PDA

View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Passive score feats



rferries
2024-03-07, 11:33 AM
Dependable
Your talents rarely go to waste. You gain the following benefits:

You are aware whenever you would be entitled to make an ability check using a skill in which you have proficiency.
If you are entitled to make an ability check using a skill in which you have proficiency, you may automatically make a passive check instead.

Capable
You gain the following benefits:

Increase your Strength or Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You have a +5 bonus to your passive Strength (Athletics), passive Dexterity (Acrobatics), passive Dexterity (Sleight of Hand), and passive Dexterity (Stealth) scores, provided you have proficiency in the relevant skill.

Charismatic
You gain the following benefits:

Increase your Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You have a +5 bonus to your passive Charisma (Deception), passive Charisma (Intimidation), passive Charisma (Performance), and passive Charisma (Persuasion) scores, provided you have proficiency in the relevant skill.

Intelligent
You gain the following benefits:

Increase your Intelligence score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You have a +5 bonus to your passive Intelligence (Arcana), passive Intelligence (History), passive Intelligence (Nature), and passive Intelligence (Religion) scores, provided you have proficiency in the relevant skill.

Wise
You gain the following benefits:

Increase your Wisdom score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You have a +5 bonus to your passive Wisdom (Animal Handling), passive Wisdom (Insight), passive Wisdom (Medicine), and passive Wisdom (Survival) scores, provided you have proficiency in the relevant skill.


Compare the Observant feat (for Capable/Charismatic/Intelligent/Wise) and the Reliable Talent rogue class feature (for Dependable).

The phrasing for Dependable may be off - it was intended for all those social encounters, dungeon crawls etc where the PCs would have gleaned a useful tidbit of information etc if only they had known/thought to attempt a particular check.

Bonus (broken) feat:

Reliable
Prerequisites: Dependable.
You have a +5 bonus to your passive score for each skill in which you have proficiency.

Anymage
2024-03-07, 02:06 PM
Dependable is a combination of too strong and nonsensical. Too strong because letting someone take 10 with any of their proficient skills means a lot in a game where bounded accuracy tries to keep the dice relevant. Nonsensical on top of too strong, because your suggested use case of allowing PCs to know when to roll for a thing is just begging for metagaming. IF you don't want there to be a chance of the PCs missing information don't gate it behind a roll, and definitely don't gate it behind a roll they only get if they think to explicitly ask for one.

Your other four feats are excessively situational and unlikely to see play at any table I've ever seen. I don't think I've ever seen people use passive scores for anything other than Perception, a bit because other passive scores are are practically never mentioned but mostly because players like rolling dice. That'd change if a player could get +5 to passive scores for all checks under the auspices of a single stat, but only because that's crazy strong (compare Glibness, an eighth level spell) and would thus cause players to look for whatever convolutions of logic they could use to justify bringing their take-15-equivalent scores to bear.