Analysing The Origin Feats From Heroes Of Faerun For D&D 2024

Brand new origin feats for the different factions of Faerun; but how good are they?

Heroes of Faerun is D&D 2024’s first rules expansion and with it comes a bunch of character options related to the Forgotten Realms. One of those expansions is a bunch of new origin feats to add to the 10 we currently have from the Player’s Handbook. These allow players to pick up capabilities specific to some of the backgrounds in the Forgotten Realms like a Harper or a Purple Dragon Knight.

In this article, I’m going to analyse each of these origin feats and work out which are great and which belong in the Abyss as well as some tactical advice you can use.

Heroes of Faerun origin feats

Heroes of Faerun gives us 8 brand new origin feats to play with. All of these are completely new origin feats. There are no refreshes or revamps of old 2014 feats in sight here.

Below you can find my analysis and ratings for each of these feats:

Cult of the dragon initiate – 2/5

Related background: Dragon cultist

Good for: Those that cause frightened in other ways (like the Scion of the three rogue or spellcasters with the fear spell). Can work for those that want to take dragonscarred at level 4 too.

Ability: You can speak draconic, cause frightened with a magic action for a turn and gain heroic inspiration when you cause the frightened condition.

Tactics: The main ability here is causing frightened. The problem you’ve got is that doing so requires an entire action to cause it for a single turn. That’s quite a weak action in my opinion, especially when there’s a decent chance of this failing.

The other side of this is the heroic inspiration from causing frightened. This isn’t linked to the feat itself so the source of causing frightened could be any ability. This includes something like the Scion of the three’s strike fear feature or the fear spell. At this point, I think there’s some worth in the feat if these are the kinds of abilities you plan on using a lot.

The other thing to consider is the follow on general feat to this (dragonscarred) that allows you to frighten creatures with a bonus action instead. This is more worthwhile, especially for classes without heavy use of their bonus action (like fighters or barbarians). But 2 feats to get this decent is a big ask.

Emerald Enclave fledgling – 2/5

Related background: Emerald enclave caretaker

Good for: Masterminds maybe, slightly (but it’s still not great for them). Those that want to cast speak with animals (but I’d argue you should grab magic initiate for that, and usually go for a better spell).

Ability: Can cast speak with animals and can swap places with an ally within 5ft when using the help action.

Tactics: Speak with animals is a decent spell. There’s no free castings of it, but it is a ritual spell which isn’t particularly an issue for this kind of spell.

The tactical need to swap places with someone 5ft away is kind of rare on its own. On top of that, you also need to forego your usual actions to use the help action. Out of combat, this doesn’t matter, but in combat, that’s a heavy price to pay and for that reason, using the help action seems to be rare. I suppose you could engineer things this way so that instead of using the disengage action, you use help, swap places and move away from an enemy, but even then, you’re relying on rare positioning of characters.

The only time this possibly gets a little better is with something like a mastermind (a 2014 subclass that’s compatible with the 2024 rules) as they can use the help action as a bonus action. It’s still very situational though.

Harper agent – 1/5

Related background: Harper

Good for: No one. Even Masterminds, that have good reasons to use the help action, already can do so at range.

Ability: Know thieves’ cant, have proficiency with a musical instrument and can use the help action for an attack even when 30ft away.

Tactics: Using the help action at distance is fine, but we have a similar issue to the emerald enclave fledgling here. Help just isn’t that common an action in combat. This is because helping someone else on their attacks means foregoing your own attack, spell or other feature. Advantage on an attack is rarely better than just making 2 attacks. The rare exception to this might be for a rogue that’s struggling to use their sneak attack, but rogues do have a lot of tools to ensure they can do this. And if you really do want to give advantage on an attack, vex weapon mastery is such an easy option to use anyway.

I should note that the follow on general feat to this does make the help action slightly better, but not enough, and again, that’s 2 feats to make something bad, slightly less bad.

Lords’ alliance agent – 3/5

Related background: Lords’ alliance vassal

Good for: Those more likely to land critical hits. This generally means those with lots of attacks like monks, fighters, dual wielders and those with extra attack. It’s even better for characters with lower critical hit thresholds like the champion fighter. It’s also good for characters that fight next to others, like paladins.

Ability: Give heroic inspiration when landing a critical hit and gain advantage on your next attack roll against an enemy that hits an ally within 5ft of you.

Tactics: Basically, use this in conjunction with as many attacks as possible and as low a critical hit thresholds as possible. A dual wielding fighter with nick and the dual wielder feat will have 4-6 attacks per turn (plus action surge). With a 5% chance of landing a critical hit each time. This means a 19-26% chance of landing a critical hit each turn you use all these attacks. A champion landing criticals on an 18+ will land a critical on 48-62% of turns (assuming 4-6 attacks per turn).

