Hello adventurers of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 18th episode of our feat series. My goodness today we’re gonna be taking a look at fade away feat dnd 5e it is found in the xanathar’s guide to everything as always if you don’t got it please get it, it is worth it and this is for you little people out there. No i’m not talking about dwarves, no i’m not talking about halflings that’s right we’re talking about the gnome and the sneaky gnome in this case. This is pretty good stuff.
If you are unfamiliar with how feats work? how to get access to them and how you use them? i’ll give you brief explanation. You get them every four levels as a general rule of thumb, some classes get a little bit more frequently than that. But for the most part every four levels and you got them in placement of your ability score improvement. They’re essentially extra features, traits, abilities and skill sets you can give your character that gives them a little more of a customized and personalized feeling. With that description of the way let’s take a look at the description for fade away.
Description
As i kind of alluded to earlier there is a prerequisite and that’s that you got to be a gnome which is probably one of the most underplayed races in the game. Can’t say i’ve ever played with a gnome if we’re gonna be honest with you. The feat reads as followed.
Your people are clever, with a knack for illusion magic. You have learned a magical trick for fading away when you suffer harm. You gain the following benefits: Increase your Dexterity or Intelligence score by 1, to a maximum of 20. Immediately after you take damage, you can use a reaction to magically become invisible until the end of your next turn or until you attack, deal damage, or force someone to make a saving throw. Once you use this ability, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
Wow lot to unpack there. That being said, let’s take a look at a walkthrough and kind of explain this a little bit better. Do not miss out our dnd 5e prodigy racial feat.
Walkthrough
So the +1 to dexterity intelligence not really a whole lot to unpack there. I’d probably just pick whichever one is kind of around that modifier increase or whichever one you’re using more frequently if neither of them are close to that ability score or ability modifier increase.
Secondly that second half my goodness that’s a wordy one. So when you get hit meaning you have to take damage first which is kind of the biggest drawback to this in my opinion. You magically become invisible. If we run familiar with how invisibility works i’m just read you the source from the player’s handbook here.
An invisible creature is impossible to see without the aid of magic or special sense. For the purpose of hiding the creature is heavily obscured which gives you can’t be hit basically, it gives you a really good bonus to AC and the creatures location can be detected by any noise it makes or any tracks it leaves.
And the second point attack rolls against the creature of disadvantage and the creatures attack rolls have a vantage. Very good stuff there, very good. So it’s something i would like to point out gotta wait until a long or short rest use it again. That in my opinion is the biggest drawback also it wears off as soon as you attack deal damage force someone to make a saving throw which is pretty much any offensive action you can take. Yeah it’s still pretty cool though. That being said, let’s take a look at my personal thoughts on it.
Thoughts
Is it better than any other feat out there! it kind of depends on your playstyle i guess but for the most part i want to say no. If you’re moved that short or long rest requirement i would say it was overpowered. But because that’s there you can really only use it once maybe twice a day, maybe three times if it is rough session but still interesting.
I think a good way to play this or a good class to pair this up with would either be an assassin would probably benefit a lot from this or actually moreover the cleric would probably benefit more from this than anyone else. Reason being they’ll explain both of them will start the assassin first. So the assassin and rogues in general will really benefit from this, because in addition to getting that second sneak attack damage the second guaranteed sneak attack vantage you can run away really quick.
Reason being rogues if you’ve never played one before they can use dash as a bonus action. So assuming your movement speeds 30 feet which most races it is. You can essentially take damage, turn invisible, move 30 feet as part of your movement. Move another 30 feet is a bonus action and move another 30 feet as a action. So you can very easily see how that would put significant gap of distance between you and the enemy so that’s kind of why rogues had gained a lot from it.
On the subject of clerics it doesn’t say that healing effects it the invisibility rather so. You could take damage turn invisible go to an ally who’s probably taking damage as well and heal them or buff them significantly. Also check out dnd 5e fey teleportation feat.
I really like that use and i think it would be very effective kind of plays really well thematically as well or even heal yourself right the sky is kind of a limit. You can also check out our second chance feat 5e.
Conclusion
That being said, if you have any alternative uses, any cool playstyles, any builds related to this feat or any cool stories in general i’d really like to hear them down in the comments, i love reading them so does everyone checking in. Please be a part of our community we’re always happy to have more people. That being said, thank you so much guys and as always happy adventuring.