Jack of all Trades & Survivor

[bganon]

Specialties do bring at least one thing, if nothing else: they subdivide feats into categories. The full game is likely to have at least 50 feats, possibly close to 100. I do not want a big list of those in alphabetical order. Having about 10 categories or so to organize them is enormously helpful.

 

[gideonpepys]

Specialties do bring at least one thing, if nothing else: they subdivide feats into categories. The full game is likely to have at least 50 feats, possibly close to 100. I do not want a big list of those in alphabetical order. Having about 10 categories or so to organize them is enormously helpful.

They had simple lists of this kind in the 4E Essentials books. You don't need to call them specialties. 'Types' or 'categories' would suffice.

 

[Victim]

It also entirely possible that a full Survivor specialty has other stuff on it that doesn't appear in the playtest package or isn't currently finished. Think about building a Survivor type package of feats in 3.x or 4e. In 4e, I might pick out Toughness and Durable first so the character can withstand a beatdown and keep going, and then at higher levels grab more anti-condition and NAD defense at higher levels. 3.x is a bit tougher, since Toughness there is not so good.

The 5e specialty might work along similar lines - Toughness is pretty good, so you take it a few times to get low levels and develop a good base of HP and HD. The higher level stuff might have other feats in there, like saving throws or whatever.

But a lot of the specialties seem sufficiently weak that an Archer specialty fighter versus Survivor spec archer fighter will come down on the side of the survivor. Neither Sniper nor Rapid Shot really improve straight up DPR.

 

[gyor]

Those two specialties (especially Survivor) are for people who don't care about specialties. I think there should be a few more of those.

Edit: Not sure if "ninja'd" applies when I clicked post 7 minutes late

Thier also for people that either A) want thier thier characters to be more likely survive, like wizards and rogues with such few hitpoint B) Want to build the ultimate skill monkey or most knowldgable sage (in which case Jack of all trades becomes an extension of sage)

 

[Ahwe Yahzhe]

Agree with everyone saying that Survivor and Jack-of-All-Trades are the quick-but-useful specialties for players who don't want to deal with them. Also note that the Toughness and Skill Training feats say "Special: You may select this feat multiple times." This clearly allows for non-Specialty selection of feats at 1st, 3rd, 6th and 9th level. There will be plenty of players who will pick these feats up once or more without taking Survivor or Jack-of-all-Trades... I approve.

 

[Bow_Seat]

I want to put this out there because I read this entire thread without realizing and I was thinking that other people might have also missed:

Survivor gives another hit dice.

This means extra healing during rests, which leads to an extended adventuring day, and to lots of extra hps

After considering this it actually makes the survivor specialty pretty cool. The thing that comes to mind for me is Bruce Willis in diehard. Even after being shot and rolling in glass and jumping out of windows, after a few minutes rest between each fight he's back for more and just. keeps. going.

So I'm actually really starting to like the specialty, though they may want to consider a few different feats to maybe break a little of the monotony.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

First point - I thought these two specialties were pretty much placeholders.

Second - even as an "advanced" player, I like the inclusion of specialties/backgrounds/fighting styles, because they can be inspirational jumping-off points. (For example, I might want to play a backstabby lurker but not really care about missing my target at range, so I sub a "basic" feat like jack of all trades for the one I don't like).