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Message: <blockquote data-quote="redrick" data-source="post: 6615991" data-attributes="member: 6777696">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.</blockquote>

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