D&D (2024) Feat Levels vs Feat Chains

[Stalker0]

I know a lot of people like the concept of feat chains, but I have always hated them. It just felt like justification for a bad feat because it was a prereq for a good one, and it severely limits customization. I think this is an even bigger problem in 5e when feats are so limited, the vast majority of players (that play to about 8-11th level) will only ever get 3 feats for a character (4 for a human), and that's assuming no ability score boosts. So even a single feat chain basically dictates your characters' entire feat choice.

I think feat levels are a far superior option. You can make penultimate feats that require level 8, and then the player can decide how to get there. If they want to make a chain of similar feats to be the ultimate in X, fine. If they want the cool 8th level feat but also do some other stuff, fine. It also removes the imbalance that humans can bring into the mix, where the right chain means that humans get a major power boost over the competitive.

So I think that with the arrival of feat levels, feat chains are obsolete. The levels are simply a superior mechanic....as long as they are used well. I think the vast majority of feats should be level 1 or 4....with only a handful of "truly powerful ones" being 8th....even 12th feels a bit too long for most feats to come online.

Thoughts?

 

[glass]

I would not rule out feat chains entirely: They are reasonable where the second feat builds directly off the effect of the first, and and the combined effect is genuinely worth two feats (although the latter is an extremely high bar to clear in 5e in particular, with feats being fewer in number and competing with ASIs). That said, I am not a fan of 3e-style feats where some feats had irrelevant and crappy feats as prereqs in the name of balance (even though they often had the opposite effect).

So in short, I mostly agree with you, but not entirely.

 

[Stalker0]

I would not rule out feat chains entirely: They are reasonable where the second feat builds directly off the effect of the first, and and the combined effect is genuinely worth two feats (although the latter is an extremely high bar to clear in 5e in particular, with feats being fewer in number and competing with ASIs). That said, I am not a fan of 3e-style feats where some feats had irrelevant and crappy feats as prereqs in the name of balance (even though they often had the opposite effect).

So in short, I mostly agree with you, but not entirely.

I would argue in this case, a scaling feat is more useful in general. Feat gives X ability, X+Y once your prof mod is 4+ or something.

 

[glass]

I would argue in this case, a scaling feat is more useful in general. Feat gives X ability, X+Y once your prof mod is 4+ or something.

That's fair, especially given which forum we are in. There is a use-case for them in a system that is more generous with feats slots and less generous with the effects of each individual feat, but O5e is not that and the revision is unlikely to make it that.

 

[tetrasodium]

I know a lot of people like the concept of feat chains, but I have always hated them. It just felt like justification for a bad feat because it was a prereq for a good one, and it severely limits customization. I think this is an even bigger problem in 5e when feats are so limited, the vast majority of players (that play to about 8-11th level) will only ever get 3 feats for a character (4 for a human), and that's assuming no ability score boosts. So even a single feat chain basically dictates your characters' entire feat choice.

I think feat levels are a far superior option. You can make penultimate feats that require level 8, and then the player can decide how to get there. If they want to make a chain of similar feats to be the ultimate in X, fine. If they want the cool 8th level feat but also do some other stuff, fine. It also removes the imbalance that humans can bring into the mix, where the right chain means that humans get a major power boost over the competitive.

So I think that with the arrival of feat levels, feat chains are obsolete. The levels are simply a superior mechanic....as long as they are used well. I think the vast majority of feats should be level 1 or 4....with only a handful of "truly powerful ones" being 8th....even 12th feels a bit too long for most feats to come online.

Thoughts?

I think that feats having level requirements is different than feats having prerequisite chains, both are important tools that should be used where relevant. It's sometimes ok if a feat is very powerful in the hands of a highly siloed idiot savant do one thing character who bit off a serious opportunity cost into doing that thing till they had created a cost that makes the math for the powerful feat worthwhile. That's not so true when a player simply chooses the best whatever till they can simply chose the broken powerful feat.

Sharpshooter is a good example where the distinction could be important simply saying that a pc needs to be x level before they can take it is rarely good enough because setting x to a level in late tier3/tier4 pretty much just admits the feat is too good & can't be used at the levels regularly played. If instead a player needed to take naturalist* + elven accuracy + weapon focus:longbow > sharpshooter then the benefits that come with sharpshooter start looking reasonable because the character is specialized in whatever comes with naturalist plus two solid but niche feats with all of them focused on the same niche as sharpshooter being able to shoot through cover

That's not to say I think sharpshooter should be in 5.5 just that it makes a good example of a borked feat with a few theme relevant feats from 5e & past editions.

