Unlike typical feats, aberrant feats manifest as physical changes to your character’s features (or as additions to your character’s appearance). These feats twist and reshape your form, and you become alien in appearance. A character who has selected at least one aberrant feat gains an inhuman, unsettling presence. You take a –1 penalty on Diplomacy, Disguise, Gather Information, Handle Animal, and wild empathy checks for every aberrant feat you possess (–2 with two feats, –3 with three feats, and so on). Some aberrant feats have an additional cumulative effect based on your total number of aberrant feats. This accumulation increases as you gain additional aberrant feats.
Example: A character with Aberration Blood who selects Durable Form gains 4 hit points (two for each aberrant feat he possesses). If he later selects Bestial Hide, he gains another 2 hit points (in addition to the normal benefit of Bestial Hide).
Editor: If you are looking to mutate, this is a good place to start. It has some choice feats for self improvement. Deepspawn and inhuman reach for instance. Alas, the Aberration Blood feat is a tough pill to swallow. If you are a DM looking to encourage players to mutate themselves, drop that one. Otherwise, pick up the tail and try to convince your DM to allow you to use it to put on the tail based weaponry available in the weapon section of this handbook.
Editor (Wizards.com): The Aberrant Dragonmark feat was declared an aberrant feat and could be substituted for Aberration Blood to meet the prerequisites of any other aberrant feat on the website. Since this was an obscure passage in a PDF in the back files in the Eberron section, it's doubtful it's common knowledge, as well as unlikely to be used in most games. Check with your DM to see if he uses the rules from the website.
StarterFeats: Aberrant Dragonmark, Aberration Blood, Mourning Mutate
When a grouping of feats requires a specific feat to begin a feat tree, there usually is only one. However, for aberrant feats, there turns out to be three. To sum it up, Aberration Blood if you want an extra limb, Mourning mutate for extra damage, and Aberrant Dragonmark for unlocking Aberrantion dragonmark feats AND aberrant feats.
- Aberration Blood: The original feat is Aberration Blood. It sucks as it only adds to your skills, and gives you deformities at the same time. The only one to pick is tail. Not because of the +4 balance, but because it gives you a tail, qualifying you for prehensile tail. It also gives you a limb to chop off and replace with a graft, like a tentacle or a spare arm.
- Aberrant Dragonmark: The obvious choice of the three, this one gives you an aberrant dragonmark. Honestly, the selection kinda sucks, but it's head and shoulders over the alternatives. And at low levels, they aren't bad. Tenser's floating disk, charm person, and cause fear all stand out as worth a look.
- Mourning Mutate: Your background requires exposure to the mourning. Basically it's skill bonuses, a limited save against poison or disease, and DR 3/- against nonlethal damage only. However, the one that stands out is warped limb, which gives +2 damage to your unarmed strike, but only one limb. Still, if you are playing a clawlock, or get the beast strike feat, then it unlocks the other Aberrant feats while giving you extra damage in melee.
Aberrant Dragonmark OnlyFeats: Aberrant Dragonmark, Aberrant Dragonmark Gift, Aberrant Dragonmark Mystery, Aberrant Dragonmark Vigor, Greater Aberrant Dragonmark, Lesser Aberrant Dragonmark, Mark of Madness, Mark of Vengeance, Mark of Vermin, Mark of Xoriat, Ward of Khyber, Winters Mark
Editor (Are they Aberrant feats?): Before we go any further, I need to address something. An obscure PDF on the WotC website said that Aberrant Dragonmarks counted as Aberration Blood for the purpose of qualifying for other Aberrant feats. It didn't say anything about all the Aberrant Dragonmark only feats. I am ASSUMING that all Aberrant Dragonmark feats fall under Aberrant feats, because the original does. By RAW, a DM could justify it either way. I think there's no reason not to call them aberrant feats. On the other hand, each new feat does give you negatives to certain charisma based skill checks. It could go either way.
The following feats are only for those who get the aberrant dragonmark feat. Some are useful, but not all. Still, there's room to work with here and they do work outside of most builds. So you could tack these onto any build, if you have the feats to spare.
- Enhancement: There are three enhancement feats Gift, Lesser, and Greater. Gift gives you +3 times a day use for your dragonmark. The way it reads, it becomes far bore useful if you are picking up lesser and greater. Lesser does have a few sweet spells, but greater is where you really make out. Alas, you can only get lesser at 6th, and greater at 9th. Given the power growth curve in Eberron, that could be a while. Still, if you are willing to wait it out, getting all four feats could be worth it. If you do choose this path, bestow curse is the way to go. You can word it in ways to help the party like, -6 to resist having mind-control dispelled. The limits are what your DM will allow you.
- Mystery: The mystery allows you to sacrifice a use per day to increase your caster level by +1. Much more useful for warlocks and psionic users then normal spellcasters.
- Vigor: An immediate action to give yourself temp HP. Could be useful in certain builds. You definitely want to pick up Gift is you take this one. Also, mark of madness gives you three more spell-like uses a day.
- Mark of Madness/Xoriat: Confuse people for one round as a swift action 3/day. Saving throw sucks. Much better as Vigor fuel, or a stepping stone to Mark of Xoriat. Xoriat gives you 5/Byeshk DR is nice. Three feats to get it, but you can get it at 1st level if you are willing to be human and take a flaw or two. DR 5 against an obscure metal is actually quite scary at 1st level.
