A Player's Guide to Feats - Elemental Adept
Controlling the elements sounds fun. Who wouldn’t want to cast a fireball that pierced resistance or call forth lightning that hurt more than your target thought it would? In theory, it sounds like a worthwhile feat, but is it really? Let’s look at this week’s feat, Elemental Adept.
What is the Elemental Adept Feat
Prerequisite: The ability to cast at least one spell
When you gain this feat, choose one of the following damage types: acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder.
Spells you cast ignore resistance to damage of the chosen type. In addition, when you roll damage for a spell you cast that deals damage of that type, you can treat any 1 on a damage die as a 2.
You can select this feat multiple times. Each time you do so, you must choose a different damage type.
Dissecting the Feat
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. You need to be able to cast spells to acquire this feat. Barbarians, fighters, most monks, and rogues, minus the arcane trickster, are out of luck. These classes should focus on hitting monsters or stabbing people in the back, not daydreaming about casting lightning bolt. The rest of the classes may want to consider the feat, but it depends heavily on their build.
The feat works best if you’re going to create a spellcaster who plans to take a majority of spells in the element you choose for the feat. Fire casters get the cool name pyromancer, while cold spell casters are called, well, cold casters. It doesn’t have the same ring to it, but it’s just as effective as far as the feat is concerned.
I was surprised that the most common resistance was to cold, not fire. I’m not sure why I always thought it was fire, so hooray, I learned something today. Lightning is a close third to fire, while acid and thunder are a distant 4th and 5th. Cold is the way to go if you maximize the number of creatures for the feat to be most effective.
Ignoring resistance is very good, especially considering the number of creatures we are talking about for any given element. It’s important to note that your spells will not pierce immunity. There are over 120 creatures with immunity to cold found on D&D Beyond, and more than 150 are immune to fire. Hitting a slaad with a fireball will feel extra good, knowing it will deliver full damage, but hitting a barbed devil in the face with one will only piss them off.
Changing 1’s into 2’s when you roll damage is underwhelming at best. Enough said.
I wouldn’t recommend taking this feat more than once. As we’ve seen, the feat works best when your character is focused on casting one set of spells centered around a single element.
The Elemental Adept Feat Useability by Class
Artificer: If the damage wasn’t limited to just spells, you could possibly consider it, but it doesn’t. Not worth taking.
Barbarian: Not eligible
Bard: Not worth taking.
Cleric: Maybe if you are playing Tempest Domain cleric, but there are so many other feats that do more than give you an extra point of damage.
Druid: If you’re playing a Circle of Wildfire druid, take this feat and choose fire as your element. Seriously, with all your spells being fire-based, you’ll scare the crap out of fire-resistant creatures, from the tiny quasit to the mighty dragon turtle.
Fighter: Not eligible.
Monk: You're not eligible unless you're a Way of the Four Elements monk. Even then, there are too many better feats for the monk to choose from.
Paladin: Not worth taking unless you’re going some strange build where you only cast a smite of a single element type over and over.
Ranger: Not worth taking
Rogue: Not worth taking
Sorcerer: This feat is for you if you’ve built a Draconic bloodline sorcerer. Match up the element you take with your Dragon Ancestry. The Storm Sorcery bloodline also works well. Take thunder and/or lightning and laugh when your attacker realizes you are immune to their thunder attacks while delivering full damage.
Warlock: If your patron is the Celestial, you might consider it, but I don’t recommend it. The Fathomless could be interesting, but the expanded spell list features too many different types of element-based spells to make it worthwhile. If your patron is the Fiend, the feat has some merit as long as you choose fire as your element of choice. The same applies if your patron is The Genie (Efreeti - fire, Marid - cold).
Wizard: Build a pyromancer or a cold caster (god, I hate that name) and grab the feat when you can.
There’s value in the feat if you’re an Order of Scribes wizard. Here’s why:
When you cast a wizard spell with a spell slot, you can temporarily replace its damage type with a type that appears in another spell in your spellbook, which magically alters the spell’s formula for this casting only. The latter spell must be of the same level as the spell slot you expend.
Pick an elemental type and change the damage type to that type whenever you want. This is especially helpful when you encounter a creature with resistance to that element.
Conclusion
I started off thinking the feat was going to be worthless. After a closer review, it can be quite useful with certain builds. It’s not a feat I’d strongly recommend. Still, if you’re following one of the builds mentioned above, or you only cast fireball over and over again, this feat should garner some serious consideration.
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Art Credit - Wizards of the Coast
