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

[Parmandur]

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.


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.

I mean, the majority of people playing are new: veterans of any previous edition are a minority by now. Heck, a significant percentage of players weren't even born yet when 4E came out.

I think bringing all Subclass choices to Level 1 would be good, but I think it's too early to say if they are looking at such sizeable change. I think it could be done while essentially maintaining backwards compatibility (still allowing old Adventures to work, etc.).

 

[JEB]

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'd be very interested to see Wizards' stats on that, since they ask in pretty much every survey what edition folks started with, and they surely have solid numbers by now.

Personally, though, I suspect there are more 2E and earlier vets playing 5E than you think. For example, the polling I did here and on Reddit suggested that most users started with one of the 1980s Basic sets, and even on r/dndnext those were competitive with the 5E starter set.

 

[Li Shenron]

from what I have seen in 5E while playing:

1. I haven't seen a 4th level character without feats, not a single one.

2. Bonus feats for everyone at 1st level didn't break anything.


Now, there should be some limits on what feats should NOT be granted at levels 1&4. And some are already at UA list.

These bonus feats should be a tool to make your character more interesting, more versatile and not strictly more powerful in combat.

So what feats would I have for these two bonus slots:

1. All racial feats.

2. All UA skill feats: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UA-SkillFeats.pdf
minght need some cleaning up it this file

3. And a list from PHB/XGE/TCE/Eberron:

Aberrant dragonmark
Actor
Athlete
Chef
Dungeon delver
Healer
Inspiring leader
Keen mind
Linguist
Magic initiate
Observer
Ritual caster
Skill expert
Skilled
Tavern brawler
Telekinetic
Telepathic

Every background can have few of these as an option in addition to racial/skill feats.

Now this list could be expanded or it could be reduced, but... what feats should NEVER be given out as a bonus are:

Lucky
Tough
Resilient
Alert
Mobile
Crossbow expert
Sharpshooter
Heavy armor mastery
Great weapon mastery
Polearm mastery
Fey touched
Shadowtouched

now, none of these feats are a problem in themselves, but it must be a cost to take them.

That's a sensible approach.

Limit the bonus feats to the possibly least frequently used, and out-of-combat.

I still don't think they should be free but with those limitations I could accept them to optionally replace regular background features.

But if I read it right, Alert is given out for free. Why not jump the shark and just remove the surprise rules for PCs?

This is all a marketing ploy, telling players their PC will be more powerful for free is to push everyone on board to buy the same game again, like it happened with 3.5

 

[Aldarc]

I mean, the majority of people playing are new: veterans of any previous edition are a minority by now. Heck, a significant percentage of players weren't even born yet when 4E came out.

Most definitely. To be clear, I was speaking about only those who are vets. And if the new players have leaned more into the build-craft and mechanical customization aspects of the WotC-era D&D, then it's little surprise that this continues to be the direction for the game going forward.

 

[James Gasik]

The Sundering adventures were edition-neutral though and could even be run with Pathfinder. They were also really good adventures in my opinion. Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle was specifically for the final playtest packet, but that was pretty limited availability. I have it, but I never actually read the adventure…

Well other than Murder at Baldur's Gate...I ran into a really big issue with that adventure.

 

[Horwath]

That's a sensible approach.

Limit the bonus feats to the possibly least frequently used, and out-of-combat.

I still don't think they should be free but with those limitations I could accept them to optionally replace regular background features.

But if I read it right, Alert is given out for free. Why not jump the shark and just remove the surprise rules for PCs?

This is all a marketing ploy, telling players their PC will be more powerful for free is to push everyone on board to buy the same game again, like it happened with 3.5

yeah, Alert might not be most popular feat, but it is strong.

It's 3.5e uncanny dodge+improved initiative.
That MUST compete with +2 in primary ability or some other potent combat feat.

as for philosophy of giving out 2 feats at levels 1&2, I see that as seeing the mistake of "optional" feats, not having feats at level 1, having too few feat "slot" to spend and having ASI's and feats on same resource pool. Also having them fixed to class levels and not total character levels, like in 3.5e/PF1. So multiclassing can delay a feat for several levels.

PF1, had 5 +1 ASI's and 10 feats over 20 levels. In addition to class features. But 10 feats that are not fixed gave a lot of personal touch to character outside class features.

if we value 5E feat as some average of 2,5 feats from 3.5e/pf1 we get 4 feats for those 10 and 2,5 from +5 ASI's. that is 6,5 feats vs now 5(for most classes) plus 2 optional now for total of 7 feats.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

from what I have seen in 5E while playing:

1. I haven't seen a 4th level character without feats, not a single

So do you guys just never multiclass?

in my current tuesday night game between Multi class and people that took the stat increase nobody had any feats at 6th level (although come 7th 2 if them did)

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I mean, the majority of people playing are new: veterans of any previous edition are a minority by now. Heck, a significant percentage of players weren't even born yet when 4E came out.

4e came out in 2008... someone born in 2008 would be 16 in 2024, somehow I doubt even 25% of players are younger then 16

 

[Vaalingrade]

This is all a marketing ploy, telling players their PC will be more powerful for free is to push everyone on board to buy the same game again, like it happened with 3.5

3.5 broke most of my characters instead of making them more powerful.

My alchemist rogue literally couldn't stir things anymore because he didn't have spellcasting, to say nothing of my stealth bomber fly/haste sorcerer and anyone that used the stat buff spells for anything but combat.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

4e came out in 2008... someone born in 2008 would be 16 in 2024, somehow I doubt even 25% of players are younger then 16

And that's where you'd basically be wrong, according to Wizards:

WotC - Comparing EN World's Demographics to the D&D Community's

WotC released some figures this week. I thought it would be fun to compare them to the demographics of our own little community here on EN World for the same period (2019). WotC uses a metric it refers to as 40,000,000 'D&D Fans', but that's not defined. For the purposes of this, I assume a fan...

www.enworld.org

I mean, technically, it's "17 or younger" so you can get away with "technically correct, the best kind of correct", but yeah, 25% of players are 17 or younger.