Arcana Unleashed comes with a load of quite strong feats, geared towards spellcasters and I’ve analysed them all.
Arcana Unleashed is the latest rules expansion for D&D 5.5e and comes packed with new magical options to use at your table. One of the largest additions is to the repertoire of feats with 29 brand new feats to play with. There’s 10 origin feats, 1 fighting style feat, 15 general feats and 3 epic boon feats.
Most of these are geared towards spellcasters, but there’s still some feats for non-spellcasters too.
In this article, I’ve dissected each feat, scoring how strong I think it is and giving some advice on how it can best be used.
Arcana Unleashed origin feats
Arcana Unleashed comes with 10 new backgrounds which are mostly associated with magical factions across the planes. Each background has an individual origin feat but you can also pick these up in place of ability score increases or as part of one of your Human traits without the associated background.
Arcane artist – 3/5
Related background: Phantasmic Circus trouper
Good for: Illusionists and characters that want a bit of sneaky spellcasting, like rogues and bards.
Ability: Gain the minor illusion cantrip. Grant heroic inspiration once per long rest when you cast an illusion spell.
Tactics: Minor illusion is a pretty good cantrip, but it’s still just a cantrip. The heroic inspiration is easy to grant, just cast minor illusion (it’s an action cantrip) whenever you feel like handing out heroic inspiration. It’s only once per long rest though. If we compare this to musician, that’s heroic inspiration for multiple party members each short and long rest. Conversely, magic initiate grants 2 cantrips and a 1st level spell. I think both these alternatives are just better than this feat, but I guess if you want a bit of both, this is alright.
Arcane eloquence – 5/5
Related background: Bejeweled Conclave Spy
Good for: Charismatic spellcasters like bards, paladins, warlocks and sorcerers.
Ability: Gain the vicious mockery cantrip and add 1d4 to deception, intimidation and persuasion checks.
Tactics: That boost to charisma skill checks is really good. Face skills are used a lot, especially if you’re the party face. Vicious mockery is also a decent cantrip. Paladins can use it as a ranged attack option while other spellcasters may be happy using it more frequently when they’re preserving spell slots.
Arcane infiltrator – 5/5
Related background: Agent of the Ninth Quill
Good for: Classes with little use for their bonus action and that benefit a lot from more resilience (which is most classes, but especially frontline warriors like fighters and barbarians). If you do want to use friends, it’s going to work best on charisma builds, but you should at least have a good spellcasting ability for it too.
Ability: Gain the friends cantrip and you can dodge as a bonus action a few times per long rest.
Tactics: I’m not a big fan of the friends cantrip. Too much can go wrong a minute later when the spell ends and someone knows they’ve been charmed by you. Maybe the best you can manage is a quick minute gaining some information.
Dodge as a bonus action though is excellent. even if it’s just a few times per day. Use it early in combat when more enemies are still standing and you need the extra resilience.
Arcane omens – 5/5
Related background: Seer apprentice
Good for: Anyone. You don’t need a strong spellcasting ability for guidance and you don’t use it in combat so even a barbarian is a good option for this. Few builds use their reaction lots, but perhaps if you’re built for opportunity attacks like through sentinel and or polearm master, you might want to save your reaction for attacks and forego this feat.
Ability: Learn the guidance cantrip and add 1d4 to a failed saving throw a few times per long rest for you or an ally.
Tactics: Guidance is a great cantrip for enhancing skill checks but you can’t do this for all skill checks. For instance, you can’t do it mid-conversation or when the DM suddenly asks for a perception check. It’ll be tricky during stealth segments too, but whenever someone uses a knowledge skill, starts investigating, is about to chat to someone etc, you can hurl this out there for a 1d4 boost to their skill checks.
Reaction boosts to saving throws is also really good. It’s only a 1d4 boost though so you want to use it for saving throws that barely failed rather than those that were a long way off.
Arcane overload – 4/5
Related background: Crucible storm chaser
Good for: Spellcasters with access to AoE damage dealers like wizards and sorcerers
Ability: Gain the firebolt cantrip and can add your proficiency bonus to the damage of an evocation spell once per long rest.
Tactics: Firebolt is an evocation spell (and a decent damage dealer for a cantrip), but power surge would be a waste on that. Ideally, you want to use this on AoE spells like fireball so that the damage boost affects multiple targets (an AoE spell typically make one damage roll that affects all targets in the area). When it comes to cantrips, acid splash, thunderclap and word of radiance all fit the bill here. For lower level spells, you’ve got burning hands, thunderclap, shatter and fireball and at higher levels, there’s spells like delayed blast fireball and sunburst.
