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Message: <blockquote data-quote="sla_dreamer" data-source="post: 6617754" data-attributes="member: 6795363">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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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