[UPDATED] Most D&D Players Prefer Humans - Without Feats!

Osgood · Mar 1, 2018

My own experience has been that most players don't start thinking about feats until they have a couple of ability boosts under their belt (often maxing out their primary ability). I think most campaigns don't run too far past 10th level, so I'd be curious to see how that data looks if you only include higher level characters.

TwoSix · Mar 1, 2018

Not particularly shocking. Most players I know build characters around a certain image or character quirk; picking human (or half-elf, which are humans with better bonuses) means the concept isn't diluted by a second, disparate element. When people pick another race, they're usually focusing their concept on the racial element first.

I would say (purely anecdotally) that I haven't played in a 5e game where feats weren't allowed, but I would say right around 50% of the characters actually had one. I would definitely say that the more experienced and system-savvy players leaned towards feats, and the newer or more "beer and pretzel" players leaned away from them.

BookBarbarian · Mar 1, 2018

Flexor the Mighty! said:
Its amazing that a person with a position to have access to the raw data a company compiles on its players is called out for having some kind of agenda when he states what conclusions that data points too. I guess this is a good reason why there are not endless books of feats and power ups no matter how much some people claim that is what every player wants.

Indeed.

WotC is in the business of wanting to make money so of course they want accurate data and will make changes to the game based on that data. I'm having trouble finding how that concept could be unbelievable.

neobolts · Mar 1, 2018

I start with a class and a general concept when creating a character.
When I pick a race it is often the "classic" races, but maybe for a reason I haven't seen yet: A KICK ASS MINIATURE.
It can be hard to find good minis for the exotic races. There are not many tortles to choose from (there are a few tortle minis, though).
We've always had feats available in my groups, but I usually go for the stat bumps, especially early on. I'd rather max out the prime stat asap, then look at feats.

Yunru · Mar 1, 2018

Here's a list of MAD or DAD classes, that thusly discourage taking feats:
Barbarian
Monk
Paladin

On top of that, here's a list of spellcasters, which also benefit ASIs over feats:
Bard
Cleric
Druid
Sorcerer
Warlock
Wizard

Out of 12 classes, 9 strongly discourage taking a feat before level 12. The other 3 don't exactly dislike an ASI. I wonder if this skews the data at all? [/sarcasm]

Ralif Redhammer · Mar 1, 2018

Oh how some would wail at that change. I never cared about whether people multiclassed or not until I started hearing the term “level-dip.”

As for the data citation issue, something tells me that when Deming said “In God we trust; all others bring data,” he wasn’t talking about Twitter conversations about D&D trends. I’m willing to trust them when they say that’s what the data indicates.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the data and be able to analyze it myself. But I doubt that anything untoward is going on with his analysis – certainly there’s no cover-up hiding that the most popular characters are multiclassed gnomes with polearm mastery feats.

Prakriti said:
Good. Now if they could just move feats and multiclassing into the DMG, so people will stop assuming that they're allowed by default, that would be great.

prosfilaes · Mar 1, 2018

Reynard said:
Just because something does not conform to your notions or anecdotal experience does not mean it is a lie or conspiracy. Presumably Crawford has decades of data, from organized play to various electronic systems to just plain old letters and forum posts, on which he has based his claims.

Okay, but that type of decades of data is incredibly hard to integrate. As people have pointed out, he can't have decades of data on the feat question, since all non-5E editions have either required feats or not included them, and it gets complicated about how to integrate information about low-level characters into that feat data.

I trust the race data more, but it's still pretty rough, especially if it's from decades of data. And an important question is what does it mean for us, and it's hard to say without some more details. That's information that could come from more detail about the data; it's possible D&D has a lot of new, short-term players that play humans, and this applies mainly to them.

lowkey13 · Mar 1, 2018

*Deleted by user*

TwoSix · Mar 1, 2018

I feel like it would take just one feat, a feat that gives a +1 to a group of stats, and that's limited to a certain subset of races that already give a +2 bonus to the same group of stats (so you can get an 18 at level 4), and gives a strong offensive bonus as the feat feature, to shift the margins somewhat on race choice. I don't what feat that would be <cough>Elven Accuracy<cough>, but I'm sure at some point it will exist.

Schmoe · Mar 1, 2018

Yunru said:
Out of 12 classes, 9 strongly discourage taking a feat before level 12. The other 3 don't exactly dislike an ASI. I wonder if this skews the data at all? [/sarcasm]

How does that skew the data? The data is the data (if we are to believe JC, which we have no reason not to). Most people don't use feats. I get the impression you have a story you'd like to tell, and this data is not supporting your story.