Hi everyone. A lot of players in my group would like to boost the complexity of character building in 5E. We're talking about breaking up the feats and giving more of them. We're also talking about moving feats or ASIs into the level progression, rather than the class progression.
Which would you move?
Yes, this will be a player power increase, but I'm prepared to deal with that on the DM side. I'm looking at splitting the feats in two and then giving out more in the progression, so it seems easier to give out feats with levels and leave ASIs in the classes, but I kind of like the idea of ASIs being fixed in the level progression because it hurts multiclassing less.
Thoughts?
Feats vs. ASI is a Faustian balancing act. Do you get cool thing X, or math bonus Y. We've seen feedback that at high levels featless games the ASI loses a lot of it's luster. So I'm not sure I would split them up - the either or is part of the complexity of character creation. Which fits better. Giving piles of everything is the wrong type of complexity - the overload of too many choices, always maxed prime ability scores (so no one is special), and the like.
This also changes the value of the half-feats a lot. If you know you are going to max your primary ability score at 8th (*yawn* We're all unique in the same way), and every other ASI past then will be advancing other ability scores, then a feat that gives +1 to an ability score and a weak bonus is a lot less appealing then a strong bonus.
Because of the cap on ability scores, additional ASIs lose value over time as you enhance less and less important things. Giving ASIs plus feats means that classes that give out extra ASI will get hit sooner and harder by this. So the Fighter and the Rogue will both be nerfed a bit in comparison to the other classes.
So, if that convinced you and you are keeping feats & ASIs from the same bucket, I would not move them to character level progression. It only matters for multiclass characters, so I'll just address that.
First, it is a balance point for multiclassing vs. singleclassing, but also mutliclassing vs. many-multiclassing and cherry-picking. You mention you don't mind a power increase, but this is an uneven power increase. Some character builds getting the boost of the cherry picking and not have the corresponding slowness of ASIs. So some characters only will get a boost.
The other thing is much more prosaic, but a real downer - dead levels. You'll have levels where you just don't get anything. It really sucks to hit a new level and it's just HPs. For the most part nothing else, not just class features but also things like new spell levels, proficiency increases (except 12th) or other advancements.
This isn't negating your ideas - if you want to give out more you can - just leave them connected to class and make it a choice vs. ASI or feat so to keep building interesting and full of tradeoffs so the characters don't all develop a sameness.
