Overwatch feat (5e)

[Vikingirishman]

Fiddling around with different actions for ranged characters and hit upon an idea. I'm not sold on the execution, but here's what I have so far. Thoughts?

Overwatch

On your turn, you can ready an action to provide overwatch for your allies. Until the beginning of your next turn, whenever an enemy that you can see within short range makes an attack roll you may use your reaction to make an attack against that enemy with a ranged weapon. If the attack hits, that enemy must make a Constitution save with a DC of 10 or half the damage taken, whichever number is higher.. If they fail, you impose disadvantage on that enemy's attack roll.

[Anymage]

It's not a bad move per se. It's just that feats in 5e offer multiple benefits. And you're falling into a 3e thinking trap.

Specifically, 3e either took moves that everybody should be able to do and cooked them into feats, or pointlessly nerfed the ability of a normal character to pull off the maneuver just to let a feat bring them back to baseline. Cool stuff shouldn't be gated behind feats. (Especially considering how limited they are in 5e, and how they compete with ASIs.)

For starters, broaden the Help action to either give an ally advantage on attack rolls against the target, or to give the enemy disadvantage on attack rolls against an ally. This could easily be baseline. After that, include the ability to ranged Help under something else. Off the top of my head either as part of a bigger feat, or as a battle master maneuver.

[Vikingirishman]

It's not a bad move per se. It's just that feats in 5e offer multiple benefits. And you're falling into a 3e thinking trap.

Specifically, 3e either took moves that everybody should be able to do and cooked them into feats, or pointlessly nerfed the ability of a normal character to pull off the maneuver just to let a feat bring them back to baseline. Cool stuff shouldn't be gated behind feats. (Especially considering how limited they are in 5e, and how they compete with ASIs.)

For starters, broaden the Help action to either give an ally advantage on attack rolls against the target, or to give the enemy disadvantage on attack rolls against an ally. This could easily be baseline. After that, include the ability to ranged Help under something else. Off the top of my head either as part of a bigger feat, or as a battle master maneuver.

That's actually a hell of a lot simpler and it doesn't waste a feat slot. Thank you for your input.