D&D 5E Feats: Do they stifle creativity and reduce options?

[Hussar]

Inspiring Leader is a mechanical space feat not a conceptual space feat. Whether or not you have inspiring leader feat you can give inspiring speeches and persuade others to fight even against the odds. Conceptually the feat adds nothing. It only adds to the game mechanically.

There can always be bad DM's. Saying there can be a bad DM does not necessitate a rule to fix that. It necessitates a better DM.

It has nothing to do with a "bad DM". You will see perfectly good DM's who just don't completely think through the ramifications of the math. It's not a bad thing. It just happens. And happens often.

Now, as far as making "inspiring speeches" adding nothing? I strongly disagree. The player can say whatever he or she wants, fine and dandy, but, without any mechanics to back it up, there is zero incentive to do so. Why bother? Because it gives you warm and fuzzies? Ok, fair enough, but, again, without any mechanics to back it up, that "inspiring leader" archetype, which is very common, isn't going to happen.

Hiya!

O_O ...that's ...that's a lot of posts!

/snip

With 5e..this isn't really that easy. If you want to do a lot of damage with a two handed sword, you pretty much have to take GWM weather you like it or not simply because there isn't much else you can do to increase your damage capability with a two-handed sword. The way that Feats are in 5e, my group and I found that it limited our "reasonable choices" for making a big damage dealing fighter with a 2-h sword (as an example). Take GWM or you will never be able to deal as much damage as someone with the same stats that does have GWM. The -5 is big at low levels...once you are approaching 10th (we noticed it at 6th/7th level), that -5 becomes a LOT less of a hurdle.
/snip

When the player bucked the system, they were effectively punished (mechanically) for not "taking the optimal Feat" for their build.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Huh. Or, you could play a paladin and use smites. Or go the magic route. Or Ranger with Colossus Slayer.

There are a number of routes to making "big damage dealing Two hander fighter" that don't require Great Weapon Fighting. This is just really not the experience our group is having. Four campaigns so far, and exactly one character taking GWF. It's just not even really considered that big of an option in our group.

 

[StormbringerAUS]

I allow feats in my game and as a player often use them for characters to help the build the concepts are am looking for. The 'social' feats (and skills) can be tricky as any character can attempt these and I have found that some role playing was being lost when its just I will role the dice to using 'intimidate the shop keeper'. In these types of situations I would ask the player how they are intimating if its just the - I am because my character has +5 on intimidation the role would be at disadvantage and the counter check at advantage, come up with some good role playing then its at advantage or a straight check depending on how good.

I would do the same with an inspiring speech or whatever other feat/skill seems appropriate at the time.

I find that this brings about more role playing rather than less and leads to more creative uses and not stifling creativity at all. If it is older players and DMs that are thinking this it sounds like they are stuck in their ways and like how it use to work rather than embracing what is their and thinking of how to make this work better and be fun.

 

[Gardens & Goblins]

Sure.

I mean, if only by way of, - if someone else hasn't come up with a solution/rule/mechanic already then you're going to have to come up with it yourself.

In a world without, say, Alertness as written in the PHB, if I wanted an ability that represented something the same or similar I'd have to create it myself.

..

Now in game? Looking back over the years, I'd have to agree that the less quantified the elements within the game system the more creative we as players have had to be in order to play the way we wanted. So to this end, yes, Feats can hinder creativity by offering a ready-made solution to a challenge we'd otherwise have to solve.

On the flip side, while we're not creating solutions to those challenges we're free to exercise our creative muscles in many other ways. Which ways? Well, answering that question is another chance to be creative!

 

[WonderfulSuggestion]

I had never realized this was a thing. But I can totally see why with your explanation and examples. I had however noticed that 5e really cut back on feats and the importance of them.

I think they were always intended to supply a cool effect that was otherwise not easily managed within the rule set. I think there will always be people trying to bend the rules, though.

My spouse told me that you could take a feat at first level and dual wield crossbows without having to reload them. I immediately said no you could not. I read the crossbow feat and proved I was right. Did his character have one? Where in his background did he train with a master of crossbows in order to get this good? Was he willing to give up proficiency in another weapon to make up for the time spent focusing on crossbows?

What really matters is having fun telling stories and playing make believe together. If you have a good DM they'll use their discretion to work it all out for the enjoyment of your group.

