An idea on feats and class abilities

[Mercule]

I got to rambling in another thread:

Of course, the more choices a player can make about the build of his character, the more opportunity he has to hork it up. If you have a max-min player (i.e. maximizes his minimums in an attempt to avoid a weakness) who chooses a wizard, then spends a lot of feats on power attack, whirlwind attack, mobility, etc. they aren't going to be as good of a wizard as the one who spent feats on spell focus, spell mastery, etc. Even if you balance the melee feats against one another and the magic feats against one another, it's just never going to work out so that you could let players draw their feats from a hat and be balanced with one another. Even making a nod in that direction takes time away from actually making a more fun and playable game.

There is a level of intentional deviation from the norm that can create very fun, even potent, characters. But, it comes at a cost of having to really think about who your character is. I don't think that's a bad thing, though. One of my favorite characters was a strength-based rogue. A system should be friendly to players who actually come to the table with a concept and personality for their characters. (Note: "My mage is the chosen one and can level an entire town with magic missile" isn't a concept. It's a wet dream.)

That flexibility is a double-edged sword and one of the major reasons why I really, really, really hate that 5e looks to be throwing backgrounds, traits, and some other customization bits into the "feats" category. I'd much prefer to see them as class or race ability slots. I could still be surprised, and they could end up with some pretty restrictive feat prerequisites.

I'd actually be just fine with a "general" feat list and a "restricted" feat list. Everyone could choose from the general list, assuming other, miscellaneous prereqs were met. The restricted list would be completely off limits, unless something gave explicit access to it. That could be a class, a race, a background, a wish, or some other element of the game. The player could then opt to take it, or not. That would also keep expansion books from having to "errata" prior books, too. If every class/race just had a list of opened feats, that'd cover that. Each book could have a list of feats by core class, similar to how new spells are presented, with the full matrix available online. That's pretty darn modular, too.

Basically, I'm whining about feats being too "catch-all" and potentially difficult to balance because of the free access to them. My solution is to restrict them to classes that make sense. Yes, that means class selection is pretty important, but I feel that's appropriate. The DM always has the option of breaking the rules for the players, but this gives a structure to things that keeps from having a hundred different class abilities that are potentially duplicated across classes (it's okay for all martial characters to have access to weapon finesse, but that's not in the cleric's repository, except but the elven cleric would get it from race; as a dubious but simple example).

Thoughts?

 

[MoonSong]

Sorry, but the idea doesn't fly too well with me. Either you want the same set-up that 4e has (where some feats are restricted to members of an speciffic class/race/power source) in which case it is moot, or you want an even more restricted version, which is a big no, no for those of us that want to be able to customize as much as possible.

Having a few feats that are class-exclusive isn't too bad, at all. But making most of the feats class-exclusive defeats the point of them being feats rather than say class abilities or talent trees inside the classes, the whole point of Feats is having a way to distinguish and customize your characters, the moment you restrict them (specially on balance grounds) you basically remove that ability and samenes between members of the same class appears.

Moreover I see nothing wrong with a wizard or sorcerer picking to fight "the mundane way" and use his/her spells for other things more important than combat, or a fighter that decides to use his feats to invest into exploration or interaction rather than specialization and do combat by his pure and raw talent. Utility and power are relative, and some of us put flavour over both. Having a preset list of "aceptable feats per class" only contributes to exacerbate stereotypes and imposes an arbitrary limit that upsets lots of play styles for little gain. I'd rather have a "suggested list of feats for class" on an appendix or as part of the class write-ups, but not as a limit set by RAW.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Basically, I'm whining about feats being too "catch-all" and potentially difficult to balance because of the free access to them. My solution is to restrict them to classes that make sense.

This is the kind of thing that I can see working better as a guide than a restriction, though I'd do it by some kind of keyword instead of class. Class is too brittle as new classes get added to the game, and somewhat misleading for classes the more they are drifted. (A stereotypical fighter might be a good fit for some abilities that aren't all that hot for a lightly armored, swashbuckling style fighter.)

