D&D 5E Feat Valuation - A Community Experiment?

[jgsugden]

I thought there might be room for the community to do a little 'Group Think' to help identify what the overall thoughts are on the value of each of the feats. The idea is this:

Similar to the Survivor Threads, each poster will pick one Feat to upvote and another Feat to downvote.

However, unlike the Survivor threads: 1.) Each vote is worth one, 2.) Each Feat starts at 10 points instead of 20, 3.) You can vote once per day, 4.) Each option has a maximum value of 20 and a minim value of 1, and 5.) Your goal is not to pick your favorite, but to pick which feat is most overvalued, and which is most undervalued at their current score.

So, if I were going first, I'd start with the entire list of 90 official feats which would all be scored as a 10. Then I'd pick the weakest feat and give it a downvote and the strongest feat and give it an upvote. Let's say I thought Lightly Armored was the worst and Sharshooter the best. I'd downvote Linguist and upvote Sharpshooter. The next person to go might agree with me that Sharpshooter is the best feat, but because it is now an 11 and all the other feats are at 10 or less, they might think another feat, perhaps Great Weapon Master, is more undervalued than Sharshooter and they might pick that feat to upvote. Meanwhile, they might also think Lighlt Armored is the worst feat, but as it is a 9, they might decide there are other feats that are more overrated at a 10 that should be downvoted before Lightly Armored is downvoted again.

The idea is that after a while we'll get to a community view of valuation of feats.

Before we can do it, however, we have to figure out a few things, including how to consistently define value. For these purposes, I'd propose it would be how impactful it would be on a campaign. That impact could be that it unbalances combat. However, it might also be that it creates a dynamic roleplaying situation that alters any campaign.

Before we begin, though, I'd want to think of the best way to house and maintain this voting structure. Unlike a Survivor thread, it could be perpetual and live forever. That is a bit much to ask from Enworld, I believe. So, this thread would be a place to figure out if there is interest in this idea, figure out how to reasonably execute it, and perhaps discuss modifications that would improve the process.

Thoughts? Is this worthwhile or pointless?

 

[Stalker0]

The survivor threads are fun, but are not a serious look at a person's valuation of a feat, just more personal feel and opinion.

Realistically this is what a poll is for, sure its a hell of a long poll (probably would need to break it up into 2-3 threads), but you make a 1 to 5 scale or 1 to 10 scale, put in a poll, everyone votes.

Its not perfect of course but that's a reasonable way to get a window into what Enworld thinks about certain feats.
Now of course, you need to be specific about what the scale means. Does a 10 mean I always take the feat, or does it mean I think its the "strongest" feat in the game? Does a 10 mean its perfectly balanced, or does a 10 mean its so incredibly OP I never allow it in a game? That kind of thing.

 

[jgsugden]

The problem I'd see with a poll would be: Do you do one for each feat? And if you did it over time, even introducing one new poll each day, many less focused upon feats would fall out of the public eye and stop receiving votes before others. This would potentiallysignificantly bias results.

 

[Smackpixi]

Break the feats down into groups of 15 or 20. It’s not possible for people to have a coherent sense of 90 things simultaneously. People are going to get real pedantic about the inability to compare combat and non-combat, caster and martial, etc. so head them off in your initial groupings.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i wouldn't start in survivor format, first i'd figure out some generic categories something like martial, magic, utility, social and misc and let people nominate a shortlist of the best, worst and most overlooked for each category and then after 3-5 days of nominations survivor on those.

 

[J-H]

A forum poll is probably not the best way to do this.
I'd go for a longer survey that lists all of the feats (preferably with a summary to help voters remember accurately), with the ability to use radio buttons to rate each feat on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 being best and 1 being worst.

Once you have a few hundred sets of votes, you'll get a good idea of what has the highest average scores, lowest, and where the biggest splits (controversy) are.

 

[jgsugden]

Break the feats down into groups of 15 or 20. It’s not possible for people to have a coherent sense of 90 things simultaneously. People are going to get real pedantic about the inability to compare combat and non-combat, caster and martial, etc. so head them off in your initial groupings.

The idea of the design is that they're only finding the one most underrater and most overrated based upon current rankings. I don't think they need to have a coherent sense of all 90 ... just the ones that astand out as really out of place to them.

I could just start everything with a headstart (moving some of the most often discussed/highly rated feats up and others known to be weak or underutilized down).