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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Transformer" data-source="post: 5838501" data-attributes="member: 70008">I’ve seen a lot of fighting about skills, but not much about feats as such. That scares me because I tremble for the fate of feats in D&D Next much more than for the fate of skills.Basically, I like feats. Putting all manner of little extra abilities in a special class of their own, where they can be easily searched for and picked up by any character, and balanced against one another, is a fine idea. But damn do I hate me a lot of feats in 3e and 4th.There’s a lot of things I don’t want to see within 100 miles of the feat system, things I think most people can agree to hate. No feat taxes. Please lord no feat taxes. +1 to attack? 1000 years in purgatory to whoever designs such a feat. The math should--must--work from day 1, but even if it doesn’t, I would rather see it stay broken than have a feat tax retroactively inserted into the game in a splatbook or the errata. Second, no trap options. If the balance of a feat is even in question, even a little bit, please Wizards, please, just leave it out. Just chuck it right out the window. Better to lack it completely than have it in there punishing new players or aiding munchkins.But there’s something else I want (or, really, don’t want) from feats in D&D Next, and this is my true reason for making this post. I don’t want the feat system to carry any thematic or mechanical weight at all. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying I don’t want feats to be flavorful and thematic. I want every single feat included in a book to be flavorful and thematic. What I don’t want is for the system to rely on feats to satisfy any character concept, or archetype, or fighting style.Again and again I’ve heard suggestions for using the feat system to bear some serious weight for the system. Don’t want races to limit people’s class option too much, but also want people who want really elfish elves, or really dwarfy dwarves, to get what they want? Why, racial feats is the answer, of course! Basic elves just have a few minor racial abilities, but people who want really elfish elves can take a few elfish racial feats! Wizards are going to be vancian? Fine, but some people want ‘at-will’ and ‘encounter’ spells too! The solution? Feats, of course!  Those people can buy at-will and per-encounter ‘spells’ as feats! Or back when 4th edition was in the works: 3rd edition’s multiclassing system has serious flaws? Just make multiclassing a matter of feats! People who want to multiclass can “feat” into other classes! Don’t want a full skill system for simplicity’s sake, but want people to be able to specialize in horseback riding or Olympic diving or pie eating without having to take a particular class or theme? Why, you know the answer: feats, of course! They can take horseback riding extraordinaire as a feat! I know I’ve seen even more examples of this mentality before, this “can’t see exactly how to fit concept x into the system, so use feats feats feats!”To that I say: No no no no no no no no NO NO NO! Do! Not! Want! Please don’t do this, Wizards. I would hate needing to take certain feats to satisfy a basic character concept, or just to gain non-daily resources as a Wizard. Every time I gain a feat, I want to be able to flip through the rulebook to see what looks coolest; I do not want to sit down to make a character and think “well, I want to play a really dwarfish wizard who throws around fire blasts like showers in springtime, but to do that I need to take these 3 dwarven racial feats and these 2 wizard spell feats, so there goes all excitement in feat selection for the next 10 levels…”What I’m saying it, I want to be able to make every type of character imaginable, both in terms of flavor and in terms of mechanics, without having to so much as glance at the feat list. Why? Because I want feats to be extra. I want them to be special. I want them to be little peripheral spheres of awesome. I want to get excited when I look at the feat list. I do not want them to be my basic way of accessing core mechanics and character archetypes. You don't get feats very often: every other level in 4e, less in 3rd. No feat should ever be necessary to my concept; every feat should add something unnecessary but awesome to it.I bring this up because, as I said, I've seen a lot of people (in discussions of other issues) suggest use of the feat system to cover some very basic character details and mechanics (see <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/new-horizons-upcoming-edition-d-d/318938-l-l-putting-vance-vancian-4.html" target="_blank">this</a> thread), but I've only seen a few people say "whoa there, please don't do that, for feats' sake!" I think the issue deserves its own thread.If I had my way, I’d want a very small feat list. I would love, absolutely love, to see only 30 or so feats in the PHB, and only 10 or so in a given splatbook. The 30 (10) best feats anyone at Wizards can come up with, every one of them equally viable and well balanced, every one of them interesting mechanically and thematic, and every one of them totally nonessential to any fundamental character type (If nothing else, a shorter feat list would make building a new character much more pleasant than it was in 3e or 4th, where there’s literally hundreds if not thousands of feats to look through). If I’m gonna see a 3 feat chain that goes “+1 to armor class against one target,” “+2 to armor class against one target,” and “+4 to armor class against one target,” please, just shoot me now. If I see “here’s the 3 feats you need to spend your precious feat slots on if you want to multiclass” I might just crawl into the corner and cry. I suppose I wouldn’t mind a feat that functions as an at-will spell for a wizard ( or a feat that adds a little more elfishness to your elf), as long as that wizard has access to plenty of at-will spells without buying feats; as long as she does not have to spend precious feat slots just to attain the basic archetype of “wizard who can shoot fire all day.” I don’t even want feats to be essential to making a fighter who trips people, or sunders their weapons; or at least, I only want it to cost 1 feat to get good at such things, not a chain of 2-4 feats.Am I being unreasonable here? Does anyone else see the same problem I see, or am I imagining it? Am I just totally bass ackwards? What do you think?</blockquote>

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