Feat: Lightning Reflexes (extra reaction, and more)

[Greywander]

Lightning Reflexes
Increase your Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You may take one additional reaction each round.
Immediately before or after using a reaction, you may move up to 5 feet. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.
You gain a +2 bonus to Dexterity saving throws. Whenever you use a reaction, this bonus decreases by 1, to a minimum of +0. At the start of each of your turns, the bonus resets to +2.

I kind of wanted to play around with the idea of giving out an additional reaction. Didn't want to give out too many, but even one additional reaction opens up some new options. Since the original Lightning Reflexes feat gave a bonus to reflex saves, I thought it might be nice to pay homage to that, as well. I'm not sure if there's too much going on in this feat. Maybe I should axe the extra movement. Thoughts?

[EdgeOfTheAbyss]

I don't think your realizing how powerful a extra reaction is. Personally I believe the saving throw is what relay drives it in to the over powered zone.

[Greywander]

I understand that messing with the action economy can lead to game-breaking results if you're not careful.

Let me remind you that Tunnel Fighter was a thing, and actually made it into print in the form of the 18th level Cavalier feature in XGtE. Granted, it could only be used for OAs, but allowing infinite of any type of action surely has to be much worse than what I'm proposing.

Haste and Action Surge also exist as precedents for allowing a character to take two actions rather than one. Reactions are substantially less useful than actions, and in particular can very rarely be used without something else triggering it. Meaning, often you won't be using even one reaction every round.

I'll admit, I can probably tune the feat down, but I don't think one additional reaction is quite as strong as you make it out to be, though it's certainly a handy thing to have when you have a lot of reaction abilities.

[Bjarkmundur]

I like it as it stands now, the 5 feet really make it that much more interesting.

I'm not a fan of trying to remember if I've used both my reactions this round or not, but I'll leave that up to your player to worry about ^^

[Greywander]

Huh, I was thinking of axing the movement, but it does add something a bit more interesting. I should probably specify that it won't take you out of range of whatever triggered the reaction (e.g. if it was a reaction to getting hit, you still get hit even if you move out of range of the attack). Maybe I should remove the DEX bonus, turning it from a half feat to a full feat.

If I keep the bonus to DEX saves, I might only have it persist until you use a reaction, so it's either on or off, rather than trying to track how many reactions you've used. Or just make it a flat +1 or +2 that's always on.

Here's a revamped version:

Lightning Reflexes

You gain a +1 bonus to Dexterity saving throws.
You may take one additional reaction each round.
Immediately before or after using a reaction, you may move up to 5 feet. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.

My other thought was to allow you to use a reaction to boost your DEX saves (instead of having an always-on DEX save bonus), like the War wizard's Arcane Deflection, but only for DEX saves. Here's what that might look like:

Lightning Reflexes

You may take one additional reaction each round.
Immediately before or after using a reaction, you may move up to 5 feet. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.
When you fail a Dexterity saving throw, you may use your reaction to gain a +4 bonus to that saving throw.

(+4 is what Arcane Deflection gives, and it also only applies to just that one save, not to all saves. Ergo, it has to be strong enough to make it worth using.)

[Bjarkmundur]

Huh, I was thinking of axing the movement, but it does add something a bit more interesting. I should probably specify that it won't take you out of range of whatever triggered the reaction (e.g. if it was a reaction to getting hit, you still get hit even if you move out of range of the attack). Maybe I should remove the DEX bonus, turning it from a half feat to a full feat.

If I keep the bonus to DEX saves, I might only have it persist until you use a reaction, so it's either on or off, rather than trying to track how many reactions you've used. Or just make it a flat +1 or +2 that's always on.

Here's a revamped version:

Lightning Reflexes ONE

You gain a +1 bonus to Dexterity saving throws.
You may take one additional reaction each round.
Immediately before or after using a reaction, you may move up to 5 feet. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.

My other thought was to allow you to use a reaction to boost your DEX saves (instead of having an always-on DEX save bonus), like the War wizard's Arcane Deflection, but only for DEX saves. Here's what that might look like:

Lightning Reflexes TWO

You may take one additional reaction each round.
Immediately before or after using a reaction, you may move up to 5 feet. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.
When you fail a Dexterity saving throw, you may use your reaction to gain a +4 bonus to that saving throw.

(+4 is what Arcane Deflection gives, and it also only applies to just that one save, not to all saves. Ergo, it has to be strong enough to make it worth using.)

