There's another big thing to look at in the Character Origins UA. Feats, which are technically an optional rule in 5th Edition, are going to be central in One D&D, because every character starts off with one (humans get two).
Feats are chosen as part of your background, and are meant to exhibit some of the special skills you've gained thanks to your pre-adventuring experience.
The biggest change here is that feats can now have level requirements and prerequisites. The list of level 1 feats is thus curated to ensure that none of these will be game-breaking at first level. Also, none of these feats give you an ability score bonus of any kind.
I'm very curious to see how higher-level feats will work out. Ability score improvements are precious, only coming five times for most classes, and with most campaigns ending before level 12, there are really only two opportunities to pick them up, and doing so usually means not getting your primary ability score maxed out.
But for now, these level 1 feats are baseline options, which everyone will be able to get (at least one of).
One of the design intents for a lot of these was to make them a more logical fit for characters built around their core concept: for example, the Healer feat in the 2014 PHB is quite good - unless you're already a healer. Clerics and Druids who carry a lot of healing spells aren't going to get much out of it, while it'll be quite good for a Rogue. The 2024 version, however, has a very useful effect for anyone doing any sort of healing, and thus a healing Cleric would probably take that feat very happily.
So, let's get to it:
Alert:
The redesign makes this less powerful in certain ways, but a lot more flexible. You now get to add your Proficiency Bonus to your initiative rolls. The old version gives you a flat +5. So, in other words, this is a nerf from levels 1-12, but is a buff from level 17-20.
The second part of the feat is that you can now swap your initiative after you roll with one willing ally in the same combat. (You can't do the swap if you're incapacitated.) The old version of this gave you immunity to being surprised, which was very powerful but could also be frustrating for DMs. Here, you get a really cool tool that doesn't really have any precedent. If you start combat with a bunch of enemies clustered up, and you want to make sure that the Wizard or Sorcerer gets to drop a Fireball on them before your melee characters charge in and make doing so risk friendly fire. I like this.
Crafter:
This one's brand new, I think. First off, you get Tool Proficiency (and I like that they're capitalizing important phrases with rules meanings) with three different Artisan's Tools of your choice. So, first off, that's a lot. An Artificer who took this (fittingly) would get one from their background, three from their class (and a fourth from their subclass at level 3) and then three more from this feat - they'd be proficient in seven (and later eight) tools! Now that the rules on Tool Proficiency are a little more explicit, this could be very fun.
Next, they get a discount when buying nonmagical items of 20%. The implications here are pretty crazy. First off, does this character then automatically hold the party purse-strings? We saw with Alert that having anyone with that feat in the party can help everyone, and so maybe this does the same. My one concern here is figuring out how to account for roleplaying haggling but then also accounting for this discount - does everyone have to take this discount? If they don't, that's going to feel like the DM is invalidating an element of the character, but then, is there an in-world explanation for this? If the Artificer with -1 to Charisma gets a natural 1 on their Persuasion check to knock some more off the price, do they still benefit from this 20% bonus?
Finally, if you craft an item using a tool with which you have Tool Proficiency, the required time to craft it is reduced by 20%. I really hope that means we're getting clearer rules on item crafting.
Healer:
As before, this feat allows you to use a charge of a Healer's Kit to actually restore hit points and not just stabilize a creature. The heal, though, in this case, requires the creature to expend one of its hit dice, and roll the die and add their PB to the roll, regaining that many hit points. Other limitations on the use here are gone.
However, in addition, you now get to reroll 1s on any healing spell or the use of the Battle Medic (the above feature using Healer's Kits). This will make super disappointing heals much less frequent. The ultimate effect of features like this tends to be fairly subtle in the long run, but on a psychological level, making those really bad rolls less likely can feel a lot better.
Lucky:
This one works similarly to how it did, but you now get PB Luck Points per day - meaning that this is a nerf at levels 1-4, but a buff at levels 9-20. Interestingly, the wording on its uses also suggests a subtle change to some rules:
The phrasing for using it to gain Advantage is: "Immediately after you roll a d20 for a d20 Test, you can spend 1 Luck point to give yourself Advantage on the roll." By 2014 5E rules, you can't ever give yourself retroactive Advantage - things like Inspiration have to be spent before you see what you've rolled. But now, because it's using that phrasing, rather than simply "you can roll a new d20 and choose the result," I'd imagine that other instances of granting advantage could now be doable retroactively. As before, you can also force an attacker to re-roll an attack roll if it targets you, which also uses Disadvantage to describe what you are imposing. This has always been a good and popular feat, and given that it's only nerfed for tier 1, I expect it will continue to be very popular.
Magic Initiate:
This is one of those "same, but different" feats. You still get two cantrips and a 1st level spell, but rather than picking from class lists, you now pick from one of the three new spell categories - Arcane, Divine, and Primal. All your spells need to come from the same list. You can pick this feat up again, but only if you pick another spell list.
Much like the new format for racial spells, you can cast this once for free per Long Rest, but you can also cast the leveled spell with spell slots (allowing you to upcast it, for example).
Another nice thing is that you can pick between Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma for your spellcasting ability. This means that if you wanted to say, pick up Shillelagh on your Paladin so that you could just carry a club or staff, you could make that spellcasting ability Charisma, so that you could focus in on making your Aura of Protection and spellcasting great without having to worry about Strength (other than enough to wear heavy armor). Honestly, I kind of want to make this build.
