want to max out your your character to 20th level in one class.
Taking 1 or 2 level dips brings alot to your character without needing a feat.
If however theirs isnt multiclassing in your game, then a feat becomes so much more useful, such as heavily armoured etc.
Also, a feat taken at 1st level, such as PAM, with a variety human etc, is way more powerful than taling it at 4th level.
It's interesteing. I've always heard that "Lucky" was. "THE strongest" feat... but XBE... you make some good points... Also, I usually take fey touched before lucky... so what does that say?
Lucky is certainly more universal
Lucky is universally pretty good three times a day while stuff like XBE, Sharpshooter, GWM, are a gargantuan power bump that is active all day long to the specific builds they go on, so in a way Lucky is "THE feat" but just not always.
There's one thing that's about impossible to quantify, and I think comparing feats to ASIs is a good example.
If you start with point buy, and are playing a MAD build like Monk or Paladin, the potential value of ASIs is extremely high.
Conversely, if you're rolling for stats and playing a more SAD build like a control caster, those ASIs have relatively low value.
Since value is always relative, the value of the ASI raises and lowers the value of all feats.
Then you've got the situational features, where a feat that would normally rank low gives a character something that benefits a specific build far more than its general value. The Skulker feat, in a stealth focused game comes to mind.
It would seem appropriate to give a "non situational" boost to those few feats whose value seems to be fairly static across a wide variety of conditions. I think Lucky, Resilient, and Healer are examples that have about the same value in any setting.
Campaign to make Skilled feat into a double half feat: increase dex or str by +1 AND int, cha, or wis by +1 in addition to the skills.
I really hope that the Mobile feat be redesigned to be on the new PHB. I understand if the design team doesn't want a feat to make you complete imune to opportunity attacks but the other parts of the feat are really cool and can be easily redesigned as a +1dex halfeat that give you more speed of movement, perhaps even a dash as bonus action feature
My main issue is any feat that could be replicated by one multiclass needs to have its value reduced.
You get 4x as many levels as feats(roughly). I can’t imagine ever getting ritual caster when I can get wizard -1, and get so much more. Same with the armor, cleric-1.
Unique feats should be more valued than “dip-able” feats. So some of these ritual caster, I would put a 50% penalty on.
Pretty good list but feats are more “valuable” than 1 level. However shadow/fet-touched etc is like “3-levels”, but is also a half feat..
Dipping means you don't get higher level class abilities. For some classes it doesn't matter but for others it absolutely does, especially lower level play.
You also don't get many feats al low levels. Grabbing one level in something means you can take a better feat as well.
Ritual Caster lets you pick up things like Water Breathing and Rary's Telepathic Bond at higher levels, so not exactly a Wizard-1 situation.
I agree, one correction though. Ritual caster can't really be replaced by a level 1 wizard dip if you gain access to future higher level ritual spells, which is the majority of the feats potential value IMO. To add higher than level 1 rituals to their book the wizard would need to have the class level investment for the spell, so 5 wizard levels for phantom steed, 9 for contact other plane etc
True there are some high level rituals, it was an easy example. Still unique still has more value, but very good points on those higher ones.
Thanks for the video! I’m enjoying the content and excited for more.
Since you get twenty levels vs 5 feats, I think features that can be replicated with a single level dip should be weighed less.
Savage Attacker being once per turn isn't just disappointing power wise, it's also annoying when you have multiple attacks and have to consider if it's worth using on your first attack, especially when you end up rolling better damage on the second attack anyway or miss with the second attack. Unless the DM lets you retroactively choose which damage roll to reroll.
This is easily one of the best D&D series on RUclips! Well reasoned, data based analysis that gives a relative guide to how to evaluate feats. Chef’s kiss. 😊
This isn't at all based on data.
@@Spyger9. It is based on data, not all based on data. Thanks for clarifying.
The PHB needs a redesign? Well I have good news for you buddy....
As always, the point value per feature is a nice way to rate things and shift perspective a little. I liked it in the racial tier list and I'm liking it here 👍🏻. That said, it's interesting that the bonus hp from tough gets more points than just increasing con with ASI just to get the hp (20+20).. Okay let's assume we get the choice bonus of physical attributes (23+23). And it gets more points than -5 to hit / +10 dmg. 😅
I think Observant is a bit better than you give it credit for. A +5 passive perception is very impactful.
At some tables* It heavily relies on your DM using passive checks
It should be but many DMS don't actually play with passive perception or reward it
This can be fixed by simply giving a plus 5 to all passive or active investigation and perception checks
@@abcrasshadow9341 I'm always the DM at my table ^^, but I had a player who picked this feat, with a Elf bladesinger. So obviously I said 'If you want a +1 INT, Fey Touched or Shadow Touched are better". But she didn't like those feats because they didn't fit her character concept. And so she took Observant, which is way better than Keen Mind imo. It has helped her on several crucial moments.
