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

[RHGreen]

At last they might actually be siloing.

Combat --- Interaction --- Social

Feats _______ Skills _____ Traits


There wouldn't be bloat because of traits, traits are already there. They are called feats.

Feats that are combat based stay as feats.

They would just pull out the feats that are interaction based and call them skills. Bonuses to ability checks when doing something that the skill applies to. (Which is what skills are anyway - just not written as such in older editions.)

They would pull out the feats that are social/roleplay based and call them traits.

You wouldn't have to choose between combat, interaction and roleplay. You would get an allocation for each that wouldn't interfere with each other.


At least that is how I see it. Here's hoping.

Edit* (I've been harping on about them doing this since they announced 4E - even on their own boards. I'm not special. Others have been saying it too. Siloing. It wasn't that difficult and from a design stand point it is a designers easy wet dream.)

 

[dkyle]

What's I mean is, if skills can only be exploration, then diplomacy can't be a skill. If skills can only be interaction, then jumping and climbing can't be skills. Skills should just be skills, and different skills are useful in different areas. They shouldn't try to force things that make sense as being skills into being not-skills just because of an arbitrary "pillar" philosophy. That's all I mean.

What does it matter if the rules call it a "skill" or a "trait" or a "feat"?

My expectation is all three would look a lot like feats in 3.X/4E. We already know that skills are going to be situational bonuses to attribute checks, and not a 3.X-style point system, or even a set list of skills. My guess is we'd have things like:

Feats:
Power Attack
Weapon Focus

Skills:
Jump (+2 to attribute checks when jumping)
Disable Traps (gain the ability to disable traps)

Traits:
Diplomat (+2 to attribute checks when interacting with royalty and nobility)
Intimidating (+2 to attribute checks to frighten)
Interrogator (+2 to attribute checks to extract information)

 

[Dragonblade]

Combined super feats is clunky and awkward. What if I want the combat piece from one feat, but the social piece from another? Ugh, no thanks.

Likewise, feats handling social, combat, and exploration all from one pool doesn't work either. I shouldn't have to sacrifice combat utility to be a better diplomat, or a better explorer.

You need three silos and you shouldn't be able trade them off. Otherwise, you have the same problem as before. Bob trades all his exploration and social choices to become a combat monster, while John trades all his combat options to be a super diplomat but otherwise sucks at combat. From a DM standpoint this is a balance nightmare. I don't want John dominating the RP scenes while Bob sits there and I don't want to have to worry about designing encounters for Bob that are way too lethal for John's PC to handle.

The best way to handle this is to provide three separate siloed resources and at appropriate intervals the player can choose one option from each silo.

Also, I want new options to come up pretty much every level, or at least start all PCs with at least 3 feats from each silo. I never felt like I could ever get enough feats in 3e or 4e to truly customize my PC the way I wanted it until I was practically epic level. It was very frustrating.

 

[Stormonu]

So we have:

a) A "Feat" hits all three pillars, or
b) A "Feat" hits combat pillar. A "Skill" hits the exploration pillar. A "Trait" hits the interaction pillar.

This whole idea of spreading the bonuses over all the pillars sounds like the old Weapon vs. Non-Weapon Proficiency system of late 1E/2E.

My preference would be for (b), allowing for significant choices among the 3 pillars. Going with (a), a lot of people will be locked into their choice by how it affects combat, with the exploration and interaction pillar bonuses being afterthoughts. And it becomes too easy to make it a poor choice because it has a weak effect in any one of the three pillars. If you don't make the effects co-dependent, you won't end up with as many characters looking alike, because say, they all took the Toughness feat.

Of course, way (b) means more book and character bloat, but if they're going to go with this, I think it would be the better way to handle it.

