You awaken the ability to mentally connect with others, granting you the following benefits:
Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You can speak telepathically to any creature you can see within 60 feet of you. Your telepathic utterances are in a language you know, and the creature understands you only if it knows that language. Your communication doesn't give the creature the ability to respond to you telepathically.
You can cast the Detect Thoughts spell, requiring no spell slot or components, and you must finish a long rest before you can cast it this way again. Your spellcasting ability for the spell is the ability increased by this feat. If you have spell slots of 2nd level or higher, you can cast this spell with them.
Telepathic: Please, Share Your Thoughts
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
You know what’s absolutely crazy to me? That an 8th level spell Telepathy, has the only major upside of being able to contact anyone regardless of distance of Telepathic. You’re still mentally communicating, and most of the time you’re going to be within 60 feet of a person you want to telepathically communicate with. Wild. Telepathic, as far as feats goes, is pretty decent, and is worth considering ESPECIALLY if you need a +1 to your Wis, Cha, or Int score to get that glorious extra +1 modifier.
At minimum, this is giving you a Message - like feature akin to the Great Old One warlock’s 1st level feature. Telepathic communication is genuinely useful; it assists in relieving a lot of metagame concerns. Sometimes you’ll be navigating a complex social encounter, and you really need a specific person to get your idea, but you don’t want to express that to the general public around you, or look shady whispering in somebody’s ear. Enter Telepathic: just mental message them and bam, they know what you want them to, and nobody is the wiser.
That alone probably isn’t worth a feat, though; what IS is a free use of Detect Thoughts per long rest. Detect Thoughts on its own is a great tool that is fun to use and opens up access to some neat avenues to get information through. It's the kind of spell where just casting it can get you the information you want, but it will thrive when a group comes up with a plan to direct a creature's thoughts. One free use of this every long rest is going to spur more moments where you’ll bust it out just for fun, too. Wondering what the goblin guards are daydreaming about? Care to understand the villain's real feelings a bit better? Want to destroy some friendships or relationships between some minor NPCs? You’ve got a Detect Thoughts burning a hole in your pocket just waiting to come out to play!
Telepathic does a decent job giving you all the tools you’d want to have to be the telepath archetype. You can read minds (ish) and communicate mentally with people. Simple. To the point. Plus, you’re getting smarter, wiser, or more charismatic along the way. Even if the archetype doesn’t match exactly what you’re going for, the mechanics here are solid. I’d consider taking it even without the modifier bonuses. With them, this is an incredible feat that is absolutely a slam dunk when you’re getting a +1 bonus to your spell save DC, related ability checks, and spell attack rolls. All in all, Telepathic is great, and can easily fit onto a variety of character sheets, even those that don’t really need the ability score bump.
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