[Cosmos] Feats for 2024e (Patreon)

Finally it's time to get the Backgrounds and Feats for Aryka's Guide to be usable! There are 7 new Origin Feats and 14 new General Feats. Become a hardened Survivor of the unforgiving Cosmos, or pick up the Drone Keeper feat to summon a swarm of your own drones.

There's a set of Backgrounds attached to these Origin Feats too, but they need the equipment rules to be revised before they can be fully useful. The 2024 edition of 5e introduced mechanical uses for tools and equipment, so now I have to revisit the Cosmos gear to rebalance their use and price. I'm also planning to introduce the new Fabricator tool that will be eventually be used to create some of the modern gear already available!

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DESIGN COMMENTARY

Origin Feats

Combat Medic: This feat is intended to fulfill that archetypal role of a sci-fi field medic. The Healer feat is also not in the SRD, so something is needed to replace it, but it also can’t overlap with the Healer feat if a player decides to take both. The two design pillars of this feat is the focus of carrying the wounded out of harm’s way (Athletics) and medical items. Medical Synthesizer ensures Bolstered Healing always has some use (unlike Healer’s reliance on kits); the two items created are balanced against Vampire’s Plaything’s ability to make one equivalent price/potency Healing Potion. Bolstered Healing applies to Potions as well, but its potential is gated behind price and supply (not ideal). Combat Carry is the other half of this feat’s power budget: an always-active benefit for escape situations. It’s also possible to munchkin this benefit to “create a human mount” of sorts, but that requires some weird builds to work so I’m not too worried.

Grid Runner: This feat adapts the Personal Grid feature of the original Grid Junkie background, which I liked for flavor reasons. It has functionally the same effect and power budget as the Musician origin feat, granting Heroic Inspiration on a Short Rest. The Gridspace rules will also be amended to indicate that when your Unconscious body gains the benefits of a Rest after Resting in the Grid as well. However, the Personal Gridspace benefit only functions while your party is not in the Grid (e.g. you can’t enter your Gridspace while in another Gridspace but a character with the Musician feat can still grant Heroic Inspiration). Thus, the Grid Profile benefit ensures you’ll get a bit of functionality while inside.

Prototyper: This is the response to the Crafter feat. The more robust crafting rules in 2024 means the items introduced in Aryka’s Guide 2014 need to have more well-defined uses as well as some way to produce them. The Fabricator, a universal 3D Printer, is the new tool introduced to cover them. This feat helps link the Fabricator to some of the new backgrounds that grant proficiency with it.

Star-Blessed: This is the spiritual successor of the original Cosmic Fluke background’s Determination feature. It’s different now and is geared more toward mysticism of the stars, allowing it to match well with new backgrounds that involve the stars. The power budget is based off the Lorwyn backgrounds, which grant a level 1 spell and a custom modification to it. Because Bless is widely considered a very powerful spell (and is good on all characters), I erred on the low side for Guiding Stars benefit. Treating a 1 as a 2 also reduces rerolling.

Survivor: This is the new feat for reworked Cosmic Fluke background, now retooled to match with other potential backgrounds as well. The Cosmos is dangerous! This power budget is based off Vampire’s Plaything, whose Timely Retreat is most similar. The Survivor’s Instinct benefit interacts with Heroic Inspiration, which I’d expect to happen at least 1/Short Rest due to Musician (functionally a 1/SR ability). It changes the reawakening probability of a Death Save from 5% to 30%, which is thematically appropriate. A party can theoretically ensure no one falls by triggering this benefit repeatedly via generating lots of Heroic Inspiration, except that would require a weirdly optimized party AND your party has to drop to 0 a lot, which you’d rather avoid in the first place.

Technomancy Initiate: This feat is like Magic Initiate but narrowly focused. The problem is Technomancy spells are generally a subset of Wizard spells, so the feat is functionally a worse Magic (Wizard) Initiate. To alleviate this, this feat lets you swap out spells per Long Rest, making it more flexible like downloading a new program. I considered using the Technomancer Wizard framework of expanding the selection to visual illusions (holograms) and lightning damage spells, but decided against it to maintain the wizard’s unique feature.

Void Tested: This feat is for any character who spends a lot of time from the void. Unyielding Breath can save most any character from initial suffocation, an extremely deadly hazard more common in this setting, which is very good. In practice, however, it shouldn’t see much use because you want to avoid getting that close in the first place. The other benefit grants Advantage against Prone and shoves; it makes up much of the power budget by being applicable to all types of environments. It’s also thematically appropriate for characters on starships that see a lot of rocking/impact.

General Feats

Astral Touched: This feat is the analog of the other X Touched feats, including the new Vampire Touched feat. The progression is fairly standard: a level 1 spell of choice and a level 2 utility spell. For level 1, I chose an appropriate pair of schools that are also unique from the X Touched; Conjuration is a stretch but fits better than the other schools because it’s more open-ended and thus thematically related to the “infinite possibility” nature of the Cosmos. For level 2, Levitate most strongly resonated with the floating-orbiting nature of stars. Spider Climb might be my other choice.

