A feat is a special feature that either gives your character a new capability or improves one he or she already has. For example, a halfling rogue chooses to start with the Improved Initiative feat at 1st level. That feat gives her a +4 bonus to her initiative check results. At 3rd level (see the Experience and Level-Dependent Benefits table), she gains a new feat and chooses Dodge. This feat allows her to avoid the attacks of an opponent she selects by improving her Armor Class against that opponent.
Unlike a skill, a feat has no ranks. A character either has a feat or does not.
Unlike skills, feats are not bought with points. A player simply chooses them for his or her character. Each character gets one feat upon creation. At 3rd level and every three levels thereafter (6th, 9th, 12th, 15th, and 18th), he or she gains another feat (see the Experience and Level-Dependent Benefits table). Feats are gained according to character level, regardless of individual class levels.
Additionally, members of some classes get bonus feats as class features. These feats may be chosen from special lists (see Fighter Bonus Feats, below, and the individual class descriptions in Chapter 3 for details).
A human character also gets a bonus feat at 1st level, chosen by the player. This feat can be of any feat for which the character qualifies.
Some feats have prerequisites. Your character must have the indicated ability score, class feature, feat, skill, base attack bonus, or other quality designated in order to select or use that feat. A character can gain a feat at the same level at which he or she gains the prerequisite. For example, at 3rd level, a half-orc barbarian could spend 1 skill point on the Ride skill (gaining his first rank in Ride) and select the Mounted Combat feat at the same time.
A character can’t use a feat if he or she has lost a prerequisite. For example, if your character’s Strength drops below 13 because a ray of enfeeblement spell, he or she can’t use the Power Attack feat until the prerequisite is once again met.
Some feats are general, meaning that no special rules govern them as a group. Others are item creation feats, which allow spellcasters to create magic items of all sorts. A metamagic feat lets a spellcaster prepare and cast a spell with greater effect, albeit as if the spell were a higher level than it actually is. These are but a few of the categories of feats discussed below.
Feat types introduced after the core rulebooks are listed alphabetically after those in the core rulebooks (fighter bonus feats, item creation feats, metamagic feats, and epic feats).
Fighters gain bonus feats selected from a subset of the feat index. Any feat designated as a fighter feat can be selected as a fighter’s bonus feat. This designation does not restrict characters of other classes from selecting these feats, assuming that they meet any prerequisites.
Spellcasters can use their personal power to create lasting magic items. Doing so, however, is draining. A spellcaster must put a little of himself or herself into every magic item he or she creates.
An item creation feat lets a spellcaster create a magic item of a certain type. Regardless of the type of items they involve, the various item creation feats all have certain features in common.
XP Cost: Power and energy that the spellcaster would normally have is expended when making a magic item. The XP cost equals 1⁄25 the cost of the item in gold pieces (see Creating Magic Items for item costs). A character cannot spend so much XP on an item that he or she loses a level. However, upon gaining enough XP to attain a new level, he or she can immediately expend XP on creating an item rather than keeping the XP to advance a level.
Raw Materials Cost: Creating a magic item requires costly components, most of which are consumed in the process. The cost of these materials equals half the cost of the item.
For example, at 12th level, a wizard gains the feat Forge Ring, and she creates a ring of deflection +3. The cost of the ring is 18,000 gp, so it costs her 720 XP plus 9,000 gp to make.
Using an item creation feat also requires access to a laboratory or magical workshop, special tools, and so on. A character generally has access to what he or she needs unless unusual circumstances apply (if the character is traveling far from home, for instance).
Time: The time to create a magic item depends on the feat and the cost of the item. The minimum time is one day.
Item Cost: Brew Potion, Craft Wand, and Scribe Scroll create items that directly reproduce spell effects, and the power of these items depends on their caster level—that is, a spell from such an item has the power it would have if cast by a spellcaster of that level. A wand of fireball at caster level 8th, for example, would create fireballs that deal 8d6 points of damage and have a range of 720 feet. The price of these items (and thus the XP cost and the cost of the raw materials) also depends on the caster level. The caster level must be high enough that the spellcaster creating the item can cast the spell at that level. To find the final price in each case, multiply the caster level by the spell level, then multiply the result by a constant, as shown below:
Scrolls: Base price = spell level × caster level × 25 gp.
