D&D General Path of Feats: a Superior Design than Subclasses

[Corinnguard]

I just fail to see what prestige classes bring that can't be done with feats or subclasses except more complexity and encouraging multiclass dips.

Or they are done as a chained set of feats that can be picked up at certain levels. This way they don't hamper your character's advancement in the class or classes they originally started with.

 

[Corinnguard]

Like Dragon Disciples. Its a warrior class that uses a bite and claw matrix which requires spellcastion to enter. So the prerequisites wumould be too crazy to power game and the Bite Claw Claw and Dragon Breath would not stack great with the Fighter, Barbarian, or whatever you enter it with.

Plus, what if you wanted to be a Dragonborn Dragon Disciple? As a Dragonborn, you already have a breath weapon and resistance to one damage type. There would be a stacking issue.

 

[Maxperson]

Let's not get bogged down in semantics, shall we? These are feats and you choose among many at different points on a path,
so some interactions will work better than others, as in they'll give you more power, more screen time, more ressources, and they're so many and so many potential interactions that it gets increasingly difficult to correctly balanced them all. That's the thing I've almost no interest in. I love the 5e architecture where there's not really a good option, at least theoretically (errors are still possible, obviously), only roughly equivalent ones. The more you add feats and decision points around feats, the more you'll drift from this theoretical equilibrium, IMO, and the more you have a game where system mastery is needed rather than a game every kid around could play as well.

Or you can just enjoy the feat paths thematically. Maybe you progress a little bit down the Path of the Death Knight and then seek redemption and go no further. Perhaps you go all the way thematically and don't worry about mastering the system. 5e is so incredibly easy to survive and do well in, no mastery is needed at all. Even with these feat paths.

 

[Maxperson]

So 1 choice among 48 possibilities from one side.
And 1 choice among 43 × 42 × 41 = 74046 possibilities from the other.

Sure. Quite similar. Same ballpark, really.
And that's just level 1-12.

I can tell you as an absolute fact that I have used feats for all my 5e characters and if I add all my characters together, I'm nowhere near considering 74k possibilities. You are massively overstating the issue.

 

[BenjaminPey]

You mean maths are wrong, as shown in your personal experience?

 

[Maxperson]

Here’s what feat chains do to the character building process.

You no longer can just read the feat list and think how X fits your character, you read the list and think well this feat would be cool for my character but I must meet the prereq feat…. *Looks at prereq, well that isn’t nearly as good or cool and I have to replace one of my other feats I wanted to take this so I can take the thing I really wanted. Is that worth it?

I’m not a fan of that process, especially the ideal implementation of taking something worse now for something better later.

Then don't worry about them and just take individual feats. These paths are thematic. If you don't want the theme, you don't ever have to look at any of the feats or worry about the pre-requisites. If you do want the theme, you never have to look at or worry about any other feats.

I personally find thematic feat chains like this to be far superior for many of my characters, despite other feats being "stronger." Mechanical strength is overrated in 5e. It's too easy of a system for system mastery or the most powerful feats to be an issue unless you choose for it to be an issue.

 

[Remathilis]

Plus, what if you wanted to be a Dragonborn Dragon Disciple? As a Dragonborn, you already have a breath weapon and resistance to one damage type. There would be a stacking issue.

That's already a problem with a lot of subclasses and species choice. For example, it's a bad choice for a dragonborn draconic sorcerer to pick the same element/dragon type because the resistances overlap. Or for a Triton to be a sea druid because they get water breathing and a swim speed twice.

 

[Maxperson]

You mean maths are wrong, as shown in your personal experience?

I didn't say your math was wrong. I said nobody uses it. Nobody out there goes through every single combination of feats before making a decision. For the most part they just quickly scan through and look at the 3 or 4 feats that pop out at them for their character. 74k possibilities may be the math on feat combinations, but it's not the reality of feat selection.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes, and the premise of this thread is about Feat Chains being a good design thing, encouraging them as a regular design element. In other words, a proliferation of them.

And undesirable to who? Well, considering that the three points I've listed are generally considered bad design, to just about anyone who understands game design and doesn't think feat taxes are a good idea.

The rest of your points are only focusing on what is in the UA, not focusing on the thread's "WotC leans into it more in the future" and all of the positive push for them, so it doesn't address the context my comments are made in.

Nothing about these paths are a feat tax. You aren't required to take them to be good at survival in 5e.

 

[Maxperson]

Ironically, the arcane restoration feat for the lich is useless for a Warlock, despite the fact you'd think the undead warlock would be the perfect candidate for this. But pact magic yet again fails to work with any other magic rules in the game and requires designers to develop complex workarounds to avoid breaking it.

I'd rather have homogenization than every time a new ability that affects spellcasting is released trying to figure out how pact magic breaks it.

You can progress to the end without choosing Arcane Restoration. Just choose a different good feat and enjoy being the warlock lich that you were always meant to be!