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

[houser2112]

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.

It seems to me you're contradicting yourself. You say they are the "biggest failure", and then list the reasons why they aren't so bad and thus you allow them. Since this thread is dedicated to discussing feats, I think it's safe to say that no one would be bored to hear your reasons. I am curious to know your reasons for thinking of them as the "biggest failure", despite your good reasons for allowing them.

 

[CapnZapp]

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

Alrighty... With such a trollish attitude, yes, it's best you stay away from feats...

Yikes...

 

[pming]

Alrighty... With such a trollish attitude, yes, it's best you stay away from feats...

Yikes...

Thanks for your vote of support. Will do!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[mflayermonk]

Hiya!
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.

My current group and I have played through both of the 5e hardbound adventures with all the optional rules. We currently picked up some old mods (its been long enough we have forgotten much of the story) and are playing through them without any of the optional rules (feats/multiclass). So far, most of us like the game without the optional rules the best.

 

[77IM]

It seems to me you're contradicting yourself. You say they are the "biggest failure", and then list the reasons why they aren't so bad and thus you allow them. Since this thread is dedicated to discussing feats, I think it's safe to say that no one would be bored to hear your reasons. I am curious to know your reasons for thinking of them as the "biggest failure", despite your good reasons for allowing them.

Well, in my defense 1) feats are the biggest failure in the context of 5e which I consider a tremendously successful game design, 2) as a DM they bother me less because I can ignore them; as a player they drive me nuts, and 3) as a DM I retain the right to contradict myself whenever I please.


Reasons I hate the 5e feat system:

1. Concept redundancy. By which I mean, I prefer to come up with a character concept first and then select the build options supporting that concept. Many feats muddy the waters considerably by being redundant, conceptually, with abilities, skills, and class features.

For example, which character is more "athletic?"

• The one with high Strength.
• The one with mediocre Strength and proficiency in Athletics.
• The one with low Strength and Expertise in Athletics.
• The one with mediocre Strength and the Athlete feat.
• The one with low Strength, proficiency in Athletics, and the Athlete feat.

Take out the Athlete feat and you have a two-dimensional axis of ability x skill, which is a level of conceptual complexity I can deal with. The fact that Athlete neither requires nor provides proficiency in Athletics really weirds me out.

Similar conceptual overlaps exist with: Alert and Observant and having high Perception; Actor and having high Deception and Diplomacy and Disguise Kit proficiency, and the Assassin's ability to create false identities; Dual Wielder and the two-weapon fighting style; Durable and Tough and having a high Con or being part of a class with large Hit Dice; Great Weapon Master and the great weapon fighting style; Sharpshooter and archery fighting style and being proficient in martial ranged weapons; and there are probably more.

All of these things are MECHANICALLY different and if you slice them fine enough I'm sure we can come up with reasons for the character concepts to differ but it feels artificial and pointless.

2. When there is NOT much conceptual overlap (e.g. Inspiring Leader, Elemental Adept, Lucky) it makes me feel like characters without those feats don't embody the concept. Like if I want to play an inspiring leader, without feats I just get a decent Charisma, and go around leading in an inspiring way. With feats, I feel like I should give up an ASI to get Inspiring Leader or else I'm just not as inspiring as I really could be.

3. Steep cost for marginal benefit: with a few exceptions (Polearm Mastery, maybe the -5/+10 feats or Heavy Armor Mastery at low levels), most feats are not worth giving up +2 to your primary ability score. So now there is the unfun dilemma of: should I make my character weaker, in order to fit my concept and/or get an ability that is more interesting? I don't consider this a fun trade-off. In fact it feels agonizingly painful.

Some people say, "Well your primary stat gets to 20 by 8th level so then you can start taking feats at 12th level." ...But I only want to take a feat if it's important to my character concept, and if it's important to my character concept I don't want to wait until 12 level to get it.


