Hello adventurers! Welcome to my guide and thank for taking a look at the 68th episode of our dnd 5e feats series my goodness! Always surprises me when i look at how long these series get actually because i like i look back at the first couple ones and like oh man i was so young back then. But in any case today we’re looking at CHEF which is an interesting concept and i’ve seen a lot of homebrew versions of this long before wizards of the coast announced it.
So it is interesting to see the direction they went with it. It’s got a lot going on as a lot of these new unaerthed arcana feats seem to. In any case yeah it’s an unearthed arcana i’ve alluded to it a couple times already but what that means in case you’re unfamiliar as it is play-testable material.
So what that means is you don’t have to, you’re not supposed to use it really unless you gain DM super approval and i wouldn’t recommend a lot of the unearthed arcana stuff for new players, it’s just got a lot of going on and there’s a reason it’s not official yet so. In any case let’s dive into its description here and let us know how does chef feat work?.
Description
So there is no prerequisite and it does kind of four main things. The first is a plus one to constitution or wisdom and that is of course your choice as to which. You also gain a proficiency with the cooking utensils, you don’t get them outright so you’re gonna have to find them somewhere or make them yourself if you’re able to but you just get the proficiency with them.
Time and effort spent mastering the culinary arts has paid off. You gain the following benefits: Increase your Constitution or Wisdom score by 1, to a maximum of 20. You gain proficiency with cook’s utensils if you don’t already have it. As part of a short rest, you can cook special food, provided you have ingredients and cook’s utensils on hand.
You can prepare enough of this food for a number of creatures equal to 4 + your proficiency bonus. At the end of the short rest, any creature who eats the food and spends one or more Hit Dice to regain hit points regains an extra 1d8 hit points.
Which is really really neat stuff! I’ve always found hit die to be relatively underused in terms of a resource, at least in terms of alternative applications for them. Everyone knows you can use them on a short rest. But i’m always in favor of mechanics and features that use them for other things as well. So for that reason i really like this part, it’s the next part i have reservations about.
With one hour of work or when you finish a long rest, you can cook a number of treats equal to your proficiency bonus. These special treats last 8 hours after being made. A creature can use a bonus action to eat one of those treats to gain temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus.
I’m not a huge fan of how this works so. Not really, so i don’t like using the proficiency bonus in this way because it never gets all that high you know and the higher you get, the less valuable this is going to become out right, i honestly like mechanically or at least or conceptually i get what they’re going for.
You know you can sacrifice some of your time to do something that will potentially benefit the party in the long term right, but the thing is you don’t really get that many of them you know, like for example you’re a 20th level character you know you’re at the point where you can kind of arm wrestle, any mortal in the world really and or even like cast spells that will fundamentally alter the universe and you can make six cookies.
You know that add six temporary hit points, it doesn’t really like make sense right! and they’re temporary hit points so they’re non-stackable so it’s not even like you can eat all the cookies, you can only eat one right and it’s a bonus action so i get you know it’s not the worst but i don’t know man that’s a rough one.
So an interesting way to kind of get over this would be to use temporary hit points right! So i don’t know i’ll get to that in the thoughts section actually i’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s go through the walkthrough really quick and just explain this in simplified terms.
Walkthrough
So plus to CON or WISDOM. Proficiency with cooking utensils. During a short rest you can prepare food equal to four plus your proficiency bonus when a creature eats the food and spends a hit dice they gain an extra 1d8 hit points and over the course of one hour of effort or a long rest you can make treats equal to your proficiency bonus and amount and creatures can consume these treats as a bonus action after consumption they receive temporary hit points equal to your proficiency bonus. That’s the part i don’t really like too too much to be honest with you but i’ll talk about that in a little bit here. With that being said of course let’s take a look at my personal thoughts on the matter.
Thoughts
I like what chef is trying to achieve as a feat and i like that wizards of the coast is listening to fan feedback and having some mechanical benefit in regards to what parties already do is really nice. What i mean by that is a lot of parties have culinary expertise, as so far as to say there’s always seemingly one party member that prepares meals and they always scavenge remains and if they hunt beasts they’ll often pillage said beasts for various meats and cooking ingredients. So it does make sense and it will add another dimension of play to most games.
As a dungeon master you could really sink your teeth into this by describing how the dishes turn out having them roll and maybe providing added benefits for example something to the effect of advantage on perception checks for the next eight hours. Something to that effect would be really neat and super interesting and could potentially i preface it with potentially because it’s not guaranteed.
It could potentially lead to some pretty interesting role play moments you know like if one party member has a rough combat encounter and you take a short rest after you could have the chef of the party mention how he gives that party member going for a rough time some extra meat in his dish or something to that effect and build up a sense of camaraderie that way.
Mechanically however i don’t know i’m fine with the bonus to stats i’m fine with the proficiency, i’m fine with the short rest stuff, it’s as it relates to the one hour or the long rest that i don’t like and i did touch on it a little bit earlier i think just using the proficiency bonus makes this unbelievably underwhelming like once again at 20th level you’re kind of a demigod in more ways than not and you can only make six cookies in an hour and those cookies only provide six temporary hit points.
Yeah no thanks you’re better off just getting inspiring leader or even the healer feat at that point however as ways to mitigate this i would have it where so keep the amount of treats the same so make it one plus your proficiency bonus just to make it kind of more relevant at lower levels but in terms of the temporary hit points make it so you can sacrifice your own hit dice and then apply that as temporary hit points to everyone else in the party like let’s say your barbarian and your hit dice is a d12 and you sacrifice four of them over the course of a long rest and each cookie or each treat you provide allows each party member to gain a 4d12 worth of temporary hit points.
Thats how i would go about it but i’ve always been a fan of using hit points as a resource or hit dice as a resource rather. So yeah that’s my personal thought on that particular part. But overall i like it it’s a good feat i find it’s a little wordy but that’s to be expected it’s still kind of in its rough draft form.
In terms of allowing it my games as long as the party understood it or the person using it understood it well enough, i wouldn’t personally have an issue with it i would change the treats to represent what i mentioned earlier though. I’m not just in my homebrew and of course if you have any ideas of your own on how to tweak it.
Conclusion
Let me know down beneath i’m really curious to see what you guys will come up with but overall nice concept and of course if you have any thoughts, questions, comments, concerns of your own or any stories involving a interesting dish you made for your party and how they reacted to it, please let me know down beneath in the comment section and also drop what you believe the tastiest beasts would be now. With all that being said, i hope you have a wonderful day and as always happy adventuring everyone.