D&D 5E New Feats Survey!

[Maxperson]

Yeah, that sounds about right: the numbers from D&D Beyond, filtered for active characters with access to all of the books, showed a 2:1 split against Feats (higher at lower Levels, then the minority who played high level liked Feats too), which may or may not be representative, but seems about right. A large minority likes Feats, and WotC wants to service everyone.

Absolutely. 35%-45% of close to 14 million people is a LOT of interest in feats, which translates into $$$.

 

[Parmandur]

I genuinely don't understand your rhetoric here.

"Likes" is disingenuous because it implies the others dislike them. And you're not a poster I associate with disingenuous arguments, so why do you keep going back to that? You must realize it's incorrect at this point. "Use", sure. "Likes" we dunno. I guess you can say that "at a minimum", a large minority "likes" Feats, but we don't know the feelings of people who don't use them.

The fact that lower-level character are less likely to have Feats shows (or at least incredibly strongly suggests that) "liking" Feats isn't the primary issue, rather competition with ASIs is.

Focusing solely on characters L12 and above would be more interesting in terms of statistics for seeing whether people "like" Feats. I don't have those figures available myself though. There are reasonable arguments that maybe people who play at high levels are unrepresentative freaks (lol) but that aside you could make a much more genuine analysis that way.

Qell, yes, unrepresented 8n germs of most people trailing off heir campaigns by Level 12 and moving on. So I would say that the minority who desires high level play has a strong Venn overlap with the minority who go for Feats at any Level.

I use "like" there as a shorthand for "desire", in the sense of players wanting to choose Feats or ASIs. I'm not saying everyone who never uses Feats hates them....but clearly they don't have a strong desire to pursue them. I would describe most of the people I have played with as apathetic on the topic.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah I just have played a lot and run a lot and never seen a point or two of difference actually matter all that much.

I will say tho, that if I am planning a very MAD build, I’ll look at ASIs. Even then, only 1, to catch up a third stat to my other two higher stats.

Otstrue thst the numbers aren't make or break, a low star character can still contribute. But they are consistent contributors.

 

[Parmandur]

Absolutely. 35%-45% of close to 14 million people is a LOT of interest in feats, which translates into $$$.

Exactly: and threading the desires of disparate player groups is why WotC has been so slow and cautious with Feats in 5E, while still pursuing them. Heck, they tested a bunch of Feats for Xanathar's that bombed hard.

 

[Maxperson]

Exactly: and threading the desires of disparate player groups is why WotC has been so slow and cautious with Feats in 5E, while still pursuing them. Heck, they tested a bunch of Feats for Xanathar's that bombed hard.

In 3e the feats that were the least used in my experience were the racial feats. Right off the bat you are limiting them to a very small percentage of the PCs. Elven Advantage is a great feat! Except for that pesky requirement that you be an elf or half-elf. The Xanathar's feats were set up for failure.

 

[Parmandur]

In 3e the feats that were the least used in my experience were the racial feats. Right off the bat you are limiting them to a very small percentage of the PCs. Elven Advantage is a great feat! Except for that pesky requirement that you be an elf or half-elf. The Xanathar's feats were set up for failure.

No, those were the ones that succeeded: they tested a whole raft of generic Feats that went from UA straight into oblivion. Only the racial Feats passed UA muster.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I use "like" there as a shorthand for "desire", in the sense of players wanting to choose Feats or ASIs. I'm not saying everyone who never uses Feats hates them....but clearly they don't have a strong desire to pursue them. I would describe most of the people I have played with as apathetic on the topic.

Yeah and that's a misunderstanding, I guess that's the root of the problem.

I like Feats. I have not had a 5E I did not actively want to get at least one Feat for, in the long run. Yet how many PCs do I have with Feats? 2. Out of about 9 PCs I've played in 5E. Why? Because those are the only two which got high enough level to make it "worth it". All the rest of my PCs are scattered from L2 to L10 (I'm disregarding PCs who are still L1, some of whom got played, some of whom didn't).

So from the statistics perspective, you'd say I was "apathetic" about Feats.

And that's completely wrong. Just straight bzzzzzt incorrect. The issue is that ASIs are too good to miss out on at lower levels. Especially as only one campaign had rolled stats out of those (no coincidence, one of the ones with Feats!).

If I'd played a bunch of higher-level campaigns, things would look very different. My Druid who right now, L8 I believe, would have Warcaster, for example. If we got a Feat at level 1, virtually every PC I have would have some kind of magic/cantrip-related Feat.

At a dead minimum any reasonable analysis should disregard all PCs under L4, except Vhumans and Theros/Ravenloft/Strixhaven PCs, because no PC under that level even CAN have a Feat (I mean, sure someone will note there are other exceptions, but off the top of my head). Yet they're included AFAIK. For simplicity's sake maybe just blanket disregard all PCs under L4. It's like asking how many 1-15 year olds drive cars on public roads by themselves or something lol. If the number if above zero, then questions need to be asked lol.

 

[Maxperson]

No, those were the ones that succeeded: they tested a whole raft of generic Feats that went from UA straight into oblivion. Only the racial Feats passed UA muster.

We assume. It seems like that requirement has been relaxed. In any case, the UA muster is inherently flawed when it comes to feats. If they know that 35%-45% really like feats and will pay $$$ to get them and a majority 55%-65% don't use them, requiring 70% approval in order to put out a feat is working against yourself.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

We assume. It seems like that requirement has been relaxed. In any case, the UA muster is inherently flawed when it comes to feats. If they know that 35%-45% really like feats and will pay $$$ to get them and a majority 55%-65% don't use them, requiring 70% approval in order to put out a feat is working against yourself.

It seems like they stopped using the 70% threshold sometime around when Mearls secretly stopped being in charge of D&D, which was quite a while ago now. Either way they usually ask stuff like "Do you use Feats?" when they have UAs with Feats in them, and I strongly suspect they exclude the data from people who don't use Feats for judging whether they're good (they may have other uses for that data though).

 

[jmartkdr2]

No, they aren’t, though. Some people make the leap to assume they are, but there is no actual implication that you can’t make a persuasion or performance check to make a rousing speech for your allies, and the feat simply provides a template for what sort of benefit that might have.

Without the feat, what does an inspiring speech do? What bonuses does it grant on a successful check?