My current bounty hunter runs with Observant. Nice thematically and mechanically. Most of the traps and hidden monsters are spotted without even making active perception check. Even passive investigation comes up from time to time
It would be cool for martial Adept if you regain 1 Dice after a Kill/Crit.
Kill is too common but Crit is great.
Suggestion, can you add the total score for each feat in the tile?
In the final video I will have the scores for every feat in the description in order from highest to lowest.
What would the standard ASI score? I get that it's not technically a feat but for comparison it'd be good to know, I'm guessing in the 40-50 range
By their rules (Half Feat gets 25 points if it lets you put the point in any stat), a full asi should be 50 points (low A tier). Puts into perspective how important an asi can be
Skilled could be an insane top tier feat if it gave you a +1 in any score, 3 or 2 skills, and expertise in one skill of your choice that you are proficient in (obviously including potentially a skill you chose with this feat)
Let’s leave the expertise out so Skill Expert retains its niche.
ב"ה
Do you value feat abilities the same way you valued them at race ranking?
I mean, a free cantrip here is valued the same as a free cantrip there, extra ability scores here valued the same as extra ability scores there, speed bonus here valued the same as speed bonus there, etc.
I wonder about 46 points for Tough. If a half feat is worth 20, that means a +1 in Constitution is worth 20, and you're really only ever building for a half feat if you've got an odd number the half feat pushes to even.
That makes it 20 points for +1hp/level with +1 CON saves including concentration. How does doubling the health gains while dropping the save improvement amount to more than double the value?
Medium Armor Master is probably a net +2 to AC for any character that would actually take it. That said, the set of characters who 1) care about Stealth and 2) have access to Medium armors is of course rather small, and the subset of that who have a Feat to spare is even smaller.
If you take your dex to 16 you are most likely taking it to 20. At which point studded leather is only 1 AC less than half plate with MAM. Might as well take Fighting Initiate: Defense at that point.
As far as the saving throw benefit for Shield Master goes, unless I'm mistaken there are exactly *TWO* single-target spells that provide a DEX saving throw, and one of those is a cantrip. Honestly, I'd have called this a ribbon feature. On the other hand, I'd likely have rated the shove bonus action and the almost-Evasion feature higher, so it probably all evens out in the end. 😉
Excluding monster saves, there are a fair number of qualifying spells. Disintegrate, enervation, immolation, catapult, sacred flame, hellish rebuke, snare, cordon of arrows, acid splash*, grasping vine, guardian of faith, light, resilient sphere, maybe others.
Do you think by RAW it would be applicable as well in scenarios where you are the only target within a dex save's AOE?
Regardless, Tavern Brawler has no business ranking higher than it...
I think resilient should be downgraded on account that I think the vast majority of its use case is resilient con to boost constitution saving throws for casters, and the half feat synergy with boosting constitution is not as good as other locked in half feats. Part of the charm of half feats is being able to chain them together to pick up an ability boost plus a couple nice features. Much easier to do with say heavy armor master and say crusher on a front liner than resilient con and durable? on a caster.
A number or racial feats can bump con, as well as Skill Expert, Crusher and a number of the newer setting feats
Resilient Wisdom is also a contender, super useful for maintaining concentration or rage when an incapacitating situation arises, though character that lack resilient wisdom are probably less likely to benefit much from boosting wisdom further. Excluding scenarios like rangers, monks that won't get to diamond soul, or a normally wisdom prof classes that started as something else for a different save proficiency.
Resilient Dex could be good for building a dex based character that lacks the proficiency, given the ample selection of dex half feats
Also resilient is still valuable for building with an odd stat for that score, negating the need to further chain feats
Mounted Combatant probably needs to lose points. How often do adventures largely take place where you can be on a mount? Unless you are burning spell slots for find steed
Even with Find Steed, the mount has to survive aoe's with like +1 or 2 modifiers and like 30hp and like 11 ac whenever you aren't on it
Wow, moderately armored at S tier?
i think the reason is that spellcasters are often seen as so strong. for a class that doesn't have shield and medium armor proficiency, this is quite huge because defense is very important
@@gabrielcross1062 You need proficiency with light armor in order to qualify for this feat. This really limits who can use it and it doesn't boost any spellcasting ability scores.
@@amonlewis6500 ya know, this just made me remember multiclassing. Starting off as fighter, artificer, paladin, or cleric is so common that I think you're right, it isn't all that common that this would be used with any kind of optimization. Yeah this might be way worse than I was thinking
Boy, I sure think he alter is stronger than shield master
I've always found Savage Attacker (SA) slightly underrated.
People often just calculate the avarage increase of damage and leave out the fact you can choose when to apply it.
What they are bassically calculating is how good SA is if you always reroll your first damage die even if you rolled max on it.
