D&D 5E D&D Next Blog "Avoiding Choice Traps"

[TheWriterFantastic™]

The latest blog post is up: Avoiding Choice Traps

I think the smartest design choice they could make is to go with feats granting bonuses for all three pillars; I've avoided quite a few interesting role-playing/exploration feats for fear of gimping my characters.

 

[dkyle]

Bah... I even refreshed just before posting my thread... I'll just repost here, then:

Now we could do this another way. We could just bite the bullet and say feats are generally combat focused. Feats reflect customization options that speak directly to the combat pillar. Then we could let skills (delivered through backgrounds) carry the weight of exploration and interaction. And then we could have a third element, call them traits, to address the roleplaying pillar. This ensures that we never have to worry about Power Attack = Fast Hands = Ennui, because they’re all different things.

Yes! This is exactly what I've been asking for. Although I'm a bit confused because I thought interaction was the new name for the "roleplaying" pillar, not a separate thing?

In any event, I think it's a great idea to just focus "feats" on combat, make "skills" be for exploration (that work basically like the skill-based feats in 3.5/4E), and "traits" for interaction (some skill-like things for social rolls, maybe some "gain a noble title" type stuff). Although, I do think "skills" and "traits" could be combined into just "skills". I'm more concerned about not forcing tradeoffs between combat and non-combat, than between two forms of non-combat.

I'm not a fan of the "one feat has stuff for all three pillars" approach, because it reduces flexibility in character creation. I'd rather each pillar allow independent choices.

 

[Steely_Dan]

"Traits" concerns me, I do not want a 3rd thing for characters to have to choose, on top of Feats and Skills, which I very much want to be optional.

 

[Thaumaturge]

As I mentioned in this thread here (before this blog entry was posted, thank you very much), I am intrigued by the idea.

Thaumaturge.

 

[Scribble]

Traits sounds like things like Alignment would fall into it.

It's reminiscent of the World of Darkness stuff...

 

[TerraDave]

I have had players take non-combat feats, especially if they see getting some other in play advantage. And my guess is, the more the game rewards or emphasizes non-combat activities, the more non-combat feats will be taken.

Also, the more feats a player has relative to "must take" combat feats (which always starts pretty small, then grows like a cancer), the more likely they will take non-combat feats.

 

[dkyle]

"Traits" concerns me, I do not want a 3rd thing for characters to have to choose, on top of Feats and Skills, which I very much want to be optional.

Yeah, I like the symmetry of Traits, but it does feel a bit like bloat. I think Skills covering both exploration and interaction is a better approach.

As for Feats and Skills being optional, what I'd like to see is:

Core game alone: Each Class has a full complement of feats and skills built-in, but just incorporated into its progression. Basically indistinguishable from traditional DnD classes.

Adding Themes and Backgrounds module: Stripped down core classes, plus a variety of Themes and Backgrounds, including the ones that were included by default in the core game.

Adding Feats and Skills modules: Rules for creating custom Themes and Backgrounds out of the kinds of feats familiar to 3.X and 4E players, except that the Feats would just be combat feats, and the Skills would basically be the non-combat feats.

Traits as separate form Skills makes it hard to have this progression of complexity, without adding a new thing, alongside Themes and Backgrounds.

 

[Libramarian]

"My friend Ian, who is not a min-max sort of player, chose for his paladin the Fast Runner feat at 1st level. He never mentioned it. He never talked about it. He just made that choice and played the game. At some point, someone asked him about his feat. He revealed it and earned a lot of gentle (and not-so-gentle) ribbing and laughter from his fellow players. By the rules, there’s nothing wrong with this choice. Nothing at all! In fact, it was a choice that supported his character concept. Sure, he probably would have been better off with some sort of expertise feat or damage booster or something that would let him win D&D. But he didn’t. And that’s great."

This doesn't sound so bad to me. I worry about the mindset that we have to remove all possibility that other players might judge your choices in the game.

 

[Steely_Dan]

Yeah, I like the symmetry of Traits, but it does feel a bit like bloat. I think Skills covering both exploration and interaction is a better approach.

As for Feats and Skills being optional, what I'd like to see is:

Core game alone: Each Class has a full complement of feats and skills built-in, but just incorporated into its progression. Basically indistinguishable from traditional DnD classes.

Adding Themes and Backgrounds module: Stripped down core classes, plus a variety of Themes and Backgrounds, including the ones that were included by default in the core game.

Adding Feats and Skills modules: Rules for creating custom Themes and Backgrounds out of the kinds of feats familiar to 3.X and 4E players, except that the Feats would just be combat feats, and the Skills would basically be the non-combat feats.

Traits as separate form Skills makes it hard to have this progression of complexity, without adding a new thing, alongside Themes and Backgrounds.

I like and agree with all of this.

I want my BECMI, grab a race and class and go, and the option to tinker with Feats/Skills etc.

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

Yeah, I like the symmetry of Traits, but it does feel a bit like bloat. I think Skills covering both exploration and interaction is a better approach.

As for Feats and Skills being optional, what I'd like to see is:

Core game alone: Each Class has a full complement of feats and skills built-in, but just incorporated into its progression. Basically indistinguishable from traditional DnD classes.

Adding Themes and Backgrounds module: Stripped down core classes, plus a variety of Themes and Backgrounds, including the ones that were included by default in the core game.

Adding Feats and Skills modules: Rules for creating custom Themes and Backgrounds out of the kinds of feats familiar to 3.X and 4E players, except that the Feats would just be combat feats, and the Skills would basically be the non-combat feats.

Traits as separate form Skills makes it hard to have this progression of complexity, without adding a new thing, alongside Themes and Backgrounds.

Agreed 100%!