D&D 5E PHB Feats taken - RESULTS

[clearstream]

I mentioned two feats for the Fighter because you said he is a Variant Human with Spy, which I assumed was one feat, and Skilled be a second one. What is Spy?

It's a background.

I think this is on the way to the goal, but though it is general and offers the three skill option, it is less powerful than any one of the UA Feats for Skills. I think there ought to be something more to it.

UA is officially not balanced, and it is common for first pass design to push the power level out a bit to find the boundary of what works. That said, while there are things I like about those feats, I dislike the expertise element to them. It seems unneeded and in some cases could produce some overshadowing or distortions.

 

[ro]

It's a background.


UA is officially not balanced, and it is common for first pass design to push the power level out a bit to find the boundary of what works. That said, while there are things I like about those feats, I dislike the expertise element to them. It seems unneeded and in some cases could produce some overshadowing or distortions.

I see. To me, I think those feats are well balanced, certainly not over powerful. If the expertise option were not there, I don't think they would be worth it.

 

[DeJoker]

WHY? How does my argument hold no water, when it sure seems to be a pretty darn good argument that you have not disputed other than asserting your disagreement.

I actually did refute this perhaps twice once for you and once for the other guy but your reply is I that did not refute it because you are not accepting it as a refutation which is fine and I am good with that - for as I said earlier I am willing to agree to disagree with you. Besides I think my forehead is getting a little sore so I am going to stop now so have a nice day.

 

[Frankie1969]

After going through the thread, here's a fully generalized version of Skilled that subsumes Linguist, Weapon Master, and ordinary ASIs.

TRAINED
You gain any combination of the following benefits, adding up to 8 points:
4 points: Increase one ability score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
3 points: Gain expertise in a proficient skill. (You cannot select this benefit more than once.)
2 points: Gain proficiency in a skill.
1 point: Gain proficiency in a tool, language, or weapon.

Personally I think Rogue level 6 is underpowered and should get another 2 points worth of stuff.

 

[Frankie1969]

This thread could interest you - http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?583968-Complete-Revision-of-PHB-Feats-(wiki-thread). Interesting suggestions,

Thanks for pointing me to your thread. Some very good ideas to incorporate.

 

[Mistwell]

I actually I did refute this perhaps twice once for you and once for the other guy but your reply is I that did not refute it because you are not accepting it as a refutation

You really didn't. Here, I will go back through it because you seem to think you said something you didn't. Here is what you said, and I will break each part down to be really clear I didn't miss anything:

Well if you look closely at the various classes and the various backgrounds and the various Feats I think you will find that they are indeed considered equal. Now from a players perspective you might not get the same view but like a said from the designers point of view.

This is not a refutation, it's an assertion. You make zero attempt to support your assertion. You're just claiming "If you look closely" without showing HOW they are proven to be considered equal. All you have to support your claim is what, your gut feeling? A tarot card reading? A dream you have? WHAT supports this claim other than you're personal sense for things?

Okay so maybe they nerfed them a bit by allowing you to learn one fairly easily with a little gold but what if you could not do that?

A "what if" question is not helpful here. What if we were playing a different game? Then we'd be discussing those rules. But we're not. We're judging THESE rules and in this game you CAN do that and that is an important factor in determining their relative value. The game designers gave players a means of obtaining tool proficiency for almost nothing, and that is an indication the designers don't value tool proficiency equal to a thing like a skill which you cannot gain for almost nothing. We're not living in an alternate universe where tool proficiency cannot be gained by almost nothing, so there is no point in asking a "what if" question here. This is, again, not a refutation of anything.

What then would they be equivalent to Skill Proficiency from your view point.

What does it matter what my personal feeling is on the matter? We're discussing what value the creators put on it in the game, remember? I am not a creator of this game so what would it matter what my personal sense of the thing might be? How would my personal opinion serve you to refute my prior argument? It would not.

So far the only reason you have stated they are not worth as much is because you can learn them in game and that in and of itself does not necessarily ring true. So remove it from the equation and see what you get, because frankly if you wanted to you could do the same thing for Skills and I think you can already do the same thing with languages.

If skills were so easily gained that you could spend 250 gp and some downtime to gain them, then they would indeed be worth less. A lot less. And DCs would start to inflate, because everyone would eventually have all or at least most of the skills as proficient. And any feat to gain a skill would no longer have been considered for a feat. So again, it does not refute anything to pretend we're in an alternative universe where skills could be gained in the same manner as tools. All you've shown is they would be equally less in value. Which, again, refutes nothing.

