Excising, Severely Limiting, or Strictly Organizing Feats

[Stormonu]

Tiered feats are one way. Have Weapon Focus I, II, III, IV, and so on, so forth. Each one gives a different bonus which rewards someone for delving deeply into a single feat tree. Iron Heroes works like this, and it makes for some interesting character choices; do you dabble in a bit of everything, or specialize in one tree? Two fighters with different feat trees play quite differently.

.

Unfortunately, it doesn't tend to work out that way - the character who doesn't specialize instead is "ineffective".


I'd rather that feats are only used to open up new options or trade options (such as Power Attack, trading accuracy for damage) not enhancing options already available to PCs. No Weapon Focus, Skill Focus or the half-dozen +2/+2 feats. Yes to things like Weapon Expertise (using Dex instead of Strength for Light Weapons), Whirlwind Attack (which turns your single target attack into a "burst" attack), Improved Grapple (no counterattack by foe when grappling), etc.

 

[Hazard_53188]

Picking a feat for 4e requires one to look through a crazy number of possible choices.

The total number of feats doesn't bother me. But the number of possible choices for a given character are way too many.

My solution, reduce the number of generic feats that apply to all characters and instead have most feats be specific to a class or a race.

I don't care if there are hundreds of feats if I only need to look at 20 or 30 of them to decide what I want to pick.

 

[TwinBahamut]

The Feat system from 3E and 4E really needs to go. The idea of having some unified system for character customization was a good idea, but I have slowly come to realize that the implementation of it in those two editions was outright terrible. It just doesn't work well. The balance between feats is poor, the choices presented by feats tended to be too minor and flavorless to really define a character, their existence leads to "fix it with a feat" thinking, and so on. Scrapping them entirely in favor of a better system would be the best path.

If 5E did have some replacement to the Feat system, I'd prefer to see a much smaller number of choices that are each much more important. The game should provide enough choice between ability scores, race, class, options within a class, and theme that you really shouldn't need an extensive customization system like feats. Folding most of the good ideas from the feat system into race, class, and theme would do a lot to make the feat system itself unnecessary.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Heh, as I said last time this came up, feats need a good editor. Throw out about 80% to 90% of them on general principle. Make the remaining ones work for that precious slot. Add to the full list with the same idea--one or two for every 10 proposed.

Feats are "the exception that proves the rule" when it comes to the 80/20 rule of thumb. With most things, it's that 20% of the thing causes 80% of the problems. Identify the 20%, fix it, and the thing is a lot better. With feats, it is 80% of the feats cause 80% of the problems. Makes identification tricky. So I guess as an alternative, you could just kill them all, and let Thor sort them out.

 

[Spatula]

I don't know that I'd want to get rid of feats entirely, but I would like to see

(a) fewer feats overall, because the feat bloat makes it a chore to choose feats

and

(b) feats that do cool stuff and not conditional little bonuses (or always-on little bonuses)

I want feats that make the character interesting, as opposed to "you are slightly better at Y".

 

[Quickleaf]

Honestly I don't see the objection to feats. I like them. They allow me to customize my character to make it more mine. Isn't that the whole point? I don't want to take an MMO-esque approach where all class builds are pre-baked into 31-point trees that are loaded with false choices.

I was just making a Pathfinder character so that's what's fresh in my mind, but the sentiment holds for 4e and 3e. I'm making a human monk and find I have 3 starting feats to choose - the one that's bonus for being a monk is easy cause I have a tight list of maybe 8 to choose from. My other two feats? I have an idea of what I want my character to do - be nimble, philosophical, and mean with a staff.

So my first choice is Combat Reflexes which lets me make more opportunity attacks even when flat-footed. Ok that's cool I guess, but it doesn't stand out as some unique ability or anything.

Next feat...Uh...now I'm staring at a huge amount of feats, and to find the ones I want I need to sort through a lot that my monk doesn't qualify for (even with the handy feat categories in Pathfinder) plus a bunch that just suck. Point in case: "Nimble Moves" sounds like it fits my character concept and my guy meets the requisite 13 Dex. And what does the feat let me do? Ignore 5 feet of difficult terrain when you move.

I mean at that level of minutiae who the frack *cares*?

Unfortunately, it doesn't tend to work out that way - the character who doesn't specialize instead is "ineffective".

I'd rather that feats are only used to open up new options or trade options (such as Power Attack, trading accuracy for damage) not enhancing options already available to PCs. No Weapon Focus, Skill Focus or the half-dozen +2/+2 feats. Yes to things like Weapon Expertise (using Dex instead of Strength for Light Weapons), Whirlwind Attack (which turns your single target attack into a "burst" attack), Improved Grapple (no counterattack by foe when grappling), etc.

