Chapter 5B — Feats

“A Calling is what the city trained you to be. A feat is what you made of yourself after — the trick you drilled alone, the discipline you begged a hedge-witch to show you, the scar that taught your body a new answer. Nobody is issued these. You take them.” — a Verge-scout, explaining her coilbow to a recruit

A feat is a package of training, talent, or hard-won knack that sits outside your Calling’s advancement. Where your Calling grants the features on its table and your Path sharpens them, feats are the things you reached for on your own — and so they are always a choice, never automatic.

How you get feats

You take a feat in place of an Ability Score Improvement. Every Calling offers an “Ability Score Improvement or a feat” at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 19 (some grant additional ones — check your Calling’s table). At each of those points you may either raise your ability scores the ordinary way or take one feat from this chapter instead. You also begin play with one Origin Feat from your origin (Chapter 5); those six are written there, not here, because you don’t choose them — your origin does.

The rules of the pool

Prerequisites. Most general feats require you to be at least 4th level. Some also require a minimum ability score, a Reaching into a named discipline, a Fighting Style, or another feat. You must meet every prerequisite listed to take the feat, and if you ever stop meeting it (a sundered focus stone, a lost Reaching), the feat lies dormant until you do again.
The +1. Most feats increase one ability score by 1, to a maximum of 20, in addition to their benefit — a feat is worth trading an ASI for. The handful of feats that grant no ability increase say so, and pay for it with a larger benefit.
Once only. You can’t take the same feat more than once unless its text explicitly says you can.
Epic Boons. A few feats are marked (Epic Boon) and require 19th level. These are the capstone feat you may take at 19th in place of that level’s ASI, and they push past the ordinary ceiling — several raise an ability score above 20.
Reading a feat. Each entry gives its name, any [Prerequisite] in brackets, and its benefit. Where a benefit touches a Merretian system — Fray, Strain, Conviction, the Faith Die, focus stones, buried-sun cells, the disciplines and their colour law (Order emits, Chaos drinks the light, Faith burns gold) — it uses those systems exactly as Chapters 4 and 6 define them.

The categories

The feats below are grouped by what they draw on. The groups are only for finding things — any character who meets a feat’s prerequisites may take it, whatever their Calling.

Discipline & Working Feats — for those who reach into the disciplines: deeper Reachings, cheaper Fray, borrowed cantrips, the second discipline.
Oath, Faith & Conviction Feats — the sworn word, the lent light, the debt, and the belief that only deepens when the story earns it.
Buried-Sun, Focus & Tech Feats — captured stars, bonded stones, and the magitech that runs on both.
Martial & Combat Feats — the body’s own answers: the breaker, the deadeye, the line-holder, the one who does not fall.
Hollow, Frontier & Exploration Feats — seam-sense, the Binder’s aptitude, and the hardening the exposed world beats into a person.
Social, City & Skill Feats — reading a room, working a guild, and the trained versatility a life in Sulamir rewards.

Discipline & Working Feats

These are the feats of the ones who reach into the disciplines — a longer arm inside your channel, a body that takes the bill better, a borrowed spark for those with none, and the rare, careful second channel. Every one of them uses the two-track economy of Chapter 6 exactly as written: Order pours through the flesh and costs Strain (clears on a short rest); Chaos pours through the self and costs Fray (does not clear on a short rest; a long rest of devotional stillness heals half). Your Reaching sets the highest Tier you may attempt (access); your Conviction and its Faith Die set what the attempt costs you (cost). Keep those two dials apart — most of these feats move only one of them, and the text says which.

Deep-Drawn. [Prerequisite: 4th level; a Reaching into the chosen discipline.] Your trained connection runs deeper than your Calling alone ever laid down. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 (to a maximum of 20). Choose one discipline you hold a Reaching in; the highest Tier of Working you can attempt through that Reaching rises by 1, never above Tier 9. This changes only what you may reach for — access, never cost: a Working one Tier past your Calling’s grade still lands on your Strain or Fray at its full weight after you roll and subtract the Faith Die, and pouring that deep is exactly the sort of overreach that walks you toward your cap. You gain no new track, no new discipline, and no cheaper magic — only a longer arm inside the one channel you already run. You can take this feat more than once, choosing a different Reaching each time (never the same one twice, so it can never stack past +1 in a single discipline on its own).

Ledger-Hardened. [Prerequisite: 4th level; a Reaching into any discipline.] You have learned to set your feet before you spend, and to take the bill better than most. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 (to a maximum of 20). Once per short rest, before you add an Order Working’s Tier to your Strain, you may brace and reduce that amount by your proficiency bonus (to a minimum of 0 added). Once per long rest, before you add a Chaos Working’s Tier to your Fray, you may do the same — reduce it by your proficiency bonus, to a minimum of 0 added. Each track refreshes this knack on the rest that governs it: Strain-bracing on the short rest that fully clears Strain, Fray-bracing on the long rest that at best heals only half your Fray — so the harder mercy stays the rarer one. This lowers only the number written to the track. It happens after the Faith Die is subtracted, it does not lower the Working’s Tier for any other purpose, and it never undoes a loss already triggered. A Working braced all the way to 0 added still counts as a casting in every other respect: your eyes still flash, an observer still reads you, and the Break still waits past the cap.

