Planar Wanderer 5e
Prerequisites: 4th Level, Scion of the Outer Planes feat
You can draw on the forces of the multiverse to survive cosmic extremes and to traverse its infinite realms, granting you these benefits:
Planar Adaptation. When you finish a long rest, you gain resistance to either acid, cold, or fire damage (your choice) until you finish your next long rest.
Portal Cracker. Your experience with portals allows you to open them without a portal key. As an action, you can concentrate on a portal you’re aware of that is within 5 feet of yourself and make a DC 20 Intelligence (Arcana) check. On a failed check, you take 3d8 psychic damage and can’t use this benefit on that portal again until you finish a long rest. On a successful check, you can force the portal open or closed for 1 hour. For that duration, the portal doesn’t respond to its portal key unless a creature employing the key succeeds on a DC 20 Intelligence (Arcana) check as an action.
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
How many portals are you regularly going to face, even in Sigil and Planescape? Is it enough to justify two feats to engage with in this fashion? My gut is, even in the perfect environment, this ability is just going to end up being a flavorful addition you’ll bust at twice per campaign when your DM tries to give you moments to use it.
D&D doesn’t end up working like a Metroidvania- you aren’t gated from certain areas that existed prior, built in by the game designers to reward exploration. It is normally the other way around- the DM creates situations you can use the tools you build your character with, else you’d be faced with far more problems than an average party could ever reasonably deal with while the DM wasted hours and hours planning for every corner case spell and feat in the game.
Even in the situation where you take this and your DM gives you portals to crack into, even if you stack your Arcana to best crack into portals, you’re facing a consistent DC 20 check. If you fail it, you take 3d8 damage. For trying. That’s horrendous design- you took a tool you have to build around that still might result in you killing yourself. You might be set up with a do-or-die moment to crack a portal to sneak away as combat goes south, fail the check, drop unconscious, and it's a complete disaster for you and the party, all built around the premise that you wanted to hack into portals with magic.
Planar Adaptation is a second kind of damage resistance on top of the first gained from Scion, and neither is worth a feat on their own, leaving this as a feat I expect some people will get excited by the premise and lore of, then in practice be wildly disappointed when it blows up in their face the two times in the campaign they get to attempt to meaningfully use this ability.
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