 

[cmad1977]

Sometimes yes.
Sometimes no.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Specific feats and character abilities are poorly designed and written such that they take some perfectly ordinary thing and make it sound like it's something that cannot be attempted without that particular mechanical thing being a part of your character. They are bad, and generally can be rewritten to focus on some aspect of the task that they DO allow you to do that is unique.

These include:
actor (remove the section containing rules about mimicry and instead let it give advantage when attempting mimicry)
keen mind (simply add "without a roll" or "perfectly" or "automatically" to the sections on wayfinding and memory)
subtle spell metamagic (spell out the differences between concealing a spell without the feat and with it, spell out the benefit of casting with your hands full or bound, or while physically unable to speak)

The alternative would be if the designers had done a reasonable effort on the skill rules: if there were examples of using skills and stats to resolve the above situations, we would have a baseline showing us what is possible.

 

[FrogReaver]

I guess I would like to ask: What feats enable a character concept that doesn't exist if feats are disallowed?

1. Alert - No new conceptual design space. Player can already be play an alert character by having a good perception and a good initiative.
2. Athlete - No new conceptual design space. Player can already play an athletic character by having a high strength and high athletics.
3. Actor - No new conceptual design space. Player can become a good actor and attempt to mimic peoples speech by having a good performance skill and a high charisma.
4. Charger - This feat doesn't even try to add anything to character concept. It adds pure mechanical crunch pure and simple.
5. Crossbow Expert - No new conceptual design space. Can still play any character with a crossbow as his weapon (the feat makes it mechanically possible to do so and not suck)
6. Defensive Duelist - No new conceptual design space. Pure mechanical design space.
7. Dual Wielder - No new conceptual design space. A character can always hold two longswords and attack with whichever one he prefers (perhaps a magical one that does fire damage and a magical one that does ice damage). The feat does make it mechanically not suck to wield two such weapons compared to a Greatsword or a Longsword and shield.
8. Dungeon Delver - No new conceptual design space. The game without this feat already gives plenty of ways to be a good trap finder and handler which is all the feat attempts to enhance.
9. Durable - No new conceptual design space. Same concept is enabled by taking a high constitution.
10. Elemental Adept - This feat only adds things to the mechanical design space. Conceptually this feat can't add anything as it only allows a PC to bypass a mechanical rule.
11. Grappler - No new conceptual design space. You can make a good grappler with any character that has a few hand and a good athletics score.
12. Great Weapon Master - No new conceptual design space. In a featless game you can still make a character that uses two handed weapons. He can still use them well. In fact this feat actively takes away design space by being so good that anyone who now wants to be really good at using two handed weapons now needs this feat.

...

Anyways the point is that a featless game enables all the same character concepts. as a game with feats. Feats do allow existing rules to be bypassed that caused some character concepts to be sucky without actually having to fix the sucky rule in the first place. Example: A crossbow user and part of crossbow expertise that allows you to load more than once a turn. Feats also allow an extra layer and mechanism for a character to become decent at some task he may have struggled to be good at due to other tasks he has committed to being good at. This sounds like it should be a good thing, but it is not. The more resources you have to spend at something to be an expert at it the fewer things you have the opportunity to become an expert at or nearly an expert at. Further it creates the dilemma where the DM basically allows the expert to nearly auto succeed most every check or he ups the difficulty of the checks and anyone that isn't near expert level struggles to ever make the check. If an expert at something auto succeeds then you don't need to invest in whatever the expert is doing. If the expert is the only one with a legitimate chance of success then likewise you also don't need to invest in doing it.

 

[Ancalagon]

Personally, I think feats are absolutely necessary in 5e, because 5e has so few decision points in character building and improvement. Particularly for non-casters, as at least casters can distinguish themselves with spell choice. But for nonmagical characters, feats are needed, not to give the characters things to do, but to give players ways to make those characters their own, instead of feeling like the same character the other guy is playing with a different coat of paint. I’m not opposed to the idea of a featless system, but that system would need more character customization options than 5e does for it to work for me.

You choose race, sub race, class, sub class, background, equipment, fighting style (both the game terms for some classes, and also more generic "shield vs 2 hander vs range vs...), maneuvers (in some cases), skills, where to put your stats, where to put your ASI, alignment, personality, religious beliefs, multi-class or not, others I'm forgetting...

It's already a lot of choices. It only seems like few because of the contrast of very complex systems like pathfinder.

 

[Charlaquin]

You choose race, sub race, class, sub class, background, equipment, fighting style (both the game terms for some classes, and also more generic "shield vs 2 hander vs range vs...), maneuvers (in some cases), skills, where to put your stats, where to put your ASI, alignment, personality, religious beliefs, multi-class or not, others I'm forgetting...

