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Stan
2018-07-24, 12:36 PM
Alignment Feats

This is something I found in my old homebrew folder. These feats are intended for high fantasy settings where alignment and morality play a bigger role at times. I wouldn’t add these to the majority of settings. These were originally written for 3e/PF where charisma felt like more of a dump stat than it does in 5e – I’m not sure if I’m going to keep most of them tied to charisma. Some of the evil feats are a bit stronger, but those will usually be on evil NPCs.

If you have an alignment, you may spend a feat slot to learn the corresponding alignment feat. This implies that you take your alignment more seriously and adhere to it more closely.

Chaotic (any) The luck of chaos is yours. You may reroll any single roll with an even result and take the 2nd result. You must keep the 2nd roll even if it is lower. You cannot use this ability twice on the same roll. These rerolls can be made a number of times per day equal to you CHA bonus.

Lawful (any) You can take the orderly and expected path in any situation. You may take 11 on any D20 roll a number of times per day equal to your CHA bonus.

Evil (any) You can channel energy as a cleric except it can only be used to Command Undead as per an Oathbreaker paladin. You can do this a number of times per day equal to your CHA bonus.

Good (any) Your divine protection allows you to add your CHA bonus to all saving throws from attacks, powers, and spells from aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead who are evil.

Chaotic Evil Once per turn, prior to rolling to hit, you may declare an attack to be a destructive blow. If it hits, it is automatically a critical hit. Whether or not it hits, attacks against you have advantage until the beginning of your next round. You may do this a number of times per day equal to 1 + CHA.

Chaotic Neutral Your need for freedom gives you advantage on rolls vs grapple attempts and to escape being grappled. You also have advantage on saving throws vs being held, charmed, or similarly controlled.

Chaotic Good You can lay on hands to heal with your touch. You can use this ability 1 + CHA each day to heal HP equal to your level.

Neutral Evil Your self-interest allows you to add your CHA bonus to rolls to attempts to gamble, deceive, and assess value.

True Neutral Your detachment grants you proficiency with History, Insight, Investigation, and Perception. If you are already proficient, then you gain expertise.

Neutral Good As an action, you can release a burst of radiant energy with a 30’ radious. This does damage equal to your level to aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead who are evil. Creatures take half damage if they succeed in a Charisma saving throw (DC=8 + your proficiency bonus + your Cha bonus). You can do this a number of times per day equal to you CHA bonus.

Lawful Evil You may cast Command a number of times per day equal to your CHA bonus.

Lawful Neutral You have advantage on insight rolls to detect lies or to counter deception rolls. You also have advantage on Investigation rolls to detect anything that is out of place or which is out of the ordinary.

Lawful Good You can smite aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead who are evil, adding your CHA to the attack roll and your level to the damage. You can do this a number of times per day equal to your level.

Lalliman
2018-07-24, 02:39 PM
The problem with tying these to Charisma is that they'll basically only be chosen by sorcerers, warlocks, bards and paladins. It's not worth it for other characters to raise their Charisma for the purpose of using these feats, especially since the act of taking one of these feats takes up one of their ASI's, thus further detracting from the ability scores they actually need. And of course, if you buff these feats to make them worthwhile, they just becomes overpowered for Charisma-based casters. So yeah, you're probably better off tying them to proficiency or something.

I don't have time for comprehensive feedback right now, but a few things that stand out to me:

- Chaotic Evil is incredibly powerful because there's no per round restriction. A fighter, monk or other character with a lot of attacks could use them all in one round, dealing tons of guaranteed damage, and even if the target survives they'll still only be vulnerable for one round.

- What kind of saving throw does Neutral Good use?

- Lawful Good: Outsiders aren't a type anymore. Should define the exact types.

I'll come back for a more complete appraisal later.

Stan
2018-07-24, 03:28 PM
The problem with tying these to Charisma is that they'll basically only be chosen by sorcerers, warlocks, bards and paladins. It's not worth it for other characters to raise their Charisma for the purpose of using these feats, especially since the act of taking one of these feats takes up one of their ASI's, thus further detracting from the ability scores they actually need. And of course, if you buff these feats to make them worthwhile, they just becomes overpowered for Charisma-based casters. So yeah, you're probably better off tying them to proficiency or something.

Yea, those were my thoughts as well. Proficiency is a good idea (or a flat number)- I was thinking that tying them to any ability would just switch the problem to benefit different group of classes.

Slight edits based on feedback. CE is once per turn.

