D&D 5E Feats

[DEFCON 1]

If the real purpose of this system is "remove skills from the basic game", all they would need to do for the Basic Rogue is keep the thieves' tool proficiency in the class description. It's already there! It grants the ability to DT and OL. It doesn't grant the bonus, but if skills aren't used, then the skill dice bonus isn't used either.

I would agree with much of what you said... but it's only here that I think your suggestion runs slightly into trouble. Because if the Thieve's Tools proficiency is all that is used to grant the Basic Rogue the thief abilities a BECMI/AD&D Thief player is expecting, you now have 4 feat slots that a Basic Rogue needs to have something filled in with to keep it balanced with a Standard Rogue.

That's the big issue here. The regular Standard Rogue will have feats. At 1st level, he'll have one feat from being a 1st level character, and three free ones from his Rogue Scheme. Now yes, of course, the occasional DM might choose to rip Specialties and Feats out of his particular game while retaining the skills... but that will be the outlier position from normal Standard games and the game itself will probably have to tell those DMs "If you do this... you'll have to 'houserule' that a Rogue can do all these Rogue-y things just using the Skill system without needing the feats." Which really shouldn't be an issue, because removing Specialty/Feat use is in itself "houseruling" the game already (since the Standard game will assume you will use them).

Will that annoy the exceeding small subset of DMs who'll get all pissy because feel like they shouldn't have to "houserule" anything to play the game they want? Sure. But since we know going in that ANYTHING that isn't a Basic game *IS* a "houseruled" and "optional" game in itself... we DMs are all going to have to get over it. We're building our Standard games as we see fit, and if we deviate from the expected Standard game that WotC is presuming 95% of gamers will build and play... we have to accept we need to change the wording on some rules. Every single player's "prefered" version of the rules is not going to be written up for us in a sidebar that we can just copy and paste and have to players.

So is using feat slots to get a Basic Rogue the standard thief abilities written down for them in its Class Features (while at the same time filling up those self-same slots to balance them against a Standard Rogue who will also have those feat slots filled) the only way to do it? Maybe not. But it does solve those two biggest problems the design of the Basic Rogue is going to face.

 

[Li Shenron]

...you now have 4 feat slots that a Basic Rogue needs to have something filled in with to keep it balanced with a Standard Rogue.

That's the big issue here. The regular Standard Rogue will have feats. At 1st level, he'll have one feat from being a 1st level character, and three free ones from his Rogue Scheme. Now yes, of course, the occasional DM might choose to rip Specialties and Feats out of his particular game while retaining the skills... but that will be the outlier position from normal Standard games...

Part of my point is, that the "regular standard rogue" must not have feats.

Feats must be optional and can be optional, if (a) they are not granted to classes or races as "bonus feats", and (b) there is no fundamental game option exclusively attached to them.

This include that Rogue Schemes must not grant feats. Only in the latest packet they grant 3 feats, in the previous packet some Schemes granted 1 feat (while others granted different benefits) and IMHO this should already not have been the case.

Under those conditions (a) and (b) you can either play with or without feats, and that doesn't change the balance between Basic and Standard characters, because at your gaming table both Basic or Standard characters (coexisting in the same campaign) will either use feats or not use feats, depending on the group choice. Players would still be able to choose a Basic PC rather than a Standard PC, but either both of them will have feats or neither of them. It's a group choice just the way as skills are a group choice. Trying to have both PCs with and without feats, or with and without skills, makes design more complicated than treating "Feats" and "Skills" as modules for the group. They can still skip all references to feats and skills in the Basic D&D product. A gaming group that owns both the Basic D&D and the Standard D&D games, can still mix-n-match Basic + Skills, Basic + Feats, Basic + Feats + Skills.

However, IMHO it would be quite important and useful to totally revise the list of feats, making sure that actual "pure" feats (i.e. stuff that only exists in the form of a feat) add non-essential character abilities, and then designing other special feats that can be used for "mild multiclassing" or acquiring features from another class such as a feat that grants one Maneuver of choice, a feat that grants one spell of choice, a feat that grants one Rogue's skill trick, a feat that grants an additional skill... Doing so (rather than turning Maneuvers and Skill Tricks into skills) would allow each gaming group a very easy control over niche protection or cross-breeding, depending on their taste, because it would be a simple matter of "should we allow or ban the one feat that allows everybody to gain Fighter's Maneuvers?"