In practice it adds quite a bit more damage then theory would suggest. Especially if you look for ways to make attacks out of your turn like with sentinal to trigger SA more
It doesn't come close to what Great Weapon Master does obviously but it's not nearly as bad as people think it is
Had a character with SA and sentinel and a bard party member who would trigger oppertunity attacks with dissonant whispers and the extra damage SA gave quickly stacked up. It wasn't uncommon to trigger it twice a round
Forced movement like from Dissonant Whispers isn't supposed to provoke opportunity attacks
@@foolsgold5588 according to Jerremy Crawford
"The movement in dissonant whispers can provoke opportunity attacks, since it uses your reaction (PH, 195). #DnD"
So it's more of a dm call as the rules aren't superclear on it. My dm allowed it
For shieldmaster, that's certainly not the way it's coded in one Dnd
Great video. Can I request seeing both a version of the tier chart for just xanathar's guide to everything as well as the version with all of the feats up until that point? I think it would help show the difference in the general shape of the feat spread.
6:50 as someone who plays in a campaign with a lot of spells that require Dex saves, I was surprised by the lowballing for Evasion! Guess it’s one of those features that’s setting specific because it’s a huge bonus in my opinion since it adds a staple Rogue feature to your mount
"Skilled is the worst feat in Dungeons and Dragons"
Lightly Armored, Moderately Armored (fight me), Heavily Armored, Chef, Weapon Master, and Linguist would like a word.
I'm mostly joking, everyone's welcome to their opinions.
I’ve always thought it was a bit odd that we have medium and heavy armor master feats, but nothing official for light armor. Do you have any ideas for a hypothetical Light Armor Master feat?
DEX ASI
@@apjapki
Something other than a simple +1 AC. Medium ignores stealth disadvantage, and heavy grants damage reduction. I’m wondering what sort of additional feature could be granted if the character has already capped their DEX
Why is proficiency in a skill merely 5 points when expertise in a skill is 17? I understand that Bounded Accuracy makes stacked bonuses better, but 3.4x better?
I think for a couple feats, it seems like you scored them with your tier brackets in mind. Like scoring a feature with 37 or 38 points to decide if it fits into S or A tier is definitely odd, because S and A at a glance are noticeably different, but 37 and 38 are so close to each other, and so random to choose. So I felt like that stood out to me a couple times, Like it felt like you had scored something just enough to points to put it within a specific tier.
That being said, I do think most rankings are fairly decent. I think some situational feats were a bit underscored because yes they are situational, but under those situations they can be pretty good. But yea, that becomes more down to the individual to decide; but I do think it means people will just look at the final tier list at a glance, and get the wrong idea for some of these feats. Some of these feats are just... always bad, and some of them are bad on the wrong build, or very good on the right build, but because most builds aren't the right build, they scored similarly.
The main feat I think I would have scored differently would be the Tough feat. You gave it 40 something points and I think that is quite dramatically too much. I would say that Tough tends to scale with creature's damage, and most of the time, it's gonna be roughly around the same amount of extra hit points as 1 monster attack. So in the long run, at most levels, you are surviving 1 additional monster attack on average. Like, yea that's good, but that to me is worth like 20 points. Being able to survive 1 additional attack per combat (assuming you reach full hitpoints before the start of each combat) is not on the same level as like proficiency in a saving throw, or the ability to add 10 damage to every attack you hit. And honestly sometimes, it isn't even going to be one additional attack. Or, that 1 additional attack isn't going to afford you an additional turn due to multiattack or multiple monsters. It's definitely decent, but I do think you really overscored that feat
I wonder ...
How would you rate Mounted Combatant feat ... when taken by spellcaster who casts Enlarge/Reduce, who Enlarges Tank of the Party ... just so he can mount him? :D
I know its not purpose of this video ...
And i totally realize its very specific situation ...
But it feels like A++ at worse in such case to me. :D
Great work, here. I would like to talk about four of them: Magic initiate, skulker, savage attacker, martial adept, and ritual caster.
I really expected a higher score for ritual caster. I get that it is somewhat DM dependent, but it can give a player the ability to cast a dozen good spells: alarm, detect magic, identify, unseen servant, comprehend languages, find familiar, augury, skywrite, tiny hut, water breathing, phantom steed, divination, and telepathic bond. Surely it should be in high S tier. That's definitely why it got nerfed in the OneDND UA.
Martial adept synergizes really well with the superior technique fighting style and the battle master subclass. I wouldn't mind two dice from it, though.
Savage attacker synergizes really well with rogues and paladins, if we interpret it to allow a boost on sneak attack dice and smites.
Skulker got short-changed a bit. You said that the dimlight condition doesn't happen often, but dark vision turns darkness into dim light for every character that has it. Every party that doesn't bring light should be rolling disadvantage on perception checks in the dark, RAW.
Magic initiate is just so beautifully flavorful. It just makes me sad to see it so weakly scored.
I think you overrated spell sniper’s first two bullet points because there are so few attack roll spells unless you are a warlock, and EB already has 120ft range so you don’t need the doubling.
rly minor point, but Sharpshooters -5/+10 thing should be valued higher than GWM's, as it's ranged which is just better than being in melee, and also the Archery Fighting Style exists.