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

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm curious. How did you get your players to feel comfortable that they could indulge in feats?
Less punishing fights? (in my experience, players panic that they will end up boringly weak compared to the fighter who chooses optimally,
or that they risk getting killed if they don't choose optimally).

De-emphasize the character sheet and discourage players from looking at each other's character sheets. I don't mean "don't play by the rules", just "don't ask to know players' abilities and bonuses until it comes up in play."

That feeling of panic that you're talking about comes from comparing a +7 on a piece of paper to a +8 on a different piece of paper. It doesn't come from missing a monster by one occasionally (on 5% of your attacks, because you don't have Str 20) while sneaking around in the shadows (Skulker feat for rogue, lets him hide even against darkvision) or bashing monsters prone for advantage with every attack (Shield Master).

My players don't seem to take many feats, but they do invest in non-primary ASIs (boosting Int is very popular for every class) so clearly they don't feel much if any pressure to "optimize" by boosting attack stats to 20. This in spite of the fact that the conflicts which do occur in my combat-light game vary wildly between "pretty easy" and "amazingly difficult, so much so that the DM is surprised when they don't TPK." This could be due purely to player personality but I hypothesize that it's also due to DMing style and the fact that my game tends to be more about making smart decisions (like "do we attack or run away?") rather than die rolls. Could be both of course--maybe that's why my players and I get along so well, because we have similar preferences.

TL;DR if you want your players to be willing to take feats over ASIs, try a high-agency game which emphasizes player skill more than character stats. Here's a good place to start: http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2012/04/on-transcript-unfortunate-death.html

 

[Sacrosanct]

Also, old-school gamers might be more comfortable with "low" scores like Int 16, because AD&D didn't let you change your stats at all (hardly ever). The roleplayer in me actually hates the thought of every fighter always winding up the strongest man in the world and every rogue the quickest and every wizard the smartest. It's bland. Feats are more interesting and less homogenizing.

It would be interesting to see whether old-school gamers, as a group, lean toward feats or ASIs. I'm hypothesizing that they'd lean toward feats.

That makes perfect sense, and is probably exactly why I feel the way I do about them. In fact, as I've said in other discussions, I really don't like cookie cutter PCs where every class X has the same attributes.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, the problem with Mounted Combat IS how highly situational it is.

That's what I attempted to point the light at. Not just a bunch of plusses and minuses. HUGE minuses unless you get your DM aboard BEFORE you make the choice.

In a classical AD&D campaign (where every illustration shows clean beautiful Heroes with a big H): absolutely! That's the kind of campaign where the evil goblins would never dream of trying to harm your dear horsie.

In Out of the Abyss: if you're an underdark denizen yourself, maybe. Just maybe. But as a human knight? fuhgeddaboudit!

The point I'm trying to make is that the feat describes the best-case scenario. There are lots of adventures that will restrict you in a way that simply doesn't happen for many other feats, but none* that make it better than what's on paper.

It's like Dungeon Delver - with a DM that doesn't care much for traps and doesn't remember half the traps that's there, it's just not a good feat. But the thing is that trapfinder-friendly adventures are more common than mount-friendly ones!

*) Well, I guess a Dragonrider campaign where anyone not on a flying mount can go home...

Sure, but that's true of everything in 5E, not just mounted combatant. If you specialize in GWM and then you find out that your DM cares a lot about realistic tactics, and many of your enemies have missile weapons and horses (like Mongols), you've just brought a knife to a gunfight. If you specialize in warlockery and then find out that your DM likes wilderness games where you tend to have only one combat in a given day, you'll be sad that your spells are short rest-recharge. If you specialize in stealth and then find that your DM hates stealth rules and gimps them severely, if you play a warrior and then discover that the DM doesn't give out magic weapons, if you play a wizard and discover that the DM likes tracking material components and forcing you to roleplay creating/purchasing them... your experience will not be what you hoped.

You should always know something about the circumstances of the campaign when you're creating a PC for it. You can't optimize a solution when you don't know the constraints on the problem.

In your case, it seems that you play in mount-unfriendly campaigns. Fine. Don't take MC then. Take Dungeon Delver instead. Undoubtedly there are people who play at completely different tables who think you're insane to take Dungeon Delver, but what do you care? It's useful at your table.

