I agree with FrogReaver's objections to Hussar's characterizations of what constitutes "tough". However I agree with Hussar that feats do increase the number of ways you can increase the toughness of a character, and thus
increase options, not decrease them.
Basically, you can have a tough character without feats. However you can have more
types of tough characters
with feats.
lowkey said:
Second, what some argue is that choice constrains. Think of this in terms of an adjective (as in, an actual adjective). You would say that adjectives are awesome! Adjectives make nouns pop! It's not just a car, it's a RED car.
But an adjective, by definition, is a word that limits a noun. A car can be any type of car, but once you adjective it, you have limited it. A RED car cannot be green; a BIG RED car cannot be a small yellow car, and so on. The more choice points you have, the more limited your options. Because you are defining it in the rules. Now, that's not a bad thing (just like using adjectives isn't a bad thing), but it's real enough that this debate has existed since D&D has existed (as I wrote at the beginning, I remember people arguing about the Thief's abilities, and I'm sure there are antecedent arguments).
That is not limiting options; that is increasing specificity. The options are still there, you've just selected a certain subset of them so as to differentiate between "a car" and "
that car".
FrogReaver said:
A few observations:
Customers that want a high quality paint job get more options with shop 1 as they have leftover resources they can do other things with
Customers that that go to shop 2 get more options with shop 2 but no comparable options to what getting the paint job at shop 1 allows
You really are horrible with analogies. Or maybe you work for an ISP's marketing department.
The
cost of an option is an entirely separate factor from the option itself, and in the case of feats or stat increases, that cost is always the same (which is why we can ignore it for the purposes of these discussions). Thus, you introducing cost into your comparison as an extra differentiator simply means that your analogy is too far removed from the original case to be at all useful, and doesn't help the discussion.
The issues of cost and value are issues of game balance. If the feats are properly balanced, then they implicitly have the same value as a stat increase. If their value falls too far above or below the value of a stat increase, then they are considered unbalanced (broken or junk). While there are a few unbalanced feats, they are being ignored for this discussion because they introduce extra problems into the evaluation, and that's not the point of this discussion anyway.
All feats are assumed to be balanced for the purpose of this issue, and the specific examples (Tough or Durable) chosen are not considered unbalanced, so they don't get in the way of the actual argument.
FrogReaver said:
In D&D terms.
Modeling a very tough character requires less resources in a game without feats than it does in a game with feats. As such the player in the featless game has more remaining resources to spend on things.
A game with feats provides more options up front but because it now takes more resources to create a very tough character then said tough character end up with less options and no comparable options to the very tough character in the featless game.
Partly right, partly wrong.
Modeling a tough character does require less resources in a game without feats than one with feats. But that's because you're dealing with — if I can use my own analogy —
lower resolution. Without feats, you have a blurry or blocky picture of what the character looks like. With feats, you have a more refined picture — higher resolution — because you can be more precise in what each bit
means.
For example, I can have a high Con character. Or I can have a high Con character with the Tough feat. Or I can have a high Con character with the Durable feat. I'll say that they all started from 14 Con, and now the pure Con has 16, the Tough still has 14, and the Durable has 15.
There is no difference between my high Con character and the next high Con character. Thus, what that high Con
means is blurry and a bit abstract. However he has higher saves, and more hit points, and slightly better HP recovery than a character that did not raise Con.
My character with Tough has a few more hit points than the character that simply has more Con. That means he can last in a fight a bit longer, although he's slightly more susceptible to attacks that require Con saves.
My character with Durable can recover from the fatigue of combat more quickly, and handle more fights per day. And if the starting Con had been odd, he'd also have increased his save bonus, just like the pure Con increase.
All three of those characters are 'tough', but they are tough in different ways. One can last longer in each fight; one can handle more fights per day; and one is better at resisting damage that targets Con while also getting a bit of the benefit of what the feats provide.
If you did not have the option of feats, simply raising Con would give you a little bit of all three options. In increases the save score, it increases your hit points, and it increases how much a hit die will help you recover by 1 point. The feats simply allow you to focus more on one aspect or another of those features, so that you can be much better at increasing hit points, or much better at recovering hit points using hit dice, while possibly sacrificing the +1 to your Con save.
This increases your choices because there are more types of characters that can be described by having those extra options. Or rather, those types of characters can be described more clearly, and thus you have a "higher resolution" view of exactly how that character concept of 'tough' manifests.
So, in summary:
I agree with Hussar that having feats increases the ability to realize his character concept with more precision than otherwise would be available. I do
not agree that he cannot realize his character concept without feats, only that such an approach is not as exact.
I do not agree with FrogReaver that having feats reduces choices. I do agree that the lack of feats does not prevent you from realizing a character concept, though it will likely be a bit rougher than what feats allow you to define (though how the DM handles things also affects the results).