While this is decent, we’re talking about a 2-6 damage increase to an AoE spell per day at best. Firebolt is so easily accessed for classes relevant for this feat that it’s almost not worth being concerned with. Overall, I’d say this is good but not amazing.
Arcane safeguard – 5/5
Related background: Ward of the Sheltering Hands
Good for: Non-spellcasters, especially front-line martials. But not barbarians (who can’t maintain concentration while raging) or those who rely heavily on their bonus action like monks and rogues. This mostly means fighters, but paladins might be a decent option too.
Ability: Gain the resistance cantrip and you can cast it a few times per long rest using a bonus action. Using the help action to assist an ally’s ability check grants them a few temporary hit points.
Tactics: Normally I find resistance a very poor spell as it requires an entire action and consumes your concentration. However, if it only requires a bonus action to use, this becomes considerably more worthwhile from an action economy perspective. Ironically, because resistance isn’t reliant on a good spellcasting ability, and because it relies on concentration, I’d argue it’s best on non-spellcasters who won’t mind using their concentration on it.
That’s a resistance you can change each encounter which will be great for melee warriors. You do still need to worry about concentration, but most frontline builds at least have a high constotution and classes like fighters are proficient in constitution saving throws.
The temporary hit points from the help action are small, but still a welcome buff. Just help with ability checks whenever you can. This is technically easy to abuse, but DMs just need to be wise to abusive tactics like overusing ability checks for stuff that doesn’t matter. There is a provision for this in the rulebook for good faith interpretations of rules so be prepared to draw a line with your players that try to abuse this feat.
Arcane undertaker – 2/5
Related background: Covenant of the grave recruit
Good for: Not really anyone, but high wisdom classes without healing spells are your best option. Maybe a ranger without healing spells or a monk, but I don’t think this one’s great.
Ability: Gain a necromancy cantrip. Add 1d4 to history and medicine checks. Gain heroic inspiration once per long rest when you use the help action to stabilise a character.
Tactics: There are 4 cantrips that qualify for this feat; chill touch, poison spray, spare the dying and toll the dead. I much prefer healing word (for a bonus action and get a character back in the fight) than spare the dying if you have the option in the party. Spare the dying also makes the understanding death aspect of this feat obsolete. Chill touch is rarely a good option due to its melee nature. If you want a cantrip that can deal with range and melee, then toll the dead is a high damage option and I think the best option here.
History and medicine checks aren’t hugely common and rely on ability scores that rarely coincide (intelligence and wisdom) and stabilising using the help action is again, inferior to a healing spell like healing word, which will bring a character back into play, doesn’t require a skill check, can just use a bonus action and some of these spells can be performed at range. Overall, I think this one’s a bit disappointing.
Familiar friend – 5/5
Related background: Familiar trainer
Good for: Anyone, but especially those that take lots of skill checks like bards, rogues, rangers and whoever is your party face. Also great for familiar specialists like necromancers, conjurers and pact of the chain warlocks.
Ability: Gain the find familiar spell and a free casting of it. Your familiar has increased hit points equal to twice your level and can grant advantage on a few ability checks each day.
Tactics: Find familiar is a great spell for things like scouting and some amount of utility. Making it a bit more resilient means it’s of more use in combat now (it can grant the help action for instance). These extra hit points also stack with enhanced familiars that the necromancer and warlocks with pact of the chain receive too.
Advantage on a few skill checks per day is great too, especially if you expect to make a lot of skill checks. This allows you to create a character like Kay Vess from Star Wars Outlaws by building a rogue with this enhanced familiar.
Portal jumper – 4/5
Related background: Horizon Weaver initiate
Good for: Anyone, but especially hit and run specialists like monks and rogues.
Ability: Gain resistance to necrotic, psychic or radiant damage and can teleport 15ft using 15ft of movement a few times per long rest.
Tactics: This is a great way to move out of reach of enemies or escape grapples. Unlike something like misty step, it doesn’t require your bonus action so hit and run specialists like monks and rogues, who normally have competing uses for their bonus action (like using disengage to get out of range) can do so while preserving their bonus action for other things. Backline Spellcasters can also use it to move out of melee reach while preserving their actions for spells and even tanks can use it to more easily reach their real target without incurring attacks of opportunity.
