D&D 5E How do you feel about games without Feats and Multiclassing?

[Shiroiken]

I'll run or play either, but I prefer with Feats. I'm pretty ambivalent about multi-classing, with no real desire to use it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yep, an attribute of 20 isn’t what it used to be.

Whatdayamean? That a supposed peak human with a 20 STR is only 5 ability modifier points better than a supposed average 10 STR person with +0 (resulting in merely a +25% bonus in capability)... isn't truly representative of the difference in human build and action? Get outta town!

And to think... that supposed peak human with the 20 STR can attempt basic DC 10 STR checks and fail 20% of the time by rolling 1s, 2,s 3,s and 4s. Whereas even humans with a STR of 3 (-4) can still sometimes complete a DC 15 task by rolling a Nat 20.

It's almost like game mechanics don't actually represent anything real or concrete in the fiction and are there merely to give us some numbers to play the board game with! Whodathunkit!

 

[DEFCON 1]

Up until the DM calls for DEX checks every time you describe dodging and rolling.

Yeah, and when I roll a 15, 19, and 18 on my three DEX checks I still succeed on the rolls. Thereby rendering my "dodging and tumbling" DEX 10 character still valid.

Whereas the player who wanted to roleplay a super-strengthed behemoth of a character with a +5 STR mod still blows one out of every five DC 10 STR checks.

Oh yeah, game mechanics do great to model fiction.

 

[ph0rk]

Failure rates for even simple active checks really are quite high in 5e, and barring some fantastical magical items a strong character is just as meh at making those checks at 20 as they are at level 1 or 4.


It would be nice if the passive check concept passed to that sort of stuff - opening a door out of combat? let's make that a passive 12-14. Lifting a gate to escape while a room fills with water, snakes, or both? Make that an active check.

 

[Stattick]

Failure rates for even simple active checks really are quite high in 5e, and barring some fantastical magical items a strong character is just as meh at making those checks at 20 as they are at level 1 or 4.

Yeah. When we were new to 5e, our party tried to use an improvised zipline to infiltrate an enemy fortification. The GM, for whatever reason, assigned us a DC 15 to successfully slide down the rope to the fort. Maybe there was some miscommunication there, and the the zipline was a lot more steep than what we players were imagining or something? We were around 7th level, I believe. Being a group that isn't strongly into optimization, we didn't have any spells or abilities to buff each other to make the roll easier. And out of the 9 or so players we had, all but one of us fell off the zipline.

 

[ph0rk]

15 used to be a pretty baseline DC in 3e, so maybe it was that. It's rather high in 5e, though, especially if it is an ability check without proficiency, as many many strength checks are.

 

[FrogReaver]

Maxing out your main stats seems so ubiquitous that the "choice" between ASIs and feats feels like one of the failed experiments of 5e, to me. I like the concept of more robust feats that don't require clunky trees and arbitrary prereqs, so 5e feats are an improvement over 3x and 4e for me in that regard. I'm just ready to go back to just letting people get their ASIs as a standard part of progression AND get feats that flesh out perks that lay outside of class features.

I'm actually not a fan of PC increasing ASI's as they currently do. There's something conceptually odd about it. IMO, it would work better and be more balanced and thematic to give PC's a couple of levels of +1 to all ASI's instead of what we have now.

As for feats, 5e botched those already - but conceptually a few levels of choosing a strong generic bonus that anyone could take is cool. Feats just need to be more generic in terms of what they enhance instead of so specific as they currently are (examples: GWM, CE, SS, warcaster, Heavy Armor Master, etc)

 

[Weiley31]

Considering one my issues with 3.0/3.5 was the master degree required for a geometry course of a character build, I'm good with no Multi-Classing in 5E.

Feats are different story: they can stay.

 

[jasper]

How do you feel about games without Feats and Multiclassing?

...

As to the question itself, I wouldn't consider playing in a 5e game without Feats and Multiclassing. That's a hard pass for me.

Jasper reaches up, blocks and intercepts the ball. Runs it back for three points HOMERUN. As a DM I can see how easier it will be to create and run for single class pcs. As a player I generally run single class with no feats. But a lot of my gamers run multi and feats.

 

[ECMO3]

Maxing out your main stats seems so ubiquitous that the "choice" between ASIs and feats feels like one of the failed experiments of 5e, to me. I like the concept of more robust feats that don't require clunky trees and arbitrary prereqs, so 5e feats are an improvement over 3x and 4e for me in that regard. I'm just ready to go back to just letting people get their ASIs as a standard part of progression AND get feats that flesh out perks that lay outside of class features.

I think different tables play differently. I rarely take the ASI. I do take half feats a lot though. Most of my table is the same. I think in the 20+ PCs I have played I have taken an ASI 3 times. I played most of them to around level 10-12.

Agree completely on the prerequisites and trees.