SOURCE: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything

Rating the Benefits of Bountiful Luck

Bountiful luck has two bullet points, but they’re really one benefit with a drawback.

Benefit #1 – 

When an ally you can see within 30 feet of you rolls a 1 on the d20 for an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw, you can use your reaction to let the ally reroll the die. The ally must use the new roll.

This feature is just a reroll you sometimes give to your allies, but you run the risk of losing your halfling luck when you most need it, and the odds of someone rolling a 1 are 1/20. Still, across enough rolls, like four party members making a saving throw at once, this can sometimes come up quite a lot.

Mechanics and Requirements

Understanding How It Functions

The first thing to consider is that this costs a reaction. People tend to treat reactions as freebies; this isn’t the case, since you can use them for Counterspell, the Shield spell, an opportunity attack, or some more esoteric reactions granted by subclasses. The reaction cost is particularly important at highly optimized tables where everyone has the Shield spell.

The reroll itself works similarly to the halfling’s standard luck: Jeremy Crawford helpfully reminds us that the rules on advantage and disadvantage describe how rerolls work with them on page 173: you reroll only one of the dice, so if they rolled two 1s with disadvantage, you could only reroll one of the two, meaning this wouldn’t be useful. Your target also performs the reroll after you see the roll, but presumably, before the target is told by the DM if they succeed or not (it’s not that important in this case, since rolling a 1 is almost always a failure, so you don’t need the DM to tell you if you succeeded or failed)

The phrase “must use the new roll” also means you can’t reroll it again, so keep that in mind if multiple people in the party have this feat.

Finally, remember that this denies you your Lucky trait: here’s the text of that feature copied and pasted to remind you what you lost.

When you roll a 1 on the d20 for an attack roll, ability check or saving throw, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll.

Key Stats

This feat doesn’t really depend on any particular ability score on the part of the user, so you can put it on any character with any ability score distribution. Go nuts!

Ideal Characters for Bountiful Luck

Top Classes

Sorcerer – The problem with Bountiful Luck is that you lose your Lucky feature, which can suck for someone who makes a lot of d20 rolls. But if you have War Caster and proficiency in constitution saving throws from your class, and also you don’t make attack rolls, and you’re not fighting enemies that cause saving throws, Bountiful Luck is almost free for a sorcerer, aside from the reaction it costs.

Berserker Barbarian – If you’re playing a halfling barbarian for some reason, then you’re using Reckless Attack and have a 1/400 chance of rolling two 1s on the d20, so your Lucky feature isn’t very useful. And as a Berserker, you gain immunity to the charmed and frightened conditions at level 6, so you’re simply not making as many saving throws as other people, and can hand out a nat 1 reroll to other party members as needed. See our Berserker Barbarian guide for strategies and concerns regarding playing one.

Divination Wizard – If you want to truly control fate, why not go with the School of Divination so you have portent dice? Take Silvery Barbs to make enemies reroll, take this feat to let your allies reroll 1s, force set die outcomes on whoever you like, and go nuts. Make sure to use the knowledge in our Halfling Wizard guide.

Multiclassing Considerations

Multiclassing isn’t particularly relevant here.

Race or Subrace Choices

You absolutely must be a halfling to take this feat, but other than that, there’s no particular synergy, so take your favorite subrace of halfling.

Combos, Tactics, and Synergies

Complementary Feats

If you’re a spellcaster, War Caster will prevent you from rolling as many 1s, so you don’t have to worry about rolling a nat 1 on a concentration saving throw. Resilient (Constitution) can allow you to possibly succeed on a DC 10 save even on a nat 1.

Oddly enough, Bountiful Luck synergizes with one other party member with Bountiful Luck; if you use Bountiful Luck and roll a 1, someone else can cover for you with their own Bountiful Luck.

Spells that Synergize

Spells that buff saving throws like Bless will increase the chance your reroll works while decreasing the number of reactions spent on it.

Strategies for Maximizing Bountiful Luck Effectiveness

Rerolls are less common but more useful when the original roll had a high chance of succeeding anyway; try to use your Bountiful Luck to save the person who failed their save with a +8, not the person with a +2, unless it’s tactically vital that the +2 person succeed and you’re trying to stave off utter defeat.

A Paladin’s level 6 aura, the Bless spell, advantage from various sources, a Peace Domain Cleric’s level 1 feature, and more can increase saving throws.

Speaking of saving throws, this feature is best used on saving throws to avoid some horrible outcome, rather than on rolls with less dire outcomes. Don’t use this on the rogue’s two weapon fighting miss when they already used sneak attack, don’t use this on a saving throw against an enemy’s burning hands at level 10, etc.

Finally, remember, this is basically free nat 1 prevention for your party out of combat, so long as only one person is rolling at a time. Always use this feature when doing ability checks out of combat, even in social encounters, since Bountiful Luck has no physical manifestations that can make NPCs suspicious.

Alright, But Is Bountiful Luck Any Good?

Bountiful Luck isn’t a great feat, but I think it’s a bit better than some people give it credit for. Some people, such as the incredibly wise YouTuber Treantmonk, will see that this feat takes away the Halfling’s main feature and go “Ew, pass”: I think this is a mistake. Bountiful Luck is an okay middle of the road feat for halflings and should be considered once you’ve taken the important feats and ASIs for your class.