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

[Shieldhaven]

The thing that I particularly like about Specialties is that character creation is essentially reduced to four Big Choices, plus one choice within your class. I much prefer four choices that matter to two choices that matter and then a dozen choices that really... don't matter, because of their small scale. Customization is great, but I know too many players who are simply paralyzed in the face of a large number of small choices.

Haven

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I've been having a thought about how front loaded characters are. What if you didn't choose your specialty until third level? First level would be a choice of race, class, and background. At third, you choose a specialty and start getting feats. The current specialties have four feats, which would be one at 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th level.

I think this would open up some breathing room in feat design, because you wouldn't have to worry about what such a feat means for a first level character.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

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.

You mean something like the Optional Rule in the grey box on page 1 of the Specialties and Feats pdf?

 

[Dice4Hire]

I've been having a thought about how front loaded characters are. What if you didn't choose your specialty until third level? First level would be a choice of race, class, and background. At third, you choose a specialty and start getting feats. The current specialties have four feats, which would be one at 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th level.

I think this would open up some breathing room in feat design, because you wouldn't have to worry about what such a feat means for a first level character.

That is a good idea. I liked a bit how 4E had theme at 1st (along with lots of other choices), Paragon path at 11th, and Epic Destiny at 21st.

They all needed a lot of work but the framework was good.

 

[Grimmjow]

i like the system, but some of the feats i dislike. Namely, ALL of the divine magic ones. they guide you way to far into a healer buffer and not enough options. Same with the level 1 arcane magic one. I know that they are trying to make it easier for new people but we still need choices.

 

[Kinak]

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?

Well, yes and no. I mean, it's good that there's (hopefully) going to be rules support for feats being interchangable and people can run feat games.

But this is an issue I think is one of the biggest weaknesses of 3rd and Pathfinder. One of the only reasons I'd consider switching is if they could offer a better framework for character building and customization.

If the best they can offer is as bad as Pathfinder, I'll just keep playing Pathfinder. They need to offer something better.

For what it's worth, I think they realized that and that Specializations are an attempt to provide that framework. I just think the cure is worse than the disease.

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.

Agreed on the analysis paralysis. I'm certainly not trying to hoist the "3e rules 5e drools" banner here. I think 3rd suffered a lot under the weight of feats.

I'm just in kind of a hard spot, because I think that attributes, race, class, subclass, and background are plenty of customization at first level. But I also want increased customization and (small-s) specialization as the character finds their place in the world.

Next doesn't look poised to provide that, which is a shame, because that's what bringing together the oldschool (character creation isn't a giant slog) and newschool (wooo customization!) means to me. They're not that far off, though, so we shall see

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.

That would be nice. I've allowed players to do that since back in 2nd, but they always feel weird about it. It'd be nice to have that written down like (I believe) 4th did.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[kerleth]

Actually, the retraining rules are in the specialties section of the current playtest packet already.