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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6918851" data-attributes="member: 12731">part of my series on how D&D 5.1 Edition might look like.this is not meant as a homebrew or houserule threadI suddently realized I have had a number of unconnected discusions related to feats, that it was high time I put together a comprehensive review! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Lets look at the entire rost of 5E feats, and to grade them on three important scales.Are they well designed? (As in, from a mechanical and psycological point of view, as well as not stealing play time or contributing to analysis paralysis)Are they fun to use? (As in, do the feat actually enhance gameplay)Are they truly useful? (As in powerful, but not too powerful)I'm the first to acknowledge the three pillars of 5E (combat, social, exploration), but this review is done assuming combat is the predominant mechanic and pastime in the game. That is, the number of rules and mechanisms devoted to combat greatly outnumber that of rules for social and exploration. This review reflects that. (If your game focuses on the other two pillars, maybe this review just isn't for you - please simply do not respond if that's the case. Thanks)The scale is (hopefully) the standard for these things: gold, blue, black, purple, and red, in descending order (gold is the best, red is the worst). Yes, I'm proudly using the standard black on white color scheme.As you might expect after this many years since the PHB was released, this isn't an armchair read-through review; this is a review well into dungeonmastering my second 5E campaign (currently at level 14).With no further ado, let's get right to it! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The first part is the basic mechanism of aquiring feats itself.Design: The basic idea is excellent: giving players the opportunity to flesh out what their characters can do in ways that transcend the class system. And the decision to make you give up an ASI does a lot to widen the design space for what a feat can actually do, as well as making the whole subsystem truly optional. The biggest flaw is that the balance of it all pretty much requires you to use point-buy ability scores, which is not the default. I guess I really should have lowered the grade because it is possible (probably even) you might have a bad experience if you use feats in a campaign where somebody rolls three straight 18's... but I can't bring myself to it.Fun: To me, a fun decision is also a hard decision. I'm downgrading this from gold to blue because I've seen several players say it isn't fun to have to choose between a feat and an ASI; and for the number of feats that might be fun but provide far too little power, they're actually right.Power: Of course the overall feat system needs to be powerful, otherwise you would never use it. This rating is based on the fact that apart from a few feats that turned out to be too easy to game, the overall impression is that there is plenty of choices, even if mostly for martial characters and even if not all the interesting choices actually work out so well in practical gaming. But the thing that lifts this from black to blue is that without feats, the mechanical means of expressing your character would be much lessened. Crunch is good, and actually useful crunch is better!</blockquote>

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