Getting actor feat is a bad idea, is it not?

[Entessa]

I was thinking that some feats seems to suffer from one limit - that limit being that they are reactive feats rather than proactive.

I explain myself more clearly: my personal issue with actor is that the DM has actually to provide the chance to use it, rather than the player being able to just make a difference with all the tools provided by the DM. My fear, and I admit that my DM seems to have actually have kinda strengthened it, is that I have to ask to him to provide such roleplay opportunities and I'm not sure he wants to do the job required to do so. Add on top of that the story has to be adapted by him to actually make it possible to use actor. Basically, I would say that the only "good part" is that I could probably use this:

You have an advantage on Charisma (Deception) and Charisma (Performance) checks when trying to pass yourself off as a different person.

But not this: You can mimic the speech of another person or the sounds made by other creatures. You must have heard the person speaking, or heard the creature make the sound, for at least 1 minute. A successful Wisdom (Insight) check contested by your Charisma (Deception) check allows a listener to determine that the effect is faked.

I will keep playing with Actor and I will check if even without the DM help, the feat can make a difference. To this date, it didn't at all.

[ender241]

I'm not really sure I understand what you mean. What reliance do you have on the DM for either of those parts of the feat, other than having another creature speak or make sounds for a minute in front of you? Once you've heard them, at any point you can say "I pretend to be this person/creature." Unless your campaign is all dungeon-crawling/exploration there will surely be opportunities to use this. Where are you getting stuck on the second part?

[Kurt Kurageous]

Actor combined with Charlatan background makes it worthwhile on a Bard or really any CHA SAD class. Playing as a powerful and wealthy personal out with their retainers (the rest of the party) is really really powerful inside a civilization.

You need money? You need magic items? You need porters or cannon fodder? All of it is a carefully created persona away in the hands of a creative player.

Actor provides a nearly luck-proof defense of the one person you pretend to be. And it works whether it's for the one you have the documents for or the one you need to become.

Need to speak like a king (or the king)? You have advantage on the attempt if you've heard the person.

[Keravath]

Actor works well in heavy role play environments. Political intrigue, infiltration, disguise, spying.

A warlock with the Mask of Many Faces invocation (disguise self at will) and the Actor feat can imitate almost anyone. The same is even more true of a bard character with expertise in persuasion and deception plus the Actor feat (and disguise self or alter self spells) - it lets them pass as almost anyone with a good chance of success.

However, Actor needs to be combined with these other abilities to really work well - particularly expertise in deception and the ability to change your appearance. By itself, without the ability to alter your appearance - being able to successfully imitate someones voice generally has pretty limited application.

A custom lineage Eloquence bard with the Actor feat at level 1 and the Eldritch Adept: Mask of Many Faces feat at level 4 would be an incredible infiltration and social character able to be almost anyone they wish. They could fall back on party support and control spells when facing a combat situation but they would be an amazing party face.

[Hytheter]

Actor isn't always useful but if nothing else it's fun.

[heavyfuel]

It's probably the most campaign-dependent feat there is. It can be great! It would be absolutely amazing in a game I played back about a decade ago, that was very very heavy on intrigue (back in D&D 3.5). But, yeah. One campaign, ten years ago, and that's the only time in my entire gaming career that Actor would've been a good pick.

[ender241]

It's probably the most campaign-dependent feat there is.

Hard disagree. I'd argue that both Dungeon Delver and Mage Slayer are much more campaign dependent.

[Toadkiller]

I think if we didn’t have the Actor feat there would be a pile of home brew developed to do basically the same thing. It lets people play a style that many consider fun. I don’t think there is anything more to it than that.

[Angelalex242]

Sorcerer still has the spells to do Actor well.

Paladin with Actor feat? You get this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38xcrF8b3KQ

[Entessa]

After reading what you wrote, it seems that I should probably change my race from variant human to changeling to try to maximise the actor feat effectiveness. Mmmmmm§

edit: from the description:

Shapechanger. As an action, you can change your appearance and your voice. You determine the specifics of the changes, including your coloration, hair length, and sex. You can also adjust your height and weight, but not so much that your size changes. You can make yourself appear as a member of another race, though none of your game statistics change. You can't duplicate the appearance of a creature you've never seen, and you must adopt a form that has the same basic arrangement of limbs that you have. Your clothing and equipment aren't changed by this trait.
You stay in the new form until you use an action to revert to your true form or until you die.


you must adopt a form that has the same basic arrangement of limbs that you have ---> does that mean that I can only imitate humanoid races? For example, what if I want to imitate a yuan-ti?

