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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tequila Sunrise" data-source="post: 7169571" data-attributes="member: 40398">Laugh XP for this, I had no idea. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Interesting, I know themes became pretty popular but I felt like they were an unnecessary addition to the chargen process from day 1. The best-written ones are those that grant class skills to players who want to play a pious fighter or whatever, and as a DM I'd rather just houserule out the concept of class v. non-class skills. And I'd rather the original dev team would have dropped the concept to begin with, so I don't have to house rule it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> But that's a common phenomenon in many games, and D&D is no exception: Build in a limitation, so that you can later sell ways to bypass that limitation. See the various paladin-alike classes for other alignments of prior editions, for a non-4e example. :/Whereas with feats, I'm not gaga in love with them on either side of the screen, and obviously I object to both feat taxes and exceptionally weaksauce feats. But feats do some things that themes don't: they fill in some otherwise dead-ish levels (assigning those two +1 stat boosts is often a non-choice), they provide design space for things like proficiencies and yes, even extra languages and skills, and perhaps most importantly feats allow the mechanics to reflect a character's expanding skillset as she levels.Feats also provide design space for circumstantial advantages that don't work well as 1st-level freebies -- for example I understand why rangers were given Prime Shot, but frankly it's one of those niggly little bonuses that doesn't work well as part of a class, theme, background, or race package -- it would have done better as a feat. (Probably with a higher bonus.) Personally as a player I prefer feats that I can buff my basic stats with and then forget about, but there are players who like tactical advantages. And since each feat is a little chunk of advantage rather than an all-or-nothing package of advantages, a feat is the perfect vehicle for a circumstantial advantage that is opted into by players who want that advantage.Do there have to be eighteen feat slots to fill during the course of 30 level? Depends on taste. Does there have to be a metric crapton of feats to choose from? Absolutely not. But in reply to thanos02's question, yes, I do think that feats are the best way to do what they in the good cases do. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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