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<blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 7356855" data-attributes="member: 57112">The basic paradox of creativity is that defined limits have a much greater tendency to enhance creativity than decrease it.That's not universal, and I think there are definitely extremes possible where that can be the case. But if you give the typical player one of two statements:&quot;You can do anything you can think of!&quot;vs.&quot;Here is a list of some of things you can do!&quot;...the typical player's imagination is more likely to be spurred much further along by the latter than the former. Call it analysis paralysis, or blank page syndrome, or whatever. As for feats in general, yeah, a feat (or feat feature) that says you can do something that anybody else should be able to try is probably bad design. I'm not entirely certain Actor qualifies. First off, perfect mimicry is not easy. Even some of the best impressionists don't sound exactly like the person they're impersonating. Trying to fool somebody else who might be familiar with that person/creature noise (which is the only reason I can think of to even try to do this in the first place) shouldn't be as simple as beating an opposed roll. If the Actor feat says you can do it with a simple opposed roll, that gives guidance to me, as a DM, to say that anyone without the feat does so at disadvantage.Of course, that might not even be necessary, considering the second feature of Actor gives the PC advantage on all Charisma (Deception) checks made to pass themselves off as another individual, which applies to basically every relevant use of the third feature I can think of (except maybe the creature noise part if you want to get pedantic, but I can understand why &quot;sound like a non-humanoid creature&quot; should be a bit more difficult than &quot;sound like a specific humanoid&quot;).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 7356855, member: 57112"] The basic paradox of creativity is that defined limits have a much greater tendency to [B][I]enhance[/I][/B] creativity than decrease it. That's not universal, and I think there are definitely extremes possible where that can be the case. But if you give the typical player one of two statements: "You can do anything you can think of!" vs. "Here is a list of some of things you can do!" ...the typical player's imagination is more likely to be spurred much further along by the latter than the former. Call it analysis paralysis, or blank page syndrome, or whatever. As for feats in general, yeah, a feat (or feat feature) that says you can do something that anybody else should be able to try is probably bad design. I'm not entirely certain Actor qualifies. First off, perfect mimicry is not easy. Even some of the best impressionists don't sound [I]exactly[/I] like the person they're impersonating. Trying to fool somebody else who might be familiar with that person/creature noise (which is the only reason I can think of to even try to do this in the first place) shouldn't be as simple as beating an opposed roll. If the Actor feat says you can do it with a simple opposed roll, that gives guidance to me, as a DM, to say that anyone without the feat does so at disadvantage. Of course, that might not even be necessary, considering the second feature of Actor gives the PC advantage on all Charisma (Deception) checks made to pass themselves off as another individual, which applies to basically every relevant use of the third feature I can think of (except maybe the creature noise part if you want to get pedantic, but I can understand why "sound like a non-humanoid creature" should be a bit more difficult than "sound like a specific humanoid"). [/QUOTE]

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