D&D 5E 5th edition design notes: Feats

[mkill]

5th edition notes is a loose series of threads where I want to talk about how I would write up 5th edition if I was in charge.

Todays topic is...

Feats

In short, 4th edition just has too many of them (2589 at current counting), and I want to analyse how that huge amount of feats came to be and how this can be addressed in 5th edition.


Too many feats is bad?

First of all, why are so many feats a bad thing? After all, this guarantees that for every possible build, there are interesting feats, right?

No. There is what psychologists call "Choice Paralysis". The more options you have, the more insecure you are about making a decision. In fact, it increases the chance that you don't want to make a decision at all and just give up. And even if you make a choice, too much selection means we are more insecure about the choice that we made.

Ideally, there is a small, easy to understand selection of 4-5 options each time you make a character build choice. This is handled well with powers, where the choice is boiled down to three or four desirable ones for your build in most cases.

With feats, however, there is a vast sea of selection, and unless you know what you are looking for or unless you use an optimization handbook, there is not much to guide you. There are of course players who enjoy character optimization as an art form. These players are willing to delve through their complete collection of books for new feats every 2 levels. However, they are a small (but vocal) minority.


How did we get there?

In 3rd edition, feats served 3 important purposes:
a) provide numerical bonuses
b) enable combat maneuvers
c) allow spellcasters to modify their spells
d) other stuff (which we'll leave aside for now)

In 4th edition, b) was replaced by the powers system. c) was removed, and there simply is no equivalent subsystem to the 3rd edition metamagic system. That leaves numerical bonuses. However, there are only so many numbers on a character sheet that you can add something to.

So where do over 3000 feats come from? Short answer: Fiddly situational bonuses.
Huge amounts of 4th edition feats apply to only one race, only one class, only one power, only one situation, or any combination of these.
The result: Choice paralysis.

It has come to the point where there is a feat for every possible combination of class feature and racial power and whatnot. Need proof?

Draconic Challenge

Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Dragonborn, paladin
Benefit: When you use your dragon breath racial power, you subject each enemy targeted by that power to your divine sanction. This divine sanction lasts until the start of your next turn.

There is simply no motivation for this feat except for filling the grid and the fact that there are many dragonborn paladins. What's divine about breathing fire / spitting acid at people to challenge them to a duel? From a flavor point of view, the feat just doesn't make sense.

The other problem about these feats is that from a power standpoint, only a precious few of them are worth taking. After all, you will only use your racial power once per encounter. It has to be at least five times as good as anything I can do any time to be any good. Through sheer bloat, feats have become the fiddly afterthought that requires wading through too much stuff to make a decision.


The Essential Feats

As a help for newbies and to fight the bloat I would include a list of "essential" feats to the game. If you're paralyzed by the available choices, just take one of them. They are guaranteed to be viable at any level, for any race, any class, any build.


What I did is, I took a standard D&D character sheet and created one feat for each single item on there. To keep it concise, I'll only list the feat benefits.
(Of course, they would need some playtest and finetuning)

+4 to Initiative
+1 to one ability score of your choice
+5/+10/+15 hit points
+2 healing surges
+1 to AC
+1/+2/+3 to Fort
+1/+2/+3 to Ref
+1/+2/+3 to Will
+1 to saving throws
+5 to death saves
Gain training in two skills
+1 to all skills
Roll twice for all checks with one skill
+1 movement speed
+1 to hit with all attacks
+1/+2/+3 to all damage rolls
+3 to hit with one specific power (the first time you use it in an encounter)
+2 per [W] damage with one specific power
Learn a first-level at-will attack power
Learn an encounter power of up to your level
Learn a daily power of up to your level
Learn a utility power / skill power of up to your level
Use encounter power twice per encounter
Score critical hit on 19, 20
Reroll 1 on all damage rolls
Reroll 1 on all d20 rolls

Nearly all other feats in the game will be specialized versions of these to some degree.

Note: I did not include weapon and implement proficiencies here because these are class-specific. In addition, you're expected to be proficient with all relevant weapons and implements right out of the gate already.

 

[mkill]

*placeholder*

 

[RangerWickett]

I sorta agree with your displeasure regarding fiddly 4e feats. Some race-class specificity is nice, such as if you want to want to push certain stereotypes, or if a particular combination is weak and needs a boost, but 'filling in the grid' gets a tad annoying.