The damage resistance is a bit of a bonus. None of these are among the most common damage types, but I’d probably tend towards necrotic resistance here unless you know you’ll be fighting mind flayers or celestials.
Transmuted anatomy – 5/5
Related background: Cosmic Dawn experiment
Good for: Spellcasters, especially those trying to maintain concentration and that need to quickly get into melee. I think this is best on rangers, paladins and melee casters like bladesingers, battle smiths, armorers, valor bards, blade warlocks and some cleric and druid builds.
Ability: Speed increases by 5ft. Advantage on saving throws against being shapeshifted. +1d4 to constitution saving throws a few times per day.
Tactics: Advantage against being shape-shifted is very situational, but possibly great on the rare occasions it happens. Fortunately, you get a couple of very nice additional features thrown in here too.
+5ft speed is handy for anyone, though manoeuvrable classes will benefit most. Enhanced constitution saving throws is going to be especially helpful for spellcasters needing to maintain concentration on spells. Use it when you barely fail a concentration saving throw and turn that failure into a success.
Arcana Unleashed fighting style feats
Arcane warrior – 2/5
Requirements: Fighting style feature
Good for: Not really great for anyone, but maybe a ranger or paladin that wants a ranged attack or utility cantrips.
Ability: Learn 2 wizard cantrips.
Tactics: I think it’s tricky to make the case to replace a fighting style that’s consistently going to boost the damage output of your attacks with one that grants a couple of cantrips. You could take this in place of a general feat at later levels, but something like fey touched, magic initiate or magic connoisseur are just better feats for gaining spells. This isn’t necessarily bad, it just replaces something more important for something that isn’t nearly as useful for a fighter, paladin or ranger and there are better alternatives out there among different feat types.
Arcana Unleashed general feats
Abjuration adept – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Spellcasters that use plenty of abjuration spells so clerics and abjurers especially. With this spell list, any caster can cast a fair number of abjuration spells, especially with shield for your reactions. It’s going to be best on full casters that access these spells earlier and have higher level spell slots to increase the temporary hit points granted.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn the shield, lesser restoration, protection from energy, banishment and mass cure wounds spells once you have high enough spell slots. Grant temporary hit points when you cast abjuration spells.
Tactics: Cast lots of abjuration spells and get those temporary hit points spread around the party. You’ll need to dedicate yourself a fair bit to defensive and healing magic to make the best use of this, but you can easily be spreading a fair number of temporary hit points if using these spells.
I think almost all of these spells are great too. The exception being protection from energy which I think is too easy for enemies to bypass by using a different damage type or targeting allies instead.
Conjuration adept – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Full spellcaster using plenty of conjuration concentration spells. This can be any spellcaster with this feature, but paladins, rangers and artificers will get these spells later than other full casters. Be aware that a conjurer may feel like a natural fit, but by level 10, damage can’t break their concentration on conjuration spells and they can easily get these spells or similar ones through conjuration savant.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn the entangle, misty step, conjure animals, dimension door and conjure elemental spells once you have high enough spell slots. Improved concentration on conjuration spells.
Tactics: Improved concentration on constitution saving throws is excellent, but it’s limited to conjuration spells. if you plan on concentrating on plenty of conjuration spells like entangle, web and summon spells, then this could be great. You’ll want to be building around those spells a lot though to really benefit here.
Spells like misty step and entangle are universally useful while dimension door can often be helpful. Conjure animals is a great, long lasting damage dealer too. Conjure elemental can be alright, but is also one good saving throw away from being bypassed a fair bit in combat because it’s immobile.
Divination adept – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Any full spellcasters that want more information gathering spells.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn the detect evil and good, mind spike, clairvoyance, divination and scrying spells once you have high enough spell slots. Grant advantage or disadvantage to some d20 tests using a reaction.
Tactics: Prescient intervention is really strong. It’s not limited to just one type of roll either, it’s all d20 tests. The main challenge is ensuring you can top it up often enough to make good use of the feature. Unfortunately, most divination spells are really for out of combat use or are the kinds of things you only use once in a combat (like hunter’s mark or see invisibility).
Because of that, you should be able to work this in once per encounter and occasionally twice, but will need to make use of spell slots in between encounters.
Mind spike and clairvoyance are a bit situational, the other spells are more generally useful but the spell list here is only decent, even if prescient intervention is excellent.
