Top 10 5E D&D Homebrew Feats by a Factor of Three

I’ve gone through all the schools of magic, subclasses for every class and a few other categories of content for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons when it comes to homebrew material found at D&D Beyond. This time around I’m looking at homebrew feats for 5E D&D and there’s a whopping 21,400+ over at DDB. We get a kick out of checking out the 5E D&D content folks come up with and sharing their homebrew creations. (There’s lots of these posts whether for homebrew subclasses, magic items, spells, feats and more floating around for the curious.) Let’s get into it.

Feats at D&D Beyond

Before getting started it’s important to note you can create homebrew content for private use and share your homebrew content publicly at DDB at no cost — there’s no subscription required to access these services. However if you want to add any of the homebrew evocation spells mentioned below or any other homebrew content you come across to your 5E D&D collection you must subscribe at the Hero Tier or above. There’s a lot you can do at DDB for free. Check out what you can do here.

The DDB homebrew collection uses several statistics to track entries. Views shows how many eyeballs any particular homebrew creation received, Adds shows the number of times a creation was added to someone’s collection and Rating is an upvote/downvote system. Since there are over 21,400 feats in the collection I’m going to share the top 10 highest rated, most viewed and most added selections and to see what’s out there along with any crossover between these three lists.

Top 10 highest rating feats

1. Vaccinated. Believe it or not this homebrew feat was created in 2017! The benefit is really, really campaign specific for those where disease features prominently except for the secondary benefit, which makes this ridiculously good as sort of War Caster-lite but with increased scope.
2. Ventriloquist. A Charisma bump saves this from being otherwise lackluster except for niche uses.
3. Blind Fighting. With the Blind Fighting fighting style in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything this isn’t too exciting but a solid option for playing a blind character without negating a mechanical drawback or turning one into an overall advantage.
4. Candle Burning at Both Ends. I dig this! It feels like what a 5E D&D feat ought to encompass. Rather than a small incremental bonus it’s more like a special feature for the character, which I fancy quite a lot. The way it interacts with death saving throws is neat.
5. Feline Grace. Basically a racial feat for tabaxi to get more use from their Feline Agility trait. I rather enjoy the concept of racial paragon characters so this gets a dewclaw up from me.
6. Whip Master. If I’m honest there’s some components of this feat I feel could be more creative but at the end of the day it’s a decent feat for players seeking to make a whip more viable in combat.
7. Battlewise. Fantastic! A little ability score bump, initiative bonus and allows a character to Help as a bonus action. This might even be a little too good for a feat because of the last part…but I’m okay with it.
8. End Him Rightly. Hey! Maybe your character wants to end a female character rightly, or an ooze or something. Joking aside I’d say this is too much for a feat. The way it’s written suggests a measure of tongue-in-cheekedness though so I can let it slide.
9. Prehensile Tail. Another racial feat available to a variety of races with tails and I’m here for the fun utility this adds.
10. Pair of Shields. I admire the chutzpah and there’s some clever design here but at the end of the day there’s just too many weird circumstances that’ll arise from wielding two shields at the same time. By providing your own cover in addition to AC bonuses and everything else it would quickly get out of hand.

Top 10 most viewed feats

1. Candle Burning at Both Ends.
2. Gunslinger. Created well before Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything introduced the Gunner feat to 5E D&D this one is surprisingly similar. This one swaps out the Dexterity bump for a different benefit with more flair, which puts it over the official feat in my book.
3. Whip Master.
4. Ventriloquist.
5. Blind Fighting.
6. Feline Grace.
7. Blacksmith. I’m prepared to be underwhelmed before reading this one. Let’s see…I stand corrected. This designer clearly enjoys tools and their usage in 5E D&D so they’ve already won me over. This incorporates the crafting rules of the game and provides a terrific mechanical benefit that scales in a believable way. Great job!
8. Factotum (Lesser, Prime, Greater). Way, way too noodly and just skimming over it I threw up in my mouth a little. Gaining other classes’ features as a feat and circumventing multiclassing feels very wrong. There’s some limitations built in but as much as I’ve adored the factotum concept in D&D for many years this gets a hard pass from me.
9. Angelic Protection. By now you know I’m all in when it comes to racial feats in 5E D&D but magic resistance as a feat? Come on. Apologies to Adam Bradford, who created this one. Incidentally after noticing this I poked around and he created lots of racial feats. Also incidentally we’ve shared lots of great times with Adam including several guest appearances on our live chats, which we turn into podcasts for all y’all audiophiles.
10. Battlewise.

