D&D 5E To use or not to use feats

[rgoodbb]

A variant human with a feat can (with the right one) feel a lot more powerful than the others for those first few levels.

I like the idea of not having variant humans but giving out a free non-optimal feat at first level to everyone. Actor for the Fighter say, or Skilled for the Wizard etc. It might be kind of interesting for flavour. At 4th, players can choose whether to sacrifice an ASI or not for me.

 

[manduck]

I allow feats in my games. I just like giving the players more options to create their ideal heroes. It's not going to do harm if you don't use them. A good ASI goes a long way. Boosting up that main stat so you're more effective at what your class does carries more weight than what a feat may offer, to me. So a fighter without access to feats may be a bit tougher when they start boosting con or enjoy other benefits like higher save bonuses, skills, or initiative from boosting other abilities. So there are certainly some good benefits to getting more ASI's than other classes. It could mean staying on your feet longer or shrugging off a debilitating spell.

I'm also lucky in that my group isn't real heavy in the power gamer department. I wouldn't begrudge any of them if they wanted GWM or Sharp Shooter. Though they typically go for feats that reflect what they think their character is rather than the "optimal" choice. As the DM, I can always find ways to challenge them. I just like them to have more of a say in how they build their characters.

As far as customizing monsters with things like feats, yeah I do that. If feats are in the game world, they are there for everyone. So the party may battle their way through a group of hobgoblins to discover that their general with that great axe has GWM too. That wizard at the top of his tower may be up there because he has spell sniper and the party is walking up to his front door. The way I approach it is that if there are people in the world who can teach these specialized techniques and abilities to the PCs as feats, they can do that for the bad guys too. I only do it for special monsters who are big bads in the story, though it may come up.

 

[Ovarwa]

Hi,

Feats may be optional, but I believe that the game is balanced around assuming they are present.

Without feats, rogues and especially fighters take it hard, and are probably never worth playing all the way through. Who needs 6 or 7 ASIs if all you can do with the last few is raise tertiary attributes?

Similarly, the loss of Warcaster totally guts the possibility of trying to both fight and cast spells with your hands full.

The loss of possibilities just keeps going.

Feats are not overpowered. Lose them to achieve old-school "martial characters are boring but solid" (except D&D5 doesn't really support that) and strong (rigid?) niche protection flavor.

I can't quite call the game broken without feats, but I feel comfortable calling it damaged.

Anyway,

Ken

 

[hawkeyefan]

It is funny that it is an OPTIONAL rule, but there are those who would call it "denying" them if I choose not to. No one would be denied anything. I like the idea of keeping it as simple as possible, and without them, there are fewer reasons for disagreements or different interpretations of rules. That said, increasing monster HPs is a good option I have not thought of. More options for PCs is certainly good, but how many come with a little bit of a price. Thanks for all the input and ideas!

This is one of those topics where you'll ask, and get any number of answers and all of them will be valid. It really boils down to what you want for your game, and what your players want, and a few other factors.

I think a big factor that gets overlooked is how often you play, and how many characters players tend to go through. The more frequently that players create and play new characters, the addition of feats may help to maintain variety. Feats can help characters seem different, beyond the background and subclass options that already serve to differentiate. But if your players tend to stick with characters long term, feats may not be as necessary in that regard. So you have to weigh that benefit against the "drawback" of feats. The drawback being that they tend to greatly increase PC power in a narrow way, as opposed to the more standard but broad increase of a Stat Increase.

I personally don't think that Feats are all that powerful when compared to an ASI....some more so than others (most notably the ones that increase damage output since combat is such a big part of the game), but an ASI is nothing to sneeze at, either. So I think the player perception and the style of play are big factors. If you have players who really like to focus on mechanical builds and damage output and things like that, they may very well want feats. If your players are not as concerned with their power, and the game is more story-oriented, they may be fine without feats.

I allow feats in my game, but a couple of our PCs don't have them and instead opted for ASIs only....and I don't think that there is a huge difference between the PCs with feats, and those without.

 

[Yunru]

I go so far as to include feats into point buy. 4 points gets you a feat.

Although that's also in part because I only allow Racial feats to be taken on character creation (that is to say, on character creation they can choose from all feats, but they can't use an ASI to take a racial feat).

 

[cbwjm]

I didn't even question it, I just allowed feats for my players. At 4th level I think everyone took the ASI anyway.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Feats are counter-productive. In my experience, going from 2E to Skills & Powers and through 3E to Pathfinder, adding character customization options tends to detract from the actual game itself by shifting a lot of focus to the character building mini-game. With basic 2E, players were encouraged to stick with their characters through thick and thin, because the only course of advancement or getting new abilities was through actually playing. As more options were added, I noticed a lot of players looking for any excuse to ditch their current character so they could bring in a new character with a new gimmick; they could get new abilities just by dying and trading out old abilities. With 5E, we have the option of just bypassing that whole mini-game and focusing entirely on the actual game.

As a player at the table, I also don't want to choose between a feat an ability score, because the feat is almost always better and that means there's no point in raising any of my other ability scores. If I'm a greatweapon fighter, then I know that taking the feat for that (after maxxing out Strength) is a better investment than increasing my Dexterity or Wisdom. Or if I wanted to increase my perception, then taking the feat for that is more effective than just increasing Wisdom directly, but then I miss out on the fun tangential side-benefits that would normally come with a Wisdom bonus. Feats make diversification through ability scores less appealing, which is the last thing we want in a world of Bounded Accuracy where having +1 to Charisma checks is something that might actually matter.

 

[Uchawi]

I guess we need another thread on to use or not to use spells. I favor as many choices in the game as possible, so I would not want to punish martial classes by removing them.

 

[hejtmane]

I allow all the feats and I allow them to stack ss and xbow and GWM and polearm; I have always ignored CR's when I build scenarios I find they do not really tell me anything I look more to HP, AC and what abilities they can access. For instance, I had the group spread out dropped two pit fiends the spellcaster fight was over before it started and they used 1 spell force cage bam irrelevant mob sit back out of range and shot cantrips all day. The fighters while had a hell of a time and took quite a bit of damage despite having a GWM/polearm. The funny thing everyone talks about the damage output but the high-level Spellcaster with no feats have marginalized a fight more than once on me. Which just makes me relook at what I send out them do not trust the CR; it is just not a very good gauge

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

Who needs 6 or 7 ASIs if all you can do with the last few is raise tertiary attributes?

Are you using array or point buy?

With the standard array, the most a fighter is going to get in their 3 main stats is 17, 16 and 14 (I think). Getting all three to 20 is going to require all their ASIs. If they want another stat raised, for proficiency reasons, then they will have to trade off.