So, you might be looking at something like this:

Fighter: 1 Feat/2 levels, 1 Skill/3 levels, 1 Trait/4 levels
Rogue: 1 Feat/3 levels, 1 Skill/3 levels, 1 Trait/3 levels
(Bard): 1 Feat/3 levels, 1 Skill/4 levels, 1 Trait/2 levels
Wizard: 1 Feat/4 levels, 1 Skill/2 levels, 1 Trait/3 levels
Priest: 1 Feat/3 levels, 1 Skill/4 levels, 1 Trait/2 levels

 

[dkyle]

So, you might be looking at something like this:

Fighter: 1 Feat/2 levels, 1 Skill/3 levels, 1 Trait/4 levels
Rogue: 1 Feat/3 levels, 1 Skill/3 levels, 1 Trait/3 levels
(Bard): 1 Feat/3 levels, 1 Skill/4 levels, 1 Trait/2 levels
Wizard: 1 Feat/4 levels, 1 Skill/2 levels, 1 Trait/3 levels
Priest: 1 Feat/3 levels, 1 Skill/4 levels, 1 Trait/2 levels

Oh no, that ruins the whole point. Even progressions in each pillar for everyone. Also, variable progressions would make Themes (feat delivery) and Backgrounds (Skills and maybe Trait delivery) unworkable.

If a class should have a boost to a particular pillar, just stick it in the class. But make it a small one.

 

[Dragonblade]

Oh no, that ruins the whole point. Even progressions in each pillar for everyone. Also, variable progressions would make Themes (feat delivery) and Backgrounds (Skills and maybe Trait delivery) unworkable.

If a class should have a boost to a particular pillar, just stick it in the class. But make it a small one.

Indeed. All classes should progress equally in all pillars. I don't want some classes locked into being crappy at one or more pillars.

I should be able to make a scholarly or diplomatic fighter and not have to sacrifice combat utility to get that.

 

[Serendipity]

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.

This is why I hate feats. It forces everything into a 'optimized v. deliberately non-optimized' dichotomy. When the background and theme aspects of 5e were first introduced, I was happy because it sounded like (or maybe I just wanted them to be) more RP focused rather than more ways to generate mechanical exploits. Having said that, having 'traits' (as he calls them) as yet another damn kerjiggity futzy thing to have to keep track of/be optimized with is a non-starter for me.
Ideally, backgrounds should give a few skill mods, maybe a small ability or something, unique to someone of that background. Possibly also altering one of the class abilities in an interesting (both mechanically and fluff wise) way. Themes should work like traits in pathfinder. Feats should be wholly optional and not necessary to chargen at all. I realize this isn't going to happen, but that's what I'd liike regardless.
I recognize that my wants are different than many, probably most, in the community. I want a streamlined game more akin to BECMI than anything resembling 3 or 4e as the baseline. The notion of the three pillars is great - as a structure for gameplay. Trying to hard code it into the game starting at chargen is a mistake I think.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

The idea that "having less feats" is some kind of problem that needs to be avoided is itself a huge barrier to a clean system.

 

[dkyle]

The idea that "having less feats" is some kind of problem that needs to be avoided is itself a huge barrier to a clean system.

Maybe, but a system where every feat is basically three feats in one, and must have a benefit for each pillar, doesn't exactly sound very "clean" to me.

I'd much rather split those sub-feats out, even if it means having three times as many feats (or feat-like skills and traits)

Then again, I don't really have a problem with having tons of feats, anyway. As long as power-creep is kept in check, what's the problem? Publishing more feats is a good way to increase build options for those that want them.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Then again, I don't really have a problem with having tons of feats, anyway. As long as power-creep is kept in check, what's the problem? Publishing more feats is a good way to increase build options for those that want them.

If they were discarding old feats as they went, some slow growth wouldn't be bad. Start with 30 feats. Practice shows 5 of them aren't all that. Make up 7 more, deprecate the 5. Next go around, get rid of those 5 completely, evaluate the other 27 again. Add a few more, mark some as borderline. And so on. Eventually, you have a solid core of great feats that you can confidently state, "these we keep." The rest of it is in flux.

You might even be able to do that in a DDI environment, as long as you don't print them until you get the solid core, and then only print the solid core.

But constant adding of more and more? That's just making it that much harder to find what you need. A few months ago, they still had not added an easy way to the 4E DDI to filter out feats by source in the character lists. One would assume that is fairly basic. (They might have gotten to that since, but even so, the length of time it went unchanged does not give me confidence that "managing a lot of feats" is something that WotC can do well.)

As far as the "super feats," I agree those have problems. I said as much above, when I indicated historical problems with classes, though I guess that might have been oblique. My main point, though, is that whatever problems broad feats have, they are easier to balance and manage than narrow feats. Where to draw the line exactly is the big question.