Righting Perceived Wrongs - Racial Feats
It is hardly a controversial claim to say the available set of racial feats in 5th Edition is a bit lacking. Sure, there’s a fair spread for the PHB races, and even a few more broad ones based on sizes. But outside of those, and a few extremely niche ones for Planeshift releases, there seems to be an absence of racially inspired feats in a game which has a play experience largely defined by roleplaying as a fictional fantasy race.
One might argue the non-PHB races (mainly those from Volos and other setting specific books like Eberron and Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica) are both uncommon and unique enough on their own to not warrant specialized feats that play into their racial flavor and give them interesting abilities - but really, I couldn’t disagree more. Nothing makes the game feel more samey than for every Goblin to have identical abilities whereas humans, elves, tieflings, and half-orcs all strut around with diversity options.
Now, I don’t think racial feats are a big deal per se - they are not a fundamentally important part of 5th edition in the least, a system where feats are, strictly speaking, an optional facet. It makes sense for the first set of racial feats from WotC to focus on the core options that most players will be using if they’re going to include something like racially locked feats. That being said, I’d like to emphasize the word ‘first’ there, and argue that once you create a set of interesting options like Flames of Phelgethos and the Halfling feats, you can’t, and really shouldn’t even try, to put the genie back in the bottle - these are cool concepts that can redefine how a character feels and plays, and expanding them only feels natural.
Moving away from screaming into the doubtless already very crowded hall of people complaining about WotC’s design choices, I’d rather talk about the Racial Feats we recently released and the inspiration for each one as a flavor concept, and encourage people to consider making similar things on their own. Feats are a fun design space, because they’re innately strong and optional, and can revolutionize build options if well made. (Of course, balance is always an issue, but when the official game contains things like Lucky and Elvin Accuracy, you’ve got a lot of wiggle room between ‘too weak’ and broken).
There’s a very simple answer to why these feats were in the first set released: They’re the ‘non-monstrous’ races in Volos’ Guide to Monsters. Kenku, Aasimar, Firbolg, and Triton.
I prefer to do things like this in fives, and I had two fun ideas for Aasimar, thus them getting two options - it helped they have subraces and two polarizing abilities that gave me some wiggle room for design space - and the others only get one, not that I think these racial feats are anywhere near exhaustive of the potential for Kenku, Firbolg, Triton or even Aasimar.
Each of these feats take a different approach to the idea of a racial feat augmenting the existing aspects of a race. Kenku are cunning and flexible - thus they are adept at scavenging and assessing the value of things. Firbolg have a spread of magical skills, much like the Drow, and a feat that augments these features, again much like Drow High Magic, felt appropriate. The Aasimar feats improve the two most notable aspects of these part-celestials, their ability to heal, and the powerful temporary transformation they can undertake. The Triton feat emphasizes their innately foregin presence in almost any land based setting - both providing a useful and interesting skill set, and a flavorful explanation for why the Triton is present in the first place, should one be needed.
I could delve into the nitty gritty of design and balance, but I am more than sure you can find such assessments elsewhere, and doubtless you can find such a breakdown elsewhere (I suggest the Angry DM. He’s very thorough). Instead, I want to reaffirm that racial feats should be strong (not TOO strong, again, Elvin Accuracy simply isn’t OK) but also should emphasize, augment, reshape, or subvert the racial mechanics and lore of the races they are an option for. If someone wants a purely mechanically strong feat, they won’t be looking for a racially themed one.
-Jon the Kobold Wrangler
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