Player's Handbook Chapter 5

 

We are now moving on to the biggest addition to the Dungeons & Dragons game: Feats. There have been teases about how feats work in the Countdown articles, but now we get the details.

So, a feat is 'a special feature that either gives your character a new capability or improves one he or she already has.' Every character gets one feat at 1st level; some classes get an additional feat automatically, fighters get a bonus feat, and humans get an extra feat just because. So a 1st-level human fighter would start with three feats, which is pretty sweet.

Feats are divided into a few categories: Item Creation, Metamagic, Special, and General. Item Creation refers to making different magic items, and you can get these feats much earlier than you could make magic items in earlier editions. Scribe Scroll, for example, is available to starting characters (and wizards get it as a bonus feat). So, your cleric could start scribing cure light wounds scrolls right off the bat. That's a handy thing to have. However, magic items have a cost, and not just in money; magic items cost you XP to create. You're literally putting a bit of yourself into each magic item. Some items will be very cheap; others will be ridiculously expensive, both in coin and in XP. Beware.

Metamagic feats affect spells that are yet to be cast. They replace some of the spells from earlier editions such as Extension, Vocalize, and Dilation. This is a good change; you don't have to prepare spells to modify other spells anymore, and you aren't limited to a single casting if you don't want to be. None of the metamagic feats have prerequisites, so they can all be taken by any spellcaster at any level. However, for wizards, clerics and druids they make the spell they will affect higher level, so it has to be prepared as a higher-level spell (for example, a Silent magic missile spell is prepared as a 2nd-level spell rather than a 1st. So, if your character can't actually cast spells of the higher level in question, you can't metamagic a spell to that level, either.

Item Creation and Metamagic feats are available to wizards as bonus feats; they get to pick one every five levels, similar to how fighters get their bonus feats every other level.

Special feats are restricted to specific classes. Extra Turning is for clerics and paladins only; Spell Mastery is restricted to wizards, and only fighters can take Weapon Specialization (and that only at 4th level or higher).

Finally, there are the General feats. These are a bit of a grab-bag of abilities; all the fighter bonus feats (except Weapon Specialization) are in the General list. Some of them have prerequisites, making them more difficult to obtain, but many of them have no such prerequisites and can be taken at any time at any level. Examples of these are Alertness, Combat Reflexes, and Spell Penetration. Some feats can be selected more than once, but must be applied to a different spell, school of magic, weapon, etc. and don't stack their effects. One feat, Toughness, does stack; it gives the character an additional 3 hit points every time it's taken. That seems like a pretty weak return for a feat, but the option is there.

Some of the feats are grouped into 'feat trees', in which some of the earlier feats are prerequisites for the later ones. For example, if you wanted to play a knight on horseback and get the Spirited Charge feat, you would first have to have points in the Ride skill, and the feats Mounted Combat and Ride-By Attack (which itself has Mounted Combat as a prerequisite). So you won't get it right away, but you can plan out your feat acquisition to ensure you eventually qualify for the one you want.

Other feats have ability score prerequisites; Ambidexterity, for example, requires a Dex of 15 or more, while Power Attack requires a Str of 13 or more. And some require you to have a high base attack bonus, meaning you can't get them until you're higher level (in some cases, much higher level).

Alright, so that's the basics of feats. Now let's take a look at some of the feats that we can choose from, and then I'll pick one for my half-orc ranger. He already gets Track as a ranger, but it's a bonus feat, and he still gets to pick one.

Alertness gives you a bonus to Listen and Spot checks. Not a big deal. Ambidexterity means you don't get penalized for using a weapon in your off-hand; normally, that's a -4 penalty. So this is a sweet deal. And rangers get the benefits of this feat automatically when in light armor or no armor at all. Cleave means that when you kill a creature, if there's another one nearby, you get to attack it immediately. Combat Reflexes allows you to make additional attacks of opportunity, which we haven't learned about yet. Dodge gives you a +1 dodge bonus to your AC against one opponent of your choosing.

Enlarge Spell is a metamagic feat that doubles the range of a spell. Expertise lets you trade points from your attack bonus to your AC for one action, up to +5. Power Attack is similar, except it trades points from your attack bonus to your damage. So if you've got an easy target in front of you, you can reduce your attack roll by up to 5 points and add that to your damage if you hit them. Improved Critical means you have a better chance of scoring a critical hit, doubling the threat range of your weapon. Again, not fully explained yet. Improved Initiative means you go sooner in the round, adding +4 to your initiative checks. Lightning Reflexes gives you +2 to all Reflex saving throws, which is handy when dodging fireballs and lightning bolts.

Point Blank Shot gives you a +1 to attack and damage rolls with any ranged weapon if you are no more than 30 feet from the target. It's a prerequisite for a bunch of archery-related feats as well, such as Precise Shot, Far Shot and Rapid Shot. Silent Spell means you can ignore the verbal component of a spell at the cost of bumping it up one spell level. Handy to have an emergency spell if you are captured and gagged. Skill Focus gives you a +2 bonus on all skill checks with a particular skill of your choice. Spring Attack lets you move before and after an attack, which normally you can't do. Weapon Finesse lets you use your Dexterity bonus in place of your Strength bonus for melee attacks, which is very handy for the swashbuckling types who are more agile than burly.

Okay, so that's a quick overview of feats in the 3rd edition. Obviously, there's lots more than what I've mentioned, but I'm just not going to do a page-by-page read-through of this book, because it would literally take almost an entire year to do it. So I'll hit the highlights and go from there.

Now, my half-orc ranger still needs a feat. As mentioned, he already gets Track as a bonus, and he gets the benefits of both Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon Fighting just for being a ranger (and wearing limited armor). So I want something that will perhaps complement these existing abilities. Considering his ability scores, his race, and his likely personality, I'm thinking Power Attack would be a great choice. He's already got a +4 to hit from his Strength bonus, so transferring some of that to damage would be basically doubling his damage bonus. And Power Attack is a prerequisite for a few other feats such as Cleave. So, Power Attack it is. This ranger is not subtle.

Alright, let's move on to the next chapter, which is titled 'Description'. Should be fun.