D&D 5E Feats: Do you use them? Are they necessary?

[treps]

I started in AD&D2, and back then fighters were pretty reliant on weapon specialization to excel. The feats Sharpshooter/GWM are roughly analogous. Without weapon specialization, fighters lost a lot of their attractiveness in AD&D relative to other classes, and I think the same holds in 5E for feats.

Kits were pretty popular too, and those aren't that different from feats except that kits are less granular.

Weapon specialization in 2E was the way to have an effective warrior but you had to make a choice, at the creation of the character either you specialized in one weapon and gain the bonus attack, bonus to hit and bonus to damages or either you didn't and could use more weapons.
Kits were small class variations, but we used them as guidelines/inspiration to give different flavors to a character class not to make them overpowered.
Before 2E we used to make this kind of things by using common sense, for examples, in my campaigns the player who wanted to play a ranger coming from the sea shore would have different "primary terrain" (as introduced by the Complete Ranger Handbook) than the one coming from mountains...

OTOH feats (and prestige class) in 3E were here to build a character by giving him more power.

Before 3E to have fun and great games we used to play our characters while since 3E players think they have to power-build them...

I think that this also related to the concepts/notions of "balance", "Encounter Levels" or "Challenge Rating" and all this kind of stuff that comes from videogames and encourages using maths at the detriment of roleplaying and common sense...

 

[abirdcall]

My players showed that kind of shift in attitude the *second* their PC got a Feat.

Do they not play their characters differently when they gain other powers from levelling?

Classes have all sorts of special abilities, many much more powerful than feats.

Characters suddenly gain a lot of power when they level, especially when entering a new tier.

The abilities they get at levels 5 and 11 are going to impact them much more than feats.

I don't really understand this reasoning.

 

[redrick]

Hiya!

Nope. Why? Ability score increases are not OPTIONAL, like Feats are.

I've said this in other threads and whatnot back when we were still playtesting 5e. My contention was that I didn't want Feats to have the "...but this one goes to 11..." mentality that most of the Feats from previous versions of the game had. Yes, there were a lot of feats that didn't just grant "bonuses", and those were ones that nobody took...and if you did, chances were that someone you play with or might play with would get all pissy because of "stupid choices for feats...now you suck and my character has to pull up the slack!...grumble-grumble". It's easy to find examples of people verbally attacking other players for "stupid feat choices" all over the place.

How Feats should have worked was a LOT less "+1's", and a lot more "here's something cool you can do, or reduce, or ignore". For example, GWM should drop the -5/+10 and replace it with something "non-pluss'y"...say, give the GWM Reach with it. Or, as I said in my other post, each Feat should have a drawback to using it. So in stead of the -5/+10 as is, leave it in, but add Attacking like this can cause you to lower your defenses, so any attacks against you that round from an opponent in melee with you gets Advantage. But just flat out numbers adjustments? Bad idea...really bad. It encourages min/maxing power-building as players try to give their character every bonus they can via any means they can just to offset that -5. If/when they succeed, it's basically a free +10 to damage. Terrible design if you ask me.




If you use 4d6-L? You do realize that is the default character stat creation method, right? Just checking. And yes, that is how we do it...most of the time.

It wasn't about adjusting strategies. It was a lot more than that. It was a character personality change. Like, up until level 4, the cleric was all about RP'ing that violence should be the last resort, or that a plan of attack should be agreed upon so as to minimize party casualties/damage, etc. But as soon as he got that magical -3 to damage taken...it was all Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! when fighting *anything* that was likely to only do small'ish damage (re: 1d4+1 or 2d4, or 1d6+2, etc). Yes, the tactics could have changed with him offering to go in first to draw attacks, or maybe positioning better so he could take on more than one at a time while protecting the wizard, etc. But it didn't pan out that way. It's like he was a new character.

And before you think of this as an isolated incident...no, it's not. As I said, I saw this phenomenon happen time and time again (usually not *quite* as extreme, but easily noticeable) with my group. Conferring with other DM's here in town and on the net showed me that I wasn't alone in seeing this. Feats are also an either/or thing, despite how the designers wanted it to be. If one player chooses Feats for his character, ALL characters need to start taking Feats or they risk being "one upped" by the guy with the Feats.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

The ability score increase is optional to the player if you are playing with feats. Either take the stat boost or take the feat. The former will make you more effective overall, and the latter will make your much more effective in certain situations. Both are attractive to certain types of players, and even the heavy optimizers will tell you that you should take some ability score increases over the life of your character.

