D&D 5E I hate choosing between ASIs and Feats

[ChrisCarlson]

I also wonder if the fact that you're playing AL is contributing to this dilemma. At a friendly home table, you might feel less pressure to "keep up" through optimization.

Back during the most competitive era of D&D organized play (4e RPGA), my friend and I would make fun, thematically interesting characters all the time, optimization be darned. We did fine then too. And 5e AL is far more forgiving that that.

 

[Psikerlord#]

Easiest solution for the OP: ban ASIs, only allow feats.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I feel that adding a bonus feat at first lol and excluding variant humans help fix this problem. When I first started running 5th for my group qich had three new players to the game. They at first tried different races and ended up wiping a couple of times even though I warned them that rocket tag was in full effect. They eventually started playing nothing but vhumans for that 1st lvl feat qich tends to be a lot stronger than racial abilities.

Doesn't that only fix a "problem" of "too many humans, not enough gnomes/orcs/dwarves/etc."? I mean, if everyone in your group was already playing humans, and now they're playing elves with a free feat, the exact same number of feats are in play, just on a chassis with Dex +2 Wis +1 and darkvision/Mask of the Wild/etc. instead of +1/+1 and a free skill.

In short, that seems to address a different, non-feat-related problem about racial diversity. How much you like that variant rule depends on how much you like the idea of a world or party populated primarily by humans.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Perhaps I was to quick to dismiss this I may have to give it a whirl

Here's my attempt at summarizing the pros and cons of Mounted Combatant:

(-) Logistics. You need a good way of procuring a mount in the first place, and/or replacing one if it gets killed by white dragon breath or something. Find Steed and Phantasmal Steed can both work, as can gold and downtime, but you'll need to plan this out. Also you need to feed it and care for it.
(-) Availability. Sometimes your mount won't fit into the adventure, e.g. if it takes place at the bottom of a well or at a duke's ball.
(+) Advantage on your melee attacks against Medium creatures: can cancel out the downside of GWM or simply increase your effectiveness against an armored foe.
(+) Mobility: free Dodges and Disengages on a high-speed (60'+) chassis means you lose fewer rounds of combat on closing to melee range. Or you can kite effectively with a longbow if you prefer to be more cataphract than Sir Lancelot.
(+) Extra opportunity attacks: attacks from your warhorse/gryphon/whatever make you stickier.
(+) Better blocking/tanking: a Large-sized mount can hold a chokepoint against a Huge giant. A Medium-sized human cannot--the giant can just ignore you and move through your space because it's two sizes larger. This makes you a more effective tank.
(+) Weird combos. If you have a mount that is capable of attacking on its own (i.e. an intelligent mount, possibly via Find Steed depending on DM ruling), you can sit up there on its back and Dodge every turn while the mount attacks. That gives you one attack at +6 for 2d6+4 (11) while also imposing disadvantage on any attackers. Goes well with the better tanking aspect.
(-) Stealth: Mounts are usually bad at it.
(-) Vulnerability to Pushing attacks: You can get knocked off your steed (possibly falling prone), and that will really disrupt your battleplan if you hadn't realized it was possible. Especially if it was a flying mount.

 

[Prism]

Aren't there many other threads where people say that fights are too easy, monsters ACs are too low, CRs are too low, various classes are overpowered (and nobody plays the ones that are not). If that is true then why would you need more than 16 in your main stat? Take as many non combat feats as you want and everything will be just fine.

My moderated armoured 16 strength elven battlemaster fighter plays just fine at 6th level. I put my first ASI into intelligence. Somehow he is still alive

 

[MechaPilot]

Some of my players have expressed similar opinions. What I did for my most recent campaign was offer a free feat to anyone who does a full background write up for their character. Unsurprisingly, everyone took me up on the offer. It's a slight power boost, but not an excessive one from what I've seen so far. Plus, it motivated them to get me their backgrounds sooner than later, which is a big plus for me (helps me tie them into the goings on of the campaign world from the start). So far it's been a win/win.

I allow PCs to train in feats, but I have used a variation on your idea. In order to encourage players to put more effort into their characters' stories, I give a couple healing potions and some extra starting gold in exchange for a full background write-up.

 

[Krachek]

Several people have suggested variants of this, and aside from the fact that I play AL so this isn't really an option: if I had the "willpower" to request such a rule, I would also have the willpower to just choose feats instead of ASIs.

I know, same thing here! Most people here choose ASI.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm just saying that I would be having more fun if ASIs and Feats were two separate choices. What I hear around the tables (AL at FLGS) is a similar sentiment.

Anybody else wish this had been designed differently?

Generally seems to be working as intended, then.

For some of those feats that are to you "clearly" inferior to an ASI, I'd just want to ramp up their power so that they aren't so clearly inferior anymore.

Difficult choices between difficult-to-compare options is what personal expression through gameplay is all about! I'd hate for there to be one ideal option that everyone would just choose if they wanted to be good at X.

 

[Valetudo]

Aren't there many other threads where people say that fights are too easy, monsters ACs are too low, CRs are too low, various classes are overpowered (and nobody plays the ones that are not). If that is true then why would you need more than 16 in your main stat? Take as many non combat feats as you want and everything will be just fine.

My moderated armoured 16 strength elven battlemaster fighter plays just fine at 6th level. I put my first ASI into intelligence. Somehow he is still alive

Different results for different groups. My groupis three to four players in wich three are new to the game, and i use a stat array. Where as alot of people still use rolling for stats wich changes things. Also larger groups are much harder to deal with.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Easiest solution for the OP: ban ASIs, only allow feats.

I think you got that backwards...what I would say is: ban Feats, only allow ASI's.

As for having to make a hard choice...er...yup. Life's kinda like that...and RPG's are even more like that. Now, IMC, I don't allow Feats (or Multiclassing for that matter), and nobody's character has 'suffered' in terms of coolness factor or 'fun'. In fact, when we did use Feats, players actually had less fun playing their characters...because they always felt like they were "expected" to take some particular Feat. Like the OP (?) said, if you were playing a Greatsword-wielding Champion Fighter in a game that uses Feats...then not taking GWM would feel, look and probably be, like you were trying to make your Greatsword Master more of a Greatsword I'm-not-too-bad-but-could-be-better-Master. When I announced "NO Feats!" for the next (and every since then) campaign/game, every single one of my players has been relieved. YMMV.

^_^

Paul L. Ming