D&D 5E Does Your DM Let Everyone Start With A Feat?

[BookTenTiger]

If I were starting up a new campaign, I would have bonus feats at 1st Level, but curated by some kind of extra background... Region, Training, Alliance, something like that.

I like the idea of choosing a bonus feat for each faction. Everyone from X faction gets the Ritual Caster feat, while everyone from Y faction gets Chef. It would be a fun way to bring some rarely-taken feats into the game while creating more connections, or differences, between characters.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

My group enjoys free feats during a campaign, however instead getting one at the start of a campaign we give out birthday feats. When a player has a birthday during the campaign, they get a feat.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's a simple question, with a simple poll: Does your DM let every character in the campaign (regardless of their race, class, or background) start with a free feat at 1st level? Can it be any feat the player wants, or do they have to choose from a list of DM-approved feats? Do you not use feats at all? Vote for the option that best fits your experience.

I'm kicking around the idea of allowing this little house-rule to my upcoming campaign. I just like the extra layer of customization that a 1st level feat brings to the character, especially if the players find a way to work it into their character backstory. But what sounds good in my head might not play well on the tabletop, so I thought I'd solicit input from my fellow gamers. Anybody have any horror stories to tell? Are there any pitfalls I should watch out for?

I started the practice in my group, and now we never make PCs without it unless introducing new players, in which case the extra feat comes in at level 2, usually.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't have a consistent 5e DM, but if I did, I would certainly hope they'd do this. Feats are among the only actually interesting mechanical bits in 5e. As is the case for most games, some feats suck, other feats rock, and most are middling.

Of course, part of my desire for that is that some homebrew I've written, which I would still like to playtest, includes a feat and it'd be nice to have that without having to wait until 4th level to see the feat in action.

 

[tetrasodium]

The poll options didn't seem to fit

Back in the 3.x days I allowed it & would often use it as a way to bait players into anchoring their PC into the world I was running by giving them a bit of early customization. When I first started running 5e I tried lots of ways to give quarter (or better)feats & such I created or chose hoping to do the same but players only ever looked at it as free stuff & immediately ignored any anchoring pretty much any way I did it. Made worse is that there was no wiggle room where I could give magic items that buff something else if a particular PC was too optimized or something as a result because of the simplicity. Because the PCs were all assumed to have no feats no magic items they were already over budget as soon as I gave them anyways but I was still expected to give magic items & such because it's d&d,

I would like to but feats are too powerful after condensing the feat chains & the system assumes no feats in the math. The system being so simplified while also assuming magic items in the math means I don't have any way to massage power imbalance between players with magic items since any magic item is too good & a magic item is either a direct improvement in a PC's main thing or useless trash with no in between..

I'd actually like to try running a 5e game without feats just to see how it goes.

I've done it once figuring I could break up feats to make magic items using one bullet point but there was really only one or two that mattered and everything else was trash.
the characters themselves were less interesting & in retrospect we all decided that it was generally considered a pure negative by both me & the players.

editL I've long banned variant human

 

[James Gasik]

Technically not yet, but this is going to be my rule going forward. Also, I hate V Human as being too good.

 

[Shiroiken]

I've considered creating a list of feats to give out based on race or class, but all of them are the "tier C" feats that no one takes.

 

[Ogre Mage]

A small handful of games I played in did this, but for the large majority only the variant human, custom lineage and their ilk start with a feat.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I have found that the “extra level of customization” of the “starter feat” actually leads to an extra level of sameness as I see the same 5 or 6 clearly superior feats selected over and over in any campaign that does this.

Solution: We need more feats.

Like forget releasing 50 settings a year and give us a book of feats and magic items. No new spells. No new weird thing for the druid to be. No new, desperate attempt to salvage the ranger. Only the good stuff.

 

[iserith]

I don't give out extra feats, if I'm using feats at all in my game. Sometimes I've gated feat access behind faction membership so, if you wanted to get certain feats, you had to join particular factions.