The Elemental Adept feat is designed for spellcasters who want to specialize in one type of damage in particular. The conventional ones are likely fire, ice, and thunder in that order, but there are also interesting builds with acid or other less common damage types that can suddenly become even more powerful thanks to the additional benefits this feat gives you.
The One DnD Elemental Adept feat gives a player a +1 in a casting ability score of their choice, the ability to ignore resistance for one damage type, and all 1’s rolled for damage from spells of said damage type will be counted as 2’s.
Let’s dive in further to really see what this feat has to offer!
Elemental Adept Feat DnD One Review
The best way to break down a feat is to check out the exact wording. So let’s check out the most current DnD One Elemental Adept Feat.
From One DnD Unearthed Arcana Expert Classes 2022:
4th-Level Feat
Prerequisite: Spellcasting or Pact Magic Feature
Repeatable: Yes, but you must choose a different Damage Type each time for Energy Mastery
In your spellcasting, you can harness a particular form of energy with deadly mastery, granting you the following benefits:
Ability Score Increase: Increase your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
Energy Mastery. 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 damage dice as a 2.
Unearthed Arcana, Expert Classes 2022
Let’s break down these individual benefits to get a better idea of how good or bad this feat is.
Benefit #1: A +1 ability score increase to player’s choice of one of the three casting ability scores.
Pretty standard for a One DnD Half Feat like this one, but I do like the versatility that allows players to choose the one that matches their casting class. Nothing too special, but it would be weird to see a feat like this without a partial ability score increase as the backbone to it.
Benefit #2: Choose from Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder and any spell you cast that uses that damage ignores any resistance that an enemy has to that damage type.
Love the theming. For those players who want a build, whether it’s Fire Sorcerer or Thunder Mage, this gives them a legitimate way to build a thematic spellcaster that isn’t muted because of enemy choice.
The fact you can choose this feat multiple times to have this ability with more than one damage type definitely opens up some interesting builds, though not necessarily optimized or min-maxed ones.
Benefit #3: When you roll damage for a spell of your chosen element, treat all 1’s on the damage dice as 2’s.
This is okay. It’s nothing that will have even the worst dice rollers jumping up and down in overpowered joy, but it’s a solid way to make sure even the worst damage rolls are a little bit better, and that can become a bigger deal with situations like crits where you get to double the damage dice rolled.
How Does Elemental Adept Feat Measure Up?
This is one of those niche feats for certain builds. I like it because it is a solid B-grade feat that can be stronger, because that bypassing resistance is a big deal. Now if you have a meta-gaming DM, this is also a feat that is easy to counter which is unfortunate, but assuming you don’t have to deal with that headache, the elemental adept gives a touch additional damage, ignores resistances you are likely to run into at some point, and the ability score improvement of +1 to your preferred casting stat is good to take an odd number to an even one.
Remember, even numbers on your core stats are what give the next level of bonuses. So if that +1 takes a 13 into a 14, a 15 into a 16, or a 17 into an 18, etc, that can be pretty useful.
This is a feat I like because it’s designed well for what it needs to do.
Elemental Adept Feat: DnD One Vs 5E
This is a really easy one, because the One DnD version of the Elemental Adept feat is the exact same as the 5E version, except the 5E version wasn’t a half feat meaning you get an extra +1 to Charisma, Intelligence, or Wisdom by going with the One DnD version of the feat.
Related Article: 5E Elemental Adept Feat Guide
Because the two are so similar there’s not much more to consider, but in the heads up competition obviously the one that gives an extra boost to your core casting stats is going to get the nod, and if you’re maxed out already, you can add a +1 to one of these off-stats, both of which have plenty of good skills attached to them.
Who Should Take the Elemental Adept Feat in DnD One?
The Elemental Adept feat is one that certain spellcasters, mostly sorcerers and wizards, although very occasionally Clerics, will want. This feat does exactly what it says: it allows a spellcaster to be built around a specific elemental damage.
Spellcasters who are around a very specific build need to consider the Elemental Adept guide, and maybe the occasional Cleric focusing on fire and offensive spells (most likely a Cleric of the Forge) but for the most part his is a Sorcerer or Wizard feat for very specific builds that are all about doing one thing particularly well.
While this won’t hit my list of best feats for sorcerers or best feats for wizards under normal circumstances, it is worth noting that for the specialty builds it’s a necessity and more than pulls its weight if that’s the direction you’re going to go.
DnD One Elemental Adept Feat Final Grade
At the end of the day this is a feat that is going to be most commonly looked at by two types of players:
- A spellcaster looking for a way to work around some common resistances you’re running into, especially when it’s favorite spells
- Creating an element-focused spellcaster who can ignore resistances to remain effective in most battles
For one of these two situations, the Elemental Adept Feat is an excellent feat pick up that allows you to create specialty elemental builds that are going to be cool to play and effective in most battle situations. For the average versatile caster won’t have as much use for this feat.
It’s a B feat that is solid, and absolutely necessary for certain builds, but outside of that you can ignore it for other major casting feats or the classic ability score level ups.
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Proud to embrace the locally created moniker of “Corrupt Overlord” from one of the all time great Lords of Waterdeep runs, Shane is one member of the Assorted Meeples crew and will be hard at work creating awesome content for the website. He is a long-time player of board games, one time semi-professional poker player, and tends to run to the quirky or RPG side of things when it comes to playing video games. He loves tabletop roleplaying systems like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Werewolf, Fate, and others, and not only has been a player but has run games as DM for years. You can find his other work in publications like Level Skip or Hobby Lark.