Spark-Touched. [Prerequisite: 4th level.] A little of the light caught in you — enough for one trick, and never enough to make you a caster. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 (to a maximum of 20). Choose one of the eight disciplines; you learn one cantrip-tier Working of it and can cast it at will at no cost, your eyes flashing that discipline’s colour when you do (an Order pick emits — yellow, blue, cyan, or orange, lit from within; a Chaos pick drinks the light — green, red, magenta, or indigo, matte and inked). Because cantrip-tier spends nothing, this never touches your Strain or Fray, and a Chaos choice makes you write no Loss Menu. This is emphatically not a Reaching: you gain no toolkit, you can never learn or attempt any Working above cantrip-tier through it, it does not advance with your level, and it does not count as a discipline for the Twofold Faith cross — a Spark-Touched Binder who sparks a Heart cantrip is still a one-Reaching Binder, not the prophesied cross. If you later gain a true Reaching into that same discipline, you count as already knowing this Working. You can take this feat more than once, choosing a different discipline (and a different cantrip-tier Working) each time.

Second Channel. [Prerequisite: 4th level; a Reaching into at least one discipline; the ability that governs your casting 13 or higher.] A practitioner may, with real work, cup a second channel in the same hand — so long as it lies on the same side of the spectrum as the one they already hold. This feat grants no ability-score increase; a half-Reaching is benefit enough on its own. You gain a half-Reaching into one additional discipline that sits on the same half of the divide as a Reaching you already hold: an Order caster may add a second Order discipline (Binding, Weight, Current, Unmaking); a Chaos caster may add a second Chaos discipline (Growing, Heart, Knowing, Dream). You may not use this feat to cross the divide from Order to Chaos or back — that crossing is Twofold Faith, its own feat-chain and a thing the world writes prophecies around, and Second Channel can never grant it. Through this half-Reaching you learn the new discipline’s toolkit and may attempt its Workings only up to a Tier equal to half the maximum Tier of your primary Reaching, rounded down — and never higher than Tier 3, no matter how you advance. It is a dabbler’s half-grip, not a second Calling; it will never reach the heights your true discipline can. Casting through it uses the ordinary two-track economy, and because it lands on the same side as your main discipline it feeds the same track you already keep (all your Order casting on one Strain clock, all your Chaos casting on one Fray clock) with no interleaving and no faster path to the Break. If this is your first Chaos discipline, write a Loss Menu now; if you already run Chaos, this half-Reaching draws on the menu you already keep. You can take this feat only once.

Overpour Adept. [Prerequisite: 4th level; a Reaching into any discipline.] You have drilled the exact moment most casters flinch from — the pour that goes one past the edge. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 (to a maximum of 20). You gain the two knacks below, usable a combined twice per long rest:

Steer the slip. When a Chaos Working triggers the d6 against your Loss Menu (because your Fray has passed 75% of its cap), you may reroll that d6 once and choose which of the two results stands. You still lose whatever the surviving die names — you only get to steer which of your six things it takes this time.
Delay the toll. When you Overchannel — pouring past your Strain cap for a level of exhaustion, or past your Fray cap to name one small permanent loss — you may hold that single consequence until the end of your next rest, when it lands in full (the exhaustion arrives then, and will not clear on the rest that delivers it; the naming-and-losing happens then). You buy the moment, not the mercy: the price is still paid, entire. You cannot delay a consequence that is already delayed, and nothing here softens the Break — if you refuse to stop and keep pouring past Overchannel, the wall is exactly where it has always been (an Order caster drops to 0 hit points and begins dying; a Chaos caster suffers an Unraveling, no save).

Quiet-Eyed. [Prerequisite: 4th level; a Reaching into any discipline.] You have learned to swallow the flash — to run a channel with nothing showing on your face. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 (to a maximum of 20). A number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest, when you cast a Working you may cast it without its tells: your eyes do not flash the discipline’s colour, you need no visible gesture and no spoken word, and a creature watching you gains none of the usual advantage on Insight checks to read what you are doing and gets no warning to react before the Working lands. Nothing showed. Because the casting needs no gesture and no word, one of these uses also lets you channel while bound, grappled, or gagged. This hides only the tell — that you are the one channelling, and what you are about to do; once a Working manifests, its effect is as plain as ever (a raised ward still glints, a lit fire still burns). And it is not the Hollow’s void-black eyes — it is your own discipline’s honest colour, simply held behind your teeth.

Stone-Bonded. [Prerequisite: 4th level; a Reaching into any discipline; a bonded focus stone.] Your stone is no longer a tool you carry but a thing you have grown into, and it answers the deeper for it. Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 (to a maximum of 20). You gain both of the following, so long as you are channelling through your bonded focus stone:

The deeper draw.Once per long rest, you may channel a single Working one Tier higher than your Reaching normally allows, never above Tier 9. As with all such reach, this is access, not cost — the higher Tier still lands on your Strain or Fray at full weight after the Faith Die. (If you also hold Deep-Drawn in that same discipline, the two increases stack for that one Working, but no Working may ever exceed Tier 9.)
The bond that holds. The DC for an opponent to sunder your bonded stone rises by your proficiency bonus, and the first time each day your stone would be sundered, it instead cracks but holds — you keep casting at full Tier, and the stone can only be truly shattered by a second sundering that same day. A stone that does finally shatter still drops you to cantrip-tier magic until you rebond a new one over days of quiet downtime, exactly as always.

Like any focus feat, both benefits lie dormant whenever you have no bonded stone in hand, and wake again the moment you do.

Oath, Faith & Conviction Feats

These are the feats of the given word and the lent light — the things a person becomes by swearing, believing, and standing between someone and the harm meant for them. None of them raises your Conviction; only the story does that (Chapter 6). Several of them point you straight at the moments that will.