I support dropping the concept of feats as *improvements* and instead implementing them as *new options*. Put all the improvement stuff into the class where it belongs.

 

[Sunseeker]

I was just making a Pathfinder character so that's what's fresh in my mind, but the sentiment holds for 4e and 3e. I'm making a human monk and find I have 3 starting feats to choose - the one that's bonus for being a monk is easy cause I have a tight list of maybe 8 to choose from. My other two feats? I have an idea of what I want my character to do - be nimble, philosophical, and mean with a staff.

So my first choice is Combat Reflexes which lets me make more opportunity attacks even when flat-footed. Ok that's cool I guess, but it doesn't stand out as some unique ability or anything.

Next feat...Uh...now I'm staring at a huge amount of feats, and to find the ones I want I need to sort through a lot that my monk doesn't qualify for (even with the handy feat categories in Pathfinder) plus a bunch that just suck. Point in case: "Nimble Moves" sounds like it fits my character concept and my guy meets the requisite 13 Dex. And what does the feat let me do? Ignore 5 feet of difficult terrain when you move.

I mean at that level of minutiae who the frack *cares*?

I agree that feats could stand to be vastly more optimized, no argument there.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Unfortunately, it doesn't tend to work out that way - the character who doesn't specialize instead is "ineffective".


I'd rather that feats are only used to open up new options or trade options (such as Power Attack, trading accuracy for damage) not enhancing options already available to PCs. No Weapon Focus, Skill Focus or the half-dozen +2/+2 feats. Yes to things like Weapon Expertise (using Dex instead of Strength for Light Weapons), Whirlwind Attack (which turns your single target attack into a "burst" attack), Improved Grapple (no counterattack by foe when grappling), etc.

To me, this depends on how prevalent feats are. In 4th Edition I can expect 18 feats over 30 levels; in Pathfinder I can expect 10 feats over 20 levels; in 3rd Edition I can expect 7 over 20 levels. (Obviously race/class decisions can modify the final number.)

The problem is that when each feat offers a new option, rather than just an enhancement, you can quickly reach the point where the character is too complex for the player if feats are anywhere near as ubiquitous as they currently are. This is not even considering skills, powers, spells, magic items, etc., all of which add to a character's complexity.

If 5th Edition limits feats to something like one feat per tier, then I would be on board with eliminating feats which only offer enhancements. However, if feats continue to be offered at the same rate that they are currently at, then there has to be room in the system for the basic enhancement feats like Weapon Focus and Improved Initiative.

 

[Minigiant]

Feats should be categorized by type.

Combat
Exploration
Social
Racial
Proficiency
Skill
Magic

So if the DM says "I'm only using Exploration, Proficiency, and Racial feats.", you can turn to page 103 and look up the Exploration feats. Then turn 4 pages for the Racial feats.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I don't know that I'd want to get rid of feats entirely, but I would like to see

(a) fewer feats overall, because the feat bloat makes it a chore to choose feats

and

(b) feats that do cool stuff and not conditional little bonuses (or always-on little bonuses)

I want feats that make the character interesting, as opposed to "you are slightly better at Y".

I don't really want to see them gone entirely, either. A few feats with very good but conditional help would be great--especially if the conditions don't often stack. If you've got nice bonus A versus goblinoids and nice bonus B when in the woods and nice bonus C resisting fire magic--you only get really overpowered when fighting goblinoids and their fire hurling shaman in the woods. And who will begrude that character his moment in the sun when it finally happens?

Big, conditional bonuses are the kind that aren't forgotten, and are appreciated when they happen. And once you've done a few of those, you've pretty much covered a big chunk of the ground that feats would cover.

Then that makes an even smaller number of always on versions even more reasonable, for those people that don't want to fool with even that amount of conditions.

Feats should be categorized by type.

Combat
Exploration
Social
Racial
Proficiency
Skill
Magic

So if the DM says "I'm only using Exploration, Proficiency, and Racial feats.", you can turn to page 103 and look up the Exploration feats. Then turn 4 pages for the Racial feats.

That, plus also categorized by rough power level (not tiers) and by playstyles. That gives even more ways for groups to communicate which ones are acceptable or useful in a given campaign. Then you can have a feat that grants one language right next to one that grants 3 languages right next to one that makes the character a world-traveling linguist. Pick the one that makes the most sense for your campaign, and don't even pretend they are balanced with each other.