Potions: Base price = spell level × caster level × 50 gp.
Wands: Base price = spell level × caster level × 750 gp.
A 0-level spell is considered to have a spell level of ½ for the purpose of this calculation.
Extra Costs: Any potion, scroll, or wand that stores a spell with a costly material component or an XP cost also carries a commensurate cost. For potions and scrolls, the creator must expend the material component or pay the XP cost when creating the item. For a wand, the creator must expend fifty copies of the material component or pay fifty times the XP cost.
Some magic items similarly incur extra costs in material components or XP, as noted in their descriptions. For example, a ring of three wishes costs 15,000 XP in addition to its normal price (as many XP as it costs to cast wish three times).
As a spellcaster’s knowledge of magic grows, she can learn to cast spells in ways slightly different from the ways in which the spells were originally designed or learned. For example, a spellcaster can learn to cast a spell without having to say its verbal component, to cast a spell for greater effect, or even to cast it with nothing but a moment’s thought. Preparing and casting a spell in such a way is harder than normal but, thanks to metamagic feats, at least it is possible.
For instance, at 3rd level, a wizard chooses to gain Silent Spell, the feat that allows her to cast a spell without its verbal component. The cost of doing so, however, is that in preparing the spell, she must use up a spell slot one spell level higher than the spell actually is. Thus, if she prepares charm person as a silent spell, it takes up one of her 2nd-level slots. It is still only a 1st-level spell, so the DC for the Will save against it does not go up. The wizard cannot prepare a 2nd-level spell as a silent spell because she would have to prepare it as a 3rd-level spell, and she can’t use 3rd-level spell slots until she reaches 5th level.
Preparation Spellcasters: Certain arcane spellcasters (such as wizards and wu jen) and divine spellcasters (such as clerics, druids, paladins, and rangers) must prepare their spells in advance. During preparation, the character chooses which spells to prepare with metamagic feats (and thus which ones take up higher-level spell slots than normal).
Spontaneous Spellcasters: These include arcane spellcasters (such as sorcerers and bards) and divine spellcasters (such as favored souls). These spellcasters choose spells as they cast them. They can choose when they cast their spells whether to apply their metamagic feats to improve them. As with other spellcasters, the improved spell uses up a higher-level spell slot. But because the sorcerer or bard has not prepared the spell in a metamagic form in advance, he must apply the metamagic feat on the spot. Therefore, such a character must also take more time to cast a metamagic spell (one enhanced by a metamagic feat) than he does to cast a regular spell. If the spell’s normal casting time is 1 action, casting a metamagic version is a full-round action for a sorcerer or bard. (This isn’t the same as a 1-round casting time, as described under Cast a Spell.) For a spell with a longer casting time, it takes an extra full-round action to cast the spell.
Spontaneous Casting and Metamagic Feats: Certain preparation spellcasters have categories of spells they can cast spontaneously, like clerics with cure or inflict spells or druids with summon nature’s ally spells. A cleric spontaneously casting a cure or inflict spell can cast a metamagic version of it instead. For instance, an 11th-level cleric can swap out a prepared 6th-level spell to cast an empowered cure critical wounds spell. Extra time is also required in this case. Casting a 1-action metamagic spell spontaneously is a full-round action, and a spell with a longer casting time takes an extra full-round action to cast. This would include any druid’s spontaneously cast summon nature’s ally spell, so a 13th-level druid spontaneously casting a maximized summon nature’s ally VII spell to summon 1d4+1 (maximized to 5) giant constrictor snakes from the 5th-level table would finish casting the spell at the end of her following turn.
Effects of Metamagic Feats on a Spell: In all ways, a metamagic spell operates at its original spell level, even though it is prepared and cast as a higher-level spell. Saving throw modifications are not changed unless stated otherwise in the feat description. The modifications made by these feats only apply to spells cast directly by the feat user. A spellcaster can’t use a metamagic feat to alter a spell being cast from a wand, scroll, or other device.