Twice-Sworn. [Prerequisite: 4th level, and a standing oath — the Oath-Sworn feat, a Vowbound Calling, or any binding vow your GM recognizes.] Increase your Wisdom or Charisma by 1 (max 20). You take on a second binding oath — to a different lodge, House, Stand, Senate seat, person, or cause than your first. Name it, name to whom, and write its one line beside your first oath. When you act in direct service of either oath, you may give yourself advantage on one attack roll, ability check, or saving throw; you have two such uses per long rest, but each use must serve a different one of your two oaths — you can never spend both on the same oath in the same rest. Beyond that, the point of holding two oaths is that they will one day pull opposite ways: whenever they conflict and you choose, at real cost to yourself, to keep the harder one, that is exactly the kind of held faith the GM weighs for a Conviction increase (Chapter 6) — say so at the table when it happens.

Held at Cost. [Prerequisite: 4th level, Conviction 2 or higher.] Increase your Wisdom or Charisma by 1 (max 20). Your belief compounds what it survives. Whenever you hold an oath, Tenet, or charge at a genuine cost to yourself — the same test the GM weighs for raising Conviction — but the moment is judged not enough (or not yet enough) to raise it, you gain an ember: a single token of tested faith. You can hold only one ember at a time, and it fades if unspent by your next long rest. You may spend your ember just before you roll your Faith Die, to roll that die twice and take the higher — as though the Working sat dead-centre of your Tenet (Chapter 6). If the Working already is dead-centre of your Tenet, spend the ember instead to treat your Faith Die as one size larger for that casting (a d12 remains a d12). This feat lets belief pay out sooner — it never raises your Conviction itself. Only the story does that.

Open-Handed Faith. [Prerequisite: 4th level.] Increase your Wisdom or Charisma by 1 (max 20). The gold reaches further from your hand, and faster. When you use the Unshaped Faith gift (Chapter 6) — spending 1 point from either track — you may split that single point’s grant between two creatures you can see rather than one; each of the two receives, your choice for each, either advantage on one roll or one extra Hit Die of recovery. (One point, two beneficiaries — this is the party-mender’s feat.) In addition, once per long rest you may make an Unshaped Faith grant as a reaction instead of taking an action: when an ally you can see makes a roll, is about to spend a Hit Die, or drops, you may lend the gift after the trigger is seen but before its outcome is settled. The reaction use still costs its point from either track like any other. None of this requires a Reaching, a focus stone, or a drop of magic-blood — Unshaped Faith is the door no one is locked out of, and this feat only widens it.

Voice That Moves the Square. [Prerequisite: 4th level, Charisma 13 or higher.] Increase your Charisma by 1 (max 20). You can turn a crowd with nothing but your voice. As an action, address a group of creatures that can hear and understand you, declare what you want them to do or feel, and make a Charisma (Persuasion or Performance) check against a DC the GM sets by how set the crowd is against you: 10 indifferent, 13 wavering, 15 restless, 18 hostile, 20 a mob already in motion. Read the crowd’s temper as a four-rung ladder — turned against you → wary → willing to hear you → moved to act. On a success you shift the whole crowd one rung toward your aim for the rest of the scene; beat the DC by 5 or more and you shift it two. While a crowd is at “moved to act” it will not turn on you this scene and you have advantage on further social checks to direct it. On a failure the crowd hardens one rung against you and turns its attention squarely on you — which is the danger. You may make only one such attempt on a given crowd per scene. Because addressing a crowd that could turn on you is a real risk of self, a success won against a hostile or dangerous room is one of the canonical moments that can raise your Conviction (Chapter 6).

The Ledger’s Eye. [Prerequisite: 4th level.] Increase your Wisdom or Charisma by 1 (max 20). You read Sulamir’s true economy — the web of who owes whom that the polite city pretends isn’t there. As an action, study one creature you can see and make a Wisdom (Insight) check against a DC the GM sets by how buried the obligation is; on a success you learn one binding obligation it presently carries — a guild oath, a House debt, a sworn favor owed or owing, a personal vow — and to whom it is bound. Then, once per day, when you deal with someone who owes a debt you can name (whether you read it just now or already knew it), you may call it due: for that interaction you have advantage on Charisma checks made to press them on the strength of that specific obligation, and if they refuse you outright they must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw (DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Wisdom or Charisma modifier) or, shaken by the weight of a broken word, take disadvantage on their next attack roll or ability check. You cannot invent debts that aren’t there — but you can see, and name, the ones that are.

Warden of the One. [Prerequisite: 4th level.] Increase your Wisdom or Charisma by 1 (max 20). You keep Sulamir’s oldest promise — for one. At the end of any short or long rest, name one creature as your charge; you may name a different creature at each rest. While your charge is within 5 feet of you and you are not incapacitated, when they are hit by an attack you can see, you may use your reaction to make yourself the target of that attack instead: it strikes you rather than your charge, and its damage and effects apply to you (you take the hit in their place — you are not rolled against; if it beat your charge, it beats you). Separately, once per long rest you may use the Unshaped Faith gift (Chapter 6) on your charge and spend a single point from either track to grant them both benefits at once — advantage on one roll and one extra Hit Die — rather than choosing between them. Taking a grave blow meant for a citizen in your charge is precisely the held-faith-at-cost the GM weighs for a Conviction increase.

The Faith That Does Not Fail (Epic Boon). [Prerequisite: 19th level.] Increase your Wisdom or Charisma by 1; this increase can raise the score above 20, to a maximum of 30. Your Faith Die never comes up empty. Whenever you roll your Faith Die (Chapter 6), treat any roll of its lowest face as its second-lowest instead — a d12 reads a 1 as a 2, a d10 reads a 1 as a 2, and so on — so your deepest magic never costs you the most it could. In addition, once per long rest you may declare a single Working, oath, or Unshaped Faith grant to be made in perfect faith: for that one act, treat your Conviction as 5, rolling a d12 Faith Die twice and taking the higher, whatever your Conviction’s true rating. This is a moment of maximal belief called down at will — your Conviction score itself does not change, and rises only ever by the story that earns it.