 

[ccs]

I'm an old school gamer. Played AD&D from 1981 all the way until 5e came out. You'd think I'd totally be for ASIs and getting rid of feats. But actually, I almost always choose the feat. Nearly every time. I just like the flavor of the broad feats.

I know exactly what you mean. I'm right there with you.
And I know why.
It's because as 1e players we aren't expecting our base stats to ever rise. Oh sure, they CAN -under very specific circumstances (playing a Cavelier, aging, several magic items, & wishes/Miracles). But if I'm not playing a Cavelier I'm not betting on that happening.....
Feats though? These are equivalent to the old Non-Weapon Proficiencies, or in some cases closer to weapon - specialization from UA.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I'm curious. How did you get your players to feel comfortable that they could indulge in feats?
Less punishing fights? (in my experience, players panic that they will end up boringly weak compared to the fighter who chooses optimally,
or that they risk getting killed if they don't choose optimally).

It's a combination of things, but the primary contributors to the players feeling comfortable are:

• Frequently having the consequence of defeat not be character death
• Letting the players know that the encounters their characters have will not be tailored to a specific difficulty, meaning I don't expect them to always be at large risk of defeat or have a significant chance of victory
• Let the players know that I'm not going to have "we try to run away" be resolved primarily by relative movement speed, meaning the characters actually possess solid chances that the players have influence over to actually escape

Then, it just comes down to that they have played optimized characters in my campaigns which I did not scale-up in difficulty (because I don't believe that changing both sides of the difficulty equation makes any sense at all) and found both that they were bored by how easy the things their character was built to be optimized for were, and that they were bored by with how little they could contribute in scenarios calling for abilities outside what they optimized for.

 

[TwoSix]

"+2 Dex or Sharpshooter....no, not another one of these!" -Sophie

 

[CapnZapp]

Sure, but that's true of everything in 5E, not just mounted combatant.

Now you're relativizing.

I maintain mounted combat is situational.

You say "aren't they all".

So I have to qualify my statement with "mounted combat is more situational than most", a completely unnecessary addition that I would assume everyone just too for granted, since the alternative interpretation is that my statement is essentially meaningless.

 

[CapnZapp]

If you specialize in GWM and then you find out that your DM cares a lot about realistic tactics, and many of your enemies have missile weapons and horses (like Mongols), you've just brought a knife to a gunfight..

If you really want to argue either that 1) GWM is as easily sidelined as MC and/or 2) a significant concern in fantasy combat is "realistic" combat...

...I can't stop you. I can only really really strongly advise against it.

 

[Mercule]

I know exactly what you mean. I'm right there with you.
And I know why.
It's because as 1e players we aren't expecting our base stats to ever rise. Oh sure, they CAN -under very specific circumstances (playing a Cavelier, aging, several magic items, & wishes/Miracles). But if I'm not playing a Cavelier I'm not betting on that happening.....
Feats though? These are equivalent to the old Non-Weapon Proficiencies, or in some cases closer to weapon - specialization from UA.

I've got mixed feelings on this. As a BECMI/AD&D player, I'm fine with lower stats that don't change much over the life of the character. I do like feats as a way to tweak characters, but one of the things that burned me out in 3E/3.5E was the glut of feats and the ritual of players pouring over the list of feats every couple levels to find just the right one.

So, I want feats that serve as chrome, rather than being expected, but need something to balance them out. So, I default to saying "you get an ASI" but allow the players to pick a feat, if they ask. For my next campaign, I may try to go with just the ASIs -- or not, five ASIs seems like a lot.

Which gets me back to my starting point: five ASIs is too many, but five feats is also too many. Split 2/3 isn't bad, either way it's split.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I've got mixed feelings on this. As a BECMI/AD&D player, I'm fine with lower stats that don't change much over the life of the character. I do like feats as a way to tweak characters, but one of the things that burned me out in 3E/3.5E was the glut of feats and the ritual of players pouring over the list of feats every couple levels to find just the right one..

I'm exactly the same way. That's probably why I like 5e's feat system because the feats are far more broad than 3e, and you get fewer of them. You're only going to get a few of them in the level range most people play the game. It doesn't feel like 3e's feat arms race, to me at least.