Vigor of the Hill Giant 5e
Prerequisite: 4th Level, Strike of the Giants (Hill Strike) Feat
You’ve manifested the resilience emblematic of hill giants, granting you the following benefits:
Ability Score Increase. Increase your Strength, Constitution, or Wisdom score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
Bulwark. When you are subjected to an effect that would move you at least 5 feet or give you the prone condition, you can use your reaction to stay yourself. You aren’t moved and don’t have the prone condition.
Iron Stomach. Whenever you eat food as part of a short rest and spend one or more Hit Dice to regain hit points, you regain additional hit points equal to your Constitution modifier + your proficiency bonus.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Poor Hill Giants. Not only did they get the short stick in their dad being born last of the giant gods, sticking them at the bottom of the giant hierarchy, but they also seem to always get some of the worst treatment as far as mechanics go. Vigor of the Hill Giant is the worst of all of the Strike prerequisite feats, and it's not particularly close.
Bulwark is a unique ability I’d be thrilled to see… if it was attached to an ability you could regularly use. I love how it looks, and there will be some moments per campaign where a character will be able to shrug off a 30 ft. knockback that would mean certain doom for them. I love that there’s no ability check or saving throw attached to it, it's just something you get to do. Unfortunately, it's something you get to do ones of times per adventure, sometimes less.
Iron Stomach, on the other hand, is something you technically could use more, but leverages a mechanic most tables aren’t struggling with in the slightest: hit dice. Improvements to Hit Dice rarely result in improvements to a character's performance, as most groups aren’t spending all (or in some cases, any) hit dice on an average adventuring day. Every character is also stacked with enough to generally give them one full heal on average. You don’t need these extra hit points. You’re flush with hit points. You’ve got hit points easily accessible in a dozen different ways in this game, and resistances to double them up on many martial characters. Even in a world where characters were taking two to three short rests, I’d still rather have something like Tough that at least gives me extra meat to work with before getting dropped, sometimes giving me that last crucial action. Iron Stomach is only retroactive and only contributes anything if you need more hit dice to stay alive than you already have. That’s almost no tables in existence.
Despite how much I adore the design direction of Bulwark as a niche passive to establish a character as an unwavering meat block, it isn’t nearly enough on its own, even with a +1 Ability Score. You need something that can empower your average adventuring day. This entirely lacks that element of it, and for that reason, is nearly unusable.
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