Anymage
2018-07-24, 03:59 PM
Chaotic sounds a lot like Lucky, so you might as well just use the established framework. Possibly calling Lucky an alignment feat, since it is one of the stronger ones. Use your wording to bypass the "disadvantage becomes super-advantage" glitch, and should be balanced. No need to include a stat mod or scaling number of times you can call it up. 3/day or 1/short rest, depending on how much you want it be a general thing vs. a bursty thing.

Lawful as an equivalent "you have a Portent with 11, go nuts" sounds okay. Similar 3/long rest or 1/short rest restriction.

Good and Evil are less about generally making the nature of your alignment work for you, and more about influencing aligned outsiders. If you want to make alignment feats a thing, make the benefits more general. I'd be tempted to make a limited healing option for Good, and turn the CE option (with the same limits I mentioned for the Chaotic and Lawful feats) into the generic one for Evil. Although if better ideas pop up for you, go for it.

Two important caveats. First, only do this if you want alignment to be a major force in your games, since 5e deliberately downplayed that. I wouldn't want these as a general thing, but being a bit strong to encourage player buy-in is okay. Second, 5e feats are very different from 3.x feats. You're not expected to get many of them, and they actively compete with ASIs. (Technically you shouldn't expect to get so many 3.x feats either. Ones that gave minor and/or super situational bonuses are widely acknowledged as mistakes.) One feat to show strong allegiance with a side is understandable. Feat chains expect deeper investment than 5e feats are really intended for, and it's redundant to have both general feats for each axis and then specific feats for every alignment.

Stan
2018-07-24, 04:21 PM
Feat chains expect deeper investment than 5e feats are really intended for, and it's redundant to have both general feats for each axis and then specific feats for every alignment.

Thanks. They're not intended as chains, just giving more options - that way, for any alignment, there are 3 feats to choose from.

Most games, I barely even use alignment, so these wouldn't fit. I originally created these for a questing knights adventure.

KarlMarx
2018-07-25, 03:35 PM
So here's my analysis of each feat, with alignment names abbreviated:

C: For high-CHA characters, a strict upgrade over Lucky, a similar feat. Although it can only be used 50% of the time, any character with more than a 16 in CHA gets more than twice as many uses out of it. For any character with a moderate CHA (14-15) , it's mathematically on par with Lucky. Given that that feat is already a good one, and that only high-CHA characters have an advantage in choosing this one, I think that it's rather too powerful for the characters who'd actually choose it.

L: First, taking 11 is really rare...I might put simply taking 10 as that's more conventional. Also, IMO, situations where 1) it's a low enough risk that you can afford to take 10 and 2) it's imperative that it gets done this round are really rare. I could see it being useful for a smite of a low-AC creature...but that's about it. There are certainly worse feats, but given how few 5E characters get there's also no real reason to take this one.

E: A powerful feat, but not game-breakingly so. The rarity of Undead, coupled with the fact that you still have to roll, balances out the powerful effect.

G: Needs clarification as to whether the "who are evil" restriction applies to only undead or to all creature types listed. Otherwise has the same flaw as C above, in that it's very powerful for high-CHA characters especially at later levels where, with bounded accuracy, an 18 or 20 in CHA would suddenly translate to a +20% or +25% success chance for a bunch of saves.

CE: For consistency's sake, I'd say that this feat should just be a number of times per day equal to CHA (min 1/day). Otherwise, I'd say my only concern is that it can very easily stack onto other smites. Alone, the feat is powerful but not beyond the Pale IMO, but on top of other smites it could get dangerous. I could see a CE paladin/warlock abusing this heavily.

CN: Balanced, though in my games few GMs use these mechanics regularly. For a GM that does it's a useful feat, otherwise I'd probably choose something else. Also a bit vague as to what exactly is and isn't allowed.

CG: Very unclear as to what action is required and whether you can heal others or only yourself. The amount of healing is also a little low in my opinion; this feat certainly wouldn't be a priority.

NE: It's sacrificing a much better feat to get a relatively small bonus to what's generally a niche (You can never have more than +5 CHA). I wouldn't see most players taking this for anything other than fluff.

TN: Very good for a loremaster type. Not an outstanding feat or something that redefines what a character does, but certainly a solid option. Expertise on Perception is probably the lure for most. I might even couple it with a +1 WIS asi to incentivize players to take it.

NG: Same clarity issue as the G feat. The damage output is also a bit on the low side.. The wide range seems like it's designed to counter that, but I find it rare for GMS to include enough creatures for that to happen as it bogs down combat. I would rewrite this feat to do 2*level damage to all creatures within a 15' radius.

