Feats and the "Awesome!" Factor

[Campbell]

It's largely about the design space assigned to the different subsystems. Powers represent abilities that require active action and due to their costs (both in terms of the action economy and daily and encounter limitations) they get more impressive effects. Feats, on the other hand are used to represent passive abilities so their effects tend to have less oomph. Whereas in 3e feats tended to occupy both design spaces for more martially inclined characters.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Ok, I understand there should be abilities comparable to skill training. I think skill training still provide you a significant characterization (+5 to a skill sets you reasonably above the performance level of an untrained character) whereas Weapon Focus (Light Blades) hardly makes you clearly better at fighting with daggers and rapiers than anyone else (a single +5 bonus once per encounter would, for instance). But I can agree with your point, anyway.

The idea is that those little mechanical bits provide a counterbalance to the extra abilities you get from the "cooler" feats.

For example, multiclassing my rogue into ranger with the Warrior of the Wild feat lets me do +1d6 damage for up to 2 rounds each combat. If there wasn't a feat like Weapon Focus, every single min-maxer who played a rogue would take that feat just for the added damage, ignoring the flavor implications.

We may actually see the downside of not enough "vanilla" feats in action: since there aren't a whole lot of good heroic feats for spellcasters, particularly clerics, we may end up with a lot of clerics multiclassed and wearing plate armor, just because they didn't have anything better to spend their feats on.

 

[Family]

There is no charge for awesomeness.