Buried-Sun, Focus & Tech Feats

Captured stars, bonded stones, and the magitech that runs on both. These are the feats of the people who wring the last shot from a lent sun, carry two disciplines in two stones, and know exactly where a Founding wall wants to fall.

Sun-Miser. [Prerequisite: 4th level, proficiency with tinker’s tools] Increase your Intelligence, Dexterity, or Constitution by 1 (max 20). You have learned to wring every drop of lent light from a buried-sun cell.

Deep charge. Each buried-sun cell you personally maintain holds more than the guild rates it for. A cell you carry that powers an arc-lock fires 2 additional shots before it empties (a coilbow’s 6 becomes 8); a cell powering a lamp, tool, or device runs 2 additional hours. This bonus renews each time the cell is recharged.
Jury-rig. As a bonus action, using tinker’s tools, you can coax a working spark from a spent or inert cell — including one salvaged from broken magitech. Make a DC 15 Intelligence (tinker’s tools) check; on a success the cell holds 1d4 shots (or one hour of light or tool-use) that bleed away after 10 minutes if unused. You can do this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest. This is a rougher, faster trick than the Grid-Wise emergency coax, and you may take both feats.
Overcharge. Once per short or long rest, as part of an attack with a charged magitech weapon (or when you activate a cell-powered magitech device), you may dump a cell’s reserve into the coil: that attack or effect deals an extra 2d6 damage of its own type. Then the coil runs hot — roll a d6. On a 1 or 2 it jams: the cell burns out (inert until recharged), the weapon cannot fire until you spend an action clearing the coil-throat, and you take 1d6 fire damage from the backwash.

Twin-Bonded. [Prerequisite: 4th level, and the ability to channel through a bonded focus stone — either your own Reaching, or the Stone-Rite of Chapter 9] Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma by 1 (max 20). Where most hands hold one stone, yours hold two.

A second bond. You may maintain a rebonding to two bonded focus stones at once (a practitioner is otherwise held to one at a time). Keep two ready — typically two different disciplines — and draw on either. A caster channeling an off-discipline bonded stone uses it exactly as a non-caster would under the Stone-Rite; the stone’s memory does the shaping your Reaching cannot.
Quick-swap. As a bonus action you can stow one ready stone and bring up the other, or move a stone into or out of a setting you can reach — switching which discipline effect or focus is live from one turn to the next.
Set fast. Your stones are hard to knock loose. A called shot to sunder a focus stone you hold or wear (Chapter 6) is made with disadvantage. And the first time in a given combat a stone you hold or wear would be sundered, you may use your reaction to twist it clear — that attack fails to sunder the stone (it may still strike you normally).

Coilhand. [Prerequisite: 4th level, proficiency with arc-locks] Increase your Dexterity or Constitution by 1 (max 20). The coil-arm is an extension of your hands, in the melee and out of it.

Ignore loading. You ignore the loading property of any arc-lock, firing as many shots as your Attack action (and any bonus-action attacks) allow. Firing more than once per turn never provokes a coil-jam for you (the overheat option in Chapter 10) — your throat-discipline is clean.
In the thick. Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn’t impose disadvantage on your arc-lock attack rolls.
Snap shot. When a creature you can see moves to within 30 feet of you, you can use your reaction to fire one arc-lock shot at it, provided you are holding a loaded, charged arc-lock. You can take a snap shot only once per round.

Maker’s Hand. [Prerequisite: 4th level, proficiency with tinker’s tools or one kind of artisan’s tools] Increase your Intelligence, Dexterity, or Constitution by 1 (max 20). You are the hand the party thanks between fights — the field-fixer, not the guild-bench.

Twice the hand. When you build, repair, or identify an item or magitech device using tools you are proficient with, you work at twice the normal speed and half the usual material cost, and you add double your proficiency bonus to the ability check.
Field-mend. As an action, with tools in hand, you can restore a broken mundane object, a piece of damaged magitech, or a construct within reach: it regains 2d6 hit points, or a broken mundane item is returned to simple working order. You can do this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.
One good gadget. At the end of a short or long rest you can assemble a single-use gadget from scrap and a charged cell, holding it ready (you may have only one at a time). Choose one: a flash-striker (as an action, each creature in a 10-foot cube makes a Dexterity saving throw against 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier or is blinded until the end of its next turn); a grapnel-line (a bonus-action pull or climb along a 30-foot line); a shock-charge (as an action, one creature or object you touch or hit takes 2d6 lightning damage); or a spare cell (a jury-made cell holding 1d4 arc-lock shots or one hour of light). The gadget works once, then is spent; you can build a fresh one at your next rest.

Grid-Walker. [Prerequisite: 4th level] Increase your Intelligence, Dexterity, or Constitution by 1 (max 20). The city’s lent light answers to you; you read it, tap it, and turn it on your enemies.

Grid-sense. Wherever the buried-sun grid reaches, you automatically know the direction and rough distance to every live cell, grid-tap, and recharge post within 120 feet — through walls — and whether each is charged or spent. You have advantage on ability checks to find hidden taps, cut lines, or contraband cells.
Grid-tap. As an action, while touching a grid-tap, a live line, a recharge post, or a charged cell, you can draw on the lent sun: fully recharge one buried-sun cell, bring one device to power, or make a DC 15 Intelligence check to open, close, or override a grid-lock or grid-powered fixture you touch. You can draw a recharge this way a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.
Borrowed current. While you are within 30 feet of a live grid line, tap, recharge post, or charged cell, once on each of your turns when you hit a creature with an attack you can whip a filament of ambient grid-light through the blow, dealing an extra 1d8 lightning damage. You can do this a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest. This does nothing off the grid — on the dark frontier, the trick is only a spark.