So, if you penalize the character who took the feat, that character has sacrificed one very valuable mechanical benefit for another valuable mechanical benefit, except you're telling that player that you'll just zero it out by specifically targeting and offsetting that benefit.

I think rolling for stats and point buy/standard array are both seen as standard options. And, don't get me wrong. I love rolling for abilities. Personally, I prefer to do it so you can't swap your abilities around. We started doing it that way when I started 5e, but I found that the higher ability scores you got with the rolled stats ended up breaking the feat choice a little bit, and decided to switch to standard array/point buy, and, honestly, it's not bad. I've toyed with a way of rolling for abilities that capped at 15, but, honestly, the results just aren't as good as the standard array. For me, the enjoyment that the players got out of their feats was more important than my love of rolled abilities, so it was an easy choice to make.

-5/+10 is a sacrifice. Yes, that particular number might be over-powered and might be worth reigning in, but I have seen it hurt our GWM fighter as often as help him. Just last session, he used an action surge and made 4 attacks, all in "power mode." Every one of those attacks missed, and every one would have hit if he had just struck normally. It is very nice for taking care of zombies.

Now, that being said, I think it is totally fine to ban feats if you are interested in a game where you want to minimize character sheet complexity in order to keep the game focused on narrative and in-game complexity. That's a great way to play the game and sometimes I wish we could do it that way. Strip out a bunch of character options and say, "the only thing that makes your characters special is how you play them, not how you build them." Of course, I would need to be playing with a group that felt the same way. On the other hand, a lot of players really enjoy the process of building their character and, honestly, it hasn't gotten in the way too much for me as a DM. I think, in this regard, 5e has done a pretty good job at finding a happy medium between fun fiddly bits that people can play with in their character design studio, but not so much that the "build" overshadows the rp.

But, yeah, again, if you and your players would prefer a difference balance and don't care about feats and all that jazz, that's awesome and they're optional for a reason. Personally, as a player, I'd happily play in a no-feats game.

 

[treps]

"the only thing that makes your characters special is how you play them, not how you build them."

That motto should be the introduction of the PHB

 

[pming]

Hiya!

The ability score increase is optional to the player if you are playing with feats. Either take the stat boost or take the feat. The former will make you more effective overall, and the latter will make your much more effective in certain situations. Both are attractive to certain types of players, and even the heavy optimizers will tell you that you should take some ability score increases over the life of your character.

Feats are optional. Assuming a game doesn't use any optional things, when a character hits level 4 they can add +1 to two stats, or +2 to one. This is not "optional". That's the way the game is built. That was my point.

So, if you penalize the character who took the feat, that character has sacrificed one very valuable mechanical benefit for another valuable mechanical benefit, except you're telling that player that you'll just zero it out by specifically targeting and offsetting that benefit.

I'm not penalizing him. I'm forcing the player to choose feats for character reasons...not "power" reasons. The player is free to choose any of the feats that don't just give you "number bonus's"...like Actor, Linguist or Skilled...without second guessing themselves because some other PC in the group took something that boosted their combat capabilities for the second or third time. It "frees up" the player of the Fighter from feeling like he has to take another combat-oriented Feat; he can choose Actor, owing to his characters background of Entertainer and not feel like he "wasted" a Feat.

At any rate, I can totally see a group of people playing a 5e game with random stats and Feats, and having it all work out fine. Unfortuneatly for me, my players don't lean that way. They do try to...and in other, non-D&D games, rules for stuff like this doesn't faze them a bit. We all love Powers & Perils (an *old* RPG made in '83; www.powersandperils.org for the rules). In that game, each character can choose to roll on a "Backgrounds" table. Some of it can be bad, most is a slight benefit, some are really powerful. But you know what? Nobody cares. The game system isn't balanced to begin with; elves, for example, are just outright better than everyone else. That's fine because it ties in with the more classical-fantasy tropes. But D&D isn't like that. D&D has a relatively narrow balancing point for everything, and if someone goes too far over to one side or the other of that point...it can get quite problematic.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm not penalizing him. I'm forcing the player to choose feats for character reasons...not "power" reasons. The player is free to choose any of the feats that don't just give you "number bonus's"...like Actor, Linguist or Skilled...without second guessing themselves because some other PC in the group took something that boosted their combat capabilities for the second or third time. It "frees up" the player of the Fighter from feeling like he has to take another combat-oriented Feat; he can choose Actor, owing to his characters background of Entertainer and not feel like he "wasted" a Feat.

