Divine Power preview: feats!

Lots of info today! Today's excerpt of Divine Power has a bunch of divine feats - probably most, if not all, of the non-race-specific heroic ones. Also not included are Domain Feats, or any other deity-specific feat. Here's a quick review on them.

(EDIT: I have later realized that these are Paragon Tier feats. This review looked at them as options for Heroic PCs, so some comments could be a bit off)


Generic feats. There are three types of effects.

• Channel divinity feats: Armored by faith and Darkfoe. They seem to provide a bonus when you spend CD, in addition to the chosen CD power. Still, no sign of any ability to recharge CD - maybe at Paragon?
• Radiant damage mastery: Clinging Radiance allows you to ignore concealment when you use a radiant attack, and Pervasive Light makes all your powers count as radiant to the purposes of enemy vulnerabilities.
• Divine healing: Invigorating Critical gets you free healing for your allies when you make a critical hit, and Saving Grace allows you to give up a succesful saving throw to allow an ally to make a saving throw.

Avenger. A few interesting, censure-specific options. I really like Censure's Grip, which prevents your OoE target from shifting when you hit with combat advantage. Avenging Surge, for the new build, grants temp. HP when an ally hits your OoE, which is pretty cool.

Cleric. Some boosts to Turn Undead, like Swift Turning, which turns it into a minor action. Narrow, but very strong. There are also ways to enhance Healing Word, such as Extended Healing (which increases its range, in case you ever missed that) and the very intriguing Radiant Vessel, which lets you "Use radiant power to enhance your healing word". We will see how that one turns out, but the idea looks cool.

Invoker. Several minor bonuses triggering on your Divine Covenant effects. Of those, I like Forceful Covenant, which adds 1 to the push effect of Covenant of Malediction, and Warding Covenant, which somehow protects the ally you slide with Covenant of Preservation against Combat Advantage. A feat that all invokers will want to take is Invoker's Blaze, as it increases fire and radiant damage and gets a boost when you're bloodied.

Paladins get my favourite feat so far: Honored Foe turns you into a sort of (pre-errata) mini-Battlerager, as you get temporary hit points when marked enemies attack you. We'll see what kind of power level they have given this, but since it has no other requirements, it looks like a well needed general boost to paladins. I'm concerned that other defenders might get it too easily via multiclassing, though. Resurgent Attack is another very nice feat, providing a decent bonus to attack rolls whenever you spend a healing surge (which Paladins do a lot). No racial requirements here (just a lot of Str.), but dwarven paladins will kill for this.

There's a feat called Untiring Virtue that grants you extra Lay on Hands uses (at last!), with a mechanic I really like - rather than getting extra uses up front, you recover them when you reach a milestone. Though the previewed tooltip doesn't specify, it would be cool if this worked on each milestone, and not just the first. In addition, this feat also recharges other class features (presumably replacing Lay on Hands).

I finish my commentary on paladin feats (paladins really got a lot of stuff, here) with an irritating one: Persistent Challenge removes the much maligned engagement clause from Divine Challenge. DMs, give your players this for free, please!

I like what I'm seeing. They'll still make good classes out of Cleric and Paladins

Bonus section - Random stuff revealed:

• New Avenger build is called Censure of Unity. I'd say it's themed around your allies attacking your OoE target.
• Class feature of new Cleric build, called Healer's Mercy. It seems to be an area effect affecting your allies.
• New Invoker covenant is Covenant of Malediction (already previewed)
• New Paladin class features: Ardent vow and Call of virtue. These seem to belong to different builds. Also, they appear to replace Lay on Hands and, like it, have a limited number of uses per day, probably linked to a secondary ability modifier.
• Replacement for Divine Challenge? This is ambiguous, as the feat entry looks bugged, but there is a mention of a Divine Sanction challenge.