Guest Post by Rory!

The D&D 2024 Player’s Handbook is out, and now everyone gets an Origin Feat at level 1 (plus a bonus feat if you go Human!). There are a lot of them and they vary wildly in power level, so here are my current rankings:

EDITS: I’m shifting around my valuations of Alert (to A-Tier), Lucky (to B-Tier), Musician (to S-Tier), and Tavern Brawler (to C-Tier) due to some early feedback. I will probably continue to modify this list based on feedback and my own experience during play.

• S-Tier: Top of the line option, arguably “must take” ability.
  • Musician (Edit to boost to S-Tier): I originally rated this a lower because it’s probably not a feat everyone needs to take, but Heroic Inspiration got such a boost in this edition (turning from Advantage into a reroll) that this belongs in S-Tier. This is the kind of feat that at least one member of the party really needs to take, and at low to mid-levels (or large parties), you wouldn’t go wrong having two people with this feat. Arguably, if you have mostly Humans and/or your DM is really free giving out Heroic Inspiration, this goes down in value, but in my experience almost no DM regularly remembers to give out Inspiration, and players usually forget to remind them so this is quite strong. And hey, you get some instrument proficiencies too.
  • Tough: This feat is so boring and so good it legitimately makes me upset; it’s the closest thing to a “forced choice” on the list, and a strong draw to playing a Human. It’s just really hard to say no to such a huge boost of hit points. Even a beefy Barbarian with 16 Constitution sees a 20% boost to hit points every time they level, never mind a Wizard with a 14 Con who sees a massive 33% boost to overall survivability. I mean, this is a feat most builds eventually took at higher levels before you could get it for free at 1st level. It’s honestly a little dumb that it’s an option, and I won’t fault folks who take something more interesting. I got some pushback from folks saying they think this is overrated, but I have trouble agreeing. Hit Points are just so foundational to the game, and this is such a significant boost to survivability AND it is so useful for literally every character, I have trouble rating this any lower. This is the kind of feat that keeps low HP characters alive AND that has excellent synergy with defensive abilities such as Barbarian Rage and Heavy Armor Mastery that reduce damage and wring out extra value out of each point of HP.
• A-Tier: Excellent option, worth strong consideration.
  • Alert (Edit to boost to A-Tier): This is a very strong feat, and it’s nice the Initiative bonus scales with level. The ability to swap is a nice bonus that allows much needed coordination that has been lacking with the removal of the delay option in 5e. It’s just a fact that so many combats are decided by who goes first as the ability to lock down enemies, move to a safe distance, or just plain eliminate opponents before they can act is massive, not to mention class specific perks like the Assassin’s Surprising Strikes. And in an environment where the majority of combats are decided in about 3 rounds of combat, going early can literally be a 33% boost to overall effectiveness. This is always going to be a decent option, either giving you a fighting chance or helping ensure you act early in every round. I got some feedback that many consider this S-Tier. I am not sure I agree considering how high variance Initiative rolls can be, but the boost combined with the option to swap Initiative to position a timely Fireball or let the Assassin sneak in a Surprising Strike makes this really attractive.
  • Magic Initiate (Edit to list extra options suggested by Reddit): There are a lot of possibilities with this feat, and getting it for “free” opens up a lot of attractive build options. The most obvious choice for your level 1 spell is just grab Find Familiar. You can cast it as a ritual so you can neatly bypass the once per long rest limitation, and you can do the usual cheese of giving yourself or an ally Advantage on an attack roll each round in combat (until the DM murders it anyway, in which case you can recast when you have an hour to kill). Plus, you can use it for scouting and fetching far away objects. Other strong options include Shield, Shield of Faith, Healing Word, Goodberry, or Charm Person. For Cantrips, I had it pointed out to me that Shillelagh opens up the ability to use Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma for your attack rolls, which can unlock all sorts of fun gish builds or just leaning into using non-standard attributes in melee. Otherwise, if you go Wizard I would tend to prioritize Minor Illusion and Mage Hand for utility and fun times. And for Cleric or Druid make sure to pick up Guidance for that sweet bonus to skill checks, especially if no one else has taken it.
• B-Tier: Solid option.