You've said that you have explicitly told your players that you will negate any combat feats, so Heavy Armor Mastery means all monsters will do 3 points extra damage by fiat to cancel out the 3 points of reduced damage. Therefore the net benefit of Heavy Armor Mastery is zero. But the opportunity cost is non-zero, because you haven't said that you will negate the benefits from stat boosts like +2 to ST, which increases your total DPR by approximately 20% as a guesstimate against most foes. Ergo, taking a feat is a net penalty due to opportunity costs. Zero is worse than +1.

Fun factoid: Powers and Perils is the very first RPG I ever played. At the age of five, my friend Brandon told me about the Disintegrate spell, and ran me through a short scenario which started out with me walking along the street and suddenly falling into a pit full of... hydras, I think. And he said I could cast every spell in the book once per day, each.

 

[Taronkov]

I allow them in my game and we have them in the game I'm playing in currently. Our previous game however did not have them. That said I do not think they are necessary but I do prefer them and I know my players do after moving into a game where we have them.

I feel they add unnecessary complication, and in many cases modifiers (crunchy bits). These may shoehorn a character into a niche role (e. g. Polearm Master) which limits the character's flexibility in the future (flexibility being a key feature I enjoy about 5e). I feel this limits my tools as a DM; as an example, I might include a flametongue in the treasure, but because the party fighter took Polearm Master, the item is looked upon as "vendor trash."

I guess my problem with this statement is that I don't see them shoehorning a player into anything. If I've developed my character around using a Polearm(as per your example), it's because I like the polearm and it's the fighting style I've chosen. If you offer me a flametongue I'll likely pass it on to somebody else who can use it and hope for a polearm down the line. Same as if I took a greatsword and there was a magical Battleaxe, unless it's got some major bonus and nobody else can use it, I won't take it. Why? Because it's not who my character is. Sure it's versatile and I can swing for almost the same damage. But I'm a sword fighter, not an axeman. Same if that was reversed. I build a concept and pick equipment because that's what I want and most my players are the same way. Thankfully we don't have a single power gamer in either game we have running right now. Hell, my next build will be a fighter based on a Greek Hoplite, so short sword and spear. Most effective choices for a fighter? Nope. Fun concept to me? Yup. I'll ignore the long sword every time just to fit into my concept. It better be an artifact before I give up my spear or short sword. Otherwise I can stand to be a little down to have more fun with what I personally want to roleplay. If feats let me flesh those idea's out, to my own personally conceived notions, then I want them. That's not less choice, that's more.

 

[MoonSong]

Hiya!



This is one of the reasons why I won't be allowing Feats. As I said in my original post for this thread, as soon as players were allowed to take a feat for their character...their characters attitude and play-style changed. Sometimes drastically. It was reminiscent of Evil alignments. If an evil character is at a distinct disadvantage, where their choices would result in them getting imprisoned, harmed or outright killed...the character will play the 'good guy', Mr.Happy-Fun-Guy, the guy that everyone sees as down to earth and reliable who would never hurt a fly. But as soon as that character gets mutated by a cosmic ray from outer space and can now Fly, lift 10 tonnes, instantly regenerate damage, and control temperatures in a 5km radius....BOOM! They start killing all the people they had to be nice to before, terrorizing everyone else into submission and generally "show their true colours". My players showed that kind of shift in attitude the *second* their PC got a Feat.

This is a problem that I just don't want to deal with or even see in my game. IMHO, a Feat should have Good stuff, and Bad stuff. For example, maybe a character with Heavy Armor Mastery gets all the good stuff, but also has the drawback of taking more damage when not wearing Heavy Armor, as he is trained to lean into certain blows, or turn to position his body to deflect attacks...in stead of avoid them. That's the kind of thing a Feat should be. Give and take. A choice to 'specialize', but at the cost of 'generalization'.

Or I could just say No and be done with it. ... ... Yeah, I think I'll stick with that.

PS: In case you were wondering; in my current World of Generika campaign I am using feats. But I told the players that taking a Feat will only benefit them from a flavour perspective. If they take something that gives them some large mechanical bonus, I will deliberately and happily "up" the monster they are fighting to balance it back down to 0. In short, taking a Feat will never give them much of a mechanical bonus. Ever. However, "narrative bonuses" will be applied aplenty, as needed. So I'd let a Heavy Armor Mastery guy sleep in his armor in certain situations with maybe a DC 15 Con Save to avoid getting a level of Exhaustion. But when fighting that orc warlord? ...the orc warlord does +3 damage above normal when fighting that PC. Why? Uh..."because he's trained to fight guys in Heavy Armor and use it against them". Yeah, that works.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

Hiya!