[diplomancer]

I'm not really sure I understand what you mean. What reliance do you have on the DM for either of those parts of the feat, other than having another creature speak or make sounds for a minute in front of you? Once you've heard them, at any point you can say "I pretend to be this person/creature." Unless your campaign is all dungeon-crawling/exploration there will surely be opportunities to use this. Where are you getting stuck on the second part?

It's a fun feat, and I think only useless on a campaign that almost doesn't have social interactions with humanoids at all. I took it as my V. Human feat on a Bard and had tons of fun with it (First part of the campaign was a modified Dragon Heist against the devil cultists; we infiltrated their communication system, sent them messages to get them to a death trap, and I impersonated their leader, whom we'd met at a social affair, to lure them in, for instance).

[Kane0]

Its a pretty niche feat. There are many DMs that would provide most if not all of its functionality by other (cheaper) means, especially if you make use of things like a shapeshifting race, background with access to disguises, class or subclass features like the Assassin Rogue or magic like Disguise Self. Plus of course other ways to obtain advantage like the Help action, Inspiration or other race/class features.

It can be good in a game geared for it, like something more social and intrigue heavy, but those sort of games arent really the norm. It would be like taking a feat to forage for food and move quickly/stealthily or stay alert at the same time. There are backgrounds, class features, racial traits, spells and good old fashioned teamwork that make the relatively large expenditure of an ASI look like a rather poor deal, even in say a survival-heavy game where it would seem specifically tailored to be a good choice.

[Eldariel]

Minor Illusion can mimic most of what the feat does. Admittedly you need someone casting the spell: it has no verbals but it does have somatics so unless you have access to Subtle Spell, it's going to be limited. Still, it's close enough that I think a half-feat is a big cost for the improvement you get. It's useful no doubt, but a half feat is e.g. Fey-Touched, Elven Accuracy, or Observant you are not picking. Plus forging documents and the like is generally safer: having to personally interact with the people you're trying to deceive always puts you at more risk than more indirect approaches.

In short, I think Actor is one of the less bad of the bad feats (it's no Keen Mind, Linguist, Dungeon Delver, or such) but it's still not strong enough to warrant picking most of the time over just taking a full ASI or taking another feat: it doesn't rank in the top half of the half-feats nor in the full feats.


The big issue is how rare ASI/Feats are in this game: Actor is perfectly reasonable for some character concepts but it comes at the cost of not picking e.g. Lucky or Alert or Fey-Touched or any generically useful feat that does way more under most circumstances. The game is structured so that you get 2-3 feats over your usual (Tier 2ish) game and even those only if you don't pick any ASIs. It's just a huge loss elsewhere to put the whole ASI into a highly situational and somewhat replaceable ability.

You'll have to count, in how many encounters you can use Actor vs. whatever ASI or feat you would've used otherwise and how big an impact the feat would've had in each of those encounters vs. how big an impact Actor had in the encounters you used it. I can say fairly confidently that even if Actor is good, you won't use it in as many encounters as e.g. Fey-Touched or Observant or whatever. Therefore, the part that remains is that it has to be superimpactful in the encounters you do use it in. And that's yet another issue with Actor - it's rarely indispensible. You can often achieve similar ends through different means. It doesn't really expand your toolbox by that much (though obviously it does expand it), which in addition to being useful in only a subset of encounters and circumstances does make it not all that desirable.

[diplomancer]

Minor Illusion can mimic most of what the feat does. Admittedly you need someone casting the spell: it has no verbals but it does have somatics so unless you have access to Subtle Spell, it's going to be limited. Still, it's close enough that I think a half-feat is a big cost for the improvement you get. It's useful no doubt, but a half feat is e.g. Fey-Touched, Elven Accuracy, or Observant you are not picking. Plus forging documents and the like is generally safer: having to personally interact with the people you're trying to deceive always puts you at more risk than more indirect approaches.

In short, I think Actor is one of the less bad of the bad feats (it's no Keen Mind, Linguist, Dungeon Delver, or such) but it's still not strong enough to warrant picking most of the time over just taking a full ASI or taking another feat: it doesn't rank in the top half of the half-feats nor in the full feats.


The big issue is how rare ASI/Feats are in this game: Actor is perfectly reasonable for some character concepts but it comes at the cost of not picking e.g. Lucky or Alert or Fey-Touched or any generically useful feat that does way more under most circumstances. The game is structured so that you get 2-3 feats over your usual (Tier 2ish) game and even those only if you don't pick any ASIs. It's just a huge loss elsewhere to put the whole ASI into a highly situational and somewhat replaceable ability.