Breaker’s Charge. [Prerequisite: 4th level, proficiency with tinker’s tools or thieves’ tools] Increase your Strength, Constitution, or Intelligence by 1 (max 20). You are the sapper — the one who knows where a wall, a door, or a Founding-era mechanism most wants to fail.

Wrecker. You deal double damage to objects and structures — doors, walls, wagons, unattended magitech, and Founding-era works — with any attack or effect, and you always know where a given structure or construct is weakest (advantage on ability checks to break, force, or collapse something).
Breaching charge. Given one minute, tinker’s tools, and a charged cell or a powder charge, you can rig and place a demolition charge. When it goes off — on your command as an action, or on a trigger you set — each creature and object in a 10-foot-radius sphere takes 4d6 fire and thunder damage; a creature makes a Dexterity saving throw against 8 + your proficiency bonus + your relevant modifier for half, while objects and structures take double. You always handle explosives without accidental mishap.
Seize the works. As an action, with tools in hand, you can attempt to disable a mechanism you can reach — a lock, trap, door-engine, grid-lock, or a construct or Founding-era device. Make a DC 15 check with your tools (the GM may set a higher DC for Founding work). On a success, a mundane mechanism is jammed or opened; against a construct or animated device, it must instead succeed on a Constitution saving throw (8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier) or be incapacitated until the end of your next turn as you seize its coil. You can use this construct-seizing effect a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus per long rest.

Boon of the Carried Sun. (Epic Boon) [Prerequisite: 19th level] Increase your Intelligence, Dexterity, or Constitution by 1. This increase can raise the score above 20, to a maximum of 30. You have kindled and bound a micro-sun — a captive star no larger than a fist, held in your own belief-containment and seated in your gear or over your heart. You never again want for light or for lent power.

Its light. At will, as a bonus action, you can make the micro-sun shed bright light in a 30-foot radius and dim light for another 30 feet, or douse it to darkness. It is true buried-sun light: it suppresses ordinary and magical darkness in its radius and reveals the Hollow’s edges (as the GM allows). You and your carried cells and magitech recharge fully each dawn from the bound sun, with no grid required.
Endless cell. Your micro-sun powers your gear as an inexhaustible cell: any arc-lock, tool, or magitech device you hold is treated as fully charged and never runs dry. If you have the Sun-Miser feat, you may Overcharge once on each of your turns with no jam risk — the bound sun does not overheat.
Star-fire. Once per long rest, as an action, you vent a measured burst of stored star-fire in a 30-foot-radius sphere centered on a point you can see within 120 feet. Each creature in the area makes a Dexterity saving throw against your DC (8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence modifier). On a failed save a creature takes 8d6 radiant damage plus 8d6 fire damage and is blinded until the end of its next turn; on a success it takes half damage and isn’t blinded. For that instant the sphere blazes with bright light, like a second noon struck in the dark.

Martial & Combat Feats

The body’s own answers — no Reaching, no borrowed light. These are the martial character’s discipline feats: the breaker who fells with one swing, the deadeye behind the coilbow, the warden who holds a line, the brawler out of the Iron Coin’s doorways, and the one who is simply never where the return blow lands. Each is drilled, not granted.

Sunder-Stroke. [Prerequisite: Level 4+, proficiency with a Heavy weapon] Increase your Strength by 1, to a maximum of 20. You have trained on the two-handed oath-metal weapons the Red Dragons and the mountain-forges favour — the maul, the greataxe, the war-glaive that needs a whole body behind it. You gain the following benefits.

Heavy Blow. Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with a weapon that has the Heavy property as part of the Attack action, you can cause that weapon to deal extra damage to the target equal to your proficiency bonus. This is simply the weight of the whole swing arriving at once — it is not magic, and it adds to that attack’s damage of the weapon’s own type.
Follow-Through. Immediately after you score a critical hit with a Heavy weapon, or reduce a creature to 0 hit points with one, you can make one attack with that weapon as a bonus action. The kill is not the end of the swing; it is the middle of it.

Coilbow Deadeye. [Prerequisite: Level 4+, proficiency with a martial ranged weapon] Increase your Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20. The Verge-scouts learn to read wind, range, and the half-second a target shows itself, and to put a coil-bolt through the gap. While you wield a coilbow — or any ranged weapon you’re proficient with — you gain the following benefits.

Ignore Cover. Your ranged weapon attacks ignore half cover and three-quarters cover. A low wall or a shield’s edge is not the wall the target believes it is.
Steady at Distance. Attacking at long range doesn’t impose disadvantage on your ranged weapon attack rolls.
Power Shot. Before you make a ranged weapon attack, you can choose to take a −5 penalty to that attack roll. If the attack hits, it deals an extra 10 damage. You must decide to do this before you roll, and the cost and the reward are yours alone to weigh, shot by shot.

Line-Warden. [Prerequisite: Level 4+] Increase your Strength or Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20. You hold ground the way a warden holds a gate: nothing crosses your reach for free, and nothing you have struck walks away clean. You gain the following benefits.

