Excising, Severely Limiting, or Strictly Organizing Feats

[erf_beto]

I am thinking that hyper-configurable characters arent necessarily the best thing for a game.

It goes unsaid that a lot of people would "cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war" over it, but I wouldn't be opposed to this.

We already have a lot of choices to make (race, class, theme) and options inside those options (equipment, spells, specializations, fighting style), and what could be the end-all-be-all diferentiator (sp?) of characters: ability scores. Wizard feats could be baked into choices of class features inside the class. It wouldn't be so wrong to expect mostly everything else be DM improv or roleplaying, would it?

Of course, there's no way we'll see that. Different people have different tastes, there should be choices, opportunity for new books, kids today, yadda yadda...

 

[Ratskinner]

<snip>
I am thinking that hyper-configurable characters arent necessarily the best thing for a game.

To me its like there is a sweet spot where you have enough tools to make a character unique enough to become enamored of it, then thats it. Anything after that is just bloat.

Are feats part of that sweet spot? Opinions will vary. But if I was to think of the most distinct adventuring party we ever had, it was our 2e Dark Sun group. Everyone remembers their character from that campaign with affection, and we didnt have feats back then. Not saying feats would have sullied the experience...but we got our gaming sweet spot without feats.

It just makes me think, not that they are a problem, but more that they are unnecessary to enjoying the game.

I agree, but finding that sweet spot can be tricky. I think that something like feats will be in or near that sweet spot, but feats as they are become far too tedious, with far too little fun-benefit. (Lately I seem to be analyzing everything in gaming by a "homework to play" ratio.)

Whatever the case, feats should probably be moduled out of the basic game (perhaps with the basic classes having pre-selected feat-ures ) at whatever levels end up being appropriate. By which I mean: "At first level, choose a feat from list A, and another from list B. At third level in <class>, choose a feat from list C. etc." Missed that one at first level...tough cookies...or retrain...whatever.

 

[Quickleaf]

Whatever the case, feats should probably be moduled out of the basic game (perhaps with the basic classes having pre-selected feat-ures )

Yes. Let those who want to use feats to tweak the fine points of their character use them, but let me play the game without feats (without putting myself at a disadvantage).

When I built a knight PC in 4e Essentials, the feats I took were all power ups: bastard sword proficiency, heavy blade expertise, heavy blade strike, and melee training (con). I suppose I could have taken linguistics, but the non-combat-optimization feat options are few and far between, and that would come at the cost of reduced combat efficacy.

So that's another element - maybe all combat and non-combat feats should be siloed, for example having the combat stuff handled within the class and non-combat stuff in feats.

 

[Spatula]

Seem that +1 bonus (either permanent or highly circunstantial) is a bad feat, by consensus. But out of curiosity:

What is an exemple of a *good* feat?

Suppose a party of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue.

Good question. I think feats that expand character options are good ones. A lot of the 3e Eberron feats qualify, although most of them are tied into the setting. Dragonmark feats give a character access to one or more spells 1/day. The druid feats had various effects depending on the sect, like adding anti-aberration spells to your spell list.

More generally, feats that give a character more skills or languages or allow the character to use better weapons and armor qualify.

Feats should be "what makes this character cool or interesting or unique," as opposed to "how do I make an unbeatable trip monkey" or "how high can I pump up this number."

I think that you could replace feats with varied class options, to some extent. Pathfinder added a lot of this sort of thing to most of the classes. Sorcerers have different arcane bloodlines that gives them some interesting and unique class abilities, gives some bonus spells known, and maybe influences your spell choices (if you pick the "elemental fire" bloodline, you're probably going to want to grab fire spells, frex). Rogues get some combat tricks to choose from. Barbarians get rage powers.

 

[BobTheNob]

I like the idea of not needing to pick feats at all = when I pick the class, thats all I needed to do.

Then, for the people who like to micro-manage the process a bit more, splat books present swapping options. So, for instance, if (hyperthetically) the fighter came with an in-built power strike option (power/feat/whatever), I could swap power strikes for whirlwind. I wont be "more powerful" for having made that swap, but I will have changed my capabilities and flavor somewhat.

It nice because it changes the design space that feats are in from being "power on top" to being "alternate power", kinda like ordering a pizza and saying "No onion, but I want anchovies". Its still basically the same pizza, just a little more suited to your tastes. At the same time people wont be punished for not putting their order together one ingredient at a time... they can just say "give me the supreme" and be happy with the result.

