Dungeons and Dragons 5e as we know and love it has been around since 2014; it has given us a great many improvements and changes to the feat mechanic. In fact, the feat mechanic was introduced to D&D as early as the third edition, in 2000. The aim of this article about D&D feats in 5e is to explain a little bit about what they are, how to get them, how they help you as a player and some example of the best feats in this edition.
Table of Contents
- What Are Feats in 5e?
- Feats in The Player Handbook
- The Difference Between Feats and Features
- When Do You Get Feats in 5E?
- Different types of Feat in 5e
- What Is The Best Feat in 5E?
- Our Favourite Homebrew Feats in 5E
- Three Feats You Need To Know for 5e
- Official Feats You Might Not Have Heard Of
- Where Can I Find a List Of Official 5e D&D Feats?
- Summing up D&D Feats in 5e
What Are Feats in 5e?
Feats are a talent or expertise that gives characters special abilities. In the world of DnD, characters devote their lives and livelihood at being the best they can be. A barbarian, for example, build their reputation on being a powerful warrior. Feats represent all the experience, training and knowledge that you have gained on your journeys for your craft.
Typically, you may only take a feat once and some have prerequisites. An example in the official DnD player handbook goes as follows: The Grappler feat requires you to have 13 strength. If your strength is below 13, even temporarily, by something like Withering Curse you cannot benefit from the grappler feat until it is restored. This makes perfect sense as to grapple is to struggle with another character or creature and it is almost completely a factor to strength to overcome your opponent.
Feats in The Player Handbook
Feats appear on page 165 of the DnD 5e Players Handbook, 2014. It is worth giving you a couple of examples to understand a bit better what feats are and what they do in 5E.
Actor
- Increase Charisma by 1
- Advantage when trying to pass yourself off as a different person
- Ability to mimic speech of another person or the sound of a creature
Crossbow Expert
- Being within 5 feet of a monster does not give you a disadvantage on crossbow rolls
- Ignore the loading quality of crossbows you are proficient with
Durable
- Increase Constitution by one
- Double your constitution modifier when regaining health through Hit Die
We tried to give examples of first, a feat outside of combat; second, a feat that helps combat through weapon skill; and third, an outright stat boost and dice improvement to combat. The bottom line is that feats come in all shapes and sizes, for all types of situation.
Indeed, feats have gotten even more comprehensive and expansive with homebrew content, that is to say fan/player made additions to the game.
The Difference Between Feats and Features
Features are typically a class feature i.e. something that comes with your class, for example, a feature of the fighting class is proficiency with all armour shields, simple weapons and martial weapons – they are innate to the class. Tavern Brawler on the other hand is a feat and can be gained. Tavern brawler gives you proficiency with improvised weapons that the fighter does not necessarily have.
Thinking about the words specifically feat is a word in and of itself meaning an achievement, for example, a feat of strength. Hopefully that helps to differentiate the two words rather than thinking one is a shortening of the other.
When Do You Get Feats in 5E?
When and how you get feats in 5E is probably the most important question when discussing feats. Well, it is important to point out that the feat rule is optional and so needs to be confirmed between the DM and the players before play starts.
Feats are taken in replace of ability score increases. For most classes this means you can get feats at the following levels: 4/8/12/16/19. However, some classes get more ability score increases than others and so can potentially have more feats. The Fighter class, for example, gets more ability score increases than the Barbarian Class.
It is often a weigh up of whether you need and ability score increase or not – maybe you desperately need to get an ability score in dexterity to 20, then a feat might not be the best choice. Of course some feats also require a prerequisite ability score before you can use them anyway so this can be a barrier to getting feats. It should however be noted that in some cases feats can also increase ability scores such as the actor feat that we discussed earlier – it increases your charisma by 1 and therefore almost always makes sense taking over just a simple ability score increase in Charisma.
Interestingly, some feats also act as prerequisites for others. The Heavy Armour Master feat requires you to have proficiency with heavy armour; this is gained (in one way at least) through the feat Heavily armoured.
Different types of Feat in 5e
We briefly discussed that 5e D&D Feats can benefit characters in and outside of battle. The following categorizations are in no way “official”, but by grouping them together it helps us to understand feats a little better. The feats used as examples are all in the D&D player handbook or other source books by the Wizards RPG team. We will try to give a brief overview of what the feat does and why we find it interesting, but recommend you read further if you are interested by it as well. Typically feats may give you multiple actions, but we will not list them all here for the sake of speed and your sanity when reading.
Racial Feats
Racial feats do not appear in the 5E player handbook, but instead, 2017’s Xanathar’s Guide to Everything which acts as a sourcebook and supplement. As the name suggests, these feats are race specific. An example of this could be Dragon fear which has the prerequisite of being dragonborn. This feat allows you to choose between increasing Strength, Constitution, or Charisma; as well as allowing you to roar instead of using your breath weapon. It adds more complexity to the race and character giving them more options in combat.
In the same vein, Dwarvern Fortitude allows you spend Hit Die after dodging in combat to regain hit points. Unsurprisingly, this feat, as the name suggests, is only available to characters who are Dwarves.
Offensive Feats
Offensive Feats seek to cause damage to enemies and monsters. Mage Slayer, for example, allows you to make a melee weapon attack against creatures that use spells within 5 feet of you.
