D&D: Five Feats That Will Make You The Ultimate Support
Feats are potent options in D&D 5.5E. And these support focused feats will make sure no one in your party ever goes down.
Supporting the party is a noble thing. Whether you’re healing, buffing, or just providing moral support (and the occasional Help Action), it’s nice to lend a hand. These days it may not even take your whole Action, thanks to the efficacy of spells like Healing Word or abilities like Bardic Inspiration.
But it’s not all Bardic Inspiration and Healing Words out there. The right Feats can make you a Support machine. Specifically, these support feats will help you carry your party to victory.
Chef
Everyone deserves a little treat. Especially your whole party. And with the Chef feat, your little treats aren’t just self-care, but rather whole-party care. With the Chef feat, your Constitution or Wisdom score goes up by 1, and as part of each Short Rest, you can cook a delicious meal that heals an extra 1d8 hit points at the end of any Short Rest where your party spends hit dice.
Or you can bake a little treat, with an hour of work. You prepare treats equal to your Proficiency Bonus—then for the next 8 hours, anyone can use a Bonus Action to eat a treat and gain your Proficiency Bonus in Temporary Hit Points. So proactive and reactive support. And you get to eat a little treat.
Ritual Caster
One of the more indispensable feats, Ritual Caster can turn anyone into at least a little bit of a Wizard. In addition to getting to increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by one, you also gain the ability to cast a handful of level 1 spells (equal to your proficiency bonus), so long as they have the Ritual tag. You can also cast a Ritual spell with its regular casting time rather than as an extended time for free once per day.
This means spells like Find Familiar, Animal Messenger, Detect Magic, Alarm, Unseen Servant, Identify, even Purify Food and Water are all up for grabs. Technically you don’t even have to have a spell slot or the ability to cast spells as a prerequisite.
This feat can be a great way to expand your normal repertoire.
Inspiring Leader
Another great way to ensure that your party is getting the most possible out of each rest. Whenever you finish a Short or Long Rest, you gain the ability to give an inspiring performance. This is typically a speech, but doesn’t have to. It could be a song or a dance or the like, too.
But your performance is not without bolstering effect. In addition to making everyone feel uplifted, it also grants up to six allies (which can include you), temporary hit points up to your Character Level + Wisdom or Charisma modifier. And they last after every rest, increasing your party’s resilience each time.
Alert
Sometimes it’s all about being in the right place at the right time. Specifically the right place and time in the initiative order. The Alert Feat gives you a potent ability to reshape a fight. With this feat you gain Proficiency with Initiative, which is already pretty cool.
But you also gain the ability to swap initiative with one willing ally in the same fight—meaning you can decide to boost a slow but deadly ally up in the round—or take advantage of the ability to set initiative in a thousand other ways. There’s a lot to be gained from making sure you get to set who goes when.
Durable
All the buff spells in the world won’t matter if you’re not alive to cast them. One of the riskiest times for the party is when the healer/support goes down, because then who is going to be around to help them back up? The Barbarian? The Wizard? Not likely.
Durable grants you Advantage on Death Saving Throws, which is a great way to ensure that you don’t bleed out while your party tries to fumble for healing potions. You can also just spend a Hit Die, roll it, and regain whatever you roll as a Bonus Action, leaving those spell slots free to buff up your party.
What feats make you feel supported?