Metamagic feats that eliminate components of a spell (such as Silent Spell and Still Spell) don’t eliminate the attack of opportunity provoked by casting a spell while threatened. However, casting a spell modified by Quicken Spell does not provoke an attack of opportunity.
Metamagic feats cannot be used with all spells. See the specific feat descriptions for the spells that a particular feat can’t modify.
Multiple Metamagic Feats on a Spell: A spellcaster can apply multiple metamagic feats to a single spell. Changes to its level are cumulative. A silent, stilled version of charm person, for example, would be prepared and cast as a 3rd-level spell (a 1st-level spell, increased by one spell level for each of the metamagic feats). You can’t apply the same metamagic feat more than once to a single spell (for instance, you can’t cast a twice-empowered magic missile to get +100% damage).
Magic Items and Metamagic Spells: With the right item creation feat, you can store a metamagic version of a spell in a scroll, potion, or wand. Level limits for potions and wands apply to the spell’s higher spell level (after the application of the metamagic feat). A character doesn’t need the metamagic feat to activate an item storing a metamagic version of a spell.
Counterspelling Metamagic Spells: Whether or not a spell has been enhanced by a metamagic feat does not affect its vulnerability to counterspelling or its ability to counterspell another spell. (See Counterspells.)
Epic feats are available only to epic characters—that is, characters with total class levels exceeding 20. Whenever an epic character gains a new feat, it can be from among epic feats or non-epic feats described elsewhere. Naturally, a character must meet the prerequisites of any feat, epic or non-epic, that is desired.
Bardic music feats, as the name suggests, require the bardic music ability, and they cost daily uses of the bardic music ability to activate. All bardic music feats require that the character be able to produce music to use the feat, even those that require only a free action and those that require no action at all.
Despite the names of the various bardic music feats, they work equally well with any variety of the Perform skill.
Class features that resemble bardic music, such as the war chanter’s chanter music (Complete Warrior) or a seeker of the song’s seeker music abilities (Complete Arcane), can be substituted for the bardic music prerequisite of this feat, and uses of those class features can be spent in place of bardic music uses to gain the benefit of the feat.
In general, bardic music feats do not function in an area of magical silence.
A ceremony feat grants you the knowledge and training needed to complete several specific ceremonies. Each feat uses the Knowledge (religion) skill to gauge the depth of your study. As you gain more ranks in that skill, the ceremonies available through the feat increase.
A creature can benefit from one ceremony at a time. If you attempt a second ceremony on the same creature, the first ceremony’s benefits immediately end, and the second ceremony’s benefits apply.
Each ceremony has a cost in time and resources. The ceremony consumes its needed materials when it ends (not when the benefit ends). If the ceremony is disrupted, such as if an opponent attacks before you finish, the material components are not lost.
The feats in this category share characteristics that make them unavailable to single-class fighters. First, they all have as a prerequisite the ability to turn or rebuke undead. Thus, they are open to clerics, paladins of 3rd level or higher, and a member of any prestige class or any creature that has that ability.
Second, the force that powers a divine feat is the ability to channel positive or negative energy to turn or rebuke undead. Each use of a divine feat costs a character a minimum of one turn or rebuke attempt from her number of attempts each day. If you don’t have any turn or rebuke attempts left, you can’t use a divine feat. Turning or rebuking undead is a standard action (unless you have a special ability that says otherwise). These feats often take a standard action to activate, but may require other types of actions as specified. Regardless, you may activate only one divine feat (or use the ability to turn or rebuke undead once) per round, though overlapping durations may allow you the benefits of more than one divine feat at a time.
Third, turning or rebuking undead is a supernatural ability and a standard action that does not provoke an attack of opportunity and counts as an attack. Activating a divine feat is also a supernatural ability and does not provoke an attack of opportunity unless otherwise specified in the feat description. Activating a divine feat is not considered an attack unless the feat’s activation could be the direct cause of damage to a target. Improved Smiting, for example, adds 1d6 points of damage to a smite attack, but does not directly deal damage to an opponent upon its activation. It is not itself an attack.
