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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9446791" data-attributes="member: 7006">It's a double-edged sword.  On the one hand there definitely is the impetus to not want to take a "useless" feat because it makes one feel like they are mechanically a step behind other characters (although the longer a character plays and the more levels they gain, the more new and more powerful mechanics greatly outshine whatever little mechanic they got at 1st level so the disparity disappears after a time.)  But on the other... giving out too many options or letting people pick what they want just allows for people to really think in terms of min-maxing and pretty soon one has an entire party filled with PCs that all have the same two feats because they're "the best".  Which just removes the creativity and narrative originality of there being separate backgrounds in the first place if everyone takes the same starting set of mechanics.I don't know what the proper answer to this quandry is... other than each DM being willing to make adjustments for their own games.  Whether that's letting people create their own custom backgrounds or creating new feats to substitute in that are more specific to the background in the game, or expanding out or editing the existing starting feats to be more applicable to a character if their class selection was such that the regular feat just wouldn't do a whole lot.  I know for me I've always been a DM that has never had a problem with doing feature swaps for players if they really wanted just a singular mechanic that their class or a feat wouldn't ordinarily give them (and it avoids level dipping)-- like a Cleric PC whose deity's favored weapon was dual-wielded and they wanted to acquire the Two Weapon Fighting fighting style (back in early 5E14 when there wasn't a feat to let other classes acquire fighting styles.)  So making adjustments or edits to certain feats so that they would be useful to a PC regardless of their class or how they might fight or behave would be the way I'd probably go.  Especially because I am not one who feels the need to carry over house rules to every single subsequent game I run (thus a PC in the next campaign wouldn't get the amended feat the PC in the first campaign got after I edited it-- especially if that new PC would make full use of the regular feat to begin with.)</blockquote>

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