*I don't know if naturalist was ever a feat, I just put in something for filler that could maybe be a decent level 1 feat

 

[Li Shenron]

Ultimately, I like neither... but that depends on how big or small are feats in a specific edition or ruleset (whatever they're called outside of D&D).

The idea of 5e was that feats are supposed to be a big deal, so each feat should really make a difference. The high-complexity feats grant therefore many benefits (low-complexity feats exist alongside, so as to allow different degrees of complexity to different players at the same table, which is a very solid principle IMO) and effectively work as mini-themes for your PC. Within such a framework, I think it is way better to design all feats as balanced as possible with each other, and retain more or less similar usefulness at all levels, so no level-restricted feats is the best for me. And it's also better not to chain feats together, so as to avoid characters having to take some feats they're not interested into.

I would make an exception however, for feats that granted spellcasting. In that case, a chain with later feats granting higher-level spells makes some sense to me, especially if the chain is used to emulate a sort of "multiclassing light". So I would not have problems with Magic Initiate having follow-up feats that granted a spell of a higher level than the previous. In DnDNext playtest we had a chain of 3 feats like that, so a character could earn up to a 3rd level spell by taking all 3 feats, but only the first made it into the PHB.

Other editions are a different matter though... in 3e feats were smaller and more abundant per character. Somehow feat chains made a bit more sense, but still I was never particularly comfortable with the different degrees of value between the early and the late feat in a chain. Generally speaking, I always found the idea of "suck early to rule later" (in this case waste a feat now to get a broken feat later) absolutely horrible, especially since not everyone starts the game from 1st level all the time. So even in that case, I'd still want all feats more or less equally valuable, and that should mean no need for a minimum level.

 

[Art Waring]

I've toyed with various kinds of feat mechanics, from grouped feats, that provide small but cumulative bonuses or abilities as you acquire more of them, to chain feats that augment each feat in the chain, but they are all a bit over-complicated.

Level based feats work in a variety of ways, I find them useful to gauge how powerful a feat should be.

Chain feats are a bit limiting, but they can have uses beyond their original design space.

 

[Mephista]

I suspect the level requirements are just going to be based on the tiers. 1-4, 5-10, 11-16, 17+.

Kind of like 4e divided things into heroic, paragon, epic. And it's not like 4e didn't have feat chains.

Heck. Wouldn't be surprised if Magic Initiate had a new version each bracket, each relying on the previous

 

[Umbran]

Thoughts?

In 5e, in which feats are pretty rare, it seems to me that the old feat chains would mostly be better translated as a series of subclass abilities.

 

[Stalker0]

I think that feats having level requirements is different than feats having prerequisite chains, both are important tools that should be used where relevant. It's sometimes ok if a feat is very powerful in the hands of a highly siloed idiot savant do one thing character who bit off a serious opportunity cost into doing that thing till they had created a cost that makes the math for the powerful feat worthwhile. That's not so true when a player simply chooses the best whatever till they can simply chose the broken powerful feat.

Sharpshooter is a good example where the distinction could be important simply saying that a pc needs to be x level before they can take it is rarely good enough because setting x to a level in late tier3/tier4 pretty much just admits the feat is too good & can't be used at the levels regularly played. If instead a player needed to take naturalist* + elven accuracy + weapon focus:longbow > sharpshooter then the benefits that come with sharpshooter start looking reasonable because the character is specialized in whatever comes with naturalist plus two solid but niche feats with all of them focused on the same niche as sharpshooter being able to shoot through cover

That's not to say I think sharpshooter should be in 5.5 just that it makes a good example of a borked feat with a few theme relevant feats from 5e & past editions.

*I don't know if naturalist was ever a feat, I just put in something for filler that could maybe be a decent level 1 feat

This seems a good example of a feat that should simply be nerfed....or again given a scaling mechanic so that by the time it hits its godly power its at a tier where that power is just par for the course.

That is much simpler than introducing a feat chain to try and balance it.