Paladins in particular should consider these feats. Because the paladin’s turning ability remains behind the cleric’s throughout the paladin’s career, a paladin who chooses one or two divine feats has more options than just turning undead.
Domain feats signify a character’s dedication to a particular religious ideal or tenet. You and your DM should determine a reason for this devotion as part of your character’s background. A domain feat usually corresponds to one of the domains to which a particular deity grants access, or those representing a set of ideals.
You can select a domain feat at any level. Once you have chosen one, however, you cannot select another unless the second fits thematically with the first. Furthermore, you can never have more than two domain feats (except as specified in Clerics and Domain Feats, below).
Unless otherwise noted, the benefit granted by any domain feat is a spell-like ability with a caster level equal to your character level. All such effects are subject to spell resistance, and you can dismiss any continuing effect as a free action. If a domain feat allows a saving throw, its entry provides the necessary information. If you have the ability to turn or rebuke undead, you can gain additional daily uses of a domain feat’s benefit by permanently sacrificing daily uses of that ability.
Usually, domain feats go together only if they correspond to the domains offered by the deity you follow. For example, Kord grants access to the Chaos, Good, Luck, and Strength domains, so a worshiper of Kord could choose the Chaos Devotion, Good Devotion, Luck Devotion, or Strength Devotion feats without going outside his deity’s sphere of influence.
For characters who do not worship a particular deity, use the following guidelines for which domain feats allow or preclude the selection of others. This should be done in concert with the DM.
Opposing Domains: The Good and Evil domains, and the Law and Chaos domains are in opposition, so no character should have both Good Devotion and Evil Devotion (or both Law Devotion and Chaos Devotion). In some cases, you might decide that the Healing and Death domains oppose each other, and likewise Destruction and Protection. The Fire domain does not necessarily oppose Water, nor does Air conflict with Earth, since many nature deities (such as Obad-Hai) grant access to all the elemental domains.
Appropriate Theme: If you do not follow any specific deity, your basic system of beliefs should support your domain feat choices. A good rule of thumb is to designate one to three domains (in addition to that corresponding to your first domain feat) that are important to you. These beliefs must also be consistent with your alignment.
Clerics and Domain Feats: If you are a cleric (or any other character class who gains access to a domain), you can choose any domain feat corresponding to the list of domains offered by your deity, even if you do not have access to those particular domains. A cleric of Pelor, for example, can choose to cast spells from the Good and Healing domains but select the Strength Devotion and Sun Devotion feats.
In addition, you can choose to give up access to a domain in exchange for the corresponding domain feat. Doing so allows you to select up to three domain feats, but you cannot prepare domain spells or use the granted power of the sacrificed domain. In essence, you trade in a domain for an extra feat slot that you can spend only on a specific domain feat. For example, the above cleric of Pelor could choose to give up the granted power and spells of the Good domain for the Good Devotion feat.
Caster Level: Unless otherwise noted, the benefit granted by any domain feat is a spell-like ability with a caster level equal to your character level. All such effects are subject to spell resistance, and you can dismiss any continuing effect as a free action. If a domain feat allows a saving throw, its entry provides the necessary information.
Players and DMs can also create domain feats tied to domains not described in the Player’s Handbook. Use existing domain feats as examples for modeling your own. Alternatively, you can create an equivalency system that links the domain feats in this section to link to other domains. The following table provides samples of equivalencies; these domains can be found in the Complete Divine supplement.
| Domain | Equivalent Domain Feat (Devotion) |
|---|---|
| Celerity | Travel |
| Cold | Water |
| Community | Protection |
| Competition | War |
| Creation | Healing |
| Domination | Magic |
| Dream | Trickery |
| Force | Earth |
| Glory | Sun |
| Inquisition | Knowledge |
| Liberation | Good |
| Madness | Chaos |
| Mind | Knowledge |
| Mysticism | Magic |
| Oracle | Luck |
| Pact | Law |
| Pestilence | Destruction |
| Purification | Healing |
| Summoner | Animal |
| Weather | Air |
Draconic feats can be taken by sorcerers, granting them abilities akin to those of their draconic ancestors. Some increase a character’s physical capabilities, granting him claw attacks or making him more resistant to attacks, while others allow him to channel his abilities into a potent breath weapon or grant him affinity with his draconic progenitor’s breath weapon energy type.
