D&D 5E Feats: Do they stifle creativity and reduce options?

[Saeviomagy]

What is needed is a higher quality (and more balanced) selection of Feats.

Well, that balance can be achieved by removing some of the high performers, namely those that modify attacks. Most of the feats are actually balanced pretty well if you run out the maths and your DM actually plans out stakes without referring to character abilities.

For example: if you have keen mind, and that "true north" thing lets you actually avoid an encounter every so often, then it's pulling its weight. If the DM just decides that someone has keen mind so they won't put any navigation challenges in the game then it is a waste of that portion of the feat - hopefully you are really making the 'flawless memory' bit work hard, and at least you still got half a stat bump.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Does it count if you want to closely model what you have in your head?

It's fine if you have that preference, but it's an unreasonable expectation to put on a class-based game. If I have an idea for a cool samurai character, and the game actually includes a samurai class, then the chance that their idea of a samurai matches my own idea is pretty negligible. You need a lot of options before there's any real chance that a scattershot of ideas will just happen to coincidentally overlap in such a way as to cover the exact idea that you had beforehand.

 

[superstition]

the more rules you have, the less freedom and creativity the player's have

If this were true then most people would choose to live as hermits rather than in civilizations.

Structure (rules) actually enhances freedom by increasing quality of life. One finds more freedom in a higher rules environment (civilization) than in isolation.

That said, the rules need to suit the people. Inhumane rules degrade quality of life.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, which means that you're inserting yourself into a role.

Physically performing e.g. swinging weapons or flipping tables, no.

Verbally performing, and being in the same sort of 'headspace' as a stage performer? Hells yeah.

Both quite true.
But here it gets messy. I say that a player should for this at least try to go through the motions (then again, I'd never allow this particular mechanic in my game anyway so it's a bit moot). Same with any other 'social' thing that could be resolved through simple game mechanics e.g. bluffing, diplomacy, etc. - if they don't at least try to roleplay it out it ain't happening.

Where I want to encourage my players to be better performers and portrayers of character. Where else do you think my entertainment as DM comes from?

Lanefan

Thing is, what counts as "trying"?

Player says: My bard plays a song to inspire the troops. Is he roleplaying? I'd say he is. He's doing what the class is expected to do, and he's engaging in the game in character.

Player says: "Oh wonderful troops, go forth into battle and do your best!" in a grand Shakespearean accent is also role playing AFAIC.

Thing is, if we only reward the second player, are we not actually reducing options? If a player isn't very good at actually, on the spot, coming up with inspiring words, that player isn't going to play a bard knowing that he actually can't do what a bard is supposed to do because the player can't do it.

Now, as far as, say, bluffing goes, you do actually, as part of using the skill, come up with something to bluff about. "I bluff my way past the guards" isn't really doing anything since part of using the skill includes actually lying. So, it is built right there into the skill. OTOH, "I try being friendly with the shopkeeper" is, IMO, a perfectly fine role-play for using Diplomacy since all Diplomacy actually does is change attitudes.

Do I seriously need to act in first person all the time in order to role-play? I'd say very much not.

 

[FrogReaver]

Since selective list there, which you then use to make a sweeping statement.

Which also involves ignoring the fact that the majority of those that don't afd new conceptual space allowing you to confidently state "this is what my character does" rather than "this is what my character does DM/rolls permitting."

Selective list???? I literally went down the feat list in the book and commented on the first 12.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

That's exactly my point, though. Back in the day, people spent more time on the actual game - the part where you do stuff in the world - because there wasn't this whole char-gen boondoggle to distract everyone away from the game.

I really don't think that's what happened. You would absolutely have metagaming, people telling other people how to play, and pre-written "here's our SOP, get to the point" stuff. There was absolutely disengagement from play going on, and that's why I gave the example I gave, with the ear seeker, even though you clipped it out. It was to illustrate that even in the earliest stages of the hobby, DMs were looking for ways to punish players for "not thinking" and "not doing stuff in the world."

 

[FrogReaver]

If this were true then most people would choose to live as hermits rather than in civilizations.

Structure (rules) actually enhances freedom by increasing quality of life. One finds more freedom in a higher rules environment (civilization) than in isolation.

That said, the rules need to suit the people. Inhumane rules degrade quality of life.

Only because cooperation in the real world requires rules and that communication can bring tangible wealth to both parties involved and then that wealth can be used to fund basic survival and more freeing up the individual for other things. That's not quite the case when we are talking about rpg game rules.

 

[FrogReaver]

Other than the whole "cannot be surprised bit". But, sure, you can get most of the way there without feats. Not all the way, but, most of the way.

Surprise in D&D 5e is a game mechanic. When the alert feat says you cannot be surprised it is speaking about the game mechanic of surprise. So even the cannot be surprised aspect still isn't a new character concept as what you are playing is still just a really alert/aware/fast reacting character and that character concept is still available with or without the alert feat.

Again, most of the way. The feat simply allows the player to plant a flag and categorically state, "I am good at this".

