Feats as story rewards
Hand out feats as loot to characters for significant character developments or to underscore important milestones in a campaign. We think of feats as something that is only relevant for players building their characters. But we can treat them as rewards just like regular loot!
For example, Shawna the sorcerer learns to lead her party just like the magical ancestral soul-fragment within her pushed her to. She gains the Inspiring Leader feat after the ancestor within her shares more of their power with her.
Or Keanu the cleric convinces a silver dragon to aid the party in their quest. In addition to the dragon’s assistance, Keanu gains the Gift of the Metallic Dragon feat. He grows metallic scales on his body, signifying his parley with the dragon.
Both of these examples showcase how feats can be satisfying loot. Either for character development or to underscore significant story milestones.
Picking and customizing feats
We choose the loot we hand out. We don’t need to give the players a ring of invisibility if we think it will derail our campaign. Similary, we pick the feats we give to the players as rewards. Pick the ones you want to play with. If you think Lucky diminishes the fun of random dice rolls, don’t give it out. Instead, we can pick feats which fit the character well, and which we want at our table.
We can also customize feats to fit a character even better. Perhaps Shawna the sorcerer’s Inspiring Leader feat also lets her cast the healing word spell once per day. Or Keanu the cleric’s Gift of the Metallic Dragon protects allies at range not just within 5 feet of him.
As DMs, we control the loot we hand out. We can take full advantage of this fact when we’re picking and customizing feats as loot.
Anything can be loot!
Why stop at feats? Anything in the books can be loot. We can hand out spells, class features, companion NPCs or monsters, or features from a monster stat block as rewards. Simply write down the effect on an index card, and hand it to the player like any old magic item. Feats can be loot. Anything can be loot.