  • Lucky (Edit to bring down to B-Tier): This version of Lucky is massively nerfed compared to the original Lucky Feat, but the original Lucky Feat was arguably pretty broken, so that’s not saying much. Dice manipulation goes a long way even if you have to do it ahead of the roll. Securing advantage on a key attack roll (such as a spell attack with a high level spell) or a crucial skill check is still really valuable. And of course you’ll remember when you use this to keep your PC alive when they are being attacked and low on health. This is an option that probably feels pretty strong by level 5 when you can use it 3 times, and you’ll be spending it like candy at higher levels.
• C-Tier: Some utility but mediocre compared to other options or very niche/campaign specific.
  • Crafter: This is a cute feat, and I could imagine someone having fun with fast crafting even if it’s actual utility is somewhat limited in most campaigns. The 20% discount to non-magical items definitely catches the eye. The most obvious use case is saving 300 gold on a set of Full Plate, which could be handy at lower levels, especially if two or more PCs need a set. Now, this would be really powerful if Vehicles or Structures counted as an item, but considering the definition of “Object” in the DMG, I am thinking it does not apply, which limits its value at higher levels. Now, there may be certain “nation building” campaigns where going into the logistics of, say, outfitting an army with weapons, armor, food, gear, etc. is a big focus on the campaign; if you’re trying to squeeze value out of every gold piece, then a 20% discount on all mundane gear might go a long way, but I don’t expect that to be a very common campaign theme.
  • Healer: This feels like it should be a feat for parties light on healing, though rerolling 1s does have some utility for characters looking to maximize their healing powers (note, the benefits are fairly minor, representing less than 0.5 HP per die of healing). In combat, however, this is pretty clunky, requiring a normal action to use for fairly modest healing, really only useful for bringing someone back from unconsciousness (which sure, you’ll do in a pinch, but you aren’t exactly excited about it). Out of combat, it still expends hit dice, which really only makes it useful when you don’t have time to do a short rest between combats. Don’t get me wrong, extra healing is always appreciated, but as an option this feels a little underpowered. Now, there is one obvious use case I can think of here that might push this up in power; a Rogue with the Thief subclass can take Utilize as a Bonus Action, which makes this pretty attractive for some classic whack a mole style healing in combat. With the limit being literally a target’s hit dice, that’s a lot of unconscious teammates potentially brought back into action.
  • Tavern Brawler (Edit to boost to C-Tier): Thematically, this is a fun feat, and I guess I won’t fault someone who just loves the ideas of getting into bar fights, but none of the benefits are all that impactful. Annoyingly, this might be best for a Monk to pick up for a small increase to damage and the ability to push 5 feet a turn, which has some situational positional uses and frees you up to move away from enemies without using disengage. The Bard College of Dance might also pick this up for kicks (since they get an unarmed strike whenever they use Bardic Inspiration), and I might be missing one or two other uses. But again unless your DM likes positioning all their enemies right at the edge of high cliffs, there are probably better options.
• D-Tier: Overall weak and a bit of a trap compared to other options.
  • Savage Attacker: So the best case scenario here is using it with a Greataxe or other 1d12 weapon, which equates to just under a 2 point damage bonus. At lower levels, when a fighter might be doing 10 damage on average, a 20% boost is pretty attractive, and I’d definitely rate this way higher for one shots or campaigns unlikely to hit 5th level. At higher levels as you do more damage on average and make multiple attacks, the utility goes down since you can only use this once per turn. By 5th level, a Fighter with Great Weapon Master is doing at least 2 Attacks a round (potentially more with Hew and Cleave) for an average of 14 damage per hit (potentially higher with a magic weapon or other buffs) before applying this feat and likely has multiple ways to secure Advantage on attack rolls, which makes Savage Attacker a lot less attractive. It’s really night and day compared to other static damage bonuses that scale with multiple attacks and ability score increases, such as Fighting Style: Dueling and Two-Weapon Fighting (now much improved due to the somewhat confusing Nick + Dual Wielder ruling), which always feels strong even at high levels.
  • Skilled: Skill and Tool proficiencies are the kind of thing where the first four or so (which everyone gets access to) are really useful towards building to your strengths, and pretty soon you are filling in gaps that will likely be tackled by other characters anyway. And there are other ways of snagging an extra Skill or Tool proficiency or two through subclass and species selection that you don’t really need to resort to burning an Origin Feat for this. In short, there are much better and more impactful options.

