A different opinion about feats--rethinking "situational"

A recent discussion about weapon master here on EnWorld got me thinking. I was one of the few people that thought the feat was fine since it helps to make a "character."

I realize why I am often on the other side of popular opinion.

I do not think "situational" is a bad thing. In fact, I think "situational" is a good thing. In short, if feats are for customization, they should not be for everyone. Why would everyone want to be the same thing?

If feats are meant for customization, shouldn't they by their nature be situational?

Many good feats are situational. Not all fighters should take ritual caster. Why? Because not all fighters are interested in magic (of course!) or would have had a background in which they would have learned the skill.

I am thinking it would be fun to take a pact of the tome warlock who is able to use martial weapons as well as greenflame/booming blade. Perhaps I might like to take an arcana cleric with heavy armor and martial weapons (and the aforementioned cantrip). This is situational too because a war cleric would have no use for weapon master or heavily armored aside from the 1/2 ASI for each! but that can be had other ways with a non-redundant side benefit...

I can see using the elemental adept with a fire sorcerer...but that is situational, right? Some spell casters don't have many elemental invocations.

Sorry--not trying to be pedantic but just saying that I don't think players should let "situational" scare them. What should scare them is BORING. Dream it and play it. Don't let people talk you out of it.

My only disclaimer here is that I am not a pacifistic junior thespian. We play combat heavy games with good roleplaying interspersed. I don't advocate playing useless ineffectual characters for the sake of high drama because I don't think many adventurers would venture forth if they are feeble or useless. I just think unique and uncommon things can make the character come to life. In my experience, this makes the stakes of combat higher and in fact more exciting.

Some of your examples aren't situational so much as advancement narrowing: if you take elemental adept, you are predicting the character will be taking elemental invocations as frequently as possible. If for some reason the PC can't or the campaign develops in ways where such invocations are sub-optimal, then the character will be as well.

As a player, the major problem with any permanent situational choice is there is a non-trivial chance the situations to use the ability will never present themselves.

In other game systems, like Hero, this is handled by the GM and player(s) negotiating the value of the situational modifier in terms of how frequently it will appear (and thus the value of the ability). D&D has no such framework. I find situational abilities less problematic in large sandbox campaigns where the PCs are a lot of free choice with respect to missions and where the players at least discuss PC concepts ahead of time so you don't end up with a single aquatic specialist in deepest desert campaign.

Warpiglet said:

Sorry--not trying to be pedantic but just saying that I don't think players should let "situational" scare them. What should scare them is BORING. Dream it and play it. Don't let people talk you out of it.

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I don't really think it scares players. Not many of them, anyway.

I think it's a thing that scares us Forumite DMs. We seem to want every option available to be equally relevant to . . . Danggit clicked reply accidentally. Wait a few minutes.

Doh!

I really was editing that post to include the rest of what I meant to say, but in composing it I realized I wasn't saying it well and abandoned the post . . . forgetting that I had already posted the first bit until @Warpiglet gave it a laugh. Well, me being me, I gotta keep it as a joke post now.

Well, you could treat feats like wizard spells. Perhaps the players begin play knowing 4 feats (humans get 5 or 6 or who cares they get more), representing a diversity of training or skill or whatever. Every morning they have to "prepare" their feats that they're going to be using today.

Your fighter is normally a big two-handed beater but you're in a tight dungeon crawl where he can't swing that around and you need more defense? Well today he prepares his Shield Whatever feat and goes sword and board for a while.

Under attack by a bunch of flying enemies? Lets try Sharpshooter out for a while.

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Granted this might not work for every feat, but it would give folks some versatility when they need to adapt to new situations.

Warpiglet said:

I do not think "situational" is a bad thing. In fact, I think "situational" is a good thing. In short, if feats are for customization, they should not be for everyone. Why would everyone want to be the same thing?

If feats are meant for customization, shouldn't they by their nature be situational?

