D&D 5E Krynn's Free Feats: setting-specific or the future of the game?

[JEB]

The Sundering adventures were edition-neutral though and could even be run with Pathfinder. They were also really good adventures in my opinion.

Edition-neutral in the sense that they had stats for Next, 4E, and 3.5, sure. They have some good reasons not to repeat that approach in books like Strixhaven or MOTM.

 

[Parmandur]

Edition-neutral in the sense that they had stats for Next, 4E, and 3.5, sure. They have some good reasons not to repeat that approach in books like Strixhaven or MOTM.

Yeah, they reiterated in the press stuff for the new Starter Set that it will be compatible with the revision.

 

[JEB]

Yeah, they reiterated in the press stuff for the new Starter Set that it will be compatible with the revision.

Which likely means anything in it, as far as rules for classes and races and the like, is more or less a lock.

 

[Parmandur]

Which likely means anything in it, as far as rules for classes and races and the like, is more or less a lock.

They may not be planning to change all that much: maybe the Pregens get a free Feat at 1st, and another at 4th, based on the Background.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It seems to me that the easiest way to control access to feats at first level is to give feats a minimum level prerequisite.

 

[Parmandur]

It seems to me that the easiest way to control access to feats at first level is to give feats a minimum level prerequisite.

Whixh is part of what they are testing here.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Whixh is part of what they are testing here.

With a "curated list". Which is an overcomplicated way of doing it.

 

[Parmandur]

With a "curated list". Which is an overcomplicated way of doing it.

Trial balloon. If people like the idea, they will probably rearrange the entire Feats list.

 

[Aldarc]

Well, Mearls had to fight his own dev team to simplify 5e as much as he did.

Mearls is out, so his old team is gonna do what they're gonna do.

Mearls was trying to woo the OSR community, including some of its most unsavory bunch, during the D&D Next design and playtest phases. These people gave their input, Mearls appeased them, and then they promptly ignored 5e and continued playing their preferred OSR games. But these aren't the people who are now playing 5e D&D in mass numbers. Most of the D&D "veterans" who play 5e are likely WotC-era players (e.g., 3e D&D, Pathfinder 1e, and 4e D&D) at this point.

I know that Crawford said on one of the streams in 2019 that he had a list of change he would make to the Core Rules based on answering Sage Advice questions for years: basically massage the Sage Advice Compendium into the Core Rules to make the design intent clear enough to address the issues that kept coming up over the years.

That seems sensible. Hopefully it would also include some sore spots that come up in feedback surveys as well.

I do think that the game would benefit from greater character customization at 1st level. For example, if you know that your character will be an arcane trickster, it can feel sucky (IME) to not jump into that character concept immediately, instead having to wait until 3rd level before you can even start casting cantrips. However, if a cantrip or two was tucked away in, for example, a Background (e.g., Arcane Apprentice), then that can go a LONG WAY to helping some characters get their feet wet into the concept. I do wish that Backgrounds had more "teeth" to them. I'm undecided if feats are the best way to go about it, but Pathfinder 2 does include feats as part of their Backgrounds.

 

[Aldarc]

With a "curated list". Which is an overcomplicated way of doing it.

Aside: I personally wish that WotC would do away with curated class-specific spell lists precisely for this reason. Having more "power source" or themed spell lists (e.g., Arcane, Primal, Divine, etc.) would be easier for adding future spells with far less wasted page layout space on classes that get the same spell.