D&D 5E Feats: What Are They For?

[Celebrim]

In 1e terms, as I picture them, feats are for creating subclasses. As 2e same along, the space that had formerly been occupied by the subclass was increasingly occupied by the Non-weapon proficiency and the 'kit class'. In 3e terms it was the feat. Instead of creating a 'thief acrobat', you would make your character an acrobat via a feat (and skill selection). At least, that seemed to be the original idea until feats started competing with PrCs.

The feat lets you depart from the usual expectations of your class by making you particularly skillful in some aspect of that class's portofolio or else expanding your bag of tricks to include something out of the ordinary.

Personally, I love feats and hate PrC's. I'm even hestitant on class powers. I see a class power and almost always I wish it were a feat instead. I probably won't play a game with PrC's or other sorts of 'advanced classes'. But I love feats. Without feats, you have either the problem of 1e (you can't be anything unless there is a class for it) or of 3e (there are 600+ classes). Having 600 feats is far preferable to 600 classes.

One of the problems here is people seem to be suggesting "grants numerical bonus" is something different than "grants a class ability". If you have a feat like, "Double your bonus when making a jump", this is a 'numerical bonus'. But it is also creates something unique enough to be a class ability. While it is less dramatic, a feat like "+5 on X checks" is just as much of a class ability. It just has been very efficiently described by leveraging text elsewhere. What that ability means is described where some other mechanic or skill is described.

What feats should not be is a spell. If the feat is, "X times per day, you may..." and you feel this is a good thing and you want a lot of them, then your effected classes should be rewritten to have lists of known spells and spell slots. Fighters should get 'Sword Magic' or whatever, and then you can just get rid of feats entirely. Problem solved, or at least, one problem solved in that a feat like 'Spell Focus' obviously is there to support being 'a necromancer' rather than simply 'a wizard with a lot of necromantic spells' by giving the player mechanical reasons for constraining spell selection instead of just hoping players will do this on their own rather than optimizing by choosing only the best and most useful spells.

I love feats. I agree that a great many badly written or thought out feats were created in 3e and that such a critical mechanic needed to be treated more thoughtfully. But a feat is just such a wonderful tool. It's really easy to go, "Oh, hmmm, that's a really novel concept. There isn't a lot of mechanical support for it, but you know, play an X and I bet I can create 3-6 feats that suit your needs."

 

[billd91]

Feats definitely suffer from the fact that they have been made to apply to every aspect of the game: race, class, spells/powers, items/weapons, skills, other feats, combat, exploration, purely roll playing (or nearly so), and what they due is equally spread out-make it better, make it better sometimes, make it different, make it unplayable in a balanced group, make it unplayable in an unbalanced group, make it sparkle but with no other real effect, make it worse except when it doesn't, make it make your DM cry, etc.

The bottom line is that if designers want to do anything, they make it a feat, regardless of what it is, with little to no sense of conformity in power or cost.

Its like if everything cost $1, but you only got $1 a day and couldn't save it for tomorrow. What would you buy? Food? Cars? Pay a parking meter? See a movie? Help out a person who spent there $1 on 3E toughness?

Or maybe it isn't....I don't think that metaphor actually holds up to scrutiny.

Frankly, I like this about feats. What I would like is for the rules to include a bit more analysis of what value feats have and under what circumstances. If this means breaking them up into thematic groupings - combat, skill enhancement, lateral development, whatever - I'm OK with that. Give me a set of tools and some guidance rather than apply the nerf bat to the whole subsystem.

 

[Spatula]

I'm kinda with you [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION]. To me, feats should be an answer to the question, "What is cool and unique about your character, that sets him/her apart from all the other [race] [class] characters?" And not just some combat bonuses, or prerequisites for attempting certain actions, or class abilities in disguise.

I guess my problem is that coming up with cool, interesting things for feats to be is difficult, which is probably why the designers have stuck with endless variations on "get a bonus to this d20 roll under these circumstances."

I always loved (most of) the feats from the 3e Eberron campaign book, because they were really interesting and flavorful and useful, AND they also tied the character to the world. Dragonmarks, druid orders, animal totems... that's the kind of stuff that I would like to see as feats.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I'm kinda with you [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION]. To me, feats should be an answer to the question, "What is cool and unique about your character, that sets him/her apart from all the other [race] [class] characters?" And not just some combat bonuses, or prerequisites for attempting certain actions, or class abilities in disguise.

I guess my problem is that coming up with cool, interesting things for feats to be is difficult, which is probably why the designers have stuck with endless variations on "get a bonus to this d20 roll under these circumstances."

I always loved (most of) the feats from the 3e Eberron campaign book, because they were really interesting and flavorful and useful, AND they also tied the character to the world. Dragonmarks, druid orders, animal totems... that's the kind of stuff that I would like to see as feats.

I agree with this and the OP. Big feats that provide interesting variety interest me. I don't mind one bit if this leads to fewer feats.

