I see the
E6 Rules from 20 years ago are still relevant today.
E6 Rules are fascinating and news to me but also very much in line with the division of storytelling I've seen run in 3e, 4e, and 5e games. Cool.
I think this is somewhat missing the rationale of my argument.
I'm totally cool with 12th-level restricted feats, 16th-level ones, etc.
I just don't want the game to lock player's in where they're running a suboptimised character if they don't invest their limited feat resources at every level bump up on a single feat concept that evolves over time to have new but releated swiss-army knife features.
So let there be a more powerful feat that builds off of background-suggested feats, or background-restricted feats in some campaign settings (Like Knight of Solamnia or Witherbloom College). But also include various higher level feats that COULD play nicely with that build but could also play nicely with other builds.
Feats are class-less class features. The more applicable they are to different types of characters, the better.
I say that feat chains should only build off of 1st level feats because the background feat is balanced quite differently than 4th or 8th etc feats are, and everyone gets one, so it's your door into the world of feats rather than just an optional alternative to an ASI. ASIs should look desirable to take as well (and honestly, I'd rename the ASIs into the ability score feats of editions past).