Basically, if you plan on taking this feat, you’ll want to up the odds of landing a critical hit as much as possible. You then also want to be doing some decent teamwork, preferably in melee combat. These are decent benefits that aren’t overly hard to engineer with the right build.

Purple dragon rook – 3/5

Related background: Purple dragon squire

Good for: Anyone. Musician is a much better alternative, but this can work alongside musician for different moments when the party needs heroic inspiration.

Ability: Proficiency in insight, performance or persuasion and grant heroic inspiration to a few allies when you roll initiative once per long rest.

Tactics: This is actually fairly good, if it wasn’t for the musician feat. The musician feat lets you grant heroic inspiration every time the party rest. This does so once per long rest at the beginning of a combat. That’s a big disparity in potential number of uses.

In theory, you could have both in the party and you use purple dragon rook when heroic inspiration has been used on other things between combats or when you haven’t had chance for a short rest. It’s just a shame that there’s such a disparity in number of uses. Personally, I’d just take musician, but there can be a place for this in a party where someone’s already taken musician.

Spellfire spark – 4/5

Related background: Spellfire initiate

Good for: Spellcasters, especially those with little to do with their bonus action. Non-spellcasters with a high spellcasting ability can make this work too, like a banneret or psi warrior fighter. Sadly, monks and rogues probably have too much to do with their bonus action even if they can have a high spellcasting ability.

Ability: Reduce spell/magical damage by 1d4 and you know the sacred flame cantrip which can be cast as a bonus action a few times per day.

Tactics: The damage reduction is great on anyone, but sacred flame will only really work for spellcasters and a few others. It’s quite good damage too as it scales with your level and radiant damage is a rarely resisted damage type. Just be aware of the conflict with your bonus action. Wizards and sorcerers shouldn’t have a problem here, but bards, rangers and paladins have a lot of demands on their bonus action.

Tyro of the gauntlet 1/5

Related background: Knight of the gauntlet

Good for: Maybe for those that fight toe to toe with allies (like a paladin), but I don’t think it’s that great for anyone.

Ability: Use a reaction to prevent a nearby ally being pushed or pulled. Attacks against you while maintaining the ready action have disadvantage.

Tactics: The problem here is how situational these things are. Push and pull aren’t hugely rare, but you must be within 5ft of the target and have your reaction spare. Push and pull usually isn’t overly problematic either.

Readying an action isn’t hugely common because it tends to be weaker, slower and costs more of your action economy than just using an action. Normally you use it while you wait for enemies to get in range, which normally means they’re not attacking you so your 2nd trait here goes unused. I just feel like this is another very niche and situational feat.

Zhentarim ruffian – 4/5

Related background: Zhentarim mercenary

Good for: Best for big damage attackers and those that can engineer more opportunity attacks, but anyone can benefit from the enhanced initiative, especially those with easy access to more heroic inspiration.

Ability: Roll damage dice twice for opportunity attacks and choose the highest. Use heroic inspiration to give yourself and allies advantage on the initiative roll.

Tactics: Opportunity attacks aren’t always common, but you can build into them with other feats and features like with the sentinel feat. If you then use higher damage dice for your attacks (like when wielding a two handed weapon) then the average increase in damage is greater.

It’s worth noting that I did check and the wording for war caster would make using a cantrip in place of an opportunity attacks incompatible with this feat, otherwise that could have been a more powerful way to use this.

Better initiative means hitting before your enemies which is a big boon for the whole party. The slight challenge will be having the heroic inspiration to spend on this, but if you have an ally with the musician or purple dragon rook origin feats, then this isn’t too hard to engineer.

Are the origin feats in Heroes of Faerun any good?

If you’ve gotten this far, you’re probably aware of the ratings I’ve given these feats. There are a few good options to add to your repertoire. Spellfire spark and Zhentarim ruffian are probably my favourites, but Purple Dragon rook and Lords’ Alliance agent are decent options too.

As a general rule, I like that these feats try to add something different to your capabilities, and there are even general feats that work to add to these capabilities too.

Having said that, while there are 4 feats that I think are worthy options, the other half are sadly not worth bothering with. For the most part, these feats feel far too situational to be of much use at all. Some of these seem to attempt to make better use of underutilised mechanics like help, but unlike the mastermind, they fail to be of much practical use. I kind of feel like with decent playtesting, the lack of use of these origin feats should have been picked up, but for whatever reason it wasn’t, and sadly, it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

That also means you’ll need to take some care when choosing a Forgotten Realms background, which may frustrate someone wanting to play a Harper or a member of the Emerald Enclave. My suggestion would be to talk to your DM and swap out the pointless origin feat for one from the Player’s Handbook.

So that’s all the new origin feats in Heroes of Faerun. I found them to be a real mixed bag of some interesting ideas and some ideas that are far too situational. What did you think of these origin feats? Let me know in the comments below.