I'd rather have "race specific" and "class specific" feats, stuff that's useful for, say, any dragonborn regardless of class, or any paladin regardless of race.


From your list, I think the improved crit one's too strong, as is the one that grants scaling boosts to defenses (as opposed to a flat bonus to AC or attack rolls).

Also, don't forget some of the "make a certain tactic useful," like removing the penalties for running, or you're better at grabbing people. Plus something like skill focus. Plus ritual caster.

I will say, sometimes fiddly is fun. Dragonmarks are nifty.

 

[keterys]

While there are certainly some feats that are overly fiddly, I think that most of your feat ideas (and the general premise of what makes a good feat) are bad ideas as they're purely mechanical and I don't think there's any need to have that.

I'd much rather there were _no_ feats like that.

 

[ZephyrTR]

Feats are meant to round the character out and give more flavor. I particularly enjoy racial feats to help underscore certain racial aptitudes that can't be put on the class naturally without making them broken.

'Gimme a +1' feats are real boring though. You need to be more creative than that. I significantly reduce starting Abilities, as well as how much they grow as you level, and then put Ability Score restrictions on all feats (11, 13, 15, 17) to make players think a lil harder about where they put their points. Take a look if you like:

Feats - Bri's Mod

its not a finished list but its what i operate off of for both my games, at least for now.

 

[mkill]

To explain why I think that feats should be general and generic, let me tell you a story. It's a long story, for which I apologize. It's the story of Pyrax, my Dragonborn Ranger.

He's a two-weapon fighter with a flail and a longsword. I built him way back, when only the PHB was out. He's not an exotic character by any account. But even after tons of books, he's still shafted when it comes to feats.

Just with PHB1, he already had the problem that D&D feats lock you into one weapon choice. For most characters, this doesn't make a difference, but it really shafts two weapon users with different weapon types. If he wants to be good with both longsword and flail, he has to pay double feat cost, or fight with two flails. But the latter would be making an in-character choice for pure metagaming reasons.

But maybe later splatbooks would help him? What unfolds is a story of how overspecialized feats.

In Martial Power, there is a feat for Dragonborn Rangers (Breath-Resistant Beast). Great, but it's only for Beast Masters. My character is not a beast master.

Okay, so what about that Dragonborn book? it had a feat for Dragonborn Rangers, right? Yeah, look at it:

Draconic Hunter
Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Dragonborn, dragon breath racial power, ranger, Hunter’s Quarry class feature
Benefit: When you hit your quarry with your dragon breath, you gain a +2 bonus to your attack rolls against that target until the end of your next turn.

+2 to attacks against one enemy once per encounter? And I have to hit him with my dragonbreath first, so if I miss, the feat is useless? No thank you. Among 2500+ feats, there is one feat for my race-class combination that I can use, but the feat is an utter waste of a feat slot.

Okay, so let's forget about Dragonborn, what about Rangers with flails? Martial Power 2 sure has a weapon style for them, right? Good news, there is not just one, but three!

Number One!

Ironstar Student [Lesser Style]
Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Fighter, ranger, or warlord; proficiency with any flail or mace
Benefit: You gain a +2 feat bonus to Athletics checks.
When you are attacking with a flail or a mace and you have proficiency with that weapon, you also gain the following benefit.
When you use a power associated with this feat and hit an enemy granting combat advantage to you, that enemy takes a –2 penalty to attack rolls until the end of your next turn.
Associated Powers: Brash Assault, Marauder's Rush, Reaping Strike

Uh, wait a second. I don't have Marauder's Rush. In fact, I'm not a Marauder, I'm a 2WF Ranger. And I'm very happy with Twin Strike, thank you! -2 to attacks and only if I have CA doesn't make Marauder's Rush any better, and my Wisdom is only 14 anyway. (Well, if I wanted to impose a -2 to attacks I could take Impending Doom Style instead. Except that it requires Intimidate, which is not a class skill for me.)
Let's check #2...

