Talk:Horde Breaker (5e Feat)

This feat is very powerful, to the point of nigh broken, because:

• You normally do not gain ability score improvement with ability score prerequisite.

• Granting up to what, three reactions per round? That's having up to four opportunity attacks, as well as many other things you do with your reactions. There are reasons you have only one reaction per round, and although there are some features that grants additional reaction per round, it's very limited.

• With the second feature combined, this allows you to make up to four extra attacks per round. That's like a 20th-level fighter. No one is supposed to make four extra attacks, in addition to other attacks made with actions and bonus actions.

In short: Too strong, disregards reaction limitation that is the standard of 5th edition. --WeirdoWhoever (talk) 18:48, 29 October 2017 (MDT)

Originally, I do not believe I had a +1 increase to DEX in the feat. If I did, your right it shouldn't necessarily increase DEX as the two abilities are more than worth the ASI trade-off. But I think that was added and removed after creation.

The creation of this feat was to bring a 3.5 Combat feat over to 5e that one of my players wished to use. It also emulates the cleave feat line from 3.5, which is lacking in 5e. I had originally nerfed the Combat feat when I created this, as it gives additional Attacks of Opportunity equal to your DEX Mod. I figured halving that might be more in line with 5e.

That said, it gives you additional *reactions*, which there are severe restrictions to when a reaction can be used. Such as when an enemy leaves your threatened area without disengaging to take an opportunity attack. This doesn't actually increase the amount of attacks that someone gets, unless they are downing enemies left and right, and then you have another problem altogether or they were downing mooks. In which case that's what this feat was meant for.

Now, I can see it being a problem with some other reaction based abilities, such as shield or counterspell. But in that case we could add a quantifier that specifies that the additional reactions can only be used with Horde Breakers second ability. This would limit the use of the additional reactions even further and, given that the character isn't strong enough to down several regular enemies of the parties level already, should keep this from being a balance issue.

--SilentPC (talk) 10:42, 3 November 2017 (CST)

Alternatively, I could set it to half your proficiency bonus, rounded down. That way it scales with level instead of someone getting upwards of 4 reactions per round at level 8 or something. This would cause it to be a steady increase of reactions instead of a sudden increase. --SilentPC (talk) 10:53, 3 November 2017 (CST)

How about something like this?

• You can take a number of additional reactions attacks equal to half your proficiency bonus. These additional reactions can only be used to make opportunity attacks.
• When you reduce a creature to 0 hit points with a melee weapon, you can use your reaction to make one melee weapon attack. --Carcabob (talk) 13:21, 3 November 2017 (MDT)

That's what I suggested, actually. And ConcealedLight, it's customary to speak on changes before things are implimented in the page. Especially with the author of the homebrew. As I stated above, this feat was supposed to emulate the Tome Combat Feat from 3.5. While that may not be balanced that well, this was an attempt to 'port' it over to 5e. Now, the changes you made are definitely more balanced than the Tome Combat Feat was. But it, seems kinda weak for a feat... But maybe that's just me.--SilentPC (talk) 16:55, 10 November 2017 (CST)

Noted. In regards to your opinion about balance. Consider that it has the potential to double the number of attacks a player can make and while normally that would be considered unbalanced the conditional nature of it brings it in line. Plus the scalability and the half feat tag of the feat I'd say puts it in line with other half feats. At best you could add a third minor effect. --ConcealedLight (talk) 21:29, 10 November 2017 (MST)

I would like to ask why the homebrew feat that I created for a player of mine was changed to fit with a version that was released in a book by wizards. If anything can we at least leave my feat intact with the variant tag added onto it? --SilentPC (talk) 18:32, 21 May 2018 (CST)

To put it simply, it was comparatively overpowered as stated in the first paragraph of this talk page. You can remake the page as a variant if you wish, however, if you don't meet the balance concerns brought up by WeirdoWhoever above then expect the page to be deleted at some point in the future. --ConcealedLight (talk) 23:10, 21 May 2018 (MDT)

But you said that with the changes we had made it brought it in line. I figured at that point the balance issue was resolved. You even said that it could do with a third minor effect!? --SilentPC (talk) 20:51, 3 June 2018 (CST)

It would depend on what you're thinking about adding as the third benefit? However, as I said before I'm of the opinion this is fine in its current state.--ConcealedLight (talk) 23:26, 3 June 2018 (MDT)