An initiate feat shows that a follower has achieved distinction with his deity, and therefore has gained access to additional spells and abilities. Typically, the feat grants a minor benefit to the character and allows him to add a number of spells to his cleric spell list. Some initiate feats also allow the addition of these spells to the spell lists of other classes. If you have more than one class list that qualifies for this addition, you must choose only one spell list to which they will be added.
Any character of a class that must select a deity and that uses the cleric spell list for spellcasting can treat his level in that class as if it were a cleric level for the purpose of qualifying for an initiate feat. For example, a favored soul who had chosen Bahamut as his deity and who had reached 3rd level could select the Initiate of Bahamut feat. The character would then gain the benefit of the feat and would add the given spells to his favored soul spell list. Since the favored soul casts from a limited list of spells known, he still must add those spells to his spells known list as normal to cast them. If an initiate feat allows you to add skills to your cleric class skill list, you can choose to add them to the class skill list of the class you used instead of cleric to qualify.
No character can have more than one initiate feat, since such a feat presumes a deep level of commitment to a single deity.
Leader feats augment or alter the effects of the Leadership feat (as presented in the Player’s Handbook version and described in more detail in the Dungeon Master’s Guide version). Typically, a leader feat affects your cohort and/or your followers but has no effect on other allies.
Since all leader feats include Leadership as a prerequisite, their presence in the game is subject to the DM’s approval. If the DM prefers not to include the Leadership feat in the campaign, then all feats of the leader type are similarly off limits.
In addition to their listed benefits, each leader feat taken by a character improves his Leadership score by +1.
Most scoundrels think themselves to be clever, surviving by their wits and escaping capture or injury with their masterful skills and abilities. Often, though, scoundrels survive simply out of dumb luck. The luck feats presented here put the power of luck (good and bad) into the hands of characters.
Luck feats don’t directly improve your abilities or add new features to your repertoire. By selecting a luck feat, you gain access to a specific lucky effect (usually a reroll) that helps keep you alive or ensures that you succeed. Each additional luck feat grants you another specific lucky effect that can help you win even when the dice say you should lose, in addition to another daily luck reroll.
Though you as a player decide when to use a luck feat, in the game world a lucky result almost never occurs consciously. Instead, a luck reroll represents a fortuitous event, such as a fire giant inexplicably losing his grip on his weapon, a puddle on the floor causing you to slip and be missed by an arrow, or a bit of rust on a lock preventing it from fully closing—making it easier to pick than normal.
When you select a luck feat, you gain access to a luck reroll similar to the power granted by the Luck domain. Unlike with that granted power, each luck feat specifies what kind of roll can be rerolled. For example, Magical Fortune allows you to reroll the damage from a single arcane spell you have just cast.
Typically, a luck feat grants one luck reroll per day, but luck rerolls can be used for any luck feat you have. For example, if you have Magical Fortune and Lucky Start, you gain two luck rerolls per day. You can use each of them either to reroll damage from an arcane spell or to reroll an initiative check.
Expending a luck reroll to use a luck feat is either a swift or immediate action, as noted in the feat description. Even if you somehow have the ability to take more than one swift action or immediate action per round, you can’t expend luck rerolls more than once to affect the same event.
Unless otherwise noted, you must decide whether to make a luck reroll after you have made the original roll, but before the success or failure of that roll has been announced. You must take the result of the reroll, even if it’s worse than the original result.
Some luck feats allow you to expend luck rerolls to change fate in ways other than simply rerolling dice.
Feats marked with the [Racial] tag require the character to be of a specific race in order to select the feat. These feats share no other special properties and are considered to be a subset of a larger category of feats.
All wild feats have as a prerequisite the wild shape ability. Thus, they are open to druids of 5th level or higher, as well as any character who has gained the wild shape ability from a prestige class or other source.