Of note, though, for those of you who want to use this to get Eldritch Blast on your, say, Sorcerer, Bard, or Warlock (or other classes because, hey, you can just pick your class' spellcasting ability,) Eldritch Blast is actually notably absent from the Arcane spell list. I suspect that this means it's going to become a Warlock class feature, but we'll have to wait and see. Still, looks like you can't grab it (though honestly, without Eldritch Invocations to prop it up, you're probably fine with Fire Bolt).
Musician:
Another new one, this first grants you Tool Proficiency in three Musical Instruments of your choice. If Crafter is perfect for Artificers who want to lean in, this would be great for Bards.
In addition, though, you get Inspiring Song. At the end of a Short or Long rest, you can play a song on an instrument with which you're proficient and give inspiration to a number of allies equal to your PB if they can hear it.
This one... I feel like they could jazz it up a little if you'll pardon the pun. Inspiration becoming a bigger part of the rules is cool, but I'm not convinced this is enough to justify choosing this feat.
Savage Attacker:
Ok, so this one is, I think, technically a nerf compared to the 2014 PHB version. To benefit from this, you have to be taking the Attack Action, which I think only happens on your turn (I don't think an Opportunity Attack counts). Rather than re-rolling your weapon damage, you now roll twice and choose which roll to use. In other words, you would, in theory, need to declare this before rolling, rather than possibly saving it if your first attack does high damage. On the other hand, if Lucky is using the terms Advantage and Disadvantage, maybe the intention here is to let you reroll, but it really isn't phrased that way.
In other words, at best, this is unchanged, but it's likely slightly worse. Still, it's free, and probably not a bad choice for any weapon-based character build.
Skilled:
This can be taken multiple times. You gain proficiency in three Skills you didn't have proficiency with before. No longer applies to tools. Still, pretty good if you want to be a skill monkey, which of course makes it a strong option for Rogues.
Tavern Brawler:
Ok, both versions here are fairly complex. There's no ability score bonus here, as is the case for all level 1 feats (unlike the old version). Again, your unarmed strike damage can be a d4+Strength (note that it doesn't have to be, so this won't glitch with Martial Arts or other things that make that damage higher).
Next, you can reroll 1s on Unarmed Strike damage.
Once per turn, if you hit a creature as part of the Attack Action with an Unarmed Strike, you can deal damage to them and push them 5 feet away - essentially combining two elements of the new Unarmed Strike umbrella term (which now covers the old unarmed strike, as well as shove and grapple).
Finally, you can use furniture as a Weapon, treating Small or Medium furniture as a Greatclub and Tiny furniture as a Club. Now, because they are calling these out as specific weapon types rather than improvised weapons, this means that a Monk can use any Tiny object (technically furniture, but I'd probably rule it as any object) as a Monk Weapon, because clubs are an option for that. Sadly, this doesn't apply to Small or Medium objects because a Greatclub, while it's a simple weapon, is disqualified from being a Monk Weapon due to its heavy and two-handed properties. This must be corrected so that we can truly get our Jackie Chan on.
This seems like an obvious choice for Monks, given the damage reroll. But I think other Strength-based melee builds could actually get a lot of use out of this.
Tough:
This one is unchanged, giving you extra max HP equal to twice your level. So, with the new racial traits, a Dwarf Barbarian with the Tough feat would be the ultimate damage-sponge. But this is an obvious choice for anyone who wants to play a tank-like role - though it could also be nice for Wizards and Sorcerers who want to be more resilient.
And that's it!
There are only 10 choices here, but I think that's a good thing: 1st level feats should be something relatively simple and easy to understand while still having a big impact on your character, and limiting the selection makes these both manageable for a new player and also allow them to feel like one of those big choices you make like race or class. Of these, I think that the Musician feat might need a boost, though we'll have to see if the new rules around natural 20s winds up getting players to actually use their Inspiration.
I'm curious to see how other feats wind up looking. What distinguishes a level 4 feat from a level 8 feat (just to be clear, these are minimums - you don't have to pick these at their designated level, and indeed, you can pick up more of the ones listed here at higher levels if you want).
Assuming they don't get significant changes in publication, the feats tied to backgrounds in the Wonders of the Multiverse UA can also be taken at level 1. Those are set to be published before these rules "go live," but will presumably fit into the context of this free feat.
Making feats a default feature of the game does unquestionably complicate it - DMs can, in the current game, just say no to them. One reason I might actually consider doing so is that it gives players opportunities to boost stats that aren't strictly relevant to their character's build, but might reflect some in-character thing. For example, you might have conceived of your Monk as being a slick charmer, but you couldn't justify boosting Charisma over Dexterity (or Wisdom. Or Constitution).
On the other hand, players can choose to engage with feats as much or as little as they want after level 1, which means that more complicated ones like Great Weapon Master are something a new player can avoid.
Also unquestionable is that this makes player characters more powerful. Many of the changes and revisions to the game have made things more efficient, allowing players to pick up features that might have been out of reach before - for example, my Dragonborn Fighter got a fairly useless Charisma bonus when I made him, when he wanted Intelligence or Constitution. Today, I would have been able to put all of that into the mechanically useful ability scores. It's a subtle change, but would make him just a little more powerful. We'll have to see how the new Monster Manual and perhaps tips on creating challenges in the new Dungeon Master's Guide addresses that increase to power.
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