D&D 5E Not liking the specialty / feat system much.

[B.T.]

It's an unfocused mash-up of powers and passive bonuses that don't really make sense. For instance, let's compare Maximize Spell, Durable, and Master Detective.

• Maximize Spell: 1/day, do maximum damage on a spell.
• Durable: Regain +2 HP per HD spent.
• Master Detective: Detect hidden things as a free action. If you detect hidden things as an action, you gain advantage on the check. If you are surprised, make a saving throw to avoid surprise.

One grants a daily power, one grants a passive bonus, and the other grants a slew of bonuses for specific skills. Aside from being a clumsy system, these abilities are so disparate in their effects that they shouldn't be labeled as part of the same system.

• Durable: extremely broad, usable by everyone.
• Maximize Spell: fairly narrow, only usable by spellcasters (and only once per day).
• Master Detective: extremely focused, only affects a specific use of skills in special circumstances.

The 5e developers need to decide hash out what a specialty is and what a feat is, and they need to redesign that system from the ground up.

 

[kerleth]

I disagree. I don't want all my feats to work the same. I think feats are a good home for abilities that make sense within a certain character concept but don't have an established home like expertise maneuvers or spells. Although I do have issues with some specific specialties. Having a choice between something like durable and master detective is exactly what I want out of character customization. Although I'll give you the metamagic thing. I always thought that would work better as a part of the wizard class. Used it that way in a homebrew mage class I made and it seemed to work well.

 

[Hautamaki]

I don't mind that the feats are all over the place. It allows for Asymmetric character design, which when done right I'm a big fan of. I think it's cool that you get to weigh the pros and cons of feats that have such widely varying effects. One of the things that turned me off 4e was the symmetrical design of all character classes; all classes used essentially the same mechanics with fluff being the main distinguishing point. On the one hand this system is easy to learn and easy to balance and has a certain beauty of simplicity to it. But D&D is not where I turn when I'm in the mood for something simple. Asymmetric design definitely presents a steeper learning curve but I for one am totally fine with that. It also makes the game much harder to balance, but seeing as how they have set aside over a year for open-playtest and balancing I think it's a reachable goal. The benefit in characters with more customization options is worth it imo. I prefer a character as an empty sheet that the players can add details to fill in as they like; with 4e I personally felt more like players had essentially a few limited choices of nearly pre-gen characters with a few basic options there-in.

 

[Shieldhaven]

I really don't like the changes made to Specialties here - I thought it was pretty much genius in the previous round of documents that you got your non-combat stuff from Backgrounds and your combat stuff from Specialties. (Setting aside class and race for the moment, as those are a mixed bag.) Once a player has to choose between a combat Specialty and a non-combat Specialty, almost every player I've ever met will choose the combat option - not because they're powergamers, but because they feel compelled to improve their survival options.

The other great thing about the previous specialties is that they were great for letting characters dabble in another class. The mechanics might not be the same as multiclassing (not that we have rules for that yet), but the end result was a lot like multiclassing. After all, the War domain cleric with the Guardian specialty, or the Protector fighter with the Acolyte specialty, were surprisingly convincing paladins.

Well, you can still pick up Divine Magic Specialist or Arcane Magic Specialist to dabble in those classes (hot tip: Arcane Magic Specialist does nothing for non-spellcasters at 6th and 9th level), or pick up Ambusher or Stealth Specialist to be partly roguey, but there isn't much out there if you want to be partly-fighter. Endurance Specialist is about it, and that applies to a pretty narrow band of fighter-like concepts. I miss the Guardian in particular - admittedly, the Dual Wielder and Archer specialties had some really strange design choices.

