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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 5838850" data-attributes="member: 1465">To that premise, I certainly agree, although I mean this in terms of not having to rely on feats as long as you don't want your e.g. fighting style to develop to mastery compared to what other characters of the same level do. If you want to get that advantage, I think a price to pay is necessary.Feats are (since their introduction in 3ed) simply pure modularity for character design. They cannot be out of 5ed, although their exact form or name doesn't have to be the same as in previous editions. If you don't have a system like feats, you are forced to have more rules available to everyone by default (imagine e.g. 3ed Power Attack and similar combat feats turned into combat actions that everyone can do). This is still fine, a little more complexity in the game but if the group can take it then no problem. However in such a case you are making the options available to everyone, so you cannot push those options up in power unless you have other options that do the same for other character archetypes and classes; e.g. if you "give" all combat tactics feats for free by making them combat actions instead of feats, that's going to be benefit only the fighting-types, so you should compensate the others for example by turning all metamagic feats into standard casting options. More complexity and more potential balance problems. I do think it can work if the players are good... but feats are a safer system as a default.---Another example, what do you suggest to do with racial archetypes, the elvish elf and dwarfy dwarf? Racial feats would mean that player #1 who wants more "elvish-looking powers" will choose a few racial feats, while player #2 who still plays an elf but is fine with the starting abilities will invest his feats in something else. Now take away racial feats. How are you going to grant extra elvish stuff to player #1? You will other grant them for free by default, in which case player #2 would be a fool not to get them too but then player #1 will feel like he's not really "more elvish" than the other elves in the game, and you're back to square 1. OR you will introduce a new mechanic for racial extras (that can eventually be exchanged with something else but guess what...?) and in this case you'll have one more mechanic in the game, when you could have just used the same mechanic you already have for other stuff and is intrinsecally flexible, i.e. feats.-----------EDIT: I also want to point out that feats are superbly flexible with their modularity: you can totally choose how many (regular) feats each PC should have, and whatever the choice the game maintains balance across the characters. Think that 1 feat every 3 levels is too little? Grant them 2 every 3 levels, once per level, or even 2/level. Hate feats? Grants zero (regular) feats to everyone. Heck, you can even grant feats as treasure, e.g. to reward the players for accomplishing some pretty neat target in the campaign. The only problem is if some specific class uses feats already for balancing against the others (mostly Fighter, Wizard and Rogue in 3ed). That makes this customization process less neat, because clearly you can't ignore also the fighter bonus feats, and if you grant more feats to everyone then in proportion this is still a lesser benefit for fighters. So this is the only thing I hope 5e won't do... use bonus feats to balance classes against each other.</blockquote>

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