Nope. Why? Ability score increases are not OPTIONAL, like Feats are.




I've said this in other threads and whatnot back when we were still playtesting 5e. My contention was that I didn't want Feats to have the "...but this one goes to 11..." mentality that most of the Feats from previous versions of the game had. Yes, there were a lot of feats that didn't just grant "bonuses", and those were ones that nobody took...and if you did, chances were that someone you play with or might play with would get all pissy because of "stupid choices for feats...now you suck and my character has to pull up the slack!...grumble-grumble". It's easy to find examples of people verbally attacking other players for "stupid feat choices" all over the place.

How Feats should have worked was a LOT less "+1's", and a lot more "here's something cool you can do, or reduce, or ignore". For example, GWM should drop the -5/+10 and replace it with something "non-pluss'y"...say, give the GWM Reach with it. Or, as I said in my other post, each Feat should have a drawback to using it. So in stead of the -5/+10 as is, leave it in, but add Attacking like this can cause you to lower your defenses, so any attacks against you that round from an opponent in melee with you gets Advantage. But just flat out numbers adjustments? Bad idea...really bad. It encourages min/maxing power-building as players try to give their character every bonus they can via any means they can just to offset that -5. If/when they succeed, it's basically a free +10 to damage. Terrible design if you ask me.




If you use 4d6-L? You do realize that is the default character stat creation method, right? Just checking. And yes, that is how we do it...most of the time.




It wasn't about adjusting strategies. It was a lot more than that. It was a character personality change. Like, up until level 4, the cleric was all about RP'ing that violence should be the last resort, or that a plan of attack should be agreed upon so as to minimize party casualties/damage, etc. But as soon as he got that magical -3 to damage taken...it was all Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! when fighting *anything* that was likely to only do small'ish damage (re: 1d4+1 or 2d4, or 1d6+2, etc). Yes, the tactics could have changed with him offering to go in first to draw attacks, or maybe positioning better so he could take on more than one at a time while protecting the wizard, etc. But it didn't pan out that way. It's like he was a new character.

And before you think of this as an isolated incident...no, it's not. As I said, I saw this phenomenon happen time and time again (usually not *quite* as extreme, but easily noticeable) with my group. Conferring with other DM's here in town and on the net showed me that I wasn't alone in seeing this. Feats are also an either/or thing, despite how the designers wanted it to be. If one player chooses Feats for his character, ALL characters need to start taking Feats or they risk being "one upped" by the guy with the Feats.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

I'm sorry you had to have that kind of thing happen to your game, but are you sure it isn't what is fun for your player?. Maybe he got tired of having to plan every combat for fear of dying and now he can finally play how he wanted all along? The game is about having fun...

And play changes over levels, or do you expect your sorcerer player to nnot change strategies once she gains her wings? are you planning to nerf that too so she remains earthbound? Or the bard's magical secrets? Feats are obviously optional, but they are balanced with the default, no need to have an obvious disadvantage, you have to give up the biggest power for them (accuracy is a huge deal), if you have to go out of the way to make them useless then maybe don't use them. The same situation we talked about like a year ago, if you advertise your game as D&D but instead you give out a 500 page book full of houserules, you are no longer playing D&D, like if you allow feats, and they are houseruled into uselessness then you don't really have feats.

 

[77IM]

I hate the feat system and consider it the biggest failure of 5e design, for reasons too numerous to bore everyone with on this thread.

...That said, as DM, I allow them, because the players like them enough to outweigh the problems they cause in play. For the most part, feats don't make the game any more complex for the DM because the players track the complexity. And they don't unbalance the game because they are generally weaker than ASI.

 

[Moorcrys]

I allow feats. I don't allow multiclassing.

I find feats to be balanced, generally, with stat increases. And feats, combined with all of the class options in the PHB, gets rid of the need to add multiclassing, imho, which I don't find to be a net positive addition to the game. Generally, I've found feats to be more character concept evocative, and multiclassing to be more character mechanics evocative (with smart players shoehorning bizarre character concepts into the mechanical build tricks they want, rather than vice-versa). Certainly a valid play style but not my thing. Ymmv.

Cheers!