You'll have to count, in how many encounters you can use Actor vs. whatever ASI or feat you would've used otherwise and how big an impact the feat would've had in each of those encounters vs. how big an impact Actor had in the encounters you used it. I can say fairly confidently that even if Actor is good, you won't use it in as many encounters as e.g. Fey-Touched or Observant or whatever. Therefore, the part that remains is that it has to be superimpactful in the encounters you do use it in. And that's yet another issue with Actor - it's rarely indispensible. You can often achieve similar ends through different means. It doesn't really expand your toolbox by that much (though obviously it does expand it), which in addition to being useful in only a subset of encounters and circumstances does make it not all that desirable.

Observant is better than Actor, but not competitive with it, since they boost different ability scores. Fey Touched IS, but not all DMs allow it, and some, if you don't get it at level 1, actually require some level of Fey interaction before you can grab it (and though it IS more useful in most campaigns, there are still plenty of campaigns where Actor will be better. Also, sometimes you don't WANT your character to be fey-touched, and want him to be good at disguises instead; it's a roleplaying game, after all).

As to Minor Illusion; it can imitate the sound of someone's voice, at a pinch. But for any extended social interaction (say, a moderately short one of 10 minutes), it's not going to cut it, unless you not only have Subtle spell, but you're also willing to spend a bunch of SPs on it. And this is before you get to the really important social interactions, where there might be a dedicated magical advisor trained at spotting those things, and using his action for that.

[Tanarii]

But not this: You can mimic the speech of another person or the sounds made by other creatures. You must have heard the person speaking, or heard the creature make the sound, for at least 1 minute. A successful Wisdom (Insight) check contested by your Charisma (Deception) check allows a listener to determine that the effect is faked.


Its a pretty niche feat. There are many DMs that would provide most if not all of its functionality by other (cheaper) means, especially if you make use of things like a shapeshifting race, background with access to disguises, class or subclass features like the Assassin Rogue or magic like Disguise Self. Plus of course other ways to obtain advantage like the Help action, Inspiration or other race/class features.
The quoted part in particular is an example of something firewalled behind a feat. The implication is that normally PCs cannot attempt to mimic with a contested check to determine if it's faked, or if they can it takes more than a minute.

Edit: OTOH yeah I can see DMs just giving advantage to checks to pass yourself off as someone else instead of making shapeshifting or a disguise or Disguise Self a minimum requirement to allow a check in the first place. But I am having trouble seeing how Help would work here. As I often do when folks claim it can be used for advantage in situations that seem awfully one PC dependent. :smallamused:

[Eldariel]

Observant is better than Actor, but not competitive with it, since they boost different ability scores. Fey Touched IS, but not all DMs allow it, and some, if you don't get it at level 1, actually require some level of Fey interaction before you can grab it (and though it IS more useful in most campaigns, there are still plenty of campaigns where Actor will be better. Also, sometimes you don't WANT your character to be fey-touched, and want him to be good at disguises instead; it's a roleplaying game, after all).-

Just because the feat is named "Fey-touched" doesn't mean you have to fluff it as being affected by the fey. You can roleplay it however you want. The names of the feats are only names: the name has no in-game impact nor does it have to explain how you gained your abilities (much the same with class names: a typical western monk is closer to a Wizard with strong divine connections and Sage background than a Monk regardless of the name).

[JackPhoenix]

Just because the feat is named "Fey-touched" doesn't mean you have to fluff it as being affected by the fey. You can roleplay it however you want. The names of the feats are only names: the name has no in-game impact nor does it have to explain how you gained your abilities (much the same with class names: a typical western monk is closer to a Wizard with strong divine connections and Sage background than a Monk regardless of the name).

What is this "typical western monk" class? I've never see it in any of my books.

[Eldariel]

What is this "typical western monk" class? I've never see it in any of my books.

Me neither. Which is why I wouldn't use the class named "Monk" regardless of its name.

[diplomancer]

Just because the feat is named "Fey-touched" doesn't mean you have to fluff it as being affected by the fey. You can roleplay it however you want. The names of the feats are only names.

