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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jacob Lewis" data-source="post: 5460314" data-attributes="member: 6667921">Now THERE is an interesting thought. Could you run a 4e game without feats? I think you probably could. You might need to scale down the opposition, but unless someone actually played an entire campaign through every level more than once we could only speculate on its impact. Question is, would anyone want to?I think feats were originally a good idea until they became marketable nuggets of crunch that players could eat up. But don't blame the publishers; blame the gluttonous masses always clamoring for more. Profitable publishers will always give in to whatever the public demands to ensure they stay profitable. Its a short-sighted strategy but let's not get into that right now.If you think back to 2e, we saw one of the earliest inceptions of feats in the game system emerge from the various Player's Options books. I don't remember the specifics of it (and I'm not going to dig them out of my garage right now) but the variant rules added another level of customization to allow personalizing the standard options for all character classes, races, and combat tactics. Players could change or enhance the basic, standard features and abilities for their individual characters, making them unique. That's essentially what feats offer now. The only difference is they are now part of the core mechanics rather than an option. But as suggested before, I don't see why you couldn't make a few adjustments in the encounters and play the game without them.Going back to first and basic editions, things were even simpler. You just picked your character's class, race, assigned random stats, and personalized him with equipment and spell choices. There's a certain attractiveness in its simplicity and straightforwardness that some of us remember fondly, but when it comes down to it, I guess its simply a matter of preference. Too bad there aren't more current options for both.Personally, I like feats. But I don't believe there's a need to have so many of them continuously pushed out, nor do I think most of them need to exist. They're easy enough to make, obviously. But that doesn't mean the game is going to stagnate unless we receive less than 50 new ones a month, right?Anyway, I think feats are a great addition to the game. But with the sheer number of them out there now, I long for simpler days when players didn't feel like they need to spend hours combing through all the options and weigh the value of one over the next. Decisions like these are supposed to be fun and easy to make, not labored over and argued about. And that, my friend, is the real failing in all of this. (IMO)</blockquote>

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