Brand new general feats for the different factions and archetypes 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 general feats to add to the 42 we currently have from the Player’s Handbook. These allow players to pick up extra abilities at level 4 and beyond in place of an ability score improvements.
You can also read my coverage of the origin feats from Heroes of Faerun.
In this article, I’m going to analyse each of these general 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 general feats
Heroes of Faerun gives us 13 brand new general feats to play with. All of these are completely new general 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:
Cold caster – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+
Good for: Spellcasters with cold damage spells, winter walker rangers and characters with cold damage weapons.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence wisdom or charisma
Ability: Learn ray of frost. Attacks that deal cold damage also reduce next saving throw by 1d4.
Tactics: This will work best for characters that can easily cause cold damage. This will usually be spellcasters that are taking plenty of cold damage spells. You already have ray of frost, but you may want to expand this repertoire. Unfortunately, cold spells often aren’t the strongest, but they can be decent.
The other option here is something like the winter walker who will consistently cause cold damage through their attacks or even characters with a cold damage magic weapon.
Dragonscarred – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+; cult of the dragon initiate feat
Good for: Characters that already have the cult of the dragon initiate feat. Characters with little to do with their bonus action.
Ability score improvement: Constitution or charisma
Ability: Gain a damage resistance and use dragon’s terror from the cult of the dragon initiate feat as a bonus action when you make an attack or use the magic action.
Tactics: So this actually makes cult of the dragon initiate a worthwhile feat, but you need 2 feats to get there. That’s not great feat economy, but it does mean that if you already have that origin feat, then this is actually a pretty decent feat. Not that I recommend getting the cult of the dragon initiate feat. 2 feats to accomplish what one feat should have isn’t great, but this feat itself is a decent enough feat.
Enclave magic – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+; emerald enclave fledgling feat
Good for: Those involved with beasts a lot and that want to influence them. Also those with animals companions and familiars. Druids and rangers likely fit the bill here.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Advantage when influencing beasts. Know beast sense and don’t need concentration when it’s cast.
Tactics: If you expect to regularly speak with animals and use them and influence them, this is great. It also means that if you have a familiar or other animal companion, then you can use their senses which is much better for scouting. Of course, if you already have these things, then you probably also have spellcasting and may already have access to this spell, making this an expensive way to access this spell, but beasts will be more responsive to you.
How situational all of this is really depends on your GM. If you can contrive circumstances in a way that you can use this a decent bit, which is possible, then it’s a decent feat for some.
Fairy trickster – 4/5
Requirements: Level 4+
Good for: Anyone making regular attack rolls (so especially martials). Rogues and monks may get more out of faerie trod trotter due to their more regular disengaging.
Ability score improvement: Dexterity or charisma
Ability: When disengaging, ignore difficult terrain. Can cause disadvantage on target’s next saving throw when you hit them a few times per day.
Tactics: Disengaging into difficult terrain probably isn’t hugely common unless your DM has difficult terrain everywhere. Disadvantage on saving throws is great though, especially as the action economics on this are great (just layer it onto an existing attack roll). You’ll want to coordinate this with allied spellcasters. Give disadvantage ahead of particularly nasty spell effects to really cause your target some bother.
Genie magic – 4/5
Requirements: Level 4+
Good for: Those with a decent spellcasting ability score.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Once per long rest, cast a level 1 sorcerer spell. At higher levels, you can cast this spell as a level 2 or 3 spell.
Tactics: It’s important to note that at higher levels, you aren’t casting a level 2 or 3 spell, it’s still a level 1 spell, but upcast to level 2 or 3. It’s also important to be aware that you don’t have to pick a spell here. You literally have the versatility of any level 1 sorcerer spell which is quite handy. It’s not as many spells cast as for something like fey touched, but you’ve got more flexibility in options.
This means you have situational spells like feather fall and disguise self at your finger tips as well as more commonly needed spells like magic missile, shield and chromatic orb. Chromatic orb is a great option for upcasting, but you can use any of these spells depending on your party needs.