So show me where you made even an attempt to refute the argument that tool proficiency is not as valued by the authors of the game as skill proficiency because tool proficiency is easily obtained for almost no opportunity cost. I'm waiting.

 

[clearstream]

I see. To me, I think those feats are well balanced, certainly not over powerful. If the expertise option were not there, I don't think they would be worth it.

I was thinking, how many skills do you equate to a full ASI?

Three skills at level 4 is worth +6 in bonuses, soon to go to +9 and eventually at level 9, +12. The impact of such bonuses is divided over their applicability. Something like AC +1 applies most sessions, often several times (each time you are attacked), so has very high applicability. My experience is that an edge skill probably comes into use about once per three sessions. Core skills come into use a lot more. Perception, Stealth, Athletics/Acrobatics (because of shove), and Investigation come up most sessions, occasionally more than once. Insight, Persuasion and Deception come up at least every other session. That gives us a rough scale. We could give AC +1 an applicability of 1. Core skills might have an applicability of 0.5, but a random skill we should discount to take into account the chance of it being an edge skill. Say we call +1 on a random skill +0.2 against +1 on AC being 1. We can observe that high values in skills are worth more than average ones, so I think we need to call an expertise +1 at least equal to say 0.3. In saying that, I also observe that Expertise for a Rogue or Bard bonuses only 2 skills up front, and 2 more much later on.

An ASI must be worth more than 2, because it can give you AC +1 plus Save +1 plus several skills and tools +1 plus Attack +1 plus DCs +1 and a few other things. Valuing it at 5 sounds plausible to me.

So if an ASI is 5 and I get half of one as a stat bump, I have 2.5 to play with. That would be +12 distributed over skills. At 9th level, Skilled does indeed give me +12 distributed over skills, but how do we count the fact that the benefits scale?! I think we can simply divide by the time the game expects us to be at the relevant levels. On average over their career a character can expect to be working with +12 if they lived to be level 20. Most games peter out before then, or characters die, so we might want to ignore everything over level 12. That gives us +10 instead of +12. Still close enough given the estimating inaccuracy.

This is estimation rather than precision, but I believe it demonstrates that Skilled isn't far below fair value if we give it a stat bump. Accordingly I think we have two options

Skilled A
Increase one ability score of your choice by 1, to a maximum of 20.
You gain proficiency in any combination of three skills or tools of your choice.

Skilled B
You gain proficiency in any combination of three skills or tools of your choice. Instead of gaining proficiency in a new skill or tool, you can choose one that you are already proficient in; if you do, then your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses it.

I believe Skilled A is worth about 4.5 and Skilled B is worth about 5.5 and as well as being stronger than Skilled A, is power-creeping Feats. For me, combining power-creeping and over-shadowing into one feat is doing it wrong

 

[clearstream]

After going through the thread, here's a fully generalized version of Skilled that subsumes Linguist, Weapon Master, and ordinary ASIs.

TRAINED
You gain any combination of the following benefits, adding up to 8 points:
4 points: Increase one ability score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
3 points: Gain expertise in a proficient skill. (You cannot select this benefit more than once.)
2 points: Gain proficiency in a skill.
1 point: Gain proficiency in a tool, language, or weapon.

Personally I think Rogue level 6 is underpowered and should get another 2 points worth of stuff.

It's interesting here that you are valuing a skill within the same ballpark that I am and suggesting a similar premium for expertise. In terms of background thinking that all looks reasonable.

I'm gravitating toward Weapon Master simply being the the Fighter weapons i.e. "Gain proficiency in all simple weapons and martial weapons."

 

[ro]

After going through the thread, here's a fully generalized version of Skilled that subsumes Linguist, Weapon Master, and ordinary ASIs.

TRAINED
You gain any combination of the following benefits, adding up to 8 points:
4 points: Increase one ability score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
3 points: Gain expertise in a proficient skill. (You cannot select this benefit more than once.)
2 points: Gain proficiency in a skill.
1 point: Gain proficiency in a tool, language, or weapon.

Personally I think Rogue level 6 is underpowered and should get another 2 points worth of stuff.

