D&D 5E Sage Advice is back!

[Maxperson]

Hmm… That’s a little concerning because I could see it making a-la-carte feats and/or ASIs suboptimal. In theory I would prefer the chain feats stick to standard feat power level and the prerequisites mostly be a flavor thing. Of course, in practice the “standard feat power level” is wildly inconsistent, so this will probably work out fine.

Nothing is going to be suboptimal. Feats that are the first of a feat chain will be just as good as those that aren't. If you are willing to invest time into the chain, the next feat or maybe two will be a bit better.

 

[Charlaquin]

Nothing is going to be suboptimal. Feats that are the first of a feat chain will be just as good as those that aren't. If you are willing to invest time into the chain, the next feat or maybe two will be a bit better.

If the next feat or two is a bit better, those feats will be optimal, and it will be suboptimal not to take them.

Of course, the fly in the ointment is the fact that it’s really difficult to measure the relative value of feats.

 

[Maxperson]

So, that doesn't really help. It means that a chain of two feats will be more powerful than a pair of non-chain feats, and the crap/trap option is to not be part of a chain.

I don't agree. A little bit better doesn't make the other options a trap or crap. They don't get worse. Sentinel, Great Weapon Master and War Caster aren't suddenly crap/traps just because feat chains exist.

 

[Maxperson]

If the next feat or two is a bit better, those feats will be optimal, and it will be suboptimal not to take them.

Not necessarily true as I just showed in my response to Umbran. Feats don't become traps or crap just because something is a little bit better. If it did, we'd just get rid of 70% of the classes, because a few of them are better than the others. There would only be 10 or so magic items, because others aren't as good.

 

[Jer]

Feats don't become traps or crap just because something is a little bit better. If it did, we'd just get rid of 70% of the classes, because a few of them are better than the others.

70% of the classes? Seems low - I'm pretty sure I've been told that the only optimal choice is to play a Wizard

 

[Charlaquin]

Not necessarily true as I just showed in my response to Umbran. Feats don't become traps or crap just because something is a little bit better. If it did, we'd just get rid of 70% of the classes, because a few of them are better than the others. There would only be 10 or so magic items, because others aren't as good.

I didn’t say traps or crap, I said suboptimal. There’s a difference.

 

[Maxperson]

I didn’t say traps or crap, I said suboptimal. There’s a difference.

I really doubt they will be better than the likes of Warcaster, Sentinel and Great Weapon Master.

 

[Jer]

I didn’t say traps or crap, I said suboptimal. There’s a difference.

Hot take coming that is going to probably mess up my alerts and this is just my opinion but - I don't think "suboptimal" matters as much in 5e as it did in 3e or 4e. In 3e a suboptimal build truly messed with the math of the system, and of course in 4e if you managed to make a suboptimal character it hurt. Because they were both games going for a specific tuning for balance.

5e just ... doesn't so much. The math is harder to break by accident because it's so flat and spread out over 20 levels. The subclasses aren't built to hold up to optimization and often their various abilities are more of a "this is a cool thing you can do" instead of "this is how you're going to be an effective member of the adventuring team". That difference in mindset means that if you're an optimizer the game is pretty easy to optimize but if you're not you can probably be in a party with a mix of optimizers and non-optimizers and not have the optimizers ripping their hair out every session because someone on the team isn't pulling their weight.

Optimization in 5e feels to me more like optimization in 2e was - optimizers have an advantage over non-optimizers, but the game doesn't break if you don't optimize. And unlike 2e it isn't as easy to just break the game entirely by optimizing by finding the right game-breaking kit that the DM has to ban because with the reduced publication schedule they just haven't generated that kind of accidental material into the game.

 

[Leatherhead]

I went over why I hate the idea of feat trees of any size that is greater than 1, and why background feats are bad for backwards compatibility back in the Dragonlance UA thread. That part of the conversation got drowned out by all the talks of Kender though.

 

[Minigiant]

I didn’t say traps or crap, I said suboptimal. There’s a difference.

Based on the feat Chains we currently see, heavily divergent mechanics between power source archetypes will likely cause many nonchain feats to be suboptimal.