Harper teamwork – 1/5
Requirements: Level 4+; Harper agent feat
Good for: Masterminds. It’s maybe slightly better for those that are strong against the frightened condition, but even then, it’s not a great feat.
Ability score improvement: Dexterity or charisma
Ability: The target of an attack from an ally helped by you has disadvantage on their next saving throw. Succeeding on a saving throw against being frightened or paralyzed let’s you grant the save to an ally too.
Tactics: The problem here is how often are characters using the help action for an attack? Normally, they just make an attack themself. Masterminds will have a great time here, but pretty much everyone else is quite limited.
Again, with the conditions, how often is there an opportunity to end these for someone else as well as yourself? Frightened can come in batches, but I can’t even think of a monster or spell that mass paralyzes creatures, even if batch frightening isn’t unusual. Between a pretty situational set of abilities and requirements for an even worse origin feat, this really isn’t a great feat to bother with.
Lordly resolve – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+; Lords’ alliance agent feat
Good for: Anyone
Ability score improvement: Strength or charisma
Ability: Use a bonus action to let allies use a reaction to get up from being prone and make them immune to being possessed, charmed or frightened and better at recovering from these conditions if they have them for 1 minute once per long rest.
Tactics: With prone being much more common in the 2024 rules, this is a decent buff. The main reason you’ll want to do this is to prevent enemies getting advantage on attack rolls against your allies while you wait to take a turn and get up. Just be aware this won’t work if they’re also grappled or similarly immobile.
On top of that, if you’re facing a dragon, vampire or some other terrifying or charming creature, then this makes an excellent foil for those things. Immunity is potent and not easy to come by. It’s technically a bit situational, but I think these effects will be common and potent enough.
Mythal touched – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+
Good for: Those that love chaos! But more specifically, I think it slightly favours tanks.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Cause a random effect to occur when hit by a spell or failing a saving throw against one.
Tactics: These are quite varied effects that I think lean toward a positive for you. Sometimes they might be meaningless, sometimes they might harm you and allies, but usually there’ll be a benefit. I reckon the safest place to be when triggering this is away from allies and near enemies. For this reason, I think it works best on tanks like barbarians and paladins, but anyone can make use of it.
Although the effects vary, I did notice 3 effects that could effectively end or prevent a spell. On an 11-17 and a 20. A 20 will definitely prevent the spell. 14-17 might turn a spell attack into a miss while 11-13 can stun the caster, ending their concentration if they needed it for the casting of the spell. A 1-2 could also trigger a concentration saving throw if you’re near the caster. If you can prevent a nasty spell or end the concentration maintaining it, then that’s quite potent. It’s still very much about luck though.
It’s worth being aware too that although a d20 is being rolled on the table, that this is not a d20 test so things like heroic inspiration, a divner’s portent feature and the luck feat don’t interact with it.
Order’s resilience – 2/5
Requirements: Level 4+; Tyro of the gauntlet
Good for: Anyone that wants to be really good at strength saving throws.
Ability score improvement: Strength, wisdom or charisma
Ability: Right yourself from being prone with just 5ft of movement and advantage on strength saving throws for you and very close allies.
Tactics: Sadly, this is a bit situational. Strength saving throws aren’t mega common and the need to have plenty of movement after being prone isn’t necessarily going to be common either. It’s decent enough, but perhaps lacks potency while being situational. Tyro of the gauntlet isn’t great either so that’s a bad feat you need to take to get this.
Purple dragon commandant – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+; purple dragon rook feat or martial weapon proficiency
Good for: High attack characters like monks, fighters and dual wielders. It’s especially good for those with little to do with their bonus action (fighters and barbarians both fit the mould here).
Ability score improvement: Strength or dexterity
Ability: Grant about 10 temporary hit points a few times per long rest and advantage on attack rolls while bloodied.
Tactics: That’s a decent number of temporary hit points you can grant and bonus actions aren’t usually too precious. Sadly, you can’t use these on yourself while bloodied to last longer while damaged, but there are many other ways to get temporary hit points which can be a good idea for keeping fighting while bloodied and having those better attacks.