Strangely enough, that might be a good use of roles, though you would need more of them than 4E used, but few enough and fixed to cover all the bases. The 4E monster roles with a few tweaks would probably be a good start. Then you can do things like this:

Power Attack
Brute+, Artillery-, Lurker-
(feat text)

That says if you've read the "brute" role and are pursuing it, then this is a good feat for you. Likewise, if you are pursuing the artillery or lurker roles, then it's a bad choice for you. Any role not listed is neutral--it's not your best option, but you could make it work for soldier, skirmisher, etc.

Even if you are ignoring the advice of the role guidelines, that still tells you a little about the nature of the feat, and would help with a database app if you want to filter to things that are more likely to interest you. If you decide to build a sneaky guy that hits hard, you know that some lurker things will work but some brute things will help too, for your atypical character.

You'd probably need about twice as many roles as the 4E monsters have, as there would be some other distinctions that might matter for certain feats, though perhaps keywords like arcane, divine, etc. will cover those well enough.

 

[Zustiur]

I've been thinking along the lines of 'class features' and 'feats' being separate selectable things. To pick up a class feature from another class is a step towards multiclassing, whereas all 'feats' are necessarily general and available to everyone. Each class would have features and feats to chose throughout their levels. I haven't expanded upon this idea much yet.

 

[Mercule]

I've been thinking along the lines of 'class features' and 'feats' being separate selectable things.

This is where I started, with my idea, though it went a different direction. While I have no problem with multiclassing (quite the opposite), I really don't see things like Power Attack as being reasonable for a wizard to take. That's part and parcel of a class-based game. If you multiclassed into fighter, and used a "class ability" slot to get Power Attack, on the other hand, it makes total sense to me.

In truth, I'd rather see the feat list seriously culled, with many of them moved to class or "power source" ability lists. Feats are over-used as a game mechanic, which makes them lack cohesion. That, in turn, makes them harder to balance and manage. I genuinely believe that it's a conflict of interest to advocate both for strongly balanced classes and for an open feat system.

 

[MoonSong]

I don't really buy into your arguments, first the "Most characters wouldn't want to do/be X, so it makes sense that no characters can." behind their reasoning. Maybe it woudn't make much sense for a first level wizard to take Power attack, but should he/she want to, there shouldn't be any good reason for he/she not to take it. Power attack does nothing for an average 1st level wizard, but like I said before, not all wizards are the same. A wizard (or sorcerer) who decides to pick mostly non-combat spells may want to take combat oriented feats to fight the mundane way. Restricting them because "it makes no sense a pure wizard will want to take them" isn't a sacrifice I'm eager to take in the name of balance.

Wizards fought hard for the right to wield swords and proficiency with them should they chose to want them, Gandalf used a frigging sword!!.

To me the simplest answer is: I'd rather have an open feat system than a straightjacketed class system no matter how "balanced" it is.

 

[ComradeGnull]

I'd like to see guidance, rather than absolute restrictions (though, obviously, restrictions in the RAW could always be ignored).

In general, I think that it's too hard for new players or people who aren't mathematical min/maxers to separate feats and feat chains that are useful for their class from those that are traps either in absolute or relative terms- and the expansion of sourcebooks and splats only makes that worse.

At the very least, it would be good to see feats labelled or tagged, e.g.:
* 'Melee' for feats that might be useful for a defender, monk, swashbuckler, fighter, etc.
* 'Arcane caster' for feats that help wizards, sorcerers, etc.
* 'Low level' for feats that are primarily of interest to characters under level 10 (e.g., Toughness)
* 'High level' for non-level restricted feats that help characters above level 10 more than those below

What I'm not sure how to handle is how to convey to new players that feats like Eschew Materials are only useful if your DM decides to make them useful, and that you probably won't know that until you've been playing for some time, and that it will probably only be useful a handful of times unless your DM decides to be kind of an ass about it. Maybe they could just not make those feats?