- Mark of Vengeance/Ward of Khyber: Unless you hate normal dragonmarks. Pass.
- Mark of Vermin: If you are a druid ranger who's willing to get gross, then swarms of vermin are scary.
- Winters Mark: A really weak save-or-die, that doesn't have a save, or SR, but is resisted by how many HPs you have and a random number of dice depending on the strength of your mark. Frankly, way too much work. Leave it to the NPCs.
Additional Dragonmark FeatsFeats: Ashbound Mark, Dragon Ward, Dragonmark Fist, Dragonmark Luck, Dragonmark Rage, Eldritch Dragonbane, Eldritch Mark, Evokers Mark, Mark of Resilience, Mighty Dragonmark, Nightborn Dragonmark
Editor (Are they Aberrant feats?): Again, the problem is that you are qualifying for these feats with an aberrant dragonmark. Does that make these feats aberrant feats? You could say ythey are aberrant feats if you buy them with an aberrant dragonmark, and general feats if you buy them with a true dragonmark, but frankly, I don't think that's the case. I think a feat is either aberrant or it isn't. So, in these cases, they aren't. Check with your DM to see how he views them. Either way, I included them here so you can evaluate them.
These dragonmark feats are the only other dragonmarked feats that an Aberrant Dragonmark can take. There are oodles more that are only available to true dragonmarks. These are available to both true and Aberrant.
- Ashbound Mark: Sucks.
- I hate dragons: Dragon Ward and Eldritch Dragonbane are only useful if you hate dragons, and only of moderate use.
- Fist: Spend an action point to maximize your unarmed strike.
- Luck: 1/day blow a use per day to get a temp action point. FINALLY. A way to regain action points, even if it's only for one round. This feat makes those feats that use up action points finally viable.
- Rage: Are you a barbarian with an Aberrant dragon mark? This gives you fast healing as you rage. Healing is fairly cheap, mind you.
- Eldritch Mark: Way too much work to make someone flat-footed.
- Mark of Resilience: 1/day get a minor bonus to saving throws. This sucks.
- Mighty Dragonmark: +1 to DC of your dragonmark. Mighty my ass.
- Nightborn Dragonmark: I hate situational bonuses. However, it is untyped and adds +1 to attack, skill and saving throws. Still not impressed.
- Spell-like: There are some feats that work on spell-like abilities. Quicken Spell-like, Mortalbane, empower spell-like, maximize spell-like. There's another section on Feats that affect spell-like abilites. They are worth a look, especially mortalbane. 5/day you add +2d6 damage to any spell-like ability that does damage to mortals. Nice.
Wild ShapeFeat: Aberration Wild Shape
If you want to add on a whole new list of critters you can turn into and you are going the wild shaping path to power, take a look at this. However, as a warning, polymorphing of any sort tends to tick off DMs if you take it too far.
Stat EnhancementsFeats: Bestial Hide, Durable Form, Inhuman vision
Bestial Hide gives you a +1 to AC for every two feats, and unless you are doing nothing but getting aberrant feats, is so not worth it. Durable form gives you a minor boost to HPs. Inhuman vision adds to your spot and extra range on your darkvision. It might be worth it for certain builds. Warped mind gives you extra will save against mind-affecting and 1 PP per Aberrant feat. If you are playing a psionic character and you have lots of aberrant feats, get it.
Attack FeatsFeats: Deepspawn, Inhuman Reach
Deepspawn gives you two natural attacks at 1d4+str. This is the foundation of the Aberrant monk. A great choice for a clawlock as well. If you are going the natural attack route, this is well worth a look. Inhuman reach gives you a -1 to hit, but adds +5 feet to your reach. Well worth the trade off.
Eat AnythingFeats: Scavenging Gullet
A unique ability, eat anything organic. If you are trying to make an ultimate survivor type, then this might be something worth looking at. Frankly, I know of no way to gain the extraordinary power to give up eating. So if you want to survive in an AMF for a few weeks, you’ll need to bring food, learn how to hunt, or get this feat and just graze on anything you walk past. Get really sharp teeth and eat wood, grass, gnaw your way through doors. Remember that common dirt is also considered organic. Get rid of evidence. Eat the dead. Ask the DM how much you are allowed to pack away. Just remember that if you eat an entire human body, you’re going to need some serious fiber to move all that.
FlyingFeats: Starspawn
If I have a high enough con, can I just fly straight up for three rounds, fall for one, then fly up again for three, fall for one, and repeat until I finally reach whatever height I want to? There are grafts that handle flying much better then this, but it also comes with some minor perks. There are few ways to eliminate the threat of altitude fatigue and sickness. Cold resistance 5 isn’t shabby, if you are planning on focusing your energy resistance elsewhere when you get around to buying it. It won’t stack, I’m afraid. Plus you might have a friendly DM who will let you replace them with grafts of limbs that provide you with more natural attacks. It’s all over the place in it’s usefulness, but worth a look to see if it will fit in your build. Personally, I'd promptly chop off the wings and replace them with graft limbs, or skip them entirely.
SwimmingFeats: Waterspawn
You get a swim speed, water breathing and cold resistance 5. Unless you have a very specific build concept in mind, leave this one for the NPCs.
