Excising, Severely Limiting, or Strictly Organizing Feats

[Ratskinner]

Yes. Let those who want to use feats to tweak the fine points of their character use them, but let me play the game without feats (without putting myself at a disadvantage).

When I built a knight PC in 4e Essentials, the feats I took were all power ups: bastard sword proficiency, heavy blade expertise, heavy blade strike, and melee training (con). I suppose I could have taken linguistics, but the non-combat-optimization feat options are few and far between, and that would come at the cost of reduced combat efficacy.

So that's another element - maybe all combat and non-combat feats should be siloed, for example having the combat stuff handled within the class and non-combat stuff in feats.

Sometimes I think the feat system was used to "fix" the fact that Fighter (and some other classes as well) are far too broadly defined. That leads to problem you describe. Unfortunately, the feat system as 3&4 had it encourages designers to write interesting feats for those classes that aren't broadly defined as well. Which then (in 3e, anyway) leads to them being over powered.

It leads me to think that they should/could go one of two ways:

The first way is to have two/three really broad classes: Fighter and Caster. All other character differences are defined by choices within those classes, or by feats. (True20 does this, but adds Expert (Skillmonkey) as a third choice.)

The second way is to have a zillion classes (perhaps subclasses) and free-wheeling multiclassing to allow players to get to the character they want. So Fighters would be out, but in his place you find Barbarian, Swashbuckler, Duelist, Archer, Landsknecht, Assassin, Wrestler, Brave, etc.... Wizard would be out as well, replaced by Diviner, Enchanter, Earthbender, Illusionist, etc. Within each, you could have a small number of choices as well.

I'm not sure which way I would prefer, though I lean toward the second. However, I fear that history may trap WOTC. Fighter is such an iconic idea within D&D, but so is Wizard.

 

[Ratskinner]

I'd like to see feats with a restriction that says - 'you may only apply one feat to an action or defense per occurance'.

And no generic + to every action in a category feats.

No stacking of feats period.

Nowadays I'm feeling like feats should be as power-neutral as possible. They should add options and flavor, rather than power...go sideways, but never up.

 

[Thalionalfirin]

Sometimes I think the feat system was used to "fix" the fact that Fighter (and some other classes as well) are far too broadly defined. That leads to problem you describe. Unfortunately, the feat system as 3&4 had it encourages designers to write interesting feats for those classes that aren't broadly defined as well. Which then (in 3e, anyway) leads to them being over powered.

It leads me to think that they should/could go one of two ways:

The first way is to have two/three really broad classes: Fighter and Caster. All other character differences are defined by choices within those classes, or by feats. (True20 does this, but adds Expert (Skillmonkey) as a third choice.)

The second way is to have a zillion classes (perhaps subclasses) and free-wheeling multiclassing to allow players to get to the character they want. So Fighters would be out, but in his place you find Barbarian, Swashbuckler, Duelist, Archer, Landsknecht, Assassin, Wrestler, Brave, etc.... Wizard would be out as well, replaced by Diviner, Enchanter, Earthbender, Illusionist, etc. Within each, you could have a small number of choices as well.

I'm not sure which way I would prefer, though I lean toward the second. However, I fear that history may trap WOTC. Fighter is such an iconic idea within D&D, but so is Wizard.

What I'd like to see is a variation of the second way.

Rather than have separate classes, you use packages or themes or archtypes or whatever you want to call them. You want to play a swashbuckler? Okay, take fighter (or rogue or whatever) and add the swashbuckler package which gives you abilities A, B, C and D (or however many may make the concept work).

But... give me all that stuff in the beginning so my character can work at level 1!!