 

[Lanefan]

Then tell me: do you want the game to support differentiation in PC design between characters of the same class/race? How would you support that?

I don't care much about mechanical differentiation between characters of the same class-race-level; I'd far ratherr the differences come out in personality-alignment-roleplay.

So what? 3e characters are by design choice more powerful than 1e/2e characters of the same level.

My point is that this is-was a bad design choice.

If someone buys tens of book and then has an issue with quantity, he created his own problems. Not just with feats, but also with classes, prestige classes, races, equipment, spells...

Yeah, they all got out of hand too; prestige classes in particular.

If you think that just because you own books with 1000 feats then you have to be aware of them or have them in your game, why don't you have the same issue against classes or magic items or everything else?

I do.* I don't really like bloat of any kind; history shows that editions tend to sink under its weight. But even using the 3.0 PH on its own, I found as a player that feats were a bloody nuisance both in selecting them in the first place and in playing them later on.

Of all the feats I ever saw the only one I can truly say I liked was Leadership - which in its day seemed to be the one lots of other people complained about!

* - Well, except for magic items; there can never be enough variety in those.

I can tell you that with my 25ish 3ed books I still had fewer feats than I could use, particularly for certain classes (the Rogue first and foremost). There were certainly also many garbage feats published, if you mean this then I certainly agree.

I wouldn't know a garbage feat from a good one, for the most part. Some were things that should have been simple basic class features for some classes and not available at all to others (e.g. Blindfighting should be a class feature of Thieves and Assassins only) to preserve some distinction between classes.

I have a hard time believing there weren't enough of 'em for you, though.

Lan-"fighting blind again"-efan

 

[Incenjucar]

Feats are needed either to accentuate or break free from archetypes. This is especially important for those who have their own personal notion of fantasy that would otherwise be limited by the more generic design of a class/race/theme combo, though sadly they tend to be limited in useless ways to enforce some other archetype.

For every Expertise feat, there's something awesome and character-defining like Child of the Sea, the Moonbow feats, Wilderness Skirmisher (and Terrain Advantage), Hurl Breath, Clever Tail, and so on. The trick is to get rid of all of the REQUIRED feats so you can get to the FUN feats.

 

[On Puget Sound]

There are two kinds of feats that need to die. The first are mechanically too good. "+1 to attack with swords", or "you can cast spells while in wild shape." Any feat that that a given class or race is an idiot for not taking should not be a feat.

The second are those that are just too situational. "When you score a critical hit against a bloodied undead creature one size larger than you while using a bull rush attack..."

So what's a good feat? One that channels your character in an interesting direction, or adds a meaningful but not mandatory option, often with a trade-off. "When you are hidden and you miss with an attack, you remain hidden." "Your wild shape can fly, but you can't attack while flying." "You can expand the area of your damaging spells, but lose some damage when doing so." "You can sheathe a weapon and draw a different one as a free action." "You can cast a ritual that normally takes 5 minutes or less as a full-round action, taking a -5 penalty to the ritual roll."

We might still see a list of hundreds of rituals - that's OK with me, if they are all good ones. In terms of presentation, I' like to see them organized so that fighters don't have to slog through the spellcasting part of the list and vice versa.

 

[Psikus]

So what's a good feat? One that channels your character in an interesting direction, or adds a meaningful but not mandatory option, often with a trade-off.

This reminds me of a glaring omission from my previous feat list: Pacifist Healer! If there is a candidate for Most Awesome Feat in 4E, this is it.

 

[Ratskinner]

Feats are needed either to accentuate or break free from archetypes. This is especially important for those who have their own personal notion of fantasy that would otherwise be limited by the more generic design of a class/race/theme combo, though sadly they tend to be limited in useless ways to enforce some other archetype.

I definitely prefer "accentuate" over "break". If we need to play a game with broken archetypes, we can play any number of classless games out there. Archetypes/classes are necessarily painted with broad strokes, and so I enjoy some mechanical ability to adjust and tweak them. However, in a D&D game, breaking archetype should require some kind of multiclassing, IMO.

Also: It'd be nice if designing new classes/races for the more radical amongst us wasn't a total leap into darkness.