D&D (2024) 75 Feats -- not nearly enough

[Micah Sweet]

They have to provide a balance. You want a well-rounded PHB. If you dedicate the PHB to crunch and optimization, then you are providing the impression that this is the focus of a good game and good player.

I think that including optimized and non-optimized options is good design for a system that intends to support multiple styles of gameplay.

Perhaps they should indicate which feats are which, or at least provide a couple examples of each, lest players make the wrong choice for their desired playstyle. They are, after all, presented as equal.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Right.

Maybe you get 1 more with the new way backgrounds work. Even then you only really pick a few.

Many of those 75 will likely never get used.

By any given character, sure. Do you only play one character over the life of an edition?

 

[Micah Sweet]

It feels bad to me because it's just an unnecessary limit: why do I have to choose between the two when I could simply have both? In a game where there are very limited choices outside of the class ones, allowing more options to customize them beyond the class structure would seem good.



I don't think it's necessarily a hard one, I think it's just a bad one. It's unnecessary to force someone to choose between the two when giving them both would just be a better option to allow more customization.




I was largely responding to this



By saying that, for martials, there are a decent amount of feats that are probably better than a simple +1 to hit/damage. Those feats are largely known and talked about, though.



Warcaster is something I liked choosing for variant human clerics if the GM wasn't allowing a free feat in general. Lucky is a good take given its universality.

As it stands, the biggest problem with the current edition (not the new one coming out) is that Feats are very much broken down into two sides: "Useful" and "Incredibly Niche". There are some feats that are particularly necessary for Martials, while there are some things that are just incredibly niche and would be fine to fill out a character but not against an ASI. Moving away from those two being in competition with one another, as well as trying to gate feats by their effectiveness, will hopefully balance things out a bit. But even still, making it a choice rather than just getting both is the big mistake here.



I would much rather move away from plussed weapons as a concept in general and just move towards more interesting magical effects. That's just my view of it.

But personally I like the idea of having ASIs, especially given the stat array we are given. I just don't like them competing with Feats because I think they shouldn't be in competition with one another; you should just get both: you get both an ASI and a Feat at certain levels. There's nothing really gained from it, and right now it seems to section off people from engaging with certain parts of the game (as you describe).

What you describe would ramp up PC power, which many folks already seem to have a problem with...

 

[Minigiant]

They aren’t “feats” in the same sense. They are class features. They aren’t something you pick. That’s like saying turn undead is a feat in 2e or BX/BECMI

In DC warrior choose a weapon to specialize in.

That's basically a Fighting style fest.

Most DCC have a specialization

 

[Justice and Rule]

What you describe would ramp up PC power, which many folks already seem to have a problem with...

Maybe. I think when people talk about "PC Power", it's more wrapped in other abilities like spells and such or unbalanced features. Doing something that increased PCs basically across the board seems less controversial, but I could be wrong.

 

[pete284]

There's currently about 42 Feats in 2014 PHB which I think is more than enough, (we never use them in any of our games anyway) so they are adding another 33 in 2024. From what I believe they are no longer optional, so can't see us upgrading.

 

[dave2008]

Sadly, while there was no need for them prior to their existence in the game, there unfortunately is now. Because now you have to away power from players that they can see in vaguely-brown and white right in the PH, and have seen for quite a while. Very difficult to do that without coming off as a big jerk. I applaud you and am rather mystified that you managed it.

My group has been gaming together for 35+ years we come from a similar perspective and cooperate to make the games we want to play - I am lucky there

 

[CreamCloud0]

i think 75 feats might be okay for DnD, but it wouldn't be these 75 feats, there's alot of things that would need be improved on a good few of them to make them more equally viable picks against ‘higher tier’ feats, some should be consolidated, some should be removed as feats and just turned into basic actions available to everyone, others just need to be adjusted to scale better or interact with different classes with different inherent capabilities differently, (like magic initiate providing higher level spells as you level up and additional castings to martials where casters have to use their own slots.)

So after merging some, improving others, intergrating more into base mechanics and then filling up the space made, 75 should be good enough, maybe a few others would get added for specific expansions but 75 should be fine for the moment.

 

[DEFCON 1]

There's currently about 42 Feats in 2014 PHB which I think is more than enough, (we never use them in any of our games anyway) so they are adding another 33 in 2024. From what I believe they are no longer optional, so can't see us upgrading.

From what we've seen this far... other than the 1st level feat that comes with a Background (basically replacing the Background Feature with a Feat)... players can just take the Ability Score Improvements each and every time as their "feats". So nothing will really be any different... you take ASIs at levels 4,8,12 etc. just like you would in 5E14. The game will just now call the Background Feature and the ASI "feats" for categorization purposes. The only real difference is the Background feat/feature now having a game mechanic connected to it rather than being purely a narrative ability that the feature was-- which admittedly some people have an issue with.

 

[tetrasodium]

Someone mentioned that the 2014 PHB has 42 feats, I'll assume that's close enough to accurate.... Jumping from 42 to 75 doesn't say anything about restoring build level specialization through feats. There's no way to even guess the impact without wotc taking the time to clarify that the feat count increase is intended to solve the problems caused in 2014. The problems with those 42 is that many of them are just awful and what dozen or so S A & B tier feats remain are almost entirely for one particular subset of classes with a singular niche. Even classes that do have options they could "choose" lower tier feats, that choice is often one between feat A B C* or B C A* at class level rather than build level. A lot of that nonchoice can be pinned directly on wotc's choices to erode the concept of niche protection & streamlining away "complex" mechanical hooks needed to differentiate different builds through specialization.



* All three of which may or may not even have a chance to matter at any point & may or may not even be noticed if they do. Think about how many times you've seen a class guide suggest resilient con or warcaster just because there's nothing better as an example.