Classic 4e Feats

[Bjarkmundur]

I'm doing a 5e feat revision based on the 4e feat mechanic:


When you would gain an ability score increase, you also gain one feat of your choice

This means throwing out all existing feats, and remaking them with a different power level. These new feats are in turn less impactful and more straight-forward than traditional 5e feats. I've been taking inspiration from 4e, but I only remember a handful of go-to feats, such as Battlewise and +4 AC against opportunity attacks provoked by making a ranged attack.

I checked the Fandom site, and quickly got overwhelmed by extremely specific og edition-specific feats.

What are the classic feats of 4e?
What are your favorite or go-to feats in 4e?
What are some general feats that can benefit a PC from any edition?


Edit: I filtered them by PHB 1 2 and 3 only, which helped.
I am however suddenly very angry that Second Wind and Bloodied didn't make the cut for 5e >.<

[Excession]

+4 AC against opportunity attacks provoked by making a ranged attack.

In my opinion, this is actually a fairly bad feat. Most ranged PCs have better ways to avoid opportunity attacks, starting with shifting back one square and finishing with taking Staff Expertise to remove such opportunity attacks completely. The way I try to judge options in 4e is:


How often does the option trigger? If your PC is making ranged attacks from melee range more than once every combat or two then something is wrong.
When the option is triggered, how likely is it to make a difference? +4 means 20% of attack rolls will be affected, which is decent in itself.
When it makes a difference, how big is that difference? Having an attack completely miss you is nice enough.
What are the costs? In this case, one feat slot.


For me, the big feats are the ones that work all the time, and ones that give options rather than just numbers. +1 to all attack rolls for example may only have a 5% chance to make a difference, but it "triggers" at least once a round and turning a miss into a hit is a big deal. Feats that affect second wind, crits, or action points come up much less often, so will tend to be weaker. This is also why per-encounter utility powers are almost always better than daily.

Feats that give new options are harder to judge, but are often quite powerful. The Skill Power feat for example will only be used once an encounter generally, but those skill powers are often quite strong and give you options you wouldn't get anywhere else.

[NomGarret]

Yeah, relatively few 4e feats are general. Most are keyed off of race and/or power source>class>class ability. In practice, this makes having a lot of feats easier to search. Coming from a 5e perspective, this means not that many are easily ported over. Those that do generally have been.

[Duff]

Do you count "Feat tax" as "classic"? If so, maybe add them in (with or without hit bonus) - these are the expertise feats
Skill focus
Weapon specialization
The racial weapon feats
Toughness
Psyonic lock (sp?)

[Yakk]

The "go to" feats in 4e are those that generate synergy.

For a damage dealer they look like:

Increase Crit Chance. Increase Crit damage or effectiveness.
Grant additional attacks to yourself or others.
Increase per-hit damage or effect.

For a defender, they might look like:
Gain a slide on basic attacks.
Add prone to a slide.
Increase the distance you slide.
Make it harder to get up from prone.
Gain an attack when attacked.
Make it easy to mark foes.
Gain additional mark punishment.
Become more durable.

Go-to 4e with the number of feats is stacking stacking stacking effects, ideally quadratically or better, where each feat grants a benefit that scales with the benefit given by another feat.

Leaders want to find ways to grant allies bonuses usually. Controllers want to boost their screwing with enemies.

Everyone has feat taxes -- gaining accuracy, defence, etc.

---

4e feats are *not* the state of the art. 5e's feats are better bundles of multiple features that are tied together.

4e powers are closer to state of the art. Some 4e feats grant powers, and those are some of the more interesting ones; but the power budget of 4e feats basically means the power is about the only thing the feat grants. Later feats can sometimes grant boosts to that power.

Skill Powers are a great example of 4e feats you might want to poach; they are like the UA skill feats.