Would you allow ASI/feats in place of a subclass levels features?

It is easily abusable. Start with a 16 Charisma ... and be a Warlock with no Patron (18 Charisma at level 1). Take level 2 as a Sorcerer ... with no origin to get that Charisma to 20 at level 2. Now start being a Bard at 3rd level... you have the DCs of an 8th level PC at level 2.

DM Dave1 said:

It would eliminate the flavor of subclasses and result in increasing samey-ness among the group as all the PCs, regardless of class, march toward 20 DEX/CON/WIS/CHA.

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There would be less flavor, but let's keep in mind that we've never had subclasses until 5e (with the exception of kits in 2e maybe?), and the added flavor of 3e prestige classes was optional, but we were still able to create flavorful PCs.

I disagree about the samey-ness. Feats are always individually picked i.e. every PC has different feats. All Wizards have the same class features, so you can differentiate them by subclass, but then all Wizards of a specific subclass have the same subclass features. The final differentiation comes from individually-picked abilities such as spells and feats, so feats contribute to the differentiation. However, it is true that too many feats might result in everyone ending up taking the same ones, especially for classes like Wizard who generally don't have many feats designed for them. I am less worried about the samey-ness of ability scores... the typical trend is to max your primary score, and when you reach the max you then increase other scores, and that's when different players make different choices (so in a sense, more ASI might actually mean more differentiation).

Mad_Jack said:

I'd think that you'd probably want to replace the features gained at each level with alternating ASI's and feats.

But, as mentioned, you probably need a lot more feats published in order to provide enough useful and interesting options for the characters.

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Alternating might be a good idea.

I am undecided about whether the scarcity of available feats is actually a good or bad thing...

The bad thing about it, is that all characters of a certain type will gravitate towards the same feats. For instance, if all spellcasters take War Caster, Spell Sniper and Elemental Adept, then it's quite boring. Additionally, you might end up with literally everyone taking those universally good feats like Lucky or Alert. (Note that this already happens with 5 feats per PC, so my house rule will only make it worse).

The good thing about it, is that after taking a few too-good feats and maxing your primary score, you are then forced to take sub-par feats and/or raise a secondary score, simply because you're running out of too-good options. That would mean you'd get an early boost compared to choosing a subclass, but later on you might reap decreasing rewards.

Wotnograpefruit said:

I think folks are coming at this from the wrong angle. What a player is asking for in this scenario is effectively a new subclass, just one whose mechanical bits are all drawn from pre existing Feats or ASI's. If the player had a strong concept for the character, and not just a lust for a given set of mechanical bonuses, I'd work with him to design an appropriate subclass.

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Just to clarify, the player's specific case isn't really a big deal Since the cause of the issue is his indecision in picking an Arcane Tradition, all I am doing is essentially let him take an ASI at 2nd level and then pick the Arcane Tradition at 4th level instead of the usual ASI, so basically swapping 2nd level with 4th level, giving him more time (2 levels) before choosing the subclass he'll be stuck with all his PC's life. So it's really a lot of a smaller deal than what we're discussing in this thread, but since the idea made me think that it could be used for example to represent a "generalist" wizard, I wanted to discuss it in more general terms.

I think it is too unbalanced this way. First of all, not all subclasses have the same number of features and classes rely differently on them. But it is certainly possible to create subclasses that have ASI as features.

Strictly no, it unbalances the System.

Satyrn said:

Do you think there are any classes that would suit Goldilocks?

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FrogReaver said:

Anyone have any idea about what single class this type of extra ASI and Feat subclass would be best with? Maybe warlock or cleric? Maybe Monk? Maybe Barbarian?

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We can first set a couple of restrictions, just to make the analysis simpler:

1) PHB feats only.
2) No multiclassing.

I went through all the PHB subclasses features, and I don't actually see a significant difference between classes. Perhaps Wizards and Sorcerers have a slightly lighter-than-average set of subclass abilities, and Clerics and Druids have a slightly heavier-than-average set. Note that this is when considering the whole set of subclass abilities (levels 1-20) compared to a number of feats equal to the number of levels at which the subclass gains its features (e.g. all Bard's subclass features VS three feats, all Wizard's subclass features VS four feats). Some subclasses also grant bonus spells (known, prepared or added to the list), so without a choice of subclass the character will also lose those spells.

When considering individual subclass features, the general situation is that there is way too much variance between their usefulness, as well as to the usefulness of feats, and that's before allowing this house rule of gaining ASI/feats instead of a subclass. Variance plus more variance means that extremely good/bad combinations can be even more extreme.

There seems to be some pattern so that especially the early subclass features are strong, then those gained at intermediate levels are weaker, and the late ones are strong again. But the pattern is not necessarily the same for all classes (e.g. the last subclass features of the Sorcerer look weakest to me).

But on average, it seems to me that subclass features are roughly on par with feats, so eventually the problem is that while choosing a subclass means you must accept the whole package (including some better-than-feats abilities and some worse-than-feats abilities), choosing feats means you can always pick good feats. In the course of 20 levels, there is going to be a net gain. Naturally, as most games don't reach past 15th level, the average net gain is lower than the theoretical maximum.

So maybe the risk of exploitation could be kept low enough by restricting the choices a bit, so that the feats regarded as strongest just cannot be gained in this way, for example Lucky, Alert or Sharpshooter (depending on your mileage, the list could be a lot longer).