Legends and Lore: Uber Feats eat Prestige classes and Paragon Paths or give +1 to ability

[VinylTap]

The thing that most concerned me about this Legends and Lore is this - we are one year into playtesting, and yet this seems like possibly such a major reworking of the way classes are balanced against each other and the way character advancement works. At this rate DNDNext looks like it won't be finished for at least 2 years, or else it will get rushed at the end. Any way, with respect to the actual proposal, I suppose it could work but I'm very concerned about their ability to balance such strong feats against each other and against ability score modifiers.

Only if their internal playtest looks anything like the public one, and I don't think it does.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

The thing that most concerned me about this Legends and Lore is this - we are one year into playtesting, and yet this seems like possibly such a major reworking of the way classes are balanced against each other and the way character advancement works. At this rate DNDNext looks like it won't be finished for at least 2 years, or else it will get rushed at the end. Any way, with respect to the actual proposal, I suppose it could work but I'm very concerned about their ability to balance such strong feats against each other and against ability score modifiers.

It seems to me that figuring out the more generic approaches is the most difficult and time consuming. Once the structure is complete, adding more stuff is comparatively simpler.

The current playtest packet is already a fairly robust game. Some aspects are still a bit thin, but most of the classes, races, feats, skills, spells, and magic items you would expect from core D&D are there.

 

[Li Shenron]

The thing that most concerned me about this Legends and Lore is this - we are one year into playtesting, and yet this seems like possibly such a major reworking of the way classes are balanced against each other and the way character advancement works. At this rate DNDNext looks like it won't be finished for at least 2 years, or else it will get rushed at the end. Any way, with respect to the actual proposal, I suppose it could work but I'm very concerned about their ability to balance such strong feats against each other and against ability score modifiers.

This is true, we've been 1 year already in playtesting.

On the other hand, we still have 1 year in playtesting.

 

[Minigiant]

The thing that most concerned me about this Legends and Lore is this - we are one year into playtesting, and yet this seems like possibly such a major reworking of the way classes are balanced against each other and the way character advancement works. At this rate DNDNext looks like it won't be finished for at least 2 years, or else it will get rushed at the end. Any way, with respect to the actual proposal, I suppose it could work but I'm very concerned about their ability to balance such strong feats against each other and against ability score modifiers.

This is my concern too. Between this, Apprentice tier, finishing the other classes and races, writing some of the near-essential modules, and playtesting it all, if D&D Next comes out before 2nd Qtr 2015, it'll be a mess. It'll all workable but it seems they are taking the hard route for everything.

Harder route take more time.

 

[Evenglare]

Balancing feats towards a goal of a +1 equivalence balance, and giving classes different rates of feat improvment in NO WAY goes together. Lets say the fighter gets 10 feats, while the wizard gets 3. That's an equivalent +10 to ability scores , while the wizard would get +3. I'm aware that there are other feats that will do different things rather than a +1 bonus, but all feats seem to be balanced and roughly equivalent to this bonus. How in HELL are they going to make this balance towards all the different classes. I can imagine no scene in my mind that allows balance unless you begin increasing spell power to keep up with feats + expertise dice. Then you get in an arms war with casters, and we all know who wins in that respect, so you start winding up with blatant 3e holes. This does not sound like a good idea in any respect.

 

[1of3]

Of course, caster don't really need their ability scores to get things done.

 

[Zardnaar]

I suspect they have the basic core worked out and are throwing dumb things out there to see what people like. At the end they will just cobble everything together that was popular and go "ta da".

 

[LightPhoenix]

This is my concern too. Between this, Apprentice tier, finishing the other classes and races, writing some of the near-essential modules, and playtesting it all, if D&D Next comes out before 2nd Qtr 2015, it'll be a mess. It'll all workable but it seems they are taking the hard route for everything.

There are, IMO, two big reasons for it seeming like this. The first is the nature of the iterative design process. The second is drifting from the design goals. From those two, you generally see changes that cascade throughout the development process. *Normally* this process is obscured from the general public, since this stage of design and development is usually internal. This sort of push and pull between iterative design and design goals is fairly normal. A couple of months from now, they may find the new feat concept strays too far from the goals, so they pull it back some. It seems like the roundabout route but it's really the normal design/development process exposed.

Of course, I agree with those that think the big problem with feats is that there is no design goal or concept; it's an amorphous mess of whatever sticks. It may be that they've realized this and are trying to tighten down the system, hence the talk about changes.

 

[SatanasOz]

two things: 1st: omg what an elegant solution. Just beautiful! it solves so many conundrums: High complexity vs. low complexity in one group. Creating meaningful customization. Maybe even a multiclassing "light".

The crux, in my opinion is to create enough meaningful choice at the same power level. It reminds me of the design background info in 3rd edition Magic Item Compendium. They realized that the bechmark for any item would be the Belt of x str. the Question each item had to survive was: would I pick this over the stat bonus at least some of the times.

2nd - As to specialities: Why should they not work anymore? Just imagine they were comprised of 6 feats, and suggest the standard stat bump every other feat. Spun even further, that works nicely for PrC classes as well. Specialities tend to be for level 1-9, PrCs do the same for 11-20.

 

[variant]

I think this design concept could be really good. I've always disliked the automatic +1 ability score progression. I also like much more powerful feats than what is currently provided and what was in previous editions. Otherwise you have a character sheet filled with what is essentially a bunch of junk you end up forgetting is there to begin with unless it is just a passive bonus to some roll that's already calculated in. Now feats can actually be valuable.