 

[Evenglare]

I think feats are handled superbly in 13th Age. You use feats to specialize your character. Feats improve your favorite abilities and aspects of your class. That being said feats are handled way differently in 13th age. Almost every ability has 3 feats which improve it in some way. There are SOME generic feats like.. improved initiative, but most of the time feats are ability specific. 10 Level and 1 feat per level . Elegant.

 

[Mad Hamish]

Several people have now pointed out that the downfall of feats--in 3E, in 4E, and now in D&DN--has been that the designers seem to have no clear picture of what they're trying to do with them. Feats become the big bucket, where they throw any widget that doesn't fit anywhere else. As a result, we end up with horribly bloated feat lists, "trap feats" like 3E Toughness, "feat taxes" like 4E Expertise, bleedover from the skill system (Skill Focus and the like), and class abilities like Weapon Specialization masquerading as feats for no good reason.

Or maybe feats always were meant to be the big bucket where you put things that don't fit anywhere else, or a way of grouping things that multiple classes could get access to or that individual characters should be able to choose whether they have them or not?
(Weapon Specialization, Spell Mastery etc come under the last case there)
It's easier & cleaner to have, say, endurance as a feat and a Ranger getting it as a bonus feat than it is to have Endurance as a ranger ability and either have to give other classes some method of getting it or not allow anybody else a way of getting it ever...
Much less 2 weapon fighting...

I think this is very apt, and so I put the question to you: What do you think feats should be for?

To me, the purpose of feats should be lateral development--fleshing out your character in interesting ways. Instead of getting better at your primary abilities (as defined by your class), you pick up secondary abilities in small packages. A wizard is already, by default, the best possible spellcaster for his/her level. No feat can ever make the wizard a more powerful spellcaster. That means no metamagic, no Spell Focus, etc. Instead, the wizard can use feats to gain basic competence with weapons; or learn new languages; or gain a familiar*; or what have you. Likewise, no feat can ever make the fighter better at fighting. But the fighter could learn some minor spells instead.

That strikes me as a bad idea.
For a start it means either
a) you get much less flexibility for characters, as things stand a caster can go for metamagic, item creation or more general feats and can mix and match as desired.
b) you make the classes themselves much more complicated and have a lot of duplicated abilities between classes.

For a)
A character can choose to improve their combat abilities in one area (point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot...) or become more of a generalist combatant (point blank shot, power attack, combat maneuver feats....), become tougher to hurt in combat (dodge, maneuver, toughness....) or do non-combat things (skill focus knowledge skills...) or item creation, metamagic, boosts to class abilities (improved channeling, extend what channeling can do)

(My 17th level Pathfinder Wizard has Augment Summoning, Combat Casting, Craft Staff, Craft Wondrous Item, Eschew Materials, Extend Spell, Magical Aptitude, Quicken Spell, Scribe Scroll, Spell Focus Conjuration, Spell Mastery, Staff-Like Wand, Superior Summoning & Toughness)
another wizard could have a completely different set of abilities from feats (the sorcerer I'm currently playing has Improved Initiative, Combat Casting, Craft Wondrous Item and will be getting Additional Traits, Toughness, Persistent Spell, Still Spell, Piercing Spell, Silent Spell, Reach Spell, Selective Spell)
A Barbarian/Sorcerer/Dragon Discipline I'm playing will have a completely different load of feats.
Coming up with a system where a class can get that degree of customisation without feats is going to be awkward and probably effectively come down to a feat system limited to selections made available to the class.

The loss of metamagic would be a huge loss to a lot of characters (especially spontaneous casters who depend on them to a fair degree to keep lower level spells useful and for versatility)

for b) if you want to keep metamagic and item creation then you offer people choices in their class or you just allow everybody in the class to do them. So either people don't get to choose how much metamagic they get or they can only choose to get, say, full metamagic but no item creation or you've effectively brought the feat system back inside the class.

How do you offer a system which lets a fighter choose "I'll pump my archery up as high as I can", "I'll go 2 handed fighting", "I'll be a 2 weapon fighter", "I'll be board and sword", "I'll mix a bit of archery with a bit of 2 weapon fighting and I'll make myself harder to hit and be good at tracking"? How fine grained can you make it without making it as general as a feat system?

You either don't allow anybody to ever channel to affect elementals or everybody in a class gets that ability

In short, each feat would do one of two things:

• Give you access to a weaker version of some other class's abilities--sort of a poor man's multiclassing.
• Give you access to an ability no class has, which doesn't "stack" with any class's abilities (e.g., learn a new language).

If feats worked this way, choosing between them would be fun instead of a chore. You don't have to worry about choosing the right feats to support your class role--that's all built into your class. Instead, you choose the feats that seem like they fit your character concept. Furthermore, for those who just don't want feats of any stripe, it would be easy to remove them from the game.

But isn't communicating and influencing people part of the Bard's job? So shouldn't they learn languages as part of their class progression? Otherwise they aren't the best at it they ever could be...