Mountain Thunder Student [Lesser Style]
Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Fighter, ranger, rogue, or warlord; proficiency with any one-handed hammer, one-handed flail, or one-handed mace
Benefit: You gain a +2 feat bonus to Endurance checks.
When you are attacking with a one-handed hammer, a one-handed flail, or a one-handed mace and you have proficiency with that weapon, you also gain the following benefit.
When you attack an enemy with a power associated with this feat, you can target the enemy’s Fortitude instead of AC.
Associated Powers: Brash Assault, Disheartening Strike, Marauder's Rush, Threatening Rush

Marauder's Rush... again? No thank you. And most monsters have a Fort that's as good or even higher than their AC, making this feat useless.

Rending Chains Student [Lesser Style]
Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Fighter, ranger, or warlord; proficiency with any flail
Benefit: You gain a +2 feat bonus to Intimidate checks.
When you are attacking with a flail and you have proficiency with that weapon, you also gain the following benefit.
Whenever you hit an enemy with a power associated with this feat, you slide that enemy 1 square to a square adjacent to you.
Associated Powers: Hit and Run, Reaping Strike, Viper’s Strike

Now, my Ranger once had Hit and Run, but I trained out of it. The idea of Hit and Run is that you can get the hell out if you get swarmed by enemies, without eating opportunity attacks. However, the power does not help if you miss, and it does not help if there is more than one enemy adjacent to you. When you hit a foe with Hit and Run, you don't want to slide him into an adjacent square, you want to get away from him.
In 90% of cases, you're better off just Twin Striking the guy anyway in the hope that you drop him before he drops you.

To make a long story short, even though there are all these shiny special feats for Dragonborn Rangers and Rangers with flails, I ended up taking none of them. I took Enlarged Dragonbreath, Dragonborn Frenzy, and Two-Weapon Fighting, and I'm happy with these choices.

 

[mkill]

Feats are meant to round the character out and give more flavor.

See, there are two philosophies of game design.

There is one school, the "Platon School", which advocates that a character's self is reflected in his stats.

And then, there is the "Tyler Durden School", which says "You are not your stats". According to this school, my character is defined by how I roleplay him. Feats and all other rules elements just give me the necessary numbers to interact with the game world.

Let me explain that with an example. Imagine a dwarf character who fights in the "Bloody Axe" style. In the Platonic school, that character has a "Bloody Axe" style feat and a "Bloody Axe Master" Paragon Path. In the Tyler Durden School, he's just a dwarven fighter who will describe his fighting style as "Bloody Axe" style, and it doesn't matter if any of his feats or powers is called Bloody Axe or not.

'Gimme a +1' feats are real boring though.

Boring, yes, but if you belong to the Tyler Durden School like me, you don't care. You don't expect a feat to make the character interesting. You just take the feat to increase damage or whatever.

I significantly reduce starting Abilities, as well as how much they grow as you level, and then put Ability Score restrictions on all feats (11, 13, 15, 17) to make players think a lil harder about where they put their points. Take a look if you like:

Feats - Bri's Mod

Ugh, no thank you. I'd rather remove each and every ability score prerequisite from all feats.

In our game, we had an Stormsoul/Windsoul Genasi Wizard with tons of lighting and thunder powers. Now, the "Raging Storm" feat would be a natural choice for such a character, right?

Yeah, except that she didn't meet the Dex 13 Con 13 prerequisites. WTF? How much more stormy can you get than a Genasi with both Windsoul and Stormsoul?

The problem about ability score requirements is that you shoehorn characters into metagame choices. The question is no longer "is my character more the agile or more the tough type" but "do I want to take feat X later or feat Y"? I'd rather have my players think about the former than the latter, thank you.

 

[ZephyrTR]

What you described isn't what I'm representing. When I say feats are meant to ROUND OUT a character, that's what I mean. Say I pick 'bloody axe' stuff to start, but I want to be bilingual and take bold movements in battle? Well, then I take a feat that gives me another language and a feat that gives me +4 to AC against Opportunity Attacks. That's what 'rounding out' is.

In a world that emphasizes interaction, what you're capable of doing is maybe three fourths of who you are, if you ask my opinion (not everyone will agree with that). Feats help you branch out from your class a bit, so you can do OTHER stuff well, too. That's why there's no class restrictions on most feats.

About Ability restrictions on Feats, they only don't work if the restrictions aren't reflecting a necessary 'base aptitude' for that feat to function. Acrobatic Steps has a DEX restriction because if you have a 10 DEX, you're not remarkably balanced and coordinated, now are you?