Elemental familiar – 2/5
Requirements: Level 4+, familiar friend feat
Good for: Anyone with plenty of spare bonus actions to command their familiar. This includes the likes of fighters, wizards and sorcerers.
Ability score improvement: Any
Ability: Grant your familiar a damage resistance and use a bonus action to cause nearby creatures to your familiar to take a small amount of damage and be knocked prone.
Tactics: This is basically a really interesting way to give yourself a bonus action attack that also happens to be a small AoE. If you compare it to something like dual wielder, which gives you an extra bonus action attack, the average damage here is about 5 and for a light weapon, will be about 6.5-8.5. As long as you can hit 2+ creatures with the familiar’s emanation, that’s going to outperform the damage here.
This can also be performed while you’re away from danger, and because your familiar is enhanced by familiar friend, it can survive a bit longer (but it’s still not tough).
The main issue your familiar will face is it will need to be next to other creatures on your turn, not its. This gives it less control over who it’s next to making positioning tricky. It also can’t just fly into the middle of combat and wait to use its energy pulse as it will likely get slaughtered. I think this is nearly quite good, but that 5ft range makes it really tricky to use easily when it makes the attack on your turn, not its own. It also doesn’t interact with features that use your own attacks like sneak attack or brutal strikes.
Enchantment adept – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Full spellcasters that want to use their spells stealthily.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn the dissonant whispers, enthrall, hold person, dominate beast and modify memory spells once you have high enough spell slots. Can also cast enchantment spells without verbal, somatic or material components (except consumed or costly components).
Tactics: In terms of spell lists, I think this is one of the weaker lists available. Dissonant whispers can be decent in certain circumstances but enthrall is just worse than pass without a trace (even when you remove verbal components). Hold person is alright, but is a level 2 spell taking up the level 3 slot which is considerably weaker than something like hypnotic pattern which has similar effects for multiple targets. They could even have granted something like catnap which would have been better. Dominate beast is reliant on finding beasts and ones worth dominating (most beasts aren’t really tough enough to be useful for level 7+ characters) and then having enough time dominating that beast to have them be useful. Finally, modify memory is really quite situational.
Subtle enchantments is discreetly decent for stealth as spellcasting with verbal components can be a real problem and enchantment spells can lean into this. I guess technically it makes enthrall a bit better, but this is still one of the lesser of the school of magic adept feats.
Evocation adept – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Full spellcasters, especially those with larger hit point dice. This means bards, warlocks, clerics and druids will do better than wizards and sorcerers here. Because there’s plenty of AoE evocation damage dealers in this list, it doesn’t matter that some of these classes don’t naturally get the best spells for this feat.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn the chromatic orb, shatter, fireball, vitriolic sphere and wall of force spells once you have high enough spell slots. Can also use up to 2 hit point dice to increase damage with an evocation spell.
Tactics: A bunch of great damage dealing spells and wall of force is great for battlefield control. The hit point dice enhancement to damage is good when you have hit dice to spare, but especially good on AoE damage dealers like fireball, shatter and vitriolic sphere as this extra damage affects each target of that damage roll, not just one of them.
Illusion adept – 4/5
Requirements: Level 4+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Full spellcasters that want to use illusions and be sneaky when doing so.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn the silent image, phantasmal force, major image, hallucinatory terrain and seeming spells once you have high enough spell slots. Can also cast illusion spells without verbal, somatic or material components (except consumed or costly components). Creatures also have disadvantage on checks to discern the true nature of your illusions.
Tactics: Verbal components when using illusion spells can often be an issue when trying to be sneaky. This overcomes that and has an upper hand on enchantment adept because your illusions are harder to discern too. This can make you the ultimate stealth caster.
The spells are decent, though silent and major inage cover some similar needs. I don’t really rate hallucinatory terrain. I’m yet to find a situation where I’d have found this spell useful to have (maybe I’m not imaginative enough). Seeming is great for whole party subterfuge and phanstasmal force is decent for trapping an enemy. It’s made better by using intelligence saving throws which are more commonly low among creatures and the fact that creatures will have disadvantage when trying to end the spell (but not on the initial saving throw).
Magic connoisseur – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+; magic initiate feat
Good for: Classes with a good spellcasting ability, especially those with spell slots for repeat casting.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Choose a level 1 and 2 spell to know and gain a free casting of each.
Tactics: This has the same effect as fey touched and shadow touched except that you have a lot more freedom over which spells you gain. This opens up spells like blindness/deafness, shatter, suggestion and web to you. Pretty good, especially with those free casting which can be very valuable for someone like a warlock.