Advantage on attack rolls is going to benefit high attack characters most, especially those with plenty of durability so you can last longer while injured.
Spellfire adept – 4/5
Requirements: Level 4+; spellfire spark feat, spellcasting or pact magic feature
Good for: Spellcasters, especially those with larger hit dice and access to radiant damage spells. You’re best off with AoE spells too making clerics probably your best option here. Bards might also fit the bill.
Ability score improvement: Intelligence, wisdom or charisma
Ability: When casting a spell that causes radiant damage, expend 2 hit dice to increase a damage roll by that much and ignore resistance to radiant damage.
Tactics: More damage dealt is decent if you can wrangle yourself with radiant damage spells. There’s a trade off here though. You may need to ask yourself whether you’ll need that healing from the hit dice later. If you’re near the end of your adventuring day, then perhaps not and this is fine, otherwise, you may need some caution.
One factor to consider is the size of your hit dice. A paladin will do more extra damage than a sorcerer due to their larger hit dice.
But the bigger effect is going to be using this on damage rolls that affect multiple creatures (so usually AoE spells). You only increase the damage on one damage roll and as AoE spells use a single damage roll for multiple creatures, this multiplies the extra damage by the number of creatures in the effect. This makes spells like spellfire storm and spirit guardians some of the better options for this. Even more so if you use circle magic to expand the area of your spell to increase its targets.
Street justice – 3/5
Requirements: Level 4+
Good for: Grappler builds. This generally means martial classes like fighters, barbarians and monks, but only if they’ve built for grappling.
Ability score improvement: Strength or dexterity
Ability: Allies have advantage on attack rolls against creatures grappled by you, You’re better at tying up foes and you’re better at intimidating hostile enemies.
Tactics: You’ll need to build a grappler for this to really be useful. Even better if they have a decent charisma. This means becoming good at unarmed strikes and potentially grabbing other feats like tavern brawler, grappler and the unarmed fighting style. Of course, that’s a lot of feats so building into this can be quite an investment, and I’d say that street justice is often your lowest priority of those unarmed fighting feats.
Despite that, it has the potential to be quite good if you’re working with allies and doing plenty of grappling, you can really focus fire on a single target while they try to squirm out of your grip.
Zhentarim tactics – 5/5
Requirements: Level 4+; Zhentarim ruffian feat
Good for: Melee martials, especially those that can enhance their opportunity attacks somehow. Rogues can do well here too making it easier to land sneak attacks on an opportunity attack, but they will need to make themselves vulnerable to do so. The more skill proficiencies you have, the better here too.
Ability score improvement: Dexterity or charisma
Ability: Can make an opportunity attack against creatures that attack you from 5ft away and have a changeable expertise.
Tactics: This will work best for close combat specialists allowing them to often get opportunity attacks out. It’s also a great way for a rogue to get the coveted opportunity sneak attack (sneak attacks are once per turn rather than once per round so you can land one on your turn and later as an opportunity attack).
A changeable expertise is really good too. Not only is expertise great, but you can shift it around different proficiencies. It’s especially useful if you have a lot of skill proficiencies, as rogues, bards, rangers and those with the skilled feat might have.
Are the general feats in Heroes of Faerun any good?
Yes, I think for the most part they are. While the origin feats I wrote about from the book were very hit and miss, the general feats seem to be more hit than miss. There’s still a couple of really poor options (Harper teamwork in particular comes to mind), but mostly I can see decent use cases for these feats.
In fact, what they manage to do is fill in some surprising niches in feat options. Want to be a teamworking grappler, then go with street justice, want a rogue with opportunity attack sneak attacks, then go with Zhentarim tactics, want to sow chaos and disrupt spellcasters, then there’s mythal touched and so on.
That does mean some of these are a tad niche, but they work for different builds. For example, cold caster is really designed around spellcasters with cold spells and the winter walker ranger, so it’s not for a lot of characters, but it works well for those it is for.
Largely then, I think that means this is a good mix of relatively unique feats that justify their space in the game.
What did you think of the general feats in Heroes of Faerun? Let me know in the comments below.
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