Haven

 

[kerleth]

I think the combat non-combat divide on how people use feats is entirely playstyle based. I played with a guy that once said "Okay, roleplaying is nice, but let's be honest. It's just a break between combats to add a little flavor and keep things from getting monotonous. Fighting is where it is at." He was also prone to using feats and spells in "unorhtodox" fashion in combat. Like transmuting an opponents equipment to jello.(3rd edition chaos mage, so many laughs, so many headaches). I, however, often want skill based abilities. Automatically getting a check to notice that secret passage while walking buy, pure awesome. Also, it depends on how you define "non-combat". Increased healing ability affects a party's combat readiness. So does increased stealth. Or increased chance of noticing an ambush. As long as a character is viable in combat, not every character should be equally skilled in that area. I don't like the end of the road that leads too. But I digress.

I did notice your point about arcane specialist and the disappearance of the defender specialty. Huge disappointment there. I think I like the earlier treatment of the arcane specialist and 0-level/minor spells better. I'm reserving judgement till I see them in action, though.

 

[Kinak]

I don't like specialties for a totally different reason: Locking in your character advancement track during character creation.

One of the weaknesses, in my opinion, of 3rd (and Pathfinder to a lesser degree) is having to plan out your prerequisites for feats and prestige classes. So you're often planning out a couple levels ahead of your character rather than letting them grow organically.

Specialties take that to an absurd level. The game is, in essence, telling you to map those choices out from character creation to at least 10th level, probably all the way up to top level.

The design decision to take the customization of 3rd or 4th Edition and cram it all into character creation frankly baffles me. Why wouldn't you want to make a couple choices, get playing now, and customize the character as you find out its role in the group and the setting?

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[kerleth]

In the new playtest they stopped hinting at it and explicitly stated that you can choose different feats and customize a specialty to your tastes. Doesn't that resolve that issue?

 

[Gadget]

I don't like specialties for a totally different reason: Locking in your character advancement track during character creation.

One of the weaknesses, in my opinion, of 3rd (and Pathfinder to a lesser degree) is having to plan out your prerequisites for feats and prestige classes. So you're often planning out a couple levels ahead of your character rather than letting them grow organically.

Specialties take that to an absurd level. The game is, in essence, telling you to map those choices out from character creation to at least 10th level, probably all the way up to top level.

The design decision to take the customization of 3rd or 4th Edition and cram it all into character creation frankly baffles me. Why wouldn't you want to make a couple choices, get playing now, and customize the character as you find out its role in the group and the setting?

Cheers!
Kinak

Previous editions had the problem of "analysis paralysis" where players dithered endlessly over the many (hundreds) feats out there to make the ultimate build and squeeze every last ounce out it. This way you can take a general character concept and add it at character creation and be done. Of course, they've explicitly said that you can go back to the old way and cherry pick your feats as you go, so its all the same. Personally, I like the idea of Specialities, as it seems to push the idea a little bit more towards character concept rather than raw min/max mechanical analysis, though not totally. Point taken about making the choice a character creation rather than letting your PC grow more organically, but I would be surprised if some form of retraining at level up did not appear in the final rules to allow for switching out previous choices.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

In the previous playtest I argued that feats should be combat-centered, for the reason Shieldhaven pointed out. But I'm willing to roll with them on this. It's hard to judge, though, since they've stripped out most of the cool feats this time around. How would a skill-specialist fighter stack up against a Defender fighter? Stay tuned till next playtest to find out!

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Thoughts:

Backgrounds should define where you're from, what you did before adventuring. They should give you skill foci or knowledge, or perhaps a proficiency or intangible perk (like: has a patron, or "well connected"). Other than a proficiency (Soldier: proficient in martial weapons) Backgrounds shouldn't grant combat abilities. Backgrounds should be class-immaterial.

Feats should let yo ubreak the rules in cool ways, and gradually add abilities. There should be a mix of in- and out-of-combat feats, some which are situational, some which are "always on".

Specialties should be a thematic grouping of feats that define "how you do things" and "what you're an expert at", that let you get access to certain feats without otherwise meeting prerequisites. There should be certain feats that can only be gained by picking a specialty or taking an extensive feat chain. Specialties should be class-immaterial, but be designed to work better with certain classes than others.