Nothing Passes. When a creature within 5 feet of you makes an attack against a target other than you — and that target doesn’t also have this feat — you can use your reaction to make one melee weapon attack against the attacking creature.
Stopped Cold. When you hit a creature with an opportunity attack, that creature’s speed becomes 0 for the rest of the current turn. The blow doesn’t only wound; it plants them where they stand.
No Clean Retreat. Creatures provoke an opportunity attack from you when they leave your reach even if they take the Disengage action first. Stepping back carefully is still stepping away from you.

Haft Mastery. [Prerequisite: Level 4+] Increase your Strength or Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20. You drill with the long oath-metal hafts — quarterstaff, spear, war-glaive, halberd, pike — until both ends of the weapon are a weapon. You gain the following benefits.

Butt-End Strike. When you take the Attack action and attack with a quarterstaff, spear, glaive, halberd, or pike, you can make one additional attack as a bonus action using the opposite, blunt end of that same weapon. This bonus attack uses the same ability modifier as the weapon’s normal attack; on a hit it deals 1d4 bludgeoning damage, adding that ability modifier to the damage as usual.
Keep Them Off the Haft. While you wield one of those weapons, other creatures provoke an opportunity attack from you when they enter the reach you have with it, not only when they leave it. The reach is the wall; crossing into it is the mistake.

Mountain-Bred. [Prerequisite: Level 4+] Increase your Constitution by 1, to a maximum of 20. Something in you was forged deep and cold — Kardun stock, a childhood in the sunless galleries, or simply a body that never learned how to quit. When you take this feat, your hit point maximum increases by an amount equal to your character level, and it increases by 1 again every time you gain a level thereafter. These hit points are permanent, ordinary hit points — they are yours to spend and refill like any others, and nothing removes them short of losing the feat itself.

Iron Coin Tough. [Prerequisite: Level 4+] Increase your Strength or Constitution by 1, to a maximum of 20. You learned to fight the way the Iron Coin’s collectors do — in doorways and stairwells, with fists, elbows, and whatever the room happens to provide. You gain the following benefits.

Bare-Knuckle. Your unarmed strikes deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage on a hit, using your Strength modifier for the attack and damage rolls as normal. Whenever you roll that damage die and it comes up a 1, you can reroll the die once and must use the new roll.
Anything’s a Weapon. You gain proficiency with improvised weapons.
Rattle Them. Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature no more than one size larger than you with an unarmed strike as part of the Attack action, you can choose one of the following as part of that strike: push the creature 5 feet straight away from you, or attempt to grab it. If you attempt to grab it, the target must succeed on a Strength or Dexterity saving throw (its choice) against a DC of 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier, or be grappled by you (escape DC equals that same number).

Oath-Blade Riposte. [Prerequisite: Level 4+, Dexterity 13 or higher] Increase your Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20. With a finesse oath-blade in hand — a duelist’s rapier, a paired short-blade, an heirloom edge — you fight defence and answer in a single motion. When a creature you can see hits you with a melee attack while you are wielding a finesse weapon you’re proficient with, you can use your reaction to raise the blade and add your proficiency bonus to your Armor Class against that attack, potentially turning the hit into a miss. If that added Armor Class causes the attack to miss, you may immediately make one melee weapon attack against the attacker with that same weapon as part of the same reaction — the parry becomes the opening. You gain the follow-up attack only when the attack misses because of this bonus to your Armor Class.

Verge-Scout’s Stride. [Prerequisite: Level 4+] Increase your Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20. Verge-scouts live by a simple rule: never be where the return blow lands. You gain the following benefits.

Fleet. Your speed increases by 10 feet.
Free Terrain. When you take the Dash action, difficult terrain doesn’t cost you extra movement for the rest of that turn.
In and Out. When you make a melee attack against a creature, you don’t provoke opportunity attacks from that creature for the rest of the turn, whether you hit or miss. You strike, and the withdrawal is already paid for.

Hollow, Frontier & Exploration Feats

These are the feats of the people who go where the grid ends — the Verge-scouts, the seam-hunters, the Binders’ seconds, and the deep-walkers of the sunless galleries. Against the Hollow they are almost all utility and defense, because the Hollow is not a thing you out-damage. It is an absence, and killing what crosses out of it closes nothing (Chapter 8) — so these feats buy you the two things that actually matter out there: warning, and the will to still be standing when the world goes thin.

Seam-Sense. [Prerequisite: 4th level] Increase your Wisdom by 1 (max 20). You have learned the feel of a thinning world — the cold that settles in the back teeth, the lamp that gutters with no draft, the refraction in the air where nothing stands. Passively, whenever you come within 120 feet of a Hollow seam (a proto-seam or a full seam, Chapter 8) or of a Hollow-origin creature, you feel that wrongness even if you cannot yet see its source; you don’t know exactly what is near, only that the world is thin here and that you should ready yourself. Actively, you can take a Search action to open your senses fully: until the end of your next turn you know the direction to, and the rough distance of, the nearest seam and the nearest Hollow-origin creature within 120 feet of you — whether or not it is hidden, invisible, or behind cover — and you read how thin the local world is, learning from the GM in plain terms whether this place is sound, a puncture, a proto-seam, or a seam. This never reads a mind or an intent (the Hollow and its seepage have none) — it reads the hole they leave in the weave. You also have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks made to notice a seam or a Hollow-origin creature.

