D&D 5E Feats

[Bow_Seat]

So right now we have a few different types of feats.

General Feats - change the way the rules affect you. rules say you don't get advantage when your enemy sees you jump out of the shadows? now you get advantage on your first attack

Martial Feats - allow you to perform specific combat actions. need to sunder, trip, or disarm? without these feats you can't do it.

Also, some change the way you wield weapons or simply enhance general combat numbers

Expertise Feats - These feats allow you to use skills either in a new way that was previously not allowed or to enhance the capabilities of already existing skill usages.

Magic Feats - change the effects of your spells

I've seen some consternation about the presentation of feats in this packet and I am interested to see which types of feats cause the most frustration. I personally dislike feats that imply that you cannot attempt something without the feat, because this disuades players from using the skill check system that 5e is trying to emphasize.

Alternatively you could just not want any pool of limited choice abilities for different classes to draw from. In this case you just don't like the idea of feats, which is also totally legitimate.

 

[Li Shenron]

I personally dislike feats that imply that you cannot attempt something without the feat, because this disuades players from using the skill check system that 5e is trying to emphasize.

This. Not that I am in principle totally against the idea, it's just that after all that's been said and done about 5e allowing players to try anything they can think about as long as it is essentially mundane, these feats pretty much go against that principle that was suppose to be one of the defining features of the new edition.

Also, I am totally baffled by the fact that they are now giving bonus feats to some classes. WTF?? Aren't feats supposed to be optional? And so far they totally were... but if they give each class bonus feats, and the number is uneven across classes, then if you ignore feats in your game you have once again like 3e different effects on different classes, ergo they are not optional anymore. What are they thinking? :/

 

[Bow_Seat]

What they were probably thinking was "hey lets not pigeonhole people into having to take a certain class to do a certain thing"

what they ended up with was "we have this pool of abilities and bonuses that people can choose from, if you dont choose that you can do a thing then you cannot do that thing"

 

[DonAdam]

I'm more concerned about the feats that just give bonuses: iron hide, dual wielding, weapon mastery, etc. Weren't we promised that these feats were a thing of the past?

 

[Blackwarder]

I dislike 3e style of feats, where every feat give you small advantage or somthing like that, I want feats to be big and have impact, not pigeonholed into a role...

I also dislike bonus feats for the fighter, it's a. Goes against everything we thought about specialities and b. add unneccesery complexity to the game.

Warde

 

[Li Shenron]

One more thing...

If they are giving out bonus feats to some classes as a balancing factor, this is quite pointless at this stage... They should be focusing on getting the mechanics down, including mechanics of every unique class feature such as Expertise Dice or Rage or Ki etc.

Balancing classes with a couple of extra feat is wasted time while the mechanics aren't nearly finalized, because they will have to reconsider them at every iteration.

 

[Drago Rinato]

Probably the basic version of the classes are a little different or have abilities the imitates the feats, choosing for you de facto.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I think they decided early on that feats were definitely going to be in the game. I think they could learn a lot if they first decided what customisation options should be available, and then find a way to implement those. So, for instance, combat feats now open up maneuvers - should these be feats, or should maneuvers just be available to learn and use freely? Expertise feats replace skill tricks - should they be accessed via the skill system instead?

 

[delericho]

The biggest problem with feats, in both 3e and 4e, was that they became the dumping ground for anything that didn't really fit anywhere else. This meant that there were feats to give a flat numerical bonus (Weapon Focus), feats that gave access to whole new powers and/or subsystems (Leadership), and feats that modify existing powers (Metamagic).

The upshot of this is that the game gradually accumulates hundreds of feats (most of which will never be used), and you potentially get big power disparities between characters who choose their feats 'well' over those who choose 'poorly'.

IMO, for 5e they should explicitly separate out these various types of feats into different categories, and then give advancement rates for each category individually. There's no particular need to actually eliminate anything - just keep them separate.

 

[Zardnaar]

Non combat feats We could rename the to non weapon pro.... erm nevermind.