LE: Not bad, but also not a standout feat. The real issue it has is that it is most appetizing to martials, as casters could just cast. The issue is that there aren't really many martials that have both no casting and a high enough charisma to justify this investment on a feat-intensive chassis. In the end, I think that few people would choose this feat...

LN: Same issue as NE. Depending on how generous the GM is with the second sentence it's certainly more powerful, but not enough to justify choosing this over another feat.

LG: Not bad, overall, though very vague. If it can be used on spells it might be a little too powerful on a warlock with a good Eldritch Blast. It does have something of the same issue as CE, but the less powerful nature of the smite does mean that it's less of an issue. Again, there isn't enough here to justify the feat...

Overall notes: I find there to be three classes of these feats: those that are too powerful on some characters (C, G, CE), those that are fairly balanced but certainly aren't the strongest feats in the game (E, CN, maybe TN and LN, LG) and those that are too niche or underpowered to really merit taking (all others). As it'd be hard to introduce 13 standout feats into the game--particularly when most characters can take 2 or 3 of them--I'd say that those in the first category need to be remade with a new concept in mind, those in the last category need to have more use than those narrow circumstances, and all of them (after the first 3 are redesigned) should also give +1 to CHA, with the possible exception of TN if it gives a WIS buff. With the stat buff each feat also gives 1/2 an ASI, and a lot of the sub-par choices might become much more reasonable.

silentpun
2018-07-27, 02:05 PM
People are saying the CHA focus favours Sorcerers, so a way to counter that could be to have them scale off the mental stat of your choice instead.

Sir Brett Nortj
2018-07-28, 01:14 PM
Alignment Feats

This is something I found in my old homebrew folder. These feats are intended for high fantasy settings where alignment and morality play a bigger role at times. I wouldn’t add these to the majority of settings. These were originally written for 3e/PF where charisma felt like more of a dump stat than it does in 5e – I’m not sure if I’m going to keep most of them tied to charisma. Some of the evil feats are a bit stronger, but those will usually be on evil NPCs.

If you have an alignment, you may spend a feat slot to learn the corresponding alignment feat. This implies that you take your alignment more seriously and adhere to it more closely.

Chaotic (any) The luck of chaos is yours. You may reroll any single roll with an even result and take the 2nd result. You must keep the 2nd roll even if it is lower. You cannot use this ability twice on the same roll. These rerolls can be made a number of times per day equal to you CHA bonus.

Lawful (any) You can take the orderly and expected path in any situation. You may take 11 on any D20 roll a number of times per day equal to your CHA bonus.

Evil (any) You can channel energy as a cleric except it can only be used to Command Undead as per an Oathbreaker paladin. You can do this a number of times per day equal to your CHA bonus.

Good (any) Your divine protection allows you to add your CHA bonus to all saving throws from attacks, powers, and spells from aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead who are evil.

Chaotic Evil Once per turn, prior to rolling to hit, you may declare an attack to be a destructive blow. If it hits, it is automatically a critical hit. Whether or not it hits, attacks against you have advantage until the beginning of your next round. You may do this a number of times per day equal to 1 + CHA.

Chaotic Neutral Your need for freedom gives you advantage on rolls vs grapple attempts and to escape being grappled. You also have advantage on saving throws vs being held, charmed, or similarly controlled.

Chaotic Good You can lay on hands to heal with your touch. You can use this ability 1 + CHA each day to heal HP equal to your level.

Neutral Evil Your self-interest allows you to add your CHA bonus to rolls to attempts to gamble, deceive, and assess value.

True Neutral Your detachment grants you proficiency with History, Insight, Investigation, and Perception. If you are already proficient, then you gain expertise.

Neutral Good As an action, you can release a burst of radiant energy with a 30’ radious. This does damage equal to your level to aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead who are evil. Creatures take half damage if they succeed in a Charisma saving throw (DC=8 + your proficiency bonus + your Cha bonus). You can do this a number of times per day equal to you CHA bonus.

Lawful Evil You may cast Command a number of times per day equal to your CHA bonus.

Lawful Neutral You have advantage on insight rolls to detect lies or to counter deception rolls. You also have advantage on Investigation rolls to detect anything that is out of place or which is out of the ordinary.

Lawful Good You can smite aberration, celestial, elemental, fey, fiend, or undead who are evil, adding your CHA to the attack roll and your level to the damage. You can do this a number of times per day equal to your level.

I think this is great. Thank you.