Druids get right down to business in D&D 5e, gaining Wild Shape as an ability by level 2. Wild Shape is a really awesome ability in this edition with a ton of utility both in combat and in general exploration. Here are a few of the obvious perks:

• Turn into any beast with of a certain CR or lower. Extremely versatile ability that is useful for blending in, getting into small spaces (think wild shaping into a mouse), and bringing force to bear in combat, among other applications.
• Unlock ability to gain a fly speed or swim speed at higher levels.
• Whole new set of hit points while in wild shape. You switch to use the hit points of whatever you transform into. If you take more damage than you have, you transform back at your previous hit points, minus any excess damage you took. So essentially the Druid can take a lot more damage than many of the other classes, which is a little crazy and borderline overpowered.
• Can wild shape 2 times between short rests! Considering that you can stay in wild shape form for one or more hours, this is pretty generous.

The Circle of the Moon sub-class really exemplifies this feature, gaining a number of abilities that makes their wild shaping stronger, more useful, and quite capable in combat. As they level, they can transform into higher level beasts, heal themselves by expending spell slots as a bonus action, treat their natural weapons as magical, and even transform into Elementals. They also can cast alter self at-will, but that’s kind of its own thing.

As combat is a bit easier to analyze than all the crazy stuff you can do with wild shape outside of combat, I thought it could be fun to take a look at some of the obvious choices for wild shaping throughout the levels. I’m focusing on the Circle of the Moon’s options since they are the obvious choice if you want to really take advantage of this feature:

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I’m a big fan of the Bard in D&D 5e. Recently, while playing around with different builds, I discovered a pretty silly hack to make them a very powerful (arguably overpowered) choice for ranged combat by level 10. If you already know about Bards, feel free to scroll past my general overview to see how it works.

However, for those who don’t have the new PHB yet, here’s a short list of some of the nice perks the Bard gets to give you a little background:

• Full caster class: Bards get the same number of spells as Clerics and Wizards. This is nice because it gives them a core competency to build off of, something they lacked in 3.5 and previous editions, where the bard was okay at everything but not particularly good at anything.
• Inspiration: In place of bard songs that all do wacky things and have always felt a little awkward to actually use, bards have inspiration dice. They can pass these to allies, who can use them to add the die as a bonus to attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws. Sub classes allow them to be used in other ways, such as reducing an enemies attack roll, adding to AC, or adding to a damage roll.
• Jack of all Trades: Super fun ability that gives bards half their proficiency bonus to skills they aren’t proficient in. It’s a great thematic ability, and it encourages Bard players to try things outside their character’s normal areas of expertise.
• Song of Rest: Grants extra healing when the Bard or allies regain hit points during a short rest.
• Good Melee/Ranged Subclass: Bards get to choose from two options for subclasses. The College of Lore emphasizes the “jack of all trades” aspect of the bard, granting extra skills and extra cross class spells, along with some other very solid perks. However, I am more attracted to the College of Valor, which legitimately makes the Bard a solid melee or ranged combatant, granting proficiency with martial weapons, medium armor, and shields, along with a bonus attack at level 6 and a nice perk at 14 to allow casting a spell and making an attack as a bonus action. So this means by level 6, the Bard is basically on par (or close enough) with all the other melee/ranged classes, such as the Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, and Rogue.
• Magical Secrets: The bard spell list is pretty focused. It has a lot of stuff you might expect from a bard: charms and enchantments, some utility spells, and good options for travel, along with a healthy mix of “fun” spells you’ll certainly enjoy playing around with. It also sports healing spells, which are always going to be useful. However, at 10th level and again at 14 and 18, you get to choose two spells from ANY class to round out your list a bit. The only requirement is that the spell level is one you can cast. This is very cool. For example, you could pick up fireball (which can be cast at higher spell levels for more damage) to add a nice AOE spell to your list, since Bards don’t normally have any.

The “Hack” Explained

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