Ridley's Cohort said:
The open question is whether the particulars of 3e were cobbled from off the shelf pieces that could be found lying around the RPG industry, or whether there is a direct conscious mimicking of CRPGs as you suggest (if I understood you correctly).
I suspect it is a little of each.
They probably used many sources for their ideas. For example, although Fallout was not class based, it was level based and had Perks every 3 levels. It came out in 1997, the year 3E development started. With feats being every 3 levels, it's possible that Fallout was an influence.
I doubt they strongly used GURPS or HEROES for their models since both of those are point purchase systems, both have both abilities and flaws of various sorts, and the ideas of flaws (such as being colorblind) did not enter the 3E picture.
Regardless, I think feats are a very good idea (for the purpose of adding versatility). However, I think the 3E implementation of feats was poorly done. Course, it was their first time.
For example, Fighters get all armor and all standard weapons.
That makes sense.
Spell casters should get all "standard" item creation feats (maybe more for Sorcerers/Wizards/Bards, less for Druids/Clerics).
Then, characters who multiclass from a non-spell casting class to a spell casting class might be able to pick up one or two item creation feats when they do that, but not all of them without spending feats at later levels.
Characters who multiclass from a spell casting class to a Fighter type class might be able to pick up an armor proficiency and/or a weapon proficiency when they do that, but again, not all of them.
This is what Star Wars does for multiclassing and I suspect that 4E might do something similar.
But, the problem with the feat system is that SO many feats are created that PCs have a hard time doing fairly standard RPG type things, otherwise they restrict their PC from doing other things they want to do. With several hundred feats, it's a bit of a mess. They should get rid of a lot of the feats that are just D20 modifiers and keep the ones that have real flavor and advantage. They could also get rid of the Improved Feat concept. Cleave and Great Cleave could be one where the feat emulates Cleave when first acquired and emulates Great Cleave 6 levels later or some such.
There are many ways to clean up and balance the feat system.