While passive feats remain working in the background of the game all of the time, active feats require player input during a battle before they'll be used. These generally allow you to perform an attack that is enhanced in some way, although they will also carry a temporary penalty. There is no activation cost for active Feats, so you can use them and abuse them as much as you like, though working around their penalties will require some strategy depending on your foe.
Critical Strike
Stunner! The primary benefit of critical strike is that it has a good chance of stunning an enemy for a short duration on a successful melee attack (and only melee attacks; critical strike doesn't work with ranged weapons), if they fail a saving throw. That saving throw, however, is checked against a DC that consists of the attacker's experience level plus the attacker's strength modifier, so at low levels, you won't stun an opponent more than 1 time out of three at best. Once you gain 10 levels or so, and gain bonuses to your strength through implants or other items, you will stand a much better chance of incapacitating opponents.
In addition to the stunning effect, critical strike doubles the chance that a hit will result in the possibility of a critical hit. If a weapon would normally perform a critical hit on a roll of 20, for instance, a critical strike will increase that range to 19-20. For best results, try to use this feat with a weapon that already has a critical range of 19-20; the range will be increased to 17-20, giving fully 20% of your attacks the chance to see their damage doubled if they connect. At higher ranks, this feat triples or even quadruples the chances of a critical strike, meaning that, at master rank, a weapon with a natural critical chance of 19-20 will have a 80% probability of a critical hit for each attack. (Note that, due to the mechanics of the critical hit, this doesn't necessarily mean that 80% of your attacks will do double damage. See the glossary entry for "critical hit" to get a bit more in-depth on this topic.) Against some powerful foes, the critical range will actually exceed the range needed for a hit, meaning that 100% of your successful hits will have a chance for double damage.
The drawback is that, when you use a critical strike, your defense is lowered by 5 points for a few seconds. This is obviously a substantial penalty, which balances the powerful effect of critical strike, and should make you wary of using this skill when dealing with multiple enemies, since they'll have a much better chance of hitting you and causing massive vitality damage.
| Rank | Prerequisites | Effect |
| First Rank | Level 1 | Chance to stun enemy; doubles critical strike range |
| Improved Rank | Level 4 | Chance to stun enemy; triples critical strike range |
| Master Rank | Level 8 | Chance to stun enemy; quadruples critical strike range |
Sniper Shot
Sniper shot works exactly the same as critical strike, except that it only works with pistols and other ranged weaponry. Also, when calculating the chance that the target will be stunned, the DC is calculated by your character's level plus the modifier of their intelligence attribute, instead of the strength stat.
| Rank | Prerequisites | Effect |
| First Rank | Level 1 | Chance to stun enemy; doubles critical strike range |
| Improved Rank | Level 4 | Chance to stun enemy; triples critical strike range |
| Master Rank | Level 8 | Chance to stun enemy; quadruples critical strike range |