Seamward. [Prerequisite: 4th level, a Reaching into the Binding discipline] Increase your Constitution or Wisdom by 1 (max 20). You cannot close a seam — true closure is nuclear-tier communal Binding, the stuff of a campaign’s climax — but you have learned the small, real work at the edge of it: to lend your hands to a sealing, and to hold a wound shut for a scene. Assist a Binding. When you use the Help action to aid another creature’s Binding-work — pressing a crossing back through a tear, or closing a seam — you count as a true second, not a bystander: you grant the lead Binder advantage on the working’s check and reduce its Strain cost by an amount equal to your proficiency bonus (the concert carries part of the weight for you). Hold it quiet. Once per long rest, you can spend 1 minute working the tear and make a Binding check with your discipline’s ability, DC 13 against a puncture, 15 against a proto-seam, or 18 against a seam. On a success you suppress the seam for 1 hour: no new seepage crosses while the hour lasts, and any Hollow-origin creature already tied to that seam has disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks while within 30 feet of it. This is Binding’s “press it back,” not closure — the seam is not mended, killing what has already crossed still closes nothing, and when the hour ends the wound resumes exactly as it was. As Order-work, this suppression adds its Tier to your Strain normally.

Hollow-Nerved. [Prerequisite: 4th level] Increase your Constitution or Wisdom by 1 (max 20). You have stood in the cold that pours off a seam and the dread that a Hollow-thing sheds like a smell, and you did not run. You have advantage on saving throws against being frightened, and against psychic damage and other psychic effects, when the source is a Hollow-origin creature or proximity to a seam (the Hollow-dread pressure of a thinning place). You have resistance to cold damage from a Hollow-origin source or from a seam’s unnatural chill, and you ignore any exhaustion or penalty the GM would impose purely for enduring that dread-cold. Finally, once per long rest, when you are frightened by a Hollow source, you can spend no action at the start of your turn to steady yourself and end that fear.

Absence-Eye. [Prerequisite: 4th level] Increase your Dexterity or Wisdom by 1 (max 20). The Knowing cannot read a Hollow-thing and the Heart cannot seize it — there is no mind to read, no heart to hold — so you learned to fight it by the only thing it does leave: the cold spot, the lens of wrong air, the place your eye slides off of. You do not have disadvantage on attack rolls against a Hollow-origin creature you cannot see, and such a creature does not gain advantage on its attacks against you for being unseen; you strike at the hole it makes in the world rather than the body it lacks. In addition, as a Bonus Action you can fix on the nearest Hollow-origin creature within 60 feet of you: until the start of your next turn you know its exact location even if it is invisible, you can target it normally, and it cannot gain the Surprised condition on you. You have no such edge against ordinary hidden foes — this is a knack for the absence specifically, learned the hard way and useless anywhere the world is whole.

Verge-Runner. [Prerequisite: 4th level] Increase your Constitution or Wisdom by 1 (max 20). The exposed frontier — the Verge where the grid ends, the Waste-Lands in the east — kills far more travelers with distance, thirst, and exhaustion than with any monster, and you have out-walked all of it. You have advantage on saving throws to avoid or resist exhaustion from a forced march, extended travel, or natural extremes of heat, cold, thirst, or altitude, and you may lead a group of up to six on a forced march without imposing that check on the others’ behalf. You ignore the penalty to d20 Tests imposed by your first level of exhaustion — which, alongside the movement clause of the Verge-Hardened origin feat, means a party’s first hard level of exhaustion barely touches a scout who has both (you cannot, however, gain this d20-Test benefit more than once). Once per day, by spending an hour in study of the land, you unerringly locate the nearest source of fresh water, the nearest defensible shelter, and the nearest patch of safe ground within a day’s travel; and you and your companions cannot become lost in natural terrain by nonmagical means while you lead. If you are not already proficient in Survival, you gain that proficiency; if you already have it, you add double your proficiency bonus to Survival checks made in the wild beyond the grid.

Sunless-Born. [Prerequisite: 4th level] Increase your Constitution by 1 (max 20). You are made for the places the sun never reaches — the buried-sun galleries and steam-deep of the sunless communities, and the frozen dark of the Waste. You gain darkvision out to 60 feet; if you already have darkvision, its range increases by 60 feet, you see in Dim light within it as though it were Bright light, and you discern colors in that darkness rather than only shades of gray. You have resistance to cold damage. And you are sure-footed on bad ground: difficult terrain composed of ice, snow, loose scree, rubble, or other unstable natural footing costs you no extra movement, and you have advantage on saving throws to avoid being knocked prone by such terrain or by slick and icy conditions. Where others pick their way and shiver, you walk.

Epic Boon of the Answered Absence. [Prerequisite: 19th level] Increase your Wisdom or Constitution by 1, to a maximum of 30. You have spent a lifetime against the thing that has no mind to fear you and no heart to hold — and you have learned, once, briefly, to give it one. Once per long rest, you can take a Magic action to name a single Hollow-origin creature you can see within 60 feet of you and impose relation upon it. For 1 minute, that creature counts as a creature that possesses a mind and a heart: it loses its immunity to the charmed and frightened conditions, it can be read by the Knowing and seized by the Heart, and it can be affected by any effect that requires a mind, a will, or an emotion, exactly as a living creature would be. It is the impossible made briefly true — the absence wearing, for one minute, the shape it never had. This grants you no power to end it: the seam it leaked from is not closed (closure is still Binding-work, Chapter 8), destroying the creature during that minute still closes nothing, and when the minute ends it is once more No Mind, No Heart. A kaiju-scale manifestation, or any Hollow-thing the GM judges too vast for one mind to answer for, is unaffected.

These are the feats a person earns by living in Sulamir rather than by fighting or reaching into a discipline. This is the pillar where the skirmisher, the fixer, the House agent, and the guild go-between buy the same kind of power a mage buys with a Reaching — the reward the world hands the character who never throws a Working and never draws first. Each one is meant to be worth an Ability Score Improvement on its own. If it is not, it does not belong here.

