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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6917252" data-attributes="member: 996">Well, you can control it in the sledge-hammer sense of banning it, or in the simple sense of not opting into feats in the first place (not a bad idea at all, IMHO - feats, MCing, magic items, they're none of them assumed for the game to work, the flip side of that being that the game just might not work as well - not that it's perfect without 'em - once you've let them in).Hey, we're not limited to only one argument.  <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=";)" />  The DM who wants to be somewhat permissive can opt into everything the PH presents as optional, and then simply cope with it in play.  DMing has traditionally meant making the game your own, back in the day we DMs all had our prefered variants, or at least a sub-set of the rules we consciously ignored or just plain missed, that made our games that much better than they might have been had we run the game as written  like contemporaneous 8 bit computers running BASIC programs.  (Because I never get tired of making fun of how freak'n old I'm getting - hey, we're all gonna get old, might as well have some fun with it.)Doesn't matter which b-word you use.  They're feats, they do stuff, they do that stuff for only specific combat styles.  Point.  Are there other feats for other styles?  Is there something about adding feats that beefs up those other styles indirectly (are they less dependent on having high stats, for instance, since feats consume ASIs)?  (I'm honestly not sure, I decided not to use feats, so haven't exactly gone through them with a fine-tooth comb.)Yep.  Only point of identifying a problem is to fix it.And that's what's getting you into trouble.  You're never going to convince everyone.  Some people only see as far as their own experiences, some have a vested interest in defending options they like to take advantage of, some have an emotional investment in the game & defend it reflexively, some dislike certain play styles and see an opportunity to highlight their downsides.    Besides, if you need to convince others, are you really that convinced yourself?OK, and I didn't take that the way you did, but, he's re-itterated it (above) quite unequivocally, so you two are, indeed, equally guilty in the exchange. Color me convinced on that point.And you were in the wrong there.  And here if that's the ultimate point you're trying to make.  The issues are with the mechanics.  In this case, with combinations of mechanics, as well.  Mechanics with issues can not only be worked around or fixed, they can be leveraged, as I pointed out to Capp, above.  But that doesn't mean that anyone experiencing problems caused by those mechanics is at fault and should change the way they play, rather than change the mechanics.Now, I'm sure you didn't actually say that either, and I'm just misunderstanding you.  Let me apologize in advance.It's hard for anything to be overpowered 'by itself' (compared to what, if it's by itself), and not meaningful to examine the effectiveness of something in isolation from the rest of the system, since it's synergies that can 'break' a game most dramatically & unexpectedly.Every complaint about every problem in every edition of the game has always gotten that reaction from at least some members of the community.  It's a cosmological constant of D&D that for every flaw, there is a host of zealous defenders who can't bear to see it corrected.  (OK, with the possible exception of gender-based STR maxima, and a few other un-lamented archaisms)  The reaction I'd hope for is 'how do we fix that?'  Because, as DMs, that's a big part of our jobs, banging the game into the shape we want.  (The other reaction I'd expect is 'how can we exploit that to the maximum possible degree?')Can you really draw that conclusion about the thought processes of  the designer?  Maybe it was intentional, to reward system-mastery or create a couple of optimal builds for classes (ranger, fighter) that might not otherwise seem that obviously fit for optimization.  Maybe it wasn't deemed a problem because it was an optional sub-system, and DMs would be assumed to use it advisedly?  Maybe it was a compromise between good design and evoking the feel of 3e? Then the DM has made a conscious choice to cope with PCs that are 'just better.'  So awareness of the issue is desirable, but 'fixing' it may not be - the characters are supposed to be more over the top.  Of course, the DM could just not hand out much in the way of two-handed weapons or bows, while giving out potent weapons & shields that don't dovetail with the feats at all, thereby 'balancing' them.5e was trying to avoid too many stacking bonuses to d20, and, especially, to avoid the systematic optimization-driven stacking we had in 3e or the expectation of stacking built into the system we had in 4e.It's probably fair to say that it is a significant factor that synergizes unexpectedly/excessively with other aspects of the system that, themselves, might also be problematic in other combos.  The more optional rules you add, the more of that there's likely to be.  Feats or magic items might cause you some issues, both could cause you signficianly more if they happen to feed on eachother like that.  As a DM, you can use that to your advantage to correct a problem you see in your campaign - if the archer in your game is languishing, opening up Sharpshooter and giving him a magic bow may propel him to MVP some of the time, and it's all good.  One of the problems with looking for signs of brokeness in the details of individual feats is that there's a lot of brokeness in D&D as a matter of course.  Because it's D&D.  It's complex and, as an RPG, it gives players a lot of options, even if one edition may not give a not a lot of mechanical options relative to another, the range of things players might decide to do is open-ended in any RPG.  One element of the game might be more powerful than other seemingly-equally-valued altneratives, but that doesn't mean it can't be used by a player or a DM to counter something else with the same or opposite problem.Nod.  And, it's also a red flag because /any/ static damage bonus is cause for concern a system that has a lot of multi-attacking, which 5e certainly does, quite a few classes having Extra Attack feature, and there being other options to allow bonus action attacks.Seems straightforward.  The possible solutions, on opposite extremes, of not using feats (or banning those specific feats) on the one hand and adding similar feats for other weapon groups (or making a -5/+10 'reckless attack' option universally available), seem pretty straightforward, too.So the majority of PC options /are/spellcasters, it's not a trivial possibility.  If it means the feat goes from letting a PC in one campaign dominate, to letting a similar PC in a different campaign keep up - it changes everything.  For that campaign.</blockquote>

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