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So my objections are mostly around a particular sort of frustration I feel during character-creation. Once game-play starts, or when I am the DM and not a player, feats are not such a big deal, and are largely indistinguishable from class features that happen to span classes. That's why as a DM I allow feats, but I still hate them and think that 5e could have achieved the same level of customizability in better manner.

 

[Bohemond D'Arlac]

While there are a few feats I find rather unpalatable (Sentinel? So you stab a Gargantuan Red Dragon with your halberd for 18 damage out of its 546 hit points, and its speed drops to 0, no saving throw nor ability contest required?) I am more than happy to allow everything in the rules, and I am fairly open to optional rules and variants as well. DMing is not about forcing your personal RPG philosophy onto your players, DMing is about making sure your players have a good time while their characters are being slaughtered by your monsters.

 

[sla_dreamer]

I think this is a fairly interesting topic and got me to thinking about the purpose of feats.

I think by your definition the majority of the features in 5e are not "necessary" either. Out of the 12 classes 4 of them or only really "necessary". And none of the archtypes listed within those classes are necessary either. I think the point of the extra classes, archetypes, races, spells, weapons, and feats is to give a player mechanical options to make their characters unique and memorable. Why do there need to be 2 spells that each do a d10? Is it because there has to be 2 mechanics in the game that distinguish these types of damage? No. It's because players want to have different flavors to their characters. Why do there need to be more than a sword, an axe, a spear, a bow, and a dagger for weapons?
If you are interested in boiling down the game to only the essential elements then I think you would find the characters extremely mechanically boring and bland.
Even in your own example about Drizz't you essentially boiled him down to a martial character that wields 2 weapons. If that was all it took to make a Drizz't, then there wouldn't be any need to have a ranger class, a beastmaster archtype, or a drow race. Every fighter that wielded 2 weapons would be a Drizz't. But I don't think that is the case.
When I play a character I want something that does something unique, memorable, and can contribute in mechanically unique way. The various customization options in the game drive that and more particularly feats. I grant that you don't need a mechanic that makes a character unique. The feats (and all the other extrapolated misc. features of the game) are mechanisms that give a set a parameters for a player who wants their character to be able to do certain behaviors and actions. These mechanics then become a reference for both the player and the DM on what those behaviors should do within the confines of the rules of the game. Giving objective, quantifiable measures of an action/ behavior rather than some subjective on the fly ruling makes the game much more consistent and in the end fair.
A character that wants to specialize in polearms doesn't need the feat to justify limiting themselves on what weapons they will or won't use because they decided at some point that they want to use polearms. It isn't the feat that makes them make the decision to not want to use other weapons, its the fact they want a unique feature and they might like the idea of wielding polearms, and they want a unique mechanism to represent their decision to primarily use polearms. I think the fact that the game has placed caps on how high an ability can go makes it necessary to allow other customization options.
Each game (obviously) has to make their own decisions about what they want but in my own opinion allowing feats isn't that big of a deal because the majority of a characters playing time they will only get 1 or 2 feats (3 ability bumps for lvls 1-12 and probably one of those times will actually be used for the bump; fighters and rogues get an extra one so maybe 3 feats for them). The fact that the final bump/ feat is at 19th lvl makes that practically pointless since 90% of the adventuring career is over at that point.
If there are feats are overpowered I think that is a separate point and shouldn't be used as an argument that feats in general aren't necessary or needed.
Anyways that's my view. Thanks for the interesting topic.

 

[Jeff Albertson]

If there are feats are overpowered I think that is a separate point and shouldn't be used as an argument that feats in general aren't necessary or needed.

They are not necessary or needed, the game got along just fine without them for over 20 years.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I allow feats mainly because I run for AL. The do seem to be needed for some classes and character concepts to work well, which is unfortunate.

 

[S'mon]

By default we don't use feats in my 5e game. If a player has a PHB and wants to take a Feat from there instead of a stat bump I'll allow it, but most of the PCs were built by me and don't have Feats.