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

[Rossbert]

If I was building a particular game that did not include subclasses for any of the classes and replacing their slots with ASIs/feats... what I'd do first would be to take all of the subclass abilities and work/rework them and turn them into feats themselves. In my opinion the number of feats available in official sources are too limited to the amount of additional ones going to be picked up.

If every class is going to gain three to six additional feat slots, we're going to see the exact same feats taken by more than one character in any particular party, which to my money runs counter to the purpose of feats in the first place. Feats are supposed to give PCs a little definition and originality... which is easily foiled if half the party is "Lucky" for example.

As far as I'm concerned... any mechanical feature a PC has-- whether it be a class feature, subclass feature, racial feature, background feature, feat, magic item etc.-- can be worked/combined/separated to create relatively balanced "packets" of game mechanic ability. Then players can choose those packets they want to create their slate of game mechanics for their PC. There's no necessity to just sticking with the various features the Player's Handbook has parceled out in the format they have. Sure, it's incredibly easier to do so... and these pre-built packages of features have been balanced and storyboarded to make them much simpler to grok from both a mechanical and a story point of view... but anyone with a little bit of time can reverse engineer all this stuff to create all kinds of different things if they feel like they want to and they have players that would appreciate it.

You just have to be very comfortable with whatever it is you end up creating, with the expectation that it hasn't been playtested at all before you hand it to your players. But if you're good with working on that stuff on the fly... then go nuts.

You may want to check out Pugmire. It has exactly that mechanic, all class abilities are feats, feat every level.

 

[the Jester]

Without a thorough review, no way. With a thorough review, probably even less way.

Not all classes put the same amount of their mechanical oomph in their subclasses. In many cases, giving an ASI instead might be overpowered; in many others, it might be underpowered. There isn't a simple "subclass features are worth x" equation to use in deciding whether a feat or ASI is more or less valuable, it varies from feature to feature and subclass to subclass, and god damn does it sound like a lot of work to make it balance out.

 

[Li Shenron]

In many cases, giving an ASI instead might be overpowered; in many others, it might be underpowered. There isn't a simple "subclass features are worth x" equation to use in deciding whether a feat or ASI is more or less valuable, it varies from feature to feature and subclass to subclass, and god damn does it sound like a lot of work to make it balance out.

Yes you're definitely right. And it's pointless to try and balance all combinations, when even the current subclasses are not necessarily balanced with each other.

In fact, what got me thinking about this idea, is that while it might give a min-maxer too much leverage, some of the unbalances within a subclass might cancel each other out. So at one level the ASI is better, but at another not so.

 

[jgsugden]

As all subclasses for all classes are not balanced against each other, I'd have to judge it on a case by case basis if a player asked.

What I would fear would be a character using it as a method to "rush" to 4 ASI/feats. "I took 1 level of Warlock just to get the ASI at first level in place of the Patron".

 

[Satyrn]

I don't think I'd allow it. I certainly wouldn't make it a universal rule, because I think it would be overbalanced for some classes, and underbalanced for others, maybe with a few suiting Goldilocks.

It would have been an interesting way to design classes from the beginning, though - either take one these subclasses, or just take ASIs (A champion-esque version of each class, essentially).

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

 

[Sunseeker]

Probably. It's basically what PF2 is shaping up to look like. More "choose your own class features". And there are certainly some underwhelming class features in every edition.

I'd let the player know I'd have to review their character first, but I'd probably approve it.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

I'd say no. 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. Might be a fun experiment but, with limited play time already, I'll pass and stick with SAW (subclasses as written).

 

[Mad_Jack]

As jgsugden somewhat touched upon, the one thing that immediately springs to my mind is that a spellcaster taking all of those ASI's is going to be at a noticeable mathematical advantage over other casters who chose to go for the feats because of what it's going to do to their spell save DC's...
A wizard would be getting an ASI at 2nd, 4th and 6th levels. A gnome wizard would be capping out at 4th level, and everyone else at 6th. They're going to be hell on wheels for the first half of their career until the math balances out around 10th level.

(And it would certainly make multi-classing and feats much more attractive options if you didn't necessarily need to wade through four levels of a class before getting an ASI/feat.)

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.

 

[Wotnograpefruit]

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. New subclasses are clearly how 5e is supposed to add complexity and better match archetypes, and I'd be happy to design one. So my answer is yes, from a certain point of view.

 

[FrogReaver]

When I first hear a new houserule, before I ever post about it I think about what kind of powerful combinations I could actually use with it. I don't see anyone actually saying if I was using this houserule I would specifically do X and that's why it's too strong. It's all just speculation about how doing things like this are typically bad ideas.

So taking the OP's question about a Wizard and trading all subclass features for ASI/Feats what can we actually do with this? I don't see anything at all that concerns me. I can't think of any combination of what are considered the good subclasses where having +1 INT MOD from level 2-7 is worth more than a level 2 subclass feature. I'm not even sure I see +1 INT MOD and +1 CON MOD as better than any good Wizard subclasses level 2 and 6 features.

Maybe the key is looking at feats instead of Stats and there may be some merit there. But I can't think of any combinations of 2 that I always want more than the subclass features I could take with a wizard. Portent Dice, Bladesinger's ability, evocation wizard's ability to avoid hitting allies, arbujuer wizard with the ability to give himself or allies extra hp, etc.

I do think people have a point about multiclassing with this option being too good. But that's easily resolved by only allowing you to have this type of subclass with any one class.

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?