D&D: Unearthed Arcana Giant Options – New Feats Demonstrate New Paradigm
Unearthed Arcana: Giant Options has more than just cool new subclasses. It also paints a picture of D&D’s future with all new feats.
Feats are perhaps the single most-used “optional rule”. So much so, that you might not even have known feats were optional in D&D 5E. And yet they are. As of 2019, more than half of all players used them. And that percentage has probably only gotten bigger over the last three years.
It’s not hard to see why, either. Feats are a powerful addition to your character. They add ways of doing more damage, they open up new options. And in just about every “optimized build” you’ll find one of a few feats. Or a spellcaster. But Crossbow Expert, Pole-Arm Master, Sharpshooter, Great Weapon Master — all of these may find a new paradigm in D&D 2024. Because as WotC’s said, they’re playing with feats.
And in Unearthed Arcana: Giant Options new feats are the order of the day. But it’s not just new feats, it’s new feats put together in an old way.
Unearthed Arcana: Giant Options Feats – A Blast From D&D’s Past
In the good old days of 3rd Edition, many feats built off of one another. You had to crawl before you could walk. Feats came in trees. With one feat leading to another to two or three other choices. You could effectively go down a rabbit hole of character options. Though, in reality, just as in 5th Edition, there were only like four or five actual choices to make. There were, and I’m not joking, absolutely “trap” options that were underpowered or didn’t function the way you thought.
They were there to make players feel good about avoiding them.
Others were gated off by level. You had to be a certain level before you could even think about taking them. In 5th Edition this has largely vanished. Feats are self-contained packets and you get very few of them.
Though in Unearthed Arcana: Giant Options, new feats take on an old light. We don’t see “feat chains” the way 3rd Edition had it. But there are some “thematic trees” that you can uncover in the ten new feats in the playtest packet.
As you can see, there’s only one feat that requires another feat. And that’s Rune Carver Adept. This feat builds off of Rune Carver Apprentice, a feat that feels very much like it’s meant to be taken at character creation. And both of these feats complement each other. Rune Carver Apprentice lets you temporarily have access to a given first level spell from a fairly robust list of options. You can pick from 19 different spells, slotting a new one in each day. You get one casting for free with a spellcasting ability of your choice, and then you can cast it per normal with spell slots.
That’s a powerful option for sure. And the Adept feat lets you have up to your proficiency bonus in extra spells at a time. Which is pretty great. That’s a lot of flexibility for casters.
Elemental Themes
The other “feat trees” here are more thematic. There are two feats you can take at any level that reflect an affinity for either the elements or the primal might of giants. Elemental Touched gives you a nice choice: attune to one of the four basic elements of D&D after every long rest. Your choice gives you a bonus action you can use to gain a number of different abilities including flying for one turn, creating difficult terrain, and so on.
Outsized Might on the other hand, gives you power. You gain skills, gain powerful build, and advantage on saving throws against being moved or knocked prone. Again, these are all things that it feels like you’d take at the beginning of your character.
But as you go you can build on that. There are several feats gated off until 4th or even 8th level. These feats feel a bit more powerful than the usual 5E fare. Let’s take a look at Fury of the Frost Giant, a feat that grants you resistance to cold damage and lets you frighten enemies that hit you with an attack roll as a reaction. It’s a neat ability, almost a class feature, and it comes from “the icy might emblematic of Frost Giants.” It builds off of Elemental Touched without actually requiring the feat. Same with Ember of the Fire Giant, an 8th level feat that gives you fire resistance and lets you make a burst of flame attack whenever you make the Attack Action.
Again, elemental power, but you don’t have to have anything else to pick it up. Just 8th level. Which also means the designers can play a little more with what they’re doing.
What do you think? Will we see more of this? Would you want to?
