The Fine Line: 3 Wise DMs List of the 5 Most Overpowered Feats and Abilities in Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

Greetings gamers from all systems, places, and timelines! 

Anyone who enjoys making homebrewed content probably struggles with walking the line between making something either underwhelming or entirely broken. This is a valid concern as countless DMs have shot themselves in the foot introducing something into the game which seemed cool at the time but later breaks the power curve. While likewise it’s also no fun when you receive “a big reward” at the end of a quest that you wish you could at least return for store credit.  

With 5e being an arguably complicated system, not every rule or power is going to be perfectly balanced. However, some defy reason making them so wildly powerful that it’s hard to believe they not only made it into the Player’s Handbook but were never amended. This is why we have put a list together of five things everyone enjoys having in their campaign – except, possibly, the DM. 

For this list, we opted to focus on feats and character abilities, leaving spells and magic items for another day.

5. The Sentinel Feat

This is an amazing feat, no question. However, mechanics aside, there are some problems with it in terms of continuity because it has no limitations. If you don’t think so, imagine Godzilla coming out of the ocean to destroy a nearby village. But what Godzilla wasn’t expecting was an attack from a paladin who has the sentinel feat. As when Godzilla tried to walk past the knight he was struck for 4 slashing damage. This caused the gargantuan beast to slam on the brakes like someone who was driving in a parking garage and about to run over tire spikes. 

For those of you who aren’t super familiar with the specs of Godzilla, he is over three-hundred feet tall and weighs thousands of tons.  So he might not even realize the knight poked him in his tail with a longsword in the first place let alone be stopped dead in his tracks because of it. But now if the knight’s attacks kept connecting with him, Godzilla couldn’t leave the encounter if his life depended on it. Could Godzilla just kill the knight and move on? Sure, but a non-magical ability shouldn’t be able to stop a monster from advancing or retreating without taking into consideration their relative size and strength.

4. The Vow of Enmity

Paladins in 5e are already badass, no question. But the Vow of Enmity is so juiced it feels like you just successfully entered a cheat code. To activate your super mode just use your bonus action, call out a target and for the next ten rounds, every attack you make on this target will have advantage. Or in other words, get used to having two chances to score a hit with every attack your paladin makes on a boss between the time they are 3rd level until retirement. 

Now you might be saying there has to be some type of drawback to this power. Such as when using an Oathbow, or it requires a sacrifice of some form to achieve the sought after victory. Or at least this knight of dark justice needs some story related reason to activate this potent ability.

Nope. It’s like an open warrant that allows you to arrest the bad guys by dropping them to zero hit points.  Just get within ten feet of your target, give them some divine justice and afterwards grab some lunch and you can start all over. So it doesn’t matter who or what the boss is. just get in there and start swinging and smiting because you probably won’t miss. 

3. The Lucky Feat

Some feats allow you to learn additional skills. While others make you tougher or let you learn weapons from outside your class. The Lucky feat, however, allows you to manipulate fate itself, as if you either have a mutant ability or the Gods owed you a solid. Fail that vital saving throw? No problem, just try again. Did the session boss just nail you with a critical hit? Well too bad because they will be rerolling that attack.

This feat feels like something we would refer to as a ” DM special” from back in the day. The “DM Special” was when one character would get something wildly overpowered during a game that it left the other players wondering if they got this reward because they helped the DM move or gave them a ride to the airport. But, in reality, everyone has access to this feat. Leaving the person running the game with the possibility of all of their players having three get out of jail free cards per long rest. 

2. Stunning Strike

Stunning Strike and other similar lockdown mechanics were one of the many nails in the coffin of 4th edition. Don’t get me wrong, it has a flair of awesome to it, because who wouldn’t want to stun literally nearly any opponent? 

Like when in our Tomb of Annihilation game, DM Chris rolled out a zombie T-Rex which was intended to be a deadly encounter. At least it would have been, until my monk stunned it with a punch to the gut like we were playing the original Punch Out. And with most fights if you give your whole crew a full round of free attacks on the boss with advantage – it’s pretty much a wrap.

This may cause the default battle plan to be for the monk to always try and stun the biggest monster in the encounter. Or the equally popular plan B of having the party burn through the monster’s legendary resistances so the monk can stun them. And, as the DM, if you were expecting to throw a gaggle of monsters at the party that are immune to stunning you will be disappointed because those creatures are few and far between. So go on and enjoy yourself by stunning all manner of mythical creatures like dragons, liches, whales, iron golems, water elementals, black puddings, and even ghosts, with roundhouse kicks delivered by Chuck Norris himself.

1. The Bear Totem

If you were always dreaming of a chance to play out your own in-game version of the Cocaine Bear, here it is. Just make it to 3rd level as a barbarian and enjoy what I affectionately refer to as “battlefield immortality.” Nature is said to be calming, but with the help of your spirit animal, you can become so angry that somehow you gain resistance to twelve of the thirteen forms of damage in the entire game universe. Sure, you have a limited amount of fantasy fury but, while raging, the only thing that is fully effective on you are psychic attacks. But if that attack is just normal damage and not some form of intelligence lock down effect, it will probably only serve as the final life regret for whoever just came at you. 

Just in case you might feel that I am exaggerating the power of this subclass, consider this. In our extended Curse of Strahd campaign, Hawk, my bear totem barbarian was in countless battles by the time he reached 16th level. Through all of them, much to DM Dave’s chagrin, Hawk was only put down one time. And that only occurred into the final rounds of the last battle. And only because the BBEG nailed him with the mother of all mental attacks – which couldn’t have been heavier if Professor X unleashed it. 

Final Thoughts

Some things may work for your group while at other times someone at your table might raise their eyebrow and say “hang on, what?” Like back in 4e when someone in my party would put a ghost to sleep or poison skeletons. Which, by RAW, did work at the time when we were playing. Oh, and while we are at it, an honorable mention needs to be made on how you could get third degree burns from a dragon’s fire, and then take a long rest, roll out of bed the next morning and be garden fresh.

What feats or abilities seem overpowered in your games? Any that you feel shouldn’t have made the list? We’d love to hear from you!