So you agree athlete adds no new conceptual space to the game because as you just noted it only allows a character to state, "I am good at this." ... Thank you.

That's a bit trickier. Can Perform allow you to mimic speech? That's a DM's call. I'd say that something is clearly being added here.

I can't think of any DM that would rule that speech mimicry is impossible in all circumstances in the game. It may have a high DC. It may be ruled impossible to fool those that are very familiar with the person whose speech is being mimicked. However, in general every DM is going to allow speech mimicry in some fashion.

So what new concept is being added with this feat? What is this feat allowing a PC to do that he isn't doing otherwise?

Without this feat, a mounted character is dependent on the DM not ganking the mount at the earliest opportunity. Since mounts tend to be pretty fragile, I'd argue that this does actually add quite a bit. My expert horseman with Charger works better with the feat than without.

I think you have the Charger feat and another confused?

By making crossbows more effective, it means that more crossbow characters will be played. Considering in all the years I've played D&D, I've only seen PC's take crossbows if they absolutely cannot use a bow, that's broadening what's being played AFAIC.

Broadening what is being played is different than broadening what can be played. It's possible (although sucky) to play a crossbow using fighter without crossbow expertise.

Again, like Crossbow Expert, these feats make it easier to take different concepts without nerfing your character.

I agree there are many feats that make a certain concept not suck. More importantly though, why should those basic concepts suck in the regular rules anyways? Why create a problem only to rely on a feat to fix it?

Yup, can't really disagree on this one.

Actually this one I strongly disagree with. My fighter in our Dragonlance campaign had this and the fact that he had about 30% more HP than everyone else meant that my dragonslaying character could actually stand up to dragons without getting smoked in a single round by dragon breath. This was a major change in how my character played. Yup, the character already had a 16 Con, but, Durable just put me head and shoulders above the other fighters in the group (there were three including mine) when it came to tanking. IME, this feat pretty much defined my character to a large degree.

But even without the feat you could have played the concept of a tough fighter. Why's it so hard admitting that no new character concept actually emerged from using this feat?

Can't really argue on these ones. Never really seen them in play. Althought, that being said, it does mean that if you want to make a really good fire wizard, you can.

SIgh out of time.

Even without the elemental adept feat you can make a really good fire wizard. Whether you have the feat or not, the character concept is still the same. The only thing that changes is how mechanically effective said character concept is.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I really don't think that's what happened. You would absolutely have metagaming, people telling other people how to play, and pre-written "here's our SOP, get to the point" stuff. There was absolutely disengagement from play going on, and that's why I gave the example I gave, with the ear seeker, even though you clipped it out. It was to illustrate that even in the earliest stages of the hobby, DMs were looking for ways to punish players for "not thinking" and "not doing stuff in the world."

I'm not saying that everyone was all hyper-focused on immersion before, but at least they were distract by the actual game. Discussions about SOP is at least discussion about what their characters are going to do within the game world. Talking about always wearing thick gloves when handling rotten wood, or always using a metal cone to listen at a door, is entirely reasonable for what professional adventurers would be talking to each other about.

The reason I cut the part about ear seekers is because, at least in my experience, they work exactly counter to your point. Maybe they (along with rot grubs) were originally included as a way to punish players for blindly following SOP, but in practice, it just meant that the players had to invent new and more-complicated SOP to account for ear seekers (and rot grubs). If early DMs hadn't spent so much time trying to catch players with silly gimmick monsters, the players wouldn't have to spend so much time figuring out SOP to avoid those silly gimmick monsters.

Mimics are an even better example. I'm sure that some players had made a habit of always declaring that they head straight to the treasure chest whenever they enter a room (because treasure = xp), so some DM decided to punish them by inventing a trapped treasure chest that attacks you if you touch it, so now players always have to declare that they poke every treasure chest with a chicken attached to the end of an eleven-foot pole before they examine it for traps.

 

[Hussar]

But even without the feat you could have played the concept of a tough fighter. Why's it so hard admitting that no new character concept actually emerged from using this feat?

Actually, no I couldn't. It turned out, just by chance, that my sword and board fighter and the sword and board paladin had virtually identical stats. Both dump statted Dex, high Con, so on and so forth. The two characters were as close as could be.

So, we had identical HP. It doesn't make any sense that I claim that my character is "tough" when the guy standing next to me, who isn't making that claim, is exactly the same. What does "tough" mean when there's no actual difference between two characters. I literally could not play my character as "tough" without that feat. Well, I could, but, it would be mostly as comedy since, given that we had 2 more fighter types in the group, all of us had virtually the same HP, and same (or close enough) AC's. Since we were all standard array PC's with standard HP on level up, there was virtually no difference between the 4 characters.

Why is it so hard to admit that some of us actually take these feats SPECIFICALLY to create a new character concept? I literally could not play the character concept I wanted to play - tough as nails guy who can take the beats - without that feat. That's WHY I took the feat.