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I think where I'd disagree with you is that I think "situational" and "effective" are pretty tangential to each other. Sharpshooter is actually a pretty situational feat; it's only really a good feat if your concept is a martially inclined archer. But when that's your character concept, Sharpshooter is both hugely effective and aesthetically pleasing to play (as it makes your character perform better at delivering that concept.)

Likewise, a feat like Actor. It doesn't have combat utility, and unless your character is Charisma oriented with multiple proficiencies in the suite of social skills, it's pretty useless. But when that situation arises, it gives benefits that aren't easily accessible with magic or class abilities, and makes that character really feel like the concept it's intended to fit.

Whereas Weapon Master is a half feat that gives you a subset of an ability (proficiency with martial weapons) that you normally pick as an ancillary benefit of a one level multiclass dip, or as an added feature to a martially oriented caster subclass. The problem with it is that it doesn't do anything close to what the name says. If it was named Expanded Weapon Training, and it gave +1 to any stat (thus benefiting the caster classes that are the target of this feat), than it would be a situational but useful feat.

Yes. It might be a good Idea to open up every half feat to any stat. That would make it a lot easier to utilize them
Often you have to plan way too much in advance to utilize the feat you'd like to take.

I don't think you're using "situational" in the same way as others do - the way you're using it is synonymous with "specialised".

"Situational" means that, even for characters who take it and are built around the concept, it may not crop up very often. An example would be an ability that provides a bonus against dragons, when there's no guarantee that you'll ever encounter a dragon in a given campaign. Basically, any time you're not fighting a dragon, the ability may as well not exist, so when you do happen to be in a position to use it, that bonus had better be something pretty spectacular.

MarkB said:

I don't think you're using "situational" in the same way as others do - the way you're using it is synonymous with "specialised".

"Situational" means that, even for characters who take it and are built around the concept, it may not crop up very often. An example would be an ability that provides a bonus against dragons, when there's no guarantee that you'll ever encounter a dragon in a given campaign. Basically, any time you're not fighting a dragon, the ability may as well not exist, so when you do happen to be in a position to use it, that bonus had better be something pretty spectacular.

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Ok. Fair enough. Now look around at how others use the term. It's applied to darn near anything but observant and great weapon master! I don't disagree with your point. I disagree with how it is applied to useful feats and abilities.

The issue I have with a feat like Weapon Master is not that its situational... but rather its giving something that provides very little bonus mechanically. It's almost purely fluff.

If you are a caster that uses weapons for example... you already have proficiency in a series of weapons that were selected for your class for the most part purely because of the "story" the designers wanted that class to have. Numbers-wise... they all kind of look the same: probably 1d6 or 1d8 damage, maybe Thrown, maybe Finesse, maybe Versatile etc. But if you take Weapon Master, you are going to be adding a series of new weapons that are still 1d6 or 1d8 damage, maybe Thrown, maybe Finesse, maybe Versatile etc. All you are gaining are new "fluff" for the mechanics you already have-- rather than having a 1d8 weapon called 'X'... you are using a 1d8 weapon called 'Y' instead. So why would anyone spend an important mechanical bonus of an ASI/Feat to gain nothing but new "fluff", when the DM could just as easily say "You know what? You are proficient in rapiers already, so if you would rather use a morningstar instead just because you like the image... just use the morningstar. I'm not going to make you spend your ASI/Feat just so you can change your story but gain no mechanical benefit."

It's the same opinion I had in the other thread about the viability of changing the STR-based rogue's weapons. And my feeling was the same... if your rogue wants to use handaxes for Sneak Attack rather than shortswords for example... I'm my opinion there is literally no mechanical difference. So I'm not going to charge you one of your important game mechanics features just to let you do that. Go ahead. Take the story change free of charge! It's only because the designers of the game made the story choice when they wrote the book not to let you use handaxes with Sneak Attack to begin with that you can't currently do it... so I have no problem making the story decision to change it. If it makes you happy and causes literally no mechanical difference in the game... it's not worth any of our time to say no.