Current Conduit: This feat is for characters touched by the raw energy that is the Current. The Ability Score spread is standard for magic-related feats. This feat is balanced against an X Touched feat (e.g. level 1 & level 2 spell). The single cantrip covers half the remaining power budget (and is equivalent to a 1/day Level 1 spell). Current Skimmer can be compared to Fey Touched’s 1/day Misty Step for a similar effect. It has functionally no action requirement if paired with an appropriate spell, making up for its inability to be “recast” with spell slots.

Cyberwarfare Expert: This feat grants a tool proficiency (which is generally minor), the ability to speed up hacks, and a situational defense. Compare this to Poisoner, which also grants a tool proficiency, a limited-use feature (Poison Doses), and a situational feature (ignore poison Resist). The power budget depends on how often one expects to encounter a creature with the Technomancy tag, but I believe the Reaction cost limiting the attack rolls to 1/round is sufficient as it doesn’t protect against multiple enemies or Multiattack.

Drone Keeper: This feat is for characters who want that Mr. Terrific drone fantasy without the full spell investment for Drone Barrage. Find Proxy is a Level 1 spell. A PB number of uses for the drones (mitigating and dealing damage is similarly leveled) starts it small and keeps it relevant throughout progression, going from a value of ~10 up to 60. This should err on the low side because it’s hard to compare to other features. At best, we can take from Vampire Hunter’s damage mitigation spread that goes from 2d6 (7) to 6d6 (21).

Firearm Expert: This feat draws similarities to Crossbow Expert. Using that as a benchmark, Tactical Reload’s ignoring the Reload penalty ability covers ignoring Loading. The other property, Cover Fire, offers an alternative fighting option with Reload weapons—where Crossbow Expert allows you to add bonus average ~3 damage per turn, Cover Fire can impose Disadvantage on multiple attacks within a range. This scales well against grouped enemies, but because it requires an action, it’s best suited to Rogues and classes who won’t miss out on extra attacks (though it’s still a decent tactical option for zoning, crowd control, and attacking approaching enemies). I considered implementing a weaker version of this as a Bonus Action to benefit those with Extra Attack, but it was too clunky since it’d be used too consistently.

Grid Savant: Using X Touched as a benchmark, this feat grants a level 1 and level 2 spell, but without the option to choose the level 1 spell. Both spell choices assist in Grid-related goals (generally connect to Grids via terminals). To make up for the lack of choice, Quick Conduit shortens the connection process down to 1 turn: a minor, situational benefit.

Moon Bearer: This feat is compared to Putrefy and Rebuke feats. This feat is different because it permits any ability score to be increased, which makes it more versatile and thus accounts for some power budget. Its next benefit grants Advantage under situational circumstances, so it’s another minor benefit. The last one creates moonlight to combo with the other feature, and also imposes Charmed with no saving throw (powerful!). This doesn’t directly mitigate damage because it triggers after an attack, but it’s enough to prevent Multiattacks and permit a subsequent free Disengage.

Sun Bearer: This feat is compared to Putrefy and Rebuke feats. This feat is different because it permits any ability score to be increased, which makes it more versatile and thus accounts for some power budget. Its next benefit grants Advantage under situational circumstances, so it’s another minor benefit. The last one creates sunlight to combo with the other feature, and also imposes a brief Blinded with no saving throw (powerful!). This isn’t the same as true Blinded because it only works for attack rolls, so it doesn’t prevent spellcasting or make them easier to hit. It’s closer to just imposing Disadvantage on attacks, only worded to use the sight rules.

Super Soldier: This is the brute feat of this batch, just granting extra damage and resilience. It’s half a Resilient feat or half of Order’s Resilience. Advantage was chosen over a type of bonus to avoid excessive-stacking. Enhanced Critical is another half a feat, granting decent extra damage on critical hits. This Critical intentionally works for any type of attack.

Technomancy Adept: This feat grants one extra spell and Advantage on Perception checks. Though portrayed as situational, technomancy should be ubiquitous enough that it’s a major benefit.

Vanguard: Feats typically get two benefits. The first one is limited use and frees up your allies for movement, which is a good way to ferry allies around (but still requires you to Dash), so it’s a minor benefit. The second is a flat bonus to damage, which is always good (and simply gets better as new benefits continue to stack).

Void Bearer: Color Loss is a ribbon benefit since there’s no mechanical rules and it’s entirely up to the GM to adjudicate its use. The Reaction to gain Resistance to a damage type until the end of a turn is a huge benefit that can prevent a ton of damage if used properly.

Vortex Warped: One cantrip is equivalent to a 1/day Level 1 spell. The second persistent benefit is a good alternative to keep enemies close to you, which is comparable to Piercer’s benefit of reducing Speed (with the exception that Vortex Snare can’t be used to prevent enemies from approaching).

Weightless Combatant: This feat borrows some from the Athlete feat, granting a Climb speed, a benefit to a specific type of mobility (launches), and medium benefit that most characters shouldn’t have trouble with (removing Disadvantage from not being Anchored). Because Anchoring doesn’t cost any actions and only requires you be adjacent to a surface, the last benefit shouldn’t come up too often.