I don't know the 'Raging Storm' feat, so I don't think i can comment on that -- I do let players try to talk me into giving them something they're not technically qualified for, though, if they can claim some racial or class-based aptitude that makes up for their lack of raw ability.

And in DnD, yes, you ARE your stats. What you can do, and your success rate, is defined by your stats. WHO you are is up to the player. Quoting Chuck Palahniuk doesn't make you correct.

And if you want to use a flail and a sword, yeah, you're gonna need to take more feats to get all the cool stuff associated with those weapons -- fighting with two weapons that are used COMPLETELY differently is harder to do than using two different length blades. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it!!! It just means starting out it might be a lil harder.

 

[Mengu]

In that list, you have some of my favorite things as feats, and some of my least favorite things.

+X attack/damage/defense feats I'd sooner be rid of. Give it to everyone, or no one. Build attack/damage/defenses into the system. Otherwise, you're just messing up your own system of expectations.

Getting a new encounter, daily, or utility power as a feat is awesome. One of my current favorite feats is Skill Power. Various multiclass feats fall in this category.

When you do X, you can also do Y feats should be the meat and potatoes of feats. This is what will differentiate builds of the same class from each other. You can have a guardian fighter with a series of shield related feats that push and prone enemies, while defending allies with intercepts and turtling. You can also have a guardian fighter with a series of flail related feats that slide, immobilize, restrain enemies, and give them attack penalties. This is what feats should be for.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Draconic Challenge

Heroic Tier
Prerequisite: Dragonborn, paladin
Benefit: When you use your dragon breath racial power, you subject each enemy targeted by that power to your divine sanction. This divine sanction lasts until the start of your next turn.

There is simply no motivation for this feat except for filling the grid and the fact that there are many dragonborn paladins. What's divine about breathing fire / spitting acid at people to challenge them to a duel? From a flavor point of view, the feat just doesn't make sense.

First up, I think this is one of the worst specific race/class feats that you could have chosen to give an example of your problem. This is a feat that couldn't possibly be used by a non dragonborn, and wouldn't make any sense to be available to a non paladin.

As for how it makes sense? Your first issue is that you think that the paladins mark is a challenge to a duel. If that's what you're after, play an avenger (for the duel aspect) or a fighter (for a non magical challenge).

What you're doing is inflicting divine punishment on foes for daring to defy you. I don't see how issuing the edict by pointing at someone (ie - a range 5 minor action) is any better or worse than issuing it by breathing fire or spitting acid on them.

The Essential Feats
Nearly all other feats in the game will be specialized versions of these to some degree.

Again, unfortunately the one feat that you chose as your example is definately not a specialized version of any of these.

Now - it's not that I don't agree with you: I think the proliferation of race specific, class specific and race/class specific feats isn't a good thing. However I think that having feats to boost powers (even racial or class-specific powers) is a very good thing and I would hate to see some of the more interesting feats reduced to what is on your list.

Now my personal view is that static bonus feats are just boring, and shouldn't exist.

That excludes anything (like boosts to movement, skills etc) that encourage a dynamic battlefield and anything that modifies how a class operates (melee training for instance is an enabler for tactics which were previously very sub-par for certain classes, although perhaps it could be done better...).

Now that said, I understand that there are people out there don't enjoy the complexity that comes with those dynamic feats that I like, and would prefer to get those +1s and +2s. And therefore your list is useful, and avoiding replication of those feats is very useful. I don't want to see feats that are gnomish wizard-specific that let them get +1 to hit and damage with illusion spells for instance : there are better ways to encourage gnomish illusionists.

I think that restrictions on feats should be purely limited to "is this feat actually useable by whomever wants to take it"? Stat requirements? Right out. Race requirements? Unless the feat requires a racial ability (like our friend draconic challenge requires dragon breath) then I don't want to see a race-specific tag on it. Same goes for classes (I believe that divine sanction is a class-specific ability, and if it's not, it should be). If a feat lets you deal extra damage to a foe that you've marked, I don't want to see a requirement that makes it fighter only. If a feat gives you low light vision, I don't want it to be restricted to human rangers. I don't want to see feat chains either.

Now that leaves the human feat list pretty slim. I think the answer to that is that humans really should have had a racial power, and then things would even up.