Defensive Feats
A defensive feat makes you tougher to defeat in combat. In 5e, the resilient feat allows you to gain proficiency in saving throws of a chosen ability – like Strength.
Health Feats
Health feats allow you to heal yourself or members of your party, typically this is more of a support type feat. The Healer feat lets dying creatures that you stabilise with a healer’s kit to regain one hit point.
Magical Feats
Magical feats boost magical options. Magic Initiate, for example, allows you to learn two cantrips from an array of classes class spell list.
Roleplaying Feats
These World interaction feats lend to the role playing aspect of DnD, outside of combat. A good example of this could be the Linguist feat. It allows you to learn three languages of your choice and create written ciphers. These ciphers can then secretly be exchanged with other players and cannot decipher the cipher unless you teach them – or they succeed on an intelligence check.
What Is The Best Feat in 5E?
Look, at the end of the day, feats are situational, a fighter has no use for, say, the keen mind feat that increases intelligence and lets you always know which way is north. If we had to pinpoint feats that are great for any class in any situation, then the Lucky feat might be the best example.
The Lucky Feat
The Lucky Feat helps you in almost every combat instance. It gives you three luck points. These points can be used on:
- An Attack Roll
- An Ability Check
- A Saving Throw.
By spending a luck point you can roll an additional D20. In 5e, DnD combat revolves around dice and passing checks. This means an additional dice is vital.
In addition, luck points can be spent when an attack is made against your character. You may roll another dice and then choose if the attacker uses your dice or theirs – let’s hope you roll low!
There is a caveat with the lucky feat however. If more than one luck point is used in a roll they cancel each other out. This can be surprisingly common given how popular and versatile the feat is to pick.
Our Favourite Homebrew Feats in 5E
Homebrew is one of the best things to come out of the D&D community. It is unofficial content, but when added to a campaign can be incredibly fun – you can learn a little more about homebrew in dungeons and dragons here.
Dervish
Dervish is all about speed. It increases speed by 5 feet first off. Additionally, when you hit a creature with a melee attack you can move 5 feet at no movement cost.
Charismatic
Spells and other effects infrequently overcome your will and you may replace wisdom throws with charisma throws.
Blood Magic
Blood Magic is a really fun homebrew feat and lends into this idea of a “glass cannon” type character. It allows you to expend hit dice as if they were sorcery points.
Use Homebrew Feats with Caution
It is important to note that the biggest issues with Homebrew feats is their balance, its always tempting to make them incredibly overpowered. The examples above are for the most part balanced and have been tested by the community – it is always worth checking with your DM when it comes to Homebrew feats in 5e.
Three Feats You Need To Know for 5e
We’ve discussed many feats over the course of this guide, here are three more from the 5e player handbook and other sourcebooks that are essential to know about and we could not quite figure out where to put them in.
The Elven Accuracy Racial Feat
Among other things this feat allows you to reroll one dice if you have an advantage on an attack roll using Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity or Charisma. It is a very flexible feat that can be used in plenty of situations provided you are an elf or half-elf.
The Mobile Feat
When you make a melee attack against a creature that creature cannot land an opportunity attack on you whether or not you hit them – this is incredibly powerful because it does not require you to hit!
The Sentinel Feat
If you hit a creature with an opportunity attack their speed becomes 0 for the turn. In addition creatures within 5 feet provoke an opportunity attack if they try to disengage from you. Essentially, if you are lucky you can keep them trapped within your reach for the entire fight.
You can also see how some feats complement each other, for example, the Sentinel feat enjoys the speed buffs that the Mobile feat gives.
Official Feats You Might Not Have Heard Of
The following two feats appear in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, it is a fairly recent sourcebook having been published in 2020.
The Chef Feat
This feat, among other things allows you to cook special food if you have the ingredients provided. At the end of short rest any creature that eats the food and spends a hit die regains an extra 1d8 hit points. It means you can take fewer long rests and overall streamlines gameplay.
On the other hand, after a long rest, you can cook treats that, when eaten, give a temporary increase to hit points.
The Telepathic Feat
Who has not wanted to speak to animals? This feat allows speak telepathically to any creature within 60 feet of you. This can work incredibly well with the linguist feat because the creature can only understand you if it understands that language. However, it must be noted just because you can speak telepathically to the creature does not mean they can speak telepathically back to you.
Where Can I Find a List Of Official 5e D&D Feats?
We have occasionally thrown in some names of the sourcebooks that we got the information from this article for. For the sake of ease we will also list the best official sources here:
- DnD 5e Players Handbook, 2014
- Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, 2017
- Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, 2020
There are of course others, but your DM should be able to give you guidance if you decide to use any sourcebooks outside of this core material.
Summing up D&D Feats in 5e
In the original 5e D&D player handbook there are around 40 feats. These feats were expanded by a number of other sourcebooks. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything introduced us to Racial feats of which there are 20 and then further sourcebooks such as Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, in 2020, introduced us to even more. When you add homebrew to the mix the number of feats is almost endless. At the end of the day, 5e D&D Feats are a fantastic way to promote character customization and uniqueness. They are well worth studying and getting to know in and out.
