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

[EzekielRaiden]

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.

Only caveat: We need more good feats.

5e has a fair number of feats right now. Most of them are not very good. They provide minor or incidental bonuses that require the DM to lean into making them worthwhile, otherwise there's no real need to take them. The few which rise above this mediocrity are generally very good, and thus get snapped up quickly, and thus have a "bad" reputation (exclusively among DMs, who are for some reason incredibly touchy about this issue). Stuff like Elven Accuracy, Sharpshooter, Pole Arm Master, etc.

If more feats were of similar impact and benefit as Elven Accuracy, you can bet your britches the pool of feats people take frequently would be equivalently expanded.

Edit: As it is, 5e has somewhere around 80 official feats. Of them, I'd say about half are mediocre to actively bad, and generally not even worth thinking about for most characters in most games (examples: Dual Wielder, the armor proficiency feats, Linguist, Slasher, etc.) Of the remainder, about half are good to great, and the other half are passable, potentially useful for some characters or some tables but generally not that good.

 

[Rune]

These days I replace the pretty terrible (and in my experience, forgettable) inspiration mechanic with a free Lucky feat* for everyone at first level. This solves three problems for me.

First, not having to grade my players’ role-playing as is expected by the inspiration rules. As a DM, that nonsense is not my job! I have more important things to focus on while I’m at the table!

Second, I’ve found that Lucky tends to be a bit of a feat-tax. At least for the optimizers. Giving it out for free makes that a non-issue.

Third, I don’t balance encounters. The Lucky feat makes survivability much easier for the PCs in low tiers (when that’s more of an issue) but never becomes useless even at high tiers.


* I do prefer a houseruled version that refreshes per session instead of in-game days for ease of book-keeping. With possibly other variations dependent on the intended feel of the campaign.

 

[delericho]

I'm the DM. I don't give out free feats, though people are free to use them (either as variant human or as part of levelling). Thus far, only one player has ever taken a feat, once.

 

[Horwath]

I love that rule and most DMs also.

However, there is some limits for "bonus" feat.

Banned from the list:

GWM,
PAM,
SS,
CE,
HAM,
Lucky,
Alert,
Mobile,

those feats are worthy to compete with +2 ASI so they should wait till 4th level.

Also one of latest UA's gave 2 bonus feats(1st and 4th level), so we might calculate that into house rules also, or expected rules for 2024 "rebalancing".

 

[Horwath]

I did it once, but like Burnside said, it didn't wind up as all that interesting. I think if I try it again, I'll make a list of feats that I never see in play, and only allow those ones. "Hey, they're free!"

good idea.

Every racial feat, UA's skill feats and every feat that gives skills, tool, languages and skulker+dungeon expert as one feat.

 

[James Gasik]

The one time I played a V Human, I chose Heavy Armor Mastery. The damage reduction felt broken as hell in Tier 1, and remained useful into Tier 2. I know it doesn't feel like a "power" Feat, but I could see the effectiveness difference, especially during an early fight that was supposed to result in our party being taken prisoner, and me managing to stay up for several rounds even after I was the last man standing.

It was at that point I realized that either everyone should have a feat at level one, or no one should, which is why I banned V Human.

After awhile though, I realized that was only half the equation. Characters don't get enough Feats, and even if a few would be dramatically better at first level than others, if everyone has a bonus Feat, then at least the party members have a chance to be balanced against one another.

I'm not too worried about having to adjust monsters, since, well, they were presumably made without taking Feats into account in the first place.

 

[Bolares]

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.

Funny, that my experience was the complete opposite. I've been doing free feats for a long time now, because all my players have played 5e before and get kind of bored in low levels. I give no restrictions, and in my experience, the free feat allows them to chose feat the are "not worth" the lost ASI every 4 levels. Most of my players get feats that make sence with their characters and help the build they are going for. I've never had the "problem" of everyone chosing the same powerful feats over and over.

I think it will all depend on who your players are.

 

[Stormonu]

To those allowing curated feats, care to give us a list?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

To those allowing curated feats, care to give us a list?

My suggested list, if you want to be certain to avoid any of the "powerful" feats (as well as any racial feats), would be:

Actor, Athlete, Chef, Dungeon Delver, Fighting Initiate, Grappler, Healer, Inspiring Leader, Keen Mind, Linguist, Mobile, Observant, Poisoner, Ritual Caster (anything except Wizard), Skill Expert, Skilled, Tavern Brawler, Telekinetic, Telepathic.

Most racial feats are also fine, but some (like Elven Accuracy) are not. So I'd say allow them on a case-by-case basis...which won't be too far off from "if it's a racial feat and isn't Elven Accuracy, it's probably fine."

 

[ART!]

These days I replace the pretty terrible (and in my experience, forgettable) inspiration mechanic with a free Lucky feat* for everyone at first level. This solves three problems for me.

First, not having to grade my players’ role-playing as is expected by the inspiration rules. As a DM, that nonsense is not my job! I have more important things to focus on while I’m at the table!

Second, I’ve found that Lucky tends to be a bit of a feat-tax. At least for the optimizers. Giving it out for free makes that a non-issue.

Third, I don’t balance encounters. The Lucky feat makes survivability much easier for the PCs in low tiers (when that’s more of an issue) but never becomes useless even at high tiers.


* I do prefer a houseruled version that refreshes per session instead of in-game days for ease of book-keeping. With possibly other variations dependent on the intended feel of the campaign.

This is pretty great, I have to say.

I thoroughly agree with the frustration of having to decide which roleplaying gets an Inspiration and which doesn't. I get decision exhaustion pretty easily, so tracking that is right out for me.

I also dislike balancing encounters. Maybe it's the decision-making thing affecting this, too, but I just kind of eye-ball things and go with it, trusting my experience and sense of how tough or long a fight feels right.

So, I might start using this approach myself!