Necromancy adept – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Full spellcasters that intend to cast a decent number of necromancy spells, especially those with larger hit dice.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn the inflict wounds, ray of enfeeblement, vampiric touch, blight and raise dead spells once you have high enough spell slots. You can also use hit point dice to self-heal when casting a necromancy spell.
Tactics: While you get the exact same healing through life manipulation as you would from expending hit points dice normally, the benefit here is you can self-heal during an encounter. And there’s no extra action economy cost. This makes those hit dice more valuable.
Unfortunately, the spells aren’t anything to shout about. Raise dead is great and blight and inflict wounds are decent enough damage dealers for their level. Vampiric touch is really poor though. The healing and damage are too low while you need to get close to an enemy to use it. Ray if enfeeblement is a save or suck spell that doesn’t suck enough. Hold person or Tasha’s hideous laughter are better.
Otherworldly familiar – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+, familiar friend feat
Good for: Characters using a familiar a lot for exploration, investigation and subterfuge.
Ability score improvement: Any
Ability: Your familiar gains a damage resistance and can move through creatures and objects.
Tactics: A damage resistance for your familiar is alright. Poison is probably your best option if you don’t know what kind of damage you’ll be facing. Moving through objects and creatures has some utility. I guess you want to be using this for exploration more than anything else. You could do things like send your familiar to scout out buildings and even steal things from secure locations. There’s some stealth utility here if you want to lean into these capabilities.
Soothing familiar – 1/5
Requirements: Level 4+, familiar friend feat
Good for: I guess for characters with a familiar where the party do lots of healing, but not really a great feat in my opinion.
Ability score improvement: Any
Ability: Allies that have hit points restored within 5ft of your familiar can treat rolls of 1 or 2 as a 3.
Tactics: I think that not only is this kind of hard to make land (you’ll need the healed ally to be next to the familiar and be healed at the same time). I think this is going to be really hard to coordinate in the heat of battle. Not only that, but I think the impact is a bit minimal. I don’t think this is really worth taking.
Spell resistant – 4/5
Requirements: Level 4+
Good for: Pretty much anyone, but frontline characters may get a little more use out of the extra resilience.
Ability score improvement: Dexterity or constitution
Ability: Gain a damage resistance and can sometimes add 1d6 to a failed saving throw against a spell or magical effect.
Tactics: I’d go with the necrotic resistance unless you happen to know you’ll face a lot of the other damage types. The magic resilience is quite good and handily, doesn’t require a reaction, unlike something like the arcane omens origin feat. You’ll get a few chances to use this too making this a solid resilience against magic.
Spell subterfuge – 4/5
Requirements: Level 4+; spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: High stealth spellcasters that want to be more evasive.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Can dash and hide after casting a spell a few times per long rest and when invisible from the hide action, can cast verbal spells and make spell attacks without losing the invisible condition if behind three quarters or full cover.
Tactics: Great for evasive builds. High stealth and high dexterity spellcasters can do well out of this. Most full casters want to be avoiding enemies and this is a great way to do that. If you can, You’ll want to get hidden and stay hidden and blast out spells until an enemy can come find you in your hiding spot. This is no good in big open environments though.
Transmutation adept – 4/5
Requirements: Level 4+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Full spellcasters most of all.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn the jump, spider climb, slow, polymorph and animate objects spells once you have high enough spell slots. You can also increase your speed by 5 times the spell level of a transmutation spells you cast.
Tactics: This feat is a lot about affecting movement. Faster movement is often useful, but this can be less so for backline spellcasters and I think coordinating casting transmutation spells with needing movement can be a little unreliable.
The spells are decent. Jump is good for faster movement, spider climb has some utility and slow is decent for debuffing enemies. Polymorph is really flexible and has loads of uses and animate objects can become a decent sized meat shield and damage boost.
Warlike familiar – 4/5
Requirements: Level 4+, familiar friend feat
Good for: Classes with a decent spellcasting ability (you’ll need this for the familiar’s attacks). It only lasts an hour so you may also want to repeat cast it so this is also better on spellcasting classes too. Necromancers can do well here too as battle familiar can layer on top of their undead familiar.
Ability score improvement: Any
Ability: Gain the battle familiar spell and can cast it once without a spell slot. The battle familiar can use its reaction to add your proficiency score to the AC of a hit target within 5ft of it.
