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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5873774" data-attributes="member: 3424">For me, the key advantage of having themes as pre-selected packages of feats is that you can add more flavor and organization to the laundry list of feats that we've seen in previous editions. I think we've seen some initial steps in this direction in Essentials where feats were categorized into groups such as &quot;Quick Reaction&quot; or &quot;Enduring Stamina&quot;. So maybe you could have a Diamond Mind Student theme which collects feats related to using speed and quick reactions in combat, while a Stone Dragon theme has feats related to toughness and endurance.It might also make a good design guideline, in that feats should never be developed in a flavor vacuum. You would need think about how it fits into the world and which organizations or archetypes might use it first.Depending on how feats turn out in 5e, in particular, if feats that grant extra&nbsp; powers or allow power swaps still exist, themes can still occupy the same mechanical space that they did in 4e.Provided WotC gets the power balance of the basic building blocks right in the first place (in that feats are more or less balanced with each other), I wouldn't be too concerned with under-powered combinations. I can always start out with the basic concept suggested by a theme and swap out specific feats if I think they would work better.As a side point, it appears that backgrounds would mean that there would be fewer class skills in 5e? If any class could take any background, then only those skills are are truly needed to fulfill the class concept (such as Arcana for a wizard, or Religion for a cleric) would need to be granted by class.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 5873774, member: 3424"] For me, the key advantage of having themes as pre-selected packages of feats is that you can add more flavor and organization to the laundry list of feats that we've seen in previous editions. I think we've seen some initial steps in this direction in Essentials where feats were categorized into groups such as "Quick Reaction" or "Enduring Stamina". So maybe you could have a Diamond Mind Student theme which collects feats related to using speed and quick reactions in combat, while a Stone Dragon theme has feats related to toughness and endurance. It might also make a good design guideline, in that feats should never be developed in a flavor vacuum. You would need think about how it fits into the world and which organizations or archetypes might use it first. Depending on how feats turn out in 5e, in particular, if feats that grant extra powers or allow power swaps still exist, themes can still occupy the same mechanical space that they did in 4e. Provided WotC gets the power balance of the basic building blocks right in the first place (in that feats are more or less balanced with each other), I wouldn't be too concerned with under-powered combinations. I can always start out with the basic concept suggested by a theme and swap out specific feats if I think they would work better. As a side point, it appears that backgrounds would mean that there would be fewer class skills in 5e? If any class could take any background, then only those skills are are truly needed to fulfill the class concept (such as Arcana for a wizard, or Religion for a cleric) would need to be granted by class. [/QUOTE]

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