Feats, Skills and Spells

Feats, Skills and Spells


Feats

Have you ever over heard someone say "Wow he display a brilliant feat!". Watching your friend juggle can be seen as a feat, or being able to type really quickly. Feats are used in Dungeons and Dragons to be able to customise your character. They are mainly there to empower your character in several ways, such as boosting the character skills, learning some combat moves to hinder the enemy or making the characters spells harder to resist. Every character can choose one feat every four levels and are found in the player's guide. Some classes get bonus feats, such as the fighter, or have specific feats to that character, such as the barbarian having the rage feat.

Examples of feats include:

Power attack - Take away up to 5 attack bonus in exchange for an increase in 5 damage on your attack. i.e you have less chance of hitting but if or when you hit, you deal alot more damage then normal.

Spell focus (spell school) - Makes your spells harder to resist. It increases the difficulty class (DC) of the saving throws your enemy has to do. It can make a wizard's fireball harder to avoid or a cleric's doom spell harder to resist.

Dodge - Add one armour class against a choosen hostile i.e you have less chance of being hit by weapons.



Skills

Skills are generally more the role play side of the game. Skills determine how well you are succeeding at something outside of combat in general. The more points (or ranks) you have in a given skill, the better you are at succeeding. Certain skills can help "pad out" your character and defines how the character behaves. For example, a very persuasive character would have a lot of points invested in the diplomat skill. Keep in mind that there are class skills and cross-class skills. Class skills are skills that the character specialises in, for example a wizard is good at concentrating and a rogue is good at hiding. Cross-class skills on the other hand are skills that your character does not specialise in, so a wizard would not be good at hiding and a rogue would not be good at concentrating. For class skills, it costs one point to increase it by one rank, whilst a cross-class skill would cost 2 points to increase it by one rank. A wizard would have to spend 2 points to get 1 point or rank in the hide skill whilst only spending 1 point to get 1 point or rank in concentration.

Examples of skills include:

Search - The ability to find traps, finding something useful in a treasure chest or finding a certain book on a bookshelf. I generally use this when a player is actively searching for something.

Spot - The ability to see in the distance and notice things. For example, spotting a goblin in the dark, looking into the fog to see a friend or standing on top of a hill looking for a settlement.

Jump - The more points invested in this skill the more likely you can jump higher or further then normal. For example, jumping up onto a ledge or jumping across a chasm.



Spells

Spells are only available to spellcasters. Sounds obvious I know...but spells generally split into two categories; divine and arcane. Divine spells are spells that have been granted by the deity (or god) of the character. Clerics and Paladins are characters that use divine spells and have to pray to gain some of the powers. Divine spells usually cover healing and supportive spells. Examples include: Cure light wounds, Cure critical wounds, aid and divine favour.

Arcane spells are used by sorcerers and wizards. These spells are also to support but mainly to inflict damage upon the enemy. Wizards must memorise their spells and sorcerers must rest before the spells can be used. Examples include magic missle, mage armour, fireball and knock.

There are spell circles. Each spell circle consists of a group of spells that the character has learnt or able to ask for. As the character progresses in levels, higher level spell circles are accessed providing more powerful spells. The weakest spells all casters begin with are cantrips (zero circle spells) and first circle spells.

Each spellcaster also have spell slots. These spell slots are spell circle bound and can be filled with whatever spells the player wishes depending if they learnt it and it's within the appropriate spell circle. For example, Warick the level 1 wizard has access to cantrips and first circle spells. He can choose up to 3 first circle spells and 2 first circle spells. However, he cannot choose any second circle spells until he is level three, where second circle spells are unlocked. More slots can be unlocked for each circle as the character levels up or has a high attribute related to their class (wizards need high intelligence to gain more slots whilst a cleric needs a high wisdom to gain more slots for example).