These two descriptions can denote the exact same Background, except one doesn't use the word "feat". The second one merely incorporates the mechanics of one of the feats directly into the description. Do you consider these equally bad, or is the first once worse because it uses a word that is supposed to be optional? Would having the second description in the game be better in your eyes?
Neither of them is "bad."*
I personally want feats to be NOT optional. I want feats to be readily accessible.
What I
do not like is people trying to have their cake and eat it too. The second example you gave would avoid making feats non-optional; but it would do so by enforcing one (and only one) benefit from backgrounds, which is not the point of the changes. The point of the changes is to enable a meaningful, solid mechanical benefit.
That's my problem. It is extremely clear that the new background rules:
- Intentionally want to make modular benefits that can be, in part, constructed by the player
- Want these benefits to be solid, something more than just a ribbon like existing background benefits
- Are in fact actually a change compared to the existing background rules.
These efforts to pretend that the new rules are somehow
not using feats, or somehow using "lesser" feats that don't
count as feats, and therefore don't
actually count as a real change, are both confusing and frustrating. They seem to be openly denying either that feats are the thing being provided,
or that providing feats in this way is a clear and obvious
change compared to the way things used to be done.
Feats in "One D&D" are not optional. I, personally, think this is a step in the right direction. I think it's a pathetically small one, but it
is a step in the right direction. I am confused and frustrated by posters pretending that it either somehow isn't an
actual change because these aren't
real feats, or that it couldn't be a change because feats are
totally what backgrounds always provided all along. Both of these statements seem to be openly and intentionally denying something obviously true: either that "One D&D" first-level feats are, in fact,
feats in every sense of the word, and run the gamut from golden to garbage); or that backgrounds in 5e currently
already do provide (non-selectable) feats or the equivalent
in addition to the baseline 2 skills, when they emphatically do not.
*Though if you're asking of my personal preference between the two, it would be the first. I like feats, so effectively forcing me to
only choose the Skilled feat when I could have at least had the
option to choose others is a clearly inferior offering, because, as I have said many times in this thread,
I like feats.