I say go with ONE into playesting, technically it does increase your dex save, and it's just very clean overall. I don't even think you need the "disengage" part, but you should keep it while playtesting.
If during playtesting the feat proves underwhelming, some other feature can be added to the feat.

[Zhorn]

Let me remind you that Tunnel Fighter was a thing, and actually made it into print in the form of the 18th level Cavalier feature in XGtE. Granted, it could only be used for OAs, but allowing infinite of any type of action surely has to be much worse than what I'm proposing.
There's also a big difference between abilities you can access at low levels (such as feats and fighting styles) compared to features locked behind 18 class levels in order to access.
Vigilant Defender is a very similar ability to Tunnel Fighter in execution, but it is nerfed to be a bit weaker.
Doesn't give the within 5 ft opportunity attack trigger
Cannot be used on the same turn as your regular reaction
And even then it's still powerful enough to justify locking it behind those 18 Fighter levels to access.

If you want to keep the extra reaction as part of the feat, I'm thinking either the rest of the feat needs to be toned down a huge deal / outright cut, OR the reaction should have a constraint on how it can be used.
Example: It's a full complete reaction, BUT it has to be used on the same turn as your regular reaction (both reactions can share the same trigger).
If it were level locked, it might be a different story, but as a feat being accessible at low levels, the power does need to be reigned in.

I like the 5 feet of bonus movement, but I'm not fond of the "this movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks"

On the Dex save, I'll vote for either the flat bonus or the +4 as a reaction (not both). Not fond of the scaling with unspent reactions.

Overall, I do like the direction of a lot of the ideas your floating about for this feat, but they seem way to strong to all be paired together under a single feat.

[JNAProductions]

Do you have an example of breaking something with two reactions?

[Composer99]

Lightning Reflexes

Increase your Dexterity score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You may take one additional reaction each round.
Immediately before or after using a reaction, you may move up to 5 feet. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.
You gain a +2 bonus to Dexterity saving throws. Whenever you use a reaction, this bonus decreases by 1, to a minimum of +0. At the start of each of your turns, the bonus resets to +2.

I kind of wanted to play around with the idea of giving out an additional reaction. Didn't want to give out too many, but even one additional reaction opens up some new options. Since the original Lightning Reflexes feat gave a bonus to reflex saves, I thought it might be nice to pay homage to that, as well. I'm not sure if there's too much going on in this feat. Maybe I should axe the extra movement. Thoughts?


Huh, I was thinking of axing the movement, but it does add something a bit more interesting. I should probably specify that it won't take you out of range of whatever triggered the reaction (e.g. if it was a reaction to getting hit, you still get hit even if you move out of range of the attack). Maybe I should remove the DEX bonus, turning it from a half feat to a full feat.

If I keep the bonus to DEX saves, I might only have it persist until you use a reaction, so it's either on or off, rather than trying to track how many reactions you've used. Or just make it a flat +1 or +2 that's always on.

Here's a revamped version:

Lightning Reflexes

You gain a +1 bonus to Dexterity saving throws.
You may take one additional reaction each round.
Immediately before or after using a reaction, you may move up to 5 feet. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.

My other thought was to allow you to use a reaction to boost your DEX saves (instead of having an always-on DEX save bonus), like the War wizard's Arcane Deflection, but only for DEX saves. Here's what that might look like:

Lightning Reflexes

You may take one additional reaction each round.
Immediately before or after using a reaction, you may move up to 5 feet. This movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.
When you fail a Dexterity saving throw, you may use your reaction to gain a +4 bonus to that saving throw.

(+4 is what Arcane Deflection gives, and it also only applies to just that one save, not to all saves. Ergo, it has to be strong enough to make it worth using.)

I think you'll be fine with either +1 to Dexterity and an additional reaction each round, or an additional reaction each round and some ability that boosts Dexterity saving throws somehow.

I do think the 5-foot movement thing is too fiddly.

You already have Resilient: Dexterity to get proficiency on Dexterity saving throws. Barbarians get advantage on Dexterity saving throws, so I wouldn't want to give advantage and make this a never-take feat for them, so something else.

I think letting you re-roll a failed Dexterity saving throw at the cost of a reaction would be fine. I would specify that you have to use the new roll (that is, you couldn't spend your second reaction if you still have it on the Dexterity saving throw if the reroll is bad).