Each use of a wild feat generally costs you one daily use of your wild shape ability. If you don’t have any uses of wild shape left, you can’t use a wild feat. Unless otherwise noted, changing form with wild shape or activating a wild feat is a standard action. You may only use the wild shape ability to change form or activate one wild feat per round, though overlapping durations may allow you the benefits of more than one wild feat at a time.
Activating a wild feat is a supernatural ability and does not provoke an attack of opportunity unless otherwise specified in the feat description. Activating a wild feat is not considered an attack unless the feat’s activation could be the direct cause of damage to a target. Grizzly’s Claws, for example, gives you claw attacks, but the feat does not directly deal damage to an opponent upon its activation. It is not itself an attack.
Tainted feats can only be taken by those who have taint, as described in Chapter 4 of Heroes of Horror. Certain feats require more taint than others, or a specific type of taint (corruption or depravity). Anyone with a tainted feat who reduces her taint score to below the feat’s prerequisites loses access to the feat. She does not, however, lose the feat itself; she has no empty slot to fill with something else, and she instantly regains use of the feat should she once more raise her taint score to the appropriate level.
These feats represent a manifestation of the fundamental corruption in both body and soul of the character who possesses them. Those who use these feats are literally drawing upon the mystical malevolence growing within like a cancer, an attitude that is not conducive to efforts to cleanse themselves of the taint.
A character who makes use of a tainted feat appears as evil to all alignment-detecting spells and abilities for 2d4 rounds thereafter, even if she is not of evil alignment. During this period, she is also subject to abilities that normally function only against evil beings, such as magic circle against evil or a paladin’s smite evil ability. Tainted feats are supernatural abilities (though they do not require any extra time to use, unless stated otherwise in their individual descriptions) and do not function within the area of an antimagic field.
Some of the feats presented here are vile feats. First introduced in Book of Vile Darkness (a version 3.0 publicaton), feats with the vile feats are available only to intelligent creatures of evil alignment.
This chapter contains a new subset of vile feats known as deformity feats. Deformity feats represent an intentional act of will by a character, changing him in some horrific way. The prerequisite feat for every other deformity feat is a feat called Willing Deformity; the version presented here updates and supersedes the one introduced in Book of Vile Darkness.
Many feats useful for spellcasters are equally useful for characters or creatures that employ invocations or spell-like abilities instead of spells. Spell-like abilities represent an innate magical talent that is part of a creature’s essential nature, an expression of will or a mental action that resembles a spell in almost all ways.
Learning to wield a spell-like ability requires the same level of training or effort required to learn a physical task such as swimming, and is easy enough that any character or creature with a spell-like ability is assumed to have completely mastered the skill as soon as the spell-like ability is acquired. Using a spell-like ability requires concentration (possibly provoking attacks of opportunity), and, in the case of spell-like abilities that can be used only a certain number of times per day, requires the user to tap into a reservoir of magical power that must be replenished before it can used again.
Invocations are also spell-like abilities. The only difference between invocations and other spell-like abilities is that invocations require somatic gestures and are therefore subject to arcane spell failure (see the warlock class).
Warlocks and other creatures with spell-like abilities might find the following feats useful.
Combat Casting: This feat works equally well with spells, invocations, or spell-like abilities.
Spell Penetration: Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration have the same effect on invocations and spell-like abilities that they do on normal spells.
Weaponlike Spell Feats: A character who uses invocations or spell-like abilities might be able to take advantage of feats such as Weapon Focus or Precise Shot, as described under Feats and Weaponlike Spells, below. (The warlock’s eldritch blast is weaponlike.)
Sudden Metamagic Feats: These metamagic feats don’t require modified spell slots, and so they work as well with spell-like abilities or invocations as they do with spells (though because spell-like abilities don’t have verbal or somatic components, Sudden Silent Spell doesn’t apply and Sudden Still applies only to invocations).
Creatures with spell-like abilities at a high enough level will find sudden metamagic feats less useful than the dedicated feats Empower Spell-Like Ability, Quicken Spell-Like Ability, and Maximize Spell-Like Ability.
Other Metamagic Feats: Except as noted above, metamagic feats can’t generally be used to modify spell-like abilities or invocations.