Journeyman. [Prerequisite: 1st level] A life in Sulamir bounces you through a dozen guild-halls, and you kept something from each. You gain proficiency in any combination of three skills, tools, kits, or instruments of your choice. This feat grants no ability-score increase — the three proficiencies are its whole benefit, which is why it is one of only two feats in this chapter open as early as 1st level. You can take Journeyman more than once. Each time you do, choose three new proficiencies; you cannot pick one you already have.

Master’s Hand. [Prerequisite: 1st level] You did not merely learn a craft — you were rated a master of it, the way the Masons stamp a keystone before it will bear weight. Increase one ability score of your choice by 1, to a maximum of 20. You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice. Then choose one skill in which you are proficient — it may be the one you just gained — and when you make an ability check with that skill your proficiency bonus is doubled. (A doubled proficiency bonus is called Expertise; if some other feature already grants you Expertise in that skill, choose a different skill.) Because a single doubled skill is the trade a Iron Coin ledger-clerk or a rooftop cutpurse makes at the very start of a career, this feat may be taken as early as 1st level.

Sharp-Eyed. [Prerequisite: 4th level] You read the three layers the way others read a page. Increase your Intelligence or Wisdom by 1, to a maximum of 20. Your passive Perception and passive Investigation scores each increase by 5 — you notice the tail, the palmed coin, and the wrong brick without ever rolling for it. If you can see a creature’s mouth move and you share a language with it, you can read its lips, understanding what it says across a noisy senate floor or through a pane of glass. And once per short or long rest, when you take a full minute to study a room, a document, or a person, you have advantage on the ability check to notice what is hidden, altered, forged, or out of place.

The Borrowed Face. [Prerequisite: 4th level] The Order of the Spider teaches that a good mask is not cloth — it is a second self, worn until it fits. Increase your Charisma by 1, to a maximum of 20. You gain proficiency with a disguise kit, or Expertise with it if you were already proficient. Given ten minutes and the kit, you can remake yourself into a plausible stranger, or into a specific person you have studied in the flesh; a creature that grows suspicious must succeed on an Intelligence (Investigation) check contested by your Charisma (Deception) check to pierce the disguise, and it makes that check with disadvantage if it has never met the real person you are copying. You can mimic a voice, accent, or speech pattern you have listened to for at least a minute. And you have advantage on Charisma (Deception) and Charisma (Performance) checks made to pass yourself off as someone you are not — a guild courier, a House second, a bored clerk with every right to be in that room.

First to Move. [Prerequisite: 4th level] Sulamir’s alleys teach you never to be caught flat. Increase your Dexterity or Wisdom by 1, to a maximum of 20. You add your proficiency bonus to your initiative rolls. You can’t be surprised while you are conscious — a blade clearing its sheath, a trap tripping, a shout of “now!” never robs you of your first turn. And when initiative is rolled, you may swap your own initiative result with that of a willing ally, so long as both of you are conscious and neither is surprised — letting the one who should act first, act first, once the order is called.

Guild-Connected. [Prerequisite: 4th level] You hold real, standing membership in one of the eighteen guilds — name it now (the Iron Coin, the Red Dragons, the Masons, the Abyssal Fires, Bavit-vita, the Order of the Spider, or any of the rest), and let it colour how this feat feels. Increase your Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom by 1, to a maximum of 20. In any place your guild’s reach extends, you can find a safe house, a meal, and a night’s shelter among its members; you can fence goods or move contraband through the guild’s channels at a fair member’s cut rather than a robber’s one; and you have advantage on Charisma checks made to deal with a fellow guild member who is not already your active enemy. In addition, once per downtime period — or once per long rest, if your table is not tracking downtime — you may call in a guild favor: a document vouched or quietly forged, a locked door opened, a message run across the city, a small debt looked past, a specialist’s hour of work. The favor must be something the guild could plausibly grant and must not put the guild itself in danger. And the guild remembers: from that moment the ledger runs the other way, and you owe it back.

The Long Ledger. [Prerequisite: 4th level] In a city run on debt and sworn oaths, every noble is a knot of who-owes-whom — and you learned to find the right thread and pull. Increase your Charisma or Intelligence by 1, to a maximum of 20. You gain proficiency in Persuasion or Insight, or Expertise with one of the two if you were already proficient. When you spend a minute reading a formal gathering — a Senate session, a House parley, a guild arbitration — you have advantage on ability checks to work out who in the room is allied, indebted, or oath-bound to whom. By invoking your own rank, your name, or a House’s word, you can compel an audience: a functionary or gatekeeper who would turn a stranger away must at least hear you out. And in any structured social challenge — a negotiation, a Senate motion, a trial of standing, whatever contest your table runs on the political stack — if you hold, or can credibly invoke, a debt or a sworn oath over the other party, you gain advantage on your Charisma checks against them for that scene, and your first success in the challenge counts as two successes toward carrying it. That is the weight of the ledger doing work your words alone never could.

Read the Current. [Prerequisite: 4th level] Some people simply feel the way a moment is about to break — the turn of a card, the shift in a crowd, the half-second before a blade clears leather. It is not a Working and it is not Faith; it is a gambler’s nerve honed until the city stops surprising you. Increase any one ability score of your choice by 1, to a maximum of 20. You gain a pool of luck points equal to your proficiency bonus, and you regain all spent points when you finish a long rest. You may spend them as follows, but never more than one point on a single roll:

Before you roll a d20 for an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, spend 1 luck point to make that roll with advantage.
When a creature you can see makes an attack roll against you, spend 1 luck point to impose disadvantage on that attack.

Once a luck point is spent, it is spent — if the current still turns against you, that was its answer.