This may be true in your campaign, and in many campaigns as well, I suppose. But it's not something that can be just assumed. Many players care about fluff, even if you don't. Sometimes the flimsiest of excuses is sufficient; for instance, when I took Fey-Touched on my Pact of the Chain Warlock, I explained it away by being something my Sprite familiar "rubbed off" on me. But I wouldn't feel comfortable just getting it with NO explanation whatsoever, specially since the Feat explicitly says "Your exposure to the Feywild’s magic has changed you". Just saying this happened, with no narrative justification at all, strikes me the wrong way.

[Eldariel]

This may be true in your campaign, and in many campaigns as well, I suppose. But it's not something that can be just assumed. Many players care about fluff, even if you don't. Sometimes the flimsiest of excuses is sufficient; for instance, when I took Fey-Touched on my Pact of the Chain Warlock, I explained it away by being something my Sprite familiar "rubbed off" on me. But I wouldn't feel comfortable just getting it with NO explanation whatsoever.

Why can't you just say "your patron can grant these spells" or "you studied esoteric arcana" or "your god can grant these spells" or whatever? Why is rubbing fey-magic on you required when we're talking about perfectly normal spells anyone can learn?

[diplomancer]

Why can't you just say "your patron can grant these spells" or "you studied esoteric arcana" or "your god can grant these spells" or whatever? Why is rubbing fey-magic on you required when we're talking about perfectly normal spells anyone can learn?

Because I care about fluff, and I specially care about tying fluff to mechanics. Why would a Fiend patron grant me these specific, Fey-flavoured spells? Wouldn't he be more likely to grant me, I don't know, Darkness and Hellish Rebuke? And if I was just studying esoteric arcana, I'd definitely choose Find Steed as my 2nd level spell, and probably Shield or Find Familiar as my 1st, if I didn't have it from class. But I can't do that. Why? Balance reasons, obviously, but the in-universe explanation for it is that it wasn't I who chose those spells, it was my exposure to the Feywild that did it.

[Eldariel]

Because I care about fluff, and I specially care about tying fluff to mechanics. Why would a Fiend patron grant me these specific, Fey-flavoured spells? Wouldn't he be more likely to grant me, I don't know, Darkness and Hellish Rebuke? And if I was just studying esoteric arcana, I'd definitely choose Find Steed as my 2nd level spell, and probably Shield or Find Familiar as my 1st, if I didn't have it from class. But I can't do that. Why? Balance reasons, obviously, but the in-universe explanation for it is that it wasn't I who chose those spells, it was my exposure to the Feywild that did it.

Misty Step can make perfect sense as a fiend patron spell. Plenty of fiends can teleport around at-will. Same with most enchantment-spells; hell, succubi are fiends for instance. And you can't choose what esoteric arcana you happen to find or have access to either: you learn what you have. I wouldn't expect most characters to be aware of most spells than exist, let alone be able to pick what they learn.

To me it seems like none of the problems you present really come down to fluff: it's easy enough to find explanations for any choices from any source as much as the fey. It seems like it's more restricting one's choices to remain...faithful to the onomastics of the sourcebooks? Closer to Fluff-Names-As-Written? Lucky only being able to express luck in spite of rerolling also working well as a mechanic for foresight and that sort of thing.

[diplomancer]

Misty Step can make perfect sense as a fiend patron spell. Plenty of fiends can teleport around at-will. Same with most enchantment-spells; hell, succubi are fiends for instance. And you can't choose what esoteric arcana you happen to find or have access to either: you learn what you have. I wouldn't expect most characters to be aware of most spells than exist, let alone be able to pick what they learn.

To me it seems like none of the problems you present really come down to fluff: it's easy enough to find explanations for any choices from any source as much as the fey. It seems like it's more restricting one's choices to remain...faithful to the onomastics of the sourcebooks? Closer to Fluff-Names-As-Written? Lucky only being able to express luck in spite of rerolling also working well as a mechanic for foresight and that sort of thing.

If Fey-touched didn't exist and the designers created a similar "Fiend-touched" feat, you can bet that Misty Step would not be the spell granted; but this is mostly an off-topic argument about personal taste. And you know what they say about that, so I'm going to bow out.

[heavyfuel]

Hard disagree. I'd argue that both Dungeon Delver and Mage Slayer are much more campaign dependent.

DD might be more campaign dependent than Actor, but far more campaigns have some sort of dungeon with secrets and traps. Maybe not enough dungeons that the feat is worth it, mind you, but enough that you will get some use of its features.

MS is just crap even in campaign full of spell casters. The DM could tell me on session 0 that 90%+ of our enemies will be spellcasters and I'd still not take MS.