It is just a gift. If a grateful Genie offered each PC the ability to do one of 4 things(feats) as a reward, I don't think we'd be hearing this complaint. It's just a gift/reward/extra.
Cool. So then you don't want any treasure after character creation, because if you'd known you'd have gotten those items, you'd have made a different character?
And for me, I find such things...well, pretty frustrating. Because there's the clear implication "you should use this, I gave it to you, it's for you to have fun with, why aren't you using it?" But if you have a Barbarian with GWF...that flaming longsword may not even outpace the mundane greatsword!* Like, it's seriously in a spot where sticking with the sword you already have may be simply better. And since it's very unlikely that no one else in the party cares about flaming longswords...it's gonna go to someone else, even if it's been six months since I last got anything neat.
Firstly: Your snide tone isn't helpful. At all. It is, in fact, very likely to result in cross words exchanged. Being respectful of others is in the rules. Maybe give it a shot, instead of doing what you did here.
I apologize for the tone.
...but a barbarian can use a flaming longsword, right? They're just choosing not to because it's not optimal.
Hard to say, a lot would depend on context, but probably not? That sounds, to me, like a reward after a significant adventure, even if it's the party's first, and there's no impetus (as noted above) to prevent making certain kinds of disapproved choices. It instead feels (because much of this is an emotional response, not a logical one) like a genie doing what he or she can within the scope of her or his abilities.
It's not just not optimal. It's literally less good. That's my point. Why would you choose to use something that is (at least for some example situations) actually worse?
Because for other example situations it's very much better. If your greatsword is normal, that flaming sword is going to be doing more damage to creatures that need to be hit by magic weapons to take full damage.
My point is that "less good" is not the same thing as useless or unwanted. I can think of situations where the barbarian might reach for that flaming longsword instead of her greataxe.
Yeah, I agree. This is why I'm leaning toward allowing short list of about 6-12 specific feats, instead of allowing 1st level characters to choose any feat they wish. The feats I'm talking about are the ones that nobody ever takes because they aren't worth the +2 ASI cost. (That's why I'm giving them away for free!)
No worries there; we're all honest enough with ourselves to freely admit that.
True, not every bit of loot is going to perfectly align with what the player wants for their character and that’s fine, but feats to my understanding are viewed as much more of a character customisation feature, they’re inherent, so when the GM starts interfering with that it provokes a more emotional response as it’s generally agreed that a GM doesn’t interfere with CC except in a few situations like having a few ground rules ‘I don’t allow dwarves and halflings in my world’ or ‘X subclass/ability/ect is banned at my table’ or perhaps later in the game approaching the player to discuss ‘hey i was thinking that it would be interesting and thematic if X happened to your character given what happened last session’ or ‘your character is really powerful and throwing off all my encounters/puzzles, could we discuss making some adjustments to them?’
I think it’s more that the character gen feat, at least in this situation, is intended to be more of a thing to enhance character flavour rather than mechanical effectiveness, but because feats are so thin on the ground and compete with ASI’s players will 90% of the time go for optimisation over the more narratively apt choices for their characters