Of the 15 things you listed, only 4 of them are made after character creation. 5 if you want to count replacing your starting equipment, but that’s not really a choice. You just use the best equipment available that you can afford. Even at character creation, it’s hardly a choice, as it’s almost entirely determined by Class and Background. Alignment, personality, and religious beliefs have absolutely no mechanical impact on gameplay. Skill selection only affect success probabilities and do nothing to impact how a character actually plays. Ability scores primarily affect success probabilities but do have some other game play impact. However, for the most part it’s not really a choice; there are mathematically superior and inferior options, which means most “options” are just traps. Background is just a package of Proficiencies, which again, only affect success probabilities.

So what we’re left with in terms of choices that actually affect how your character functions is race and subrace (really one decision made at character creation that ultimately has fairly minor gameplay impact), Class (made once at character creation), Subclass (made once either at character creation or at 2nd or 3rd level), fighting style, some Class-based choices like Maneuvers, and multi-classing. Essentially, the vast majority of character differentiation comes at first level and comes from Class. Once you’ve decided to be a dwarf fighter, and maybe chosen what weapons you want to use, most of your choices have either already been made, or are really just math problems pretending to be choices. If you want to make your character actually functionally different than any other dwarf fighter, you have a very small number of opportunities to make choices that will allow you to do so.

 

[Hussar]

I guess I would like to ask: What feats enable a character concept that doesn't exist if feats are disallowed?

1. Alert - No new conceptual design space. Player can already be play an alert character by having a good perception and a good initiative.

Other than the whole "cannot be surprised bit". But, sure, you can get most of the way there without feats. Not all the way, but, most of the way.

2. Athlete - No new conceptual design space. Player can already play an athletic character by having a high strength and high athletics.

Again, most of the way. The feat simply allows the player to plant a flag and categorically state, "I am good at this".

3. Actor - No new conceptual design space. Player can become a good actor and attempt to mimic peoples speech by having a good performance skill and a high charisma.

That's a bit trickier. Can Perform allow you to mimic speech? That's a DM's call. I'd say that something is clearly being added here.

4. Charger - This feat doesn't even try to add anything to character concept. It adds pure mechanical crunch pure and simple.

Without this feat, a mounted character is dependent on the DM not ganking the mount at the earliest opportunity. Since mounts tend to be pretty fragile, I'd argue that this does actually add quite a bit. My expert horseman with Charger works better with the feat than without.

5. Crossbow Expert - No new conceptual design space. Can still play any character with a crossbow as his weapon (the feat makes it mechanically possible to do so and not suck)

By making crossbows more effective, it means that more crossbow characters will be played. Considering in all the years I've played D&D, I've only seen PC's take crossbows if they absolutely cannot use a bow, that's broadening what's being played AFAIC.

6. Defensive Duelist - No new conceptual design space. Pure mechanical design space.
7. Dual Wielder - No new conceptual design space. A character can always hold two longswords and attack with whichever one he prefers (perhaps a magical one that does fire damage and a magical one that does ice damage). The feat does make it mechanically not suck to wield two such weapons compared to a Greatsword or a Longsword and shield.

Again, like Crossbow Expert, these feats make it easier to take different concepts without nerfing your character.

8. Dungeon Delver - No new conceptual design space. The game without this feat already gives plenty of ways to be a good trap finder and handler which is all the feat attempts to enhance.

Yup, can't really disagree on this one.

9. Durable - No new conceptual design space. Same concept is enabled by taking a high constitution.

Actually this one I strongly disagree with. My fighter in our Dragonlance campaign had this and the fact that he had about 30% more HP than everyone else meant that my dragonslaying character could actually stand up to dragons without getting smoked in a single round by dragon breath. This was a major change in how my character played. Yup, the character already had a 16 Con, but, Durable just put me head and shoulders above the other fighters in the group (there were three including mine) when it came to tanking. IME, this feat pretty much defined my character to a large degree.

10. Elemental Adept - This feat only adds things to the mechanical design space. Conceptually this feat can't add anything as it only allows a PC to bypass a mechanical rule.
11. Grappler - No new conceptual design space. You can make a good grappler with any character that has a few hand and a good athletics score.

Can't really argue on these ones. Never really seen them in play. Althought, that being said, it does mean that if you want to make a really good fire wizard, you can.

SIgh out of time.