Planar pacts, fighting styles and general feats for D&D Beyond subscribers. But are they worth the subscription?
D&D Beyond has started introducing new weekly perks for D&D Beyond subscribers. This includes the likes of new maps and monsters as well as new character options like feats and spells. These seem to be more the kind of content that didn’t make the cut for official book releases. This may mean that these options also receive less polish than standard releases or are more experimental than we might normally get.
For this article, I’m going to take a look at the feats released in D&D Beyond Drops to understand how good they are, who they’re best for and any tactics that should be considered for them. I’ll also evaluate whether they’re balanced and worth including in your games.
As there’s an ever-expanding load of content through D&D Beyond Drops, this will also be an ever-expanding article as new content is released.
Planar pact feats
Planar pact feats are a different class of feats that can either be taken as part of the pact seeker background at level 1 or from level 4 when you can take other feats. They aren’t origin feats so can’t be taken using the Human trait that grants these. They also aren’t general feats though so don’t come with an ability score increase either.
Fey pact – 3/5
Good for: Party faces and those looking for an extra cantrip.
Ability: Learn Sylvan, gain proficiency in nature, learn druidcraft and one other divination or enchantment cantrip and can reroll a d20 of 5 or less for persuasion and deception checks.
Tactics: There’s a lot of little benefits here that don’t amount to much of importance. Sylvan is just another language known, nature tends to be one of the less important knowledge skills and druidcraft I find is a cantrip entirely for the purposes of flavour rather than anything genuinely useful.
Fortunately, you can choose another cantrip. Of your options, guidance, mind sliver, true strike and vicious mockery are all great choices. True strike is one of your highest damage cantrip options while vicious mockery and mind sliver apply solid debuffs.
Honeyed words will protect you from very poor persuasion and deception rolls (probably your most common face skills). This should affect 25% of these particular ability checks which is solid.
Infernal pact – 5/5
Good for: Tanks and melee builds for the extra resilience. It’s at its best when you have an ally or yourself with the darkness spell (or similar), especially for a charisma build. Every class will do well here, but paladins perhaps edge it as well as pact of the blade warlocks and melee bards.
Ability: Resistance to fire and poison damage. See normally in darkness, including magical darkness, up to 60ft. Proficiency in deception.
Tactics: This feat gives resistance to 2 of the most common damage types in the game. This is especially great on tanks who are likely to be the target of these damage types most of all. Deception proficiency is decent, especially on a charisma build.
The sight through magical darkness can make for some very powerful tactics where you use something like the darkness spell to hide within and launch volleys of attacks and spells without disadvantage, while enemies have disadvantage on attacks against you. I’d work with an allied spellcasters for this.
Greater planar pacts
These are basically general feats, but you can only take them if you’ve taken the relevant planar pact feat.
Fey sentinel – 4/5
Good for: Rogues and monks especially, but spellcasters can do well with the safety features and the extra spells. Monks will also enjoy the wisdom ability score increase while some rogues need plenty of intelligence (or sometimes charisma if you’re going for more of a deceptive build).
Prerequisites: Level 4+, Fey pact feat
Ability score increase: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: When missed by an attack, can use a reaction to become temporarily invisible. Replace the extra movement from the dash action with half the distance in teleportation. Know the entangle and plant growth spells.
Tactics: This is very much a feat about staying safe. Fading target manages this by making you hard to hit for the rest of a round. Use it when you expect to be bombarded by attacks and need a bit more survivability. It won’t get you out of danger, but hopefully you can manage that when your next turn rolls around.
Fey shift is mainly for getting out of grapples, restraints and the reach of enemies safely while still gaining some extra movement. For most classes, this will require your action making it inferior to misty step (which also teleports you further). But, this doesn’t require a spell slot. If you happen to be a class that can dash as a bonus action, like a rogue or monk, then this becomes much more useful, making hit and run tactics easier (as you can dash/teleport for extra distance rather than taking the disengage action).
Entangle and plant growth are both great battlefield control spells that will keep enemies away from you (again, more safety).
Infernal bulwark – 5/5
Good for: Builds that naturally have a low AC and make use of dexterity and one of constitution or charisma. Sorcerers will benefit most, but bards (except dance bards), rogues and warlocks can do really well here too. It’s also best on classes without much use for their reaction. All of this makes it a poor option for monks though.
Prerequisites: Level 4+, infernal pact
Ability score increase: Constitution or charisma
Ability: Unarmored defense using dexterity and constitution or charisma. Level 2 armor of Agathys as a free casting. Can use a reaction to deal 1d10 fire damage when passing a saving throw against the creature that targeted you
Tactics: Unarmored defense is a huge buff as it gives you an AC up to 20. The fact you can choose your ability scores to a degree is great too. Dexterity is one of these and is useful on most classes while constitution is useful for all classes and charisma for a fair few. This is excellent on something like a wizard or sorcerer who normally are limited to low AC. Even with mage armor, this can become better. It’s better on a sorcerer than a wizard as they’ll be prioritising charisma anyway (a wizard will likely prioritise intelligence over dexterity, constitution or charisma).