Top 10 most added feats

1. Ventriloquist.
2. Feline Grace.
3. Blind Fighting.
4. Whip Master.
5. Mountain’s Endurance. Another racial feat from DDB’s former head honcho! This one modifies a goliath’s Stone’s Endurance trait and makes it much more impactful but still only works one time per short or long rest. I don’t think I’d use a precious Ability Score Improvement to take this feat but I’m 100% wishing this was what Stone’s Endurance did anyway.
6. Battlewise.
7. Sky Warden. Wow! A heck of a lot of people added Adam’s racial feats and here’s another one, this time for aarakocra. This makes me think of the dragoon — one of my most favorite fantasy character concepts — and now I’m anxiously awaiting Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons to play an aarakocra Drake Warden with this feat.
8. Tortle Protector. Yet another racial feat and this one expands the tortle’s most prominent feature — their shell. Along with increased AC and an ability score bump a tortle can provide half cover to nearby creatures. Protip: any creature can provide half cover for other creatures already but this increases the versatility of this prospect.
9. Firbolg Beast Magic. Extra spells for firbolg characters to interact with the natural world more? Yes please!
10. Urd Wings. Nothing too fancy here — an ability score bonus and a set of wings granting a flying speed for you kobold fanatics out there.

Feats rising to the top

Among these 19 feats some interesting points emerged. Most surprising for me came through the plethora of racial feats created by Adam Bradford. Way back when Xanathar’s Guide to Everything released there was a preorder bonus from DDB of a bunch of racial feats and I was today years old when I realized all these feats Adam created are those bonuses. This is most notable because despite DDB being our biggest sponsor for several years now I never knew these existed. As it turns out they also appear in a Dungeon Master’s Guild product called Expanded Racial Feats. I can’t help wondering if the bulk of them all clustered together with very close numbers of people who added them if this sorta shows the number of preorders. Or in the case of people like me the number of preorders who also figured out where their bonus content is located.

Seeing so much variety across all three categories (except added — thanks for skewing the data, Adam!) was really encouraging. I fully expected three lists of feats to transform 5E D&D characters into combat powerhouses. Some do and this is completely understandable but many of them grant characters fun, quirky or niche abilities that would be really terrific in the right kinds of games.

Candle Burning at Both Ends gets my vote for the most creative of these feats. I like how it touches on game mechanics but not character specific ones like hit points, armor class, ability scores and the like. Instead grants a unique trait with a risk vs. reward scenario. I also love the Blacksmith feat very much. In fact the majority of these homebrew feats are quite well designed and of course all the racial feats hold a special place in my heart.

5E D&D feats resources

I mention our own forays into homebrew content creation for 5E D&D several times to plant the seed in your mind. Now you’re wondering, “What kind of homebrew content do you create, Nerdarchy? I’m extremely interested!” In addition to the monthly rewards our Patreon supporters receive we’ve presented tons of material in our videos and right here at Nerdarchy the Website ready to drop right into your games too. Another place we frequently create new content for Dungeon Masters and players to drop right into games is Nerdarchy the Newsletter and you’ll also get several gifts including $9.99 in store credit so you can add whatever you like there to your own collection when you sign up. Over the years we’ve scribed over 60 new spells of our own. Here’s some places where you’ll find these spells along with other spell related stuff we’ve shared.

• • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game as a Lizardfolk with Racial Feats
  • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game as a Raucous Satyr with Racial Feats
  • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game with a Quintessential Gnoll Playable Race and Racial Feats
  • With This 5E D&D Human Racial Feat, You Got This!
  • Play Your Next 5E D&D Game with a Friendly Octopod New Playable Race and Feats
  • Two New 5E D&D Feats for Grung
  • New 5E D&D Feats for the Goatfolk
  • Enhance Your 5E D&D Character — Join the Vargarian Collective Today!
  • Entangle Your 5E D&D Characters with New Beardomantic Feats
  • Beardomancy (Barber and Beardic feats)

*Featured image — Astride a unicorn, a telepathic bard inspires her wizard companion. This circumstance is made possible by a feat! Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything includes lots of fun new feats for 5E D&D like Telepathic being employed in this illustration. [Image courtesy Wizards of the Coast]

New videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at Nerdarchy the YouTube channel here