Design Philosophy and Halflings

[Bjarkmundur]

When I'm designing (or redesigning) a feature, I try to look at it through the player’s eyes. I try to capture a specific feeling. For example take the following features.

1. You gain an additional 1st level spell slot
2. Once per long rest, you can regain one used 1st Level Spell slot.
3. The first time you roll a natural 20 after a long rest you regain one spell slot

All have the same effect, but are presented to the play by different means. This affects how the feature feels in the hands of a player. I sometimes try out different versions of the same feature, just to see what the effect of the change is.

Now, for the halfling part of the thread. I used a set of revised races, and I was comparing my half orc and my halfling race. Nothing that you need to see to understand my train of thought, though.
I noticed that the half orc features felt very ACTIVE while the Halfling's lucky, walk through creatures and advantage against fear effects felt very passive. This makes the halfling FEEL less powerful, since the player can't choose when these effects come into play.

I thought of a new version of lucky, which only works because crits don't increase damage dealt in my game:

Lucky
When you roll a d20, you can automatically roll a Natural 20. You regain the use of this feature at the end of a long rest.

How do you think this feature would feel in practice, and how do you think its power level compares to that of the traditional Lucky feature?

[Man_Over_Game]

It would feel a bit too powerful, being nearly identical to the Rogue's capstone.

I think a better way of doing it is "Once per Short or Long Rest, you can change a roll that you'd make with Disadvantage to instead be made with Advantage".

This does make it circumstantial, but much less circumstantial than the 5% chance per roll of the normal Lucky, but also less powerful than your example.

It'd also be important to understand exactly what a critical does in your games, as some classes (champion, hexblade, barbarian) have mechanics that modify criticals.

[Tvtyrant]

What about "once per short rest you may treat a 1 as a 20?" Now you can't control when you get the 20, but it gets across the feeling of just being lucky and is statistically useful for making a failure into a success.