The Furiously Feeble Orcish Fury Feat, Part 2
Fabulous feats for the forlorn. Part 2
We think the Orcish Fury feat isn’t worth it. We envisioned a replacement. Now we’re just nuts with ideas.
Continuing…
But what if a half-feat is all that’s wanted? Is it possible to have one that adds a little ongoing oomph, that could work with Orcish Fury and/or Eiame’s Berserker Orc Greataxe Mastery—not that we recommend using more valuable barbarian ASI space on this—and that doesn’t require a weapon or class?
How’s this?
Viciousness is in your blood. You gain the following benefits:
Increase any ability score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You are now an expert in intimidation.
Use a bonus action to choose a creature, or a reaction to choose a creature that just attacked you, to intimidate the creature if it is in melee range. If your skill check is successful, attacks the creature makes against you will be at a disadvantage until the end of its next turn. You may use the bonus action and reaction in the same round, and thus intimidate more than one creature.
We like this. It gives you something you can use on and off the battlefield. Intimidation is a core race skill for half-orcs, and this expands on it.
Sure, handing over a use-as-you-wish bonus action is a lot, but success is conditional. Using the reaction can be more rewarding if the attacker has more attacks in its current turn, but you have to be attacked first.
This pairs well with the barbarian’s Reckless Attack as it can perhaps nullify some advantage attacks against you.
But it also works well outside of that feature and class.
Though we’ve been thinking about barbarian and fighter classes here, with Charisma being a dump stat for those classes, a feat leaning on intimidation may not be the best choice for them. Even with intimidation at the expert level, with a Cha modifier at -1, the plus on the skill check starts at +3, +5 at 5th, +7 at 9th, +9 at 13th, and +11 at 17th. Not bad, but not incredible either.
What if the Half-Orc was instead a Hexblade Warlock? The race’s strength boost would not be wasted, as medium armour needs a 13 Str. A +1 on Con is always welcome. As a Hexblade made correctly (Pact of the Blade: Improved Pact Weapon) can use its Pact weapon as a spell focus and have an improved chance maintaining concentration (Eldritch Mind), there’s no need to use an ASI on Warcaster. Starting stats after racial bonuses are applied would look like: Str 14, Dex 14, Con 14, Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 15.
At 4th level, the feat would be taken, and Cha boosted to 16.
The ASIs at level 8 and 12 would boost Cha +2 each to 20.
At 12th level with a Cha of 20, intimidation with this partial feat is +13, +15 at level 13, and, finally, +17 at level 17. That’ll do.
We’ll stop there, though we wonder if a paladin, sorcerer, or sorcadin could be worth it.
Other ideas for expanding a feat like this include:
While you have a creature intimidated, your deception and insight skill rolls are made at an advantage against that creature.
While you have a creature intimidated, you have advantage with Athletic and Acrobatic rolls made against that creature.
When you reduce a creature’s hit points to zero, your intimidation checks are made with advantage until the end of your next turn. If you already have advantage with the check, you can reroll one of the dice once.
Anyway, let us know what you think of this one. When we have more, we’ll place a link right here.