Everything you need to know about feats in D&D 2024.
In D&D 5e 2014, feats tended to take a back seat. The instruction has always been if your DM allows them, then they can be used. It’s been kind of like trying to see a Marvel movie at the cinema when you’re 10; it’s allowed, if you parents say it’s OK!
Unfortunately, feats, like Marvel movies, are fun and cool. They also bring some variety and customisation to character builds. Thankfully, many tables allow them, but even then, they come at the expense of an ability score improvement (unless your group’s really cool and has a homebrew rule that let’s you have one at level 1).
With D&D 2024, this is all changing with feats taking a front seat in character creation. And I’ve explained exactly how in the article below as well as how each type of feat works.
What changes are coming to feats?
- Tiered feats – Feats are separated into tiers with different feats made available at different levels (or even by different class features).
- Origin feats – Everyone gets an origin feat at level 1 which is tied to their background.
- General feats – These become available at level 4 and are taken in the same way as before, replacing your ability score improvement. Each of these is a half feat though so you get a +1 to one of your ability scores.
- Epic boon feats – These become available at level 19 and not only provide more powerful abilities, but also allow ability scores to increase beyond 20 to a maximum of 30. If you want to progress beyond level 20, you can take another epic boon each time you level up after level 20.
- Fighting style – These class features are now considered feats but are only available to certain martial classes.
- Quality of life – Many general quality of life improvements to specific feats have been baked into the 2024 Player’s Handbook.
That’s quite a substantial bunch of changes. To simplify things, I’ve explained exactly how each feat type works below:
Origin feats
These are based on existing feats, but have had tweaks to balance them into appropriate level 1 abilities. These are attached to your background so you don’t choose them independently from your background.
Player’s Handbook origin feats
Below is a list of all 10 of the origin feats found in the 2024 Player’s Handbook:
- Alert
- Crafter
- Healer
- Lucky
- Magic initiate
- Musician
- Savage attacker
- Skilled
- Tavern brawler
- Tough
Heroes of Faerun origin feats
Origin feats have been expanded with 8 new origin feats from Heroes of Faerun, D&D 2024’s first rules expansion:
- Cult of the dragon initiate
- Emerald enclave fledgling
- Harper agent
- Lords’ alliance agent
- Purple dragon rook
- Spellfire spark
- Tyro of the gauntlet
- Zhentarim ruffian
Astarion’s Book of Hungers origin feats
- Tireless reveler
- Vampire hunter
- Vampire’s plaything
General feats
General feats are the typical feats we’ve come to know in D&D 5e. They become available at level 4 and can be taken in place of your ability score improvements.
Each general feat gives you +1 in an ability score as well as a special ability. The feat will define which ability scores can be increased with them being linked to the type of ability your feat is.
Player’s Handbook general feats
I’ve listed all 42 general feats in the Player’s Handbook below. It’s worth noting that while most 2014 feats became general feats, some were converted into origin feats:
- Actor
- Athlete
- Charger
- Chef
- Crossbow expert
- Charger
- Defensive duelist
- Dual wielder
- Durable
- Elemental adept
- Fey-touched
- Grappler
- Great weapon master
- Heavily armoured
- Heavy armor master
- Inspiring leader
- Keen mind
- Lightly armored
- Mage slayer
- Martial weapon training
- Medium armor master
- Moderately armored
- Mounted combatant
- Observant
- Piercer
- Poisoner
- Polearm master
- Resilient
- Ritual caster
- Sentinel
- Shadow-touched
- Sharpshooter
- Shield master
- Skill expert
- Skulker
- Slasher
- Speedy
- Spell sniper
- Telekinetic
- Telepathic
- War caster
- Weapon master
Heroes of Faerun general feats
- Cold caster
- Dragonscarred
- Enclave magic
- Fairy trickster
- Genie magic
- Harper teamwork
- Lordly resolve
- Mythal touched
- Order’s resilience
- Purple dragon commandant
- Spellfire adept
- Street justice
- Zhentarim tactics
Astarion’s Book of Hungers general feats
- Bloodlust
- Bomber
- Cloying mists
- Delicious pain
- Light bringer
- Love bites
- Putrefy
- Rebuke
- Treacherous allure
- Vampire touched
Fighting style feats
Some martial classes (fighters, paladins and rangers) have a feature called fighting style. This existed in D&D 2014 too, but wasn’t considered a feat back then. Instead, each available fighting style was printed in each class section.
Now all the fighting style options exist in the same place making navigating the book better and saving precious space.
All fighting styles are available to any character with the fighting style feature with just a couple of exceptions in blessed and druidic warrior. These fighting styles allow paladins and rangers to focus more on the spellcasting elements of their class and take on more spells, rather than become more proficient in combat but are exclusive to those classes.
All the fighting styles from D&D 2014 (including those from Tasha’s Guide) make it over to D&D 2024 other than superior technique, which wasn’t a particularly good fighting style anyway. You can find them all listed below:
- Archery
- Blessed warrior (exclusive to paladins)
- Blind fighting
- Druidic warrior (exclusive to rangers)
- Defense
- Dueling
- Great weapon fighting
- Interception
- Protection
- Thrown weapon fighting
- Two weapon fighting
- Unarmed fighting
Epic boon feats
Epic boon feats also become a standardised part of character progression. Previously, they were hidden away in the Dungeon Master’s Guide as an optional extra for level 20+ character progression. Now each class gets one at level 19 and you can continue getting a new one each time you level up after level 20.
These feats are appropriately powerful for features that come in at level 19 and rather than being forced down a class specific route for character progression, you can choose your epic boon from 12 available options.
I’ve already written in detail about how epic boons will work and the tactics you can use with them in my epic boons guide. Check that out for more detail, but below, I’ve summarised the epic boons you can choose in D&D 2024:
- Boon of the combat prowess
- Boon of energy resistance
- Boon of truesight
- Boon of the night spirit
- Boon of fate
- Boon of fortitude
- Boon of spell recall
- Boon of dimensional travel
- Boon of irresistible offense
- Boon of recovery
- Boon of skill
- Boon of speed
Heroes of Faerun epic boon feats
- Boon of bloodshed
- Boon of bountiful health
- Boon of communication
- Boon of desperate resilience
- Boon of exquisite radiance
- Boon of fluid forms
- Boon of fortune’s favour
- Boon of poison mastery
- Boon of revelry
- Boon of terror
- Boon of the bright sun
- Boon of the furious storm
- Boon of the soul drinker
Astarion’s Book of Hungers epic boon feats
- Boon of blazing dawn
- Boon of looming shadows
- Boon of misty escape
Spotlight on D&D 2024
All the latest updates on what’s changing with the 2024 rules revision.
