Robert J. Schwalb Blog Discussion; Feats: Do We need them?

[Incenjucar]

I will say that I'm totally on board with Schwalb's April 1st statement on that blog. Forced exponential feat production isn't a reasonable goal. I really love broadly-applicable feats that allow many races and classes to try new directions without having to multiclass. I'm also not a huge fan of power-fixing feats, as they're not far from being feat taxes.

 

[kaomera]

Rituals were one of the very best improvements in 4e. Their removal in Essentials was a big mistake. IMO, of course.

Well, they weren't actually removed, and as they are an "extra thing", I can understand them being left out (even if only for reasons of pagecount). I do enjoy rituals, but I could see possibly re-examining them at some point - at present they're a bit mother-may-I until you're a number of levels higher than the ritual, at which point the 4e economy makes it fairly trivial to just grab all of them... I think the only issue would be that to actually do the concept of rituals justice would take a decent amount of work / text, and WotC seems to be keeping both fairly tight at the moment... I can't seem to find the ToC for Heroes of Shadow (one was posted, right?), but I haven't seen anything about shadow rituals, and if there aren't any in there I think that's a bit of a shame.

 

[babinro]

I think the game could likely do away with many feats and instead add their abilities to a class or race. These bonuses would be added as you level your character.

Racial feats could simply be built into a the race and improve every 5 levels or so. Dragonborn could gain low light vision and +1 perception at level 5, Increase the blast size of dragon's breath at level 10 and so on.

Classes should also gain feats as they progress...as they would apply to the most universal of builds. Defenders could gain toughness, weapon focus, etc.

Where feats should still exist is to distinguish a play style rather than improve ones effectiveness with general powers. Feats like those that improve 'thunder' based spells and add effects are a good example. Headman's Chop for prone targets, Lend Might or Lend Strength for warlords are other examples.

If I want to build a warlord themed on granting attacks to other allies. I don't want to feel as though I have to take Armor proficiency feats, Expertise feats, improved weapon damage feats before I start to really focus on the intended build. I want to be able to focus on my build without having to sacrifice the superior staples.

 

[ppaladin123]

I think the game could likely do away with many feats and instead add their abilities to a class or race. These bonuses would be added as you level your character.

Racial feats could simply be built into a the race and improve every 5 levels or so. Dragonborn could gain low light vision and +1 perception at level 5, Increase the blast size of dragon's breath at level 10 and so on.

Classes should also gain feats as they progress...as they would apply to the most universal of builds. Defenders could gain toughness, weapon focus, etc.

Where feats should still exist is to distinguish a play style rather than improve ones effectiveness with general powers. Feats like those that improve 'thunder' based spells and add effects are a good example. Headman's Chop for prone targets, Lend Might or Lend Strength for warlords are other examples.

If I want to build a warlord themed on granting attacks to other allies. I don't want to feel as though I have to take Armor proficiency feats, Expertise feats, improved weapon damage feats before I start to really focus on the intended build. I want to be able to focus on my build without having to sacrifice the superior staples.

I agree with this, especially with regard to racial abilities/features improving as one progresses. It would do a lot more to distinguish the races and made race choice more meaningful.

 

[triqui]

I think feats are fun (excluding the ones needed to "fix the math").

Feats like Polearm Momentum change the game in interesting ways.

My barbarian likes the "situational bonus" of Powerful Charge.

Basically I like feats that let you do new things or help optimize a particular combat style.

I find those 2 nice examples of what are *NOT* good feats, imo. Powerful Charge isn't really situational. It's just a feat that makes you to fight in a certain way (ie: charging). But you use it *all the time* with the right build. It becomes a "math feat", no different to weapon focus or any of the arcane feats that give you extra damage with an element.

Same goes with Polearm Momentum. If it were a power (ie: encounter power), it might has it's merit. Currently, it's just a "template builder". You select it, and now your character becomes a trip machine. Every other thing you select goes to improve this (like being dragonborn, select Iron Vanguard as Paragon Path, or whatever). And then it becomes your staple attack, and thus is just another "math feat". To the point that the guys in the Char Op add it to the DPR calculations, becouse it's asumed to be used on almost every turn. Sure, there are some corner-cases that you wont use it in a round. Just like sometimes, a rogue won't sneak attack. But is no longer "situational". And it leads to situations like the several "feychargers builds" that required errata.

There's nothing bad at all about being able to customize a character or get a theme. However, you don't need feats for that. Paragon paths, 2e "kits", 3e "prestige classes", templates, backgrounds, or "themes" (whatever you call them) are for that. Make one of those "themes" a "polearm master" paragon path or prestige class or template, or make it a power (at-will, encounter, or whatever method you use)

 

[Klaus]

I agree with this, especially with regard to racial abilities/features improving as one progresses. It would do a lot more to distinguish the races and made race choice more meaningful.

Indeed, built-in racial feats are a good idea.

I think built-in class feats could also work, leaving the floating feats for character customization.

 

[Incenjucar]

Indeed, built-in racial feats are a good idea.

I think built-in class feats could also work, leaving the floating feats for character customization.

While it's kind of off-topic: Conversely, "floating" powers would also be quite nice, and could eliminate some measure of power bloat where the only differences are stat mods. Skill Powers are excellent examples of these.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I rather like the idea of replacing a lot of the feats with "pick-an-effect" class features that are based on a character decision point, such as the way in which Knights and Fighters' weapon choice determines how the rider on Power Strike works (it would be even better if it worked dynamically based on whatever you had in your hand at that moment).

I think that model has a lot of potential. You could basically replace all the "Improved Class Feature X" feats with that mechanic. It wouldn't decrease options, because they'd still have to add to them in order to reach a desired level of customizability, but it wouldn't be cluttering up the feats list.

Pretty much any feat that has a "Requirement" or "Prerequisite" line could be replaced in that way. Just build it in. "When you get x, select from a, b, or c. (and in future books/articles d, e, f, and g)."

 

[LightPhoenix]

The ultimate question is, in a class-based system that derives its customization primarily through the choice of class features, where do feats come in to play? The answer, for me, is to have feats provide class-independent methods of customization. I would have had feats take more advantage of the keyword system a little bit more. This way they would have broad utility in customization.

The real difficulty is in making feats interesting. A lot of people have commented about how "math feats" are boring. That's an inherent problem to feats as a general whole. Feats are static; unlike powers, you don't get to choose when to use them - they're always on. That makes them inherently less tactically interesting than something dynamic like powers. Making them dynamic leads you down the path to skill powers.

As an interesting consequence, I could see a future edition tie feats to utility powers. A feat might grant a specific utility power, with broad prerequisites. For example, a feat might grant a CLW effect with a prerequisite that you be a divine caster. It would allow a player to customize the secondary role of their class a little bit more.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I rather like the idea of replacing a lot of the feats with "pick-an-effect" class features that are based on a character decision point, such as the way in which Knights and Fighters' weapon choice determines how the rider on Power Strike works (it would be even better if it worked dynamically based on whatever you had in your hand at that moment).

While I like that idea - it opens up tactical flexibility - there are two problems with it. 1) You'd have to be using inherent bonuses, or you'd be boxed into using a given magic weapon (or finding one of those shape-changing weapons) and 2) it's not really the kind of character custimization given by feats, anymore, it's just a cool feature that all characters of that class can play with.

But, yes, any feat that has 'Class X' in its prerequisites could just as easily be a chooseable feature of class X.