I like this. It goes along the lines of my earlier post comparing Cleric domain features:

It seems that class features are often roughly equivalent to feats. The Cleric domains seem well-balanced overall, and so using them for reference, in comparing Cleric domains, it seemed to me that 1st level features, excluding domain spells, are roughly designed on a 5-point scale. Some features are noticeably worse, but this seems to be the guideline:

1/2 point: language
1 point: skill, tool, or expertise in existing proficiency
1 1/2 points: martial weapons (not just four!), wrath of the storm, war priest
2 points: cantrip, skill and expertise, heavy armor proficiency
3 points: warding flare, disciple of life, blessing of the forge, shield of the faithful

In balancing or designing feats, it would make sense to compare them to a similar scale.

Scaling this up to make languages 1 point and dropping most tools to that level, we would get:

1 point: language, tool (except Thieves' Tools)
2 points: skill, Thieves' Tools, or expertise in existing proficiency
3 points: (all) martial weapons (not just four!), wrath of the storm, war priest
4 points: cantrip, skill and expertise, heavy armor proficiency
5 points: +1 ASI
6 points: warding flare, disciple of life, blessing of the forge, shield of the faithful
10 points: +2 ASI

Note that for designing Cleric domains, expertise was weighted equivalently with skill proficiency. I know some people in this thread believe expertise is better than skill proficiency, and it could be bumped up a level, but following the Cleric guidelines, we could change the feat to:

TRAINED
You may take this feat more than once.

You gain any combination of the following benefits, adding up to 10 points:

5 points: Increase one ability score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
4 points: Learn a cantrip⁽¹⁾, or gain proficiency in light armor, medium armor⁽²⁾ and shields, or heavy armor⁽³⁾.
3 points: Gain proficiency in simple weapons, martial weapons⁽⁴⁾, or shields.
2 points: Gain proficiency in a skill or Thieves' Tools⁽⁵⁾.
1 point: Gain proficiency in a tool⁽⁶⁾ (except Thieves' Tools), language, or weapon.

⁽¹⁾If you learn a cantrip, you may choose Wisdom, Intelligence, or Charisma as the spellcasting ability modifier for that cantrip.
⁽²⁾You must be proficient in simple weapons before gaining proficiency in martial weapons.
⁽³⁾You must be proficient in light armor before gaining proficiency in medium armor.
⁽⁴⁾You must be proficient in medium armor before gaining proficiency in heavy armor.
⁽⁵⁾⁽⁶⁾If you choose a skill or tool that you are already proficient in, then your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses that skill or tool.​

 

[clearstream]

TRAINED
You may take this feat more than once.

You gain any combination of the following benefits, adding up to 10 points:

5 points: Increase one ability score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
4 points: Learn a cantrip⁽¹⁾, or gain proficiency in light armor, medium armor⁽²⁾ and shields, or heavy armor⁽³⁾.
3 points: Gain proficiency in simple weapons, martial weapons⁽⁴⁾, or shields.
2 points: Gain proficiency in a skill or Thieves' Tools⁽⁵⁾.
1 point: Gain proficiency in a tool⁽⁶⁾ (except Thieves' Tools), language, or weapon.

⁽¹⁾If you learn a cantrip, you may choose Wisdom, Intelligence, or Charisma as the spellcasting ability modifier for that cantrip.
⁽²⁾You must be proficient in simple weapons before gaining proficiency in martial weapons.
⁽³⁾You must be proficient in light armor before gaining proficiency in medium armor.
⁽⁴⁾You must be proficient in medium armor before gaining proficiency in heavy armor.
⁽⁵⁾⁽⁶⁾If you choose a skill or tool that you are already proficient in, then your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses that skill or tool.​

That's a nice piece of deconstruction. I feel that it undervalues expertise because it is typically stronger to have a few high scores than many average ones. It could be instead

3 points: Gain proficiency in simple weapons, martial weapons⁽⁴⁾, or shields. Or choose a skill or tool that you are already proficient in, your proficiency bonus is doubled for any ability check you make that uses it.

10 points can buy +1 stat bump, 2 skills and a language. If that is fair value, then Skilled is fair value at three skills and a stat bump (11 points), and Weapon Master is fair value at a stat bump and all weapons (11 points). I think I'm agreeing with your estimations - they're close to my own - and we have been able to settle a related question that we were working on. That's good