Feats

[Wormwood]

If feats simply add to something a character already does (+ to hit, damage or defense), I honestly don't understand why we need them at all.

 

[vagabundo]

I think feats could be put down. Most of their stuff could be divided between class abilities, skills and optional modules.

I would be happy to see them go and to wave good by to Feat bloat. That and power selection are the two major slowdowns in the game and I really don't think they add all that much to the character at the table.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think Feats were one of the best features introduced by 3ed. They were simply add-on abilities to customize your class more freely, either with class-restricted feats or those available to everyone.

If only they stopped at that, and tried to create feats that were all equal...

The problems I found with feats:

- just too many, this wasn't a problem when it was just corebooks and first wave of classbooks, but after that every new book introduced too many feats with overlapping functions or worse stacking functions

- they used feats to cover ideas that were wildly different in scope; to me the biggest offender were the "vows" feats... we all remember Vow of Poverty, how the hell they decided to represent such a huge mechanical change with one feat?

- feat trees: in theory a beatiful idea, in practice they meant a lot of feats became just unused baggage... how many NPCs had Power Attack? How many of them ever used it? In my opinion "feat chains" where simply the next feat directly increased/improved the previous were the only type of feat trees that worked fine (although not very imaginative), but not those where each feat in the tree gave totally different abilities. E.g. something like "whirlwind attack" would have been much nicer if prerequisites were level-based + ability-based and did not include a list of prerequisite feats.

 

[Kaodi]

Feats might be a good example of a mechanic the proper execution of which can only be recognized after the more basic system has been extensively playtested.

 

[paladinm]

I still believe that feats are largely an attempt to make up the power gap between fighters (and maybe rogues) and the spellcasters. If fighters are stuck with only "basic attacks", they truly do become more and more irrelevant at higher levels. If 5e does not include some feats, it needs to include a weapon specialization/ weapon mastery system like older versions. I personally wouldn't mind seeing a more balanced implementation of the BECMI weapon mastery system.

 

[Stormonu]

I still believe that feats are largely an attempt to make up the power gap between fighters (and maybe rogues) and the spellcasters. If fighters are stuck with only "basic attacks", they truly do become more and more irrelevant at higher levels. If 5e does not include some feats, it needs to include a weapon specialization/ weapon mastery system like older versions. I personally wouldn't mind seeing a more balanced implementation of the BECMI weapon mastery system.

Yeah, the feat system of 3E could very well be argued that it was the "spells" of the fighter, but it did have the issue it petered out in power about 6th-8th level and it was open to all classes (It makes me sad fighters didn't have anyhing that was "theirs" that they didn't share with other classes; they got a raw deal that their multiple attacks got distributed around to everyone).

I'd like to see, for one thing additional attacks (at no penalty to BAB) come back as feats. Back to the old 3/2, 2/1, 5/2 advancement.

 

[SKyOdin]

The only really good feats were ones that opened up multiclassing options, or let players do radically new things with existent class abilities. These included the feats that let Tome of Battle classes get use out of power points, or let clerics use their Turn Undead channeling attempts for new uses. However, even these feats were inferior to dedicated multiclassing prestige classes and could be easily replaced by more flexible class options. These few cool feats were definitely outweighed by the sheer volume of poorly designed feats that gave situational, fiddly modifiers.

A more robust system for customizing class features and a better multiclassing system could easily replace the entire feat system.

 

[Li Shenron]

I still believe that feats are largely an attempt to make up the power gap between fighters (and maybe rogues) and the spellcasters. If fighters are stuck with only "basic attacks", they truly do become more and more irrelevant at higher levels. If 5e does not include some feats, it needs to include a weapon specialization/ weapon mastery system like older versions. I personally wouldn't mind seeing a more balanced implementation of the BECMI weapon mastery system.

I agree on the highlighted part, but you make it sound like it's a bad thing It was just part of the design & balancing. I rather imagine that the 3ed designers balanced the fighter against barbarian, paladin an ranger, the class features of which are quite stereotypical, and figured out a balance between the fighter's number of feats and the number and magnitude of the other martial classes' features.

It's a pity really, that the good starting idea of fighter-only feats never really developed. Perhaps the designers were too often thinking that every new feat must have been available to everyone for the sake of "realism". But this is a kind of shortsight in terms of what the rules mean! Just because there's a feat called "Whirlwind Attack" it doesn't mean that someone without the feat is forbidden from describing her PC as doing that kind of attack, the only thing you cannot do without the feat is replicating the mechanic.

The other shortsight was to purposefully avoid class levels as feat requirements as much as possible. Why? It seemed elegant and realistic to avoid that but then they could have easily made tons of fighter-only feat... and everyone knows how hard it was to bravely stay single-class into high fighter levels.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

With a skill system where you can invest points as you choose, any feat system should not grant +X bonuses. Instead, feats should open up new options or methods of using skills or abilities.

I can see that - however it can actually make for a cool character bit. I ran a character with that for spellcraft, had a 3rd party feat that added an additional plus three, and another feat that added +4 or +5 to max skill roll.
That was a major personality and character trait. If it is a point investiture skill system - if there is a cap, a feat to give you a bonus above that cap is actually useful.

Overall I want to see them stay. Somewhere between what 3rd and 4th does.

Biases though here - I'm a guy who though that 3.x even with all 3rd party supplements didn't have enough feats total.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

This is a tough one.

I like the idea of feats, for the ability to customize a character to differentiate or attain a particular specialization. That way, you may be a Fighter, but your feat choices enable you to be an Archer, or Sword-and-Board, or Greatsword, or whatever, and actually be slightly better at your particular schtick than someone not so specialized. It's much less cumbersome a system than to design individual classes for each archetype, while still providing a way to do simplified classes (by using a fixed feat progression) and enabling player-character specific customization.

That said, feats have been poorly and inconsistently implemented, from useless feats to "must have" feats. There shouldn't be an inherent choice between feats that add flavor and not power, and feats that only increase power -- both should exist as options, but should not be and either-or in the same mechanic. I like the idea of splitting feats into two sets that are gained separately -- one set for background/flavor/character building, and one set that addresses combat capability and other "talent"-type actions. I also like the idea of feat chains or trees (though video games can often provide bad examples, the general implementation of the Skyrim or Dragon Age "feat" trees is a good concept).

Fiddly feat approaches should be eliminated, like those that provide conditional bonuses. Feats should be either always on, or enable a specific maneuver/option. Feats should also not duplicate capabilities otherwise built into other character modules (whether skill, powers, spells,or the like).