Tactics: Battle familiar can be really strong, especially when layering it onto the find familiar spell and with the familiar friend feat. You essentially have a bit of a meat shield, potential for a decent amount of damage and some decent protectiveness for allies. Pair it upfront with your martials and have it grant them some protection.
Arcana Unleashed epic boon feats
Boon of erupting spellpower – 3/5
Requirements: Level 19+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Full casters that deal lots of damage through AoE spells.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Once per encounter, turn spell damage rolls of 1 or 2 into a 3.
Tactics: We can do a bit of maths on this one. Ideally you want to be using this on spells with lots of damage dice and that affect multiple creatures (like fireball). If we take fireball as an example, the average increase on a 1 or 2 is 1.5. it affects 1/3 of dice on average which averages out at +4 damage once per encounter. There are more powerful spells at this level though, so let’s do the same with sunburst. The average damage increase here would be +6.
I know evocation adept uses hit point dice, but that’s averaging less extra damage than that which is a general feat. It can also be used multiple times per encounter. This is still alright as the damage boost can affect multiple creatures and causes prone without expending hit dice, but I still think it’s worse than a general feat (albeit a very good general feat).
Boon of magic school mastery – 5/5
Requirements: Level 19+, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Full spellcasters. Paladins that want to smite every turn.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn a level 1 spell that you can cast without using a spell slot as many times as you like. You also learn a level 7 or lower spell that you can cast once without using a spell slot. Both spells must be from the same school of magic.
Tactics: You’re limited by both the school of magic and your own class’ spell list here. Be aware that half casters like rangers and paladins won’t get the highest level spells so will have to settle for 5th level spells.
For the level 1 spell, you can basically treat this like a cantrip. You’ll need to think about what spell is worth repeat casting at higher tiers of play that’s a level 1 spell. Of course cantrips have also scaled in damage at this point so are outperforming single target, level 1 damage dealers at this point. I’d consider spells like shield, thunderwave, burning hands, cure wounds, healing word, hellish rebuke, divine smite or thunderous smite.
I do think that possessing infinite shield is a problem as you can use a reaction ever round to gain +5 AC without running out of spell slots. That’s some serious protection and while not insurmountable, can make your character too hard to hit. Fortunately, it’s limited to sorcerers and wizards who tend to have a lower AC, but that’s not definitely the case.
Despite the limitations on spell level, I’d still really consider this for paladins. Paladins can use this to smite every turn without ever running out of spell slots which is significant.
The extra 7th level spell slot is quite a big deal too as ordinarily, you get 1-2 castings of these only.
Boon of the iron mind – 5/5
Requirements: Level 19+
Good for: Spellcasters that use lots of concentration spells.
Ability score improvement: Any
Ability: Only lose concentration on a spell if you start concentrating on something else, gain the petrified or unconscious condition or if you die.
Tactics: This prevents you losing concentration on a spell if you take damage or gain the incapacitated condition. This means that the paralyzed and stunned conditions also won’t end spell concentration as well as a few other effects that incapacitate. This is a big deal for spellcasters that use plenty of concentration spells.
Are the feats in Arcana Unleashed any good?
The vast majority of the feats in Arcana Unleashed are very good. In fact, I only found a few feats that I felt were not worth taking pretty much ever. They were; arcane undertaker, arcane warrior and soothing familiar. Even then, these are not entirely useless feats, but there are just better options available.
There are plenty of new and interesting ideas on display here too. However, I have never given out so many 5s to a feat list before and this points to the fact that these feats are on the strong side of feats. Some overcome balance flaws for spellcasters like methods for ending concentration. Others help classes overcome spell list limitations. I’m not sure I found anything that was necessarily broken, but there’s plenty here that may feel like it’s so good that other options just don’t get chosen because they aren’t as good and that to me, points to an imbalance, even if it isn’t game-breakingly.
It perhaps reinforces the martial/spellcaster power divide further as well. I don’t think this is as big an issue as some, but it widens as characters become higher level. Unfortunately, martials don’t have options like this available yet.
Despite all of this, I think there’s loads that’s new and useful to get excited about for your character build, and that’s probably the most important factor here. Any power-creep I think is minor and shouldn’t ruin your game. I think there’s just a lot of new tools to play with (including enhanced familiars) and for the most part, I think this is a great set of new feats.
What did you think of the feats in Arcana Unleashed? Let me know in the comments below.