Armor of Agathys is a decent defensive spell and the reaction damage isn’t huge, but is a decent damage boost if you weren’t going to use your reaction anyway. Monks for instance, may find they’re already using their reaction a lot for deflect attacks so may find this less useful. They also already have unarmored defence.
Infernal dragoon – 4/5
Good for: Martials, especially those using weapons. It’s also slightly better on builds that can repeat cast spells and/or make many weapon attacks (an eldritch knight is ideal).
Prerequisites: Level 4+, infernal pact
Ability score increase: Constitution or charisma
Ability: Create a 30ft emanation of fear with a magic action. Add a +2 to a d20 roll once per long rest. Can cast an extended magic weapon without a spell slot once per long rest and know the spell.
Tactics: This magic weapon spell will last a big chunk of the adventuring day. This makes it great on high attack weapon wielders like fighters. It can easily be cast outside of combat too meaning it’s a workable combat spell for a barbarian despite their rage (as it also doesn’t require concentration).
Unlimited fear emanations is quite useful too, especially for melee builds that are likely to get closer to enemies. There’s no limit on uses here either, but it does only last a single round so works best for debuffing enemies while allies continue making attacks.
I’d save that +2 to a d20 test until a really crucial test (perhaps a saving throw or a really important attack or ability check). It doesn’t say when you add the +2 but presumably you can do so after you make the roll.
Fighting style feats
Pack fighting – 3/5
Good for: Those wanting to stack fighting style feats for even more damage. Best for those with an ally that also has this feat.
Prerequisites: Has the fighting style feature.
Ability: +1 to melee weapon and unarmed attacks if an ally is next to the target. This becomes +2 if they also have this feat.
Tactics: If we compare this to dueling, that grants a +2 to damage rolls and that can be every time you just wield a single, one handed weapon. This only works under certain situations (though reasonably easy to manufacture circumstances). It also only grants +1 and you need to coordinate with an ally on fighting style to get +2.
However, the benefit for this feat is it stacks, whereas most fighting style feats are limited to certain weapon loadouts. It also means you can switch weapon load outs and still gain the benefits.
It’s still weaker than most fighting styles, but elevated slightly for its stackability. Especially when you coordinate with an ally.
Prone fighting – 4/5
Good for: Anyone that makes lots of attacks and doesn’t need to be highly mobile while doing so.
Prerequisite: Fighting style feature
Ability: Prone doesn’t cause disadvantage on attack rolls for you or advantage on attack rolls against you.
Tactics: Prone is actually a condition with some advantages for you and one you can inflict on yourself. Ranged attacks against you have disadvantage while prone. The only issue is you do become less maneuverable as a result.
If you’re a ranged build, you can hang at the back of the battlefield and drop prone while launching projectiles at enemies while being safer (perhaps like a sniper, though achieving this with a longbow is certainly impressive). You can use this in melee too so that other enemies hurling projectiles at you will still struggle to hit you. This feels like an amusingly good feat. I’m not sure what actual fighting technique it embodies, but it sounds great.
General feats
Shifting combatant – 3/5
Good for: Tanks. No one else wants to be getting this close to so many enemies.
Prerequisites: Level 4+, weapon mastery feature
Ability score increase: Strength or dexterity
Ability: Using push mastery to make enemies collide can knock both prone. Moving and then making a long jump will grant disadvantage on attack rolls against you for a round.
Tactics: I think pushing prone could be difficult to engineer at times, and not too hard at others. I think this is probably situational. The long jump is also a little situational but the benefits are strong. Disadvantage on attack rolls against you for a round. You will have to jump next to 2 enemies and moving out of range of them on subsequent turns is going to be tricky without invoking opportunity attacks. I think that makes this good if you can engineer it, but sometimes challenging to engineer.
Tactical combatant – 4/5
Good for: Characters that wield high damage weapons and make plenty of ability checks.
Prerequisites: Level 4+, strength or dexterity 13+
Ability score increase: Strength or dexterity
Ability: Gain temporary hit points equal to a damage roll from your weapon once per combat encounter. Add d6 to a failed ability check once per rest.
Tactics: This is going to be best on builds that make high damage weapon attacks and make lots of ability checks. This excludes rogues as sneak attack damage isn’t included in here (and their weapons tend to be low to mid damage) and spellcasters will get little joy either. This makes it best on paladins (who use plenty of face skills) and rangers (who use scouting skills). Both are capable of wielding higher damage weapons like greatswords, though rangers tend to struggle more with a strength build.
But really, this is about getting those temporary hit points as high as possible and making sure you get to benefit from plenty of ability checks.
Are the feats from D&D Beyond Drops any good?
I think so. There’s a bunch of unique ideas being tested here and all the feats have a decent purpose. For the most part, they’re nicely balanced too.
I would say that infernal pact and infernal bulwark are perhaps a bit too strong granting sight through magical darkness and unarmored defense respectively. Both of these are very strong options for a feat (and both have other benefits too). It’s not game-breakingly bad though.
I feel like these feats do encourage new play styles and tactics though, which I like. They don’t play it too safe while still sticking to mostly balanced gameplay.
What do you think of the feats from D&D Beyond Drops? Let me know in the comments below.
