D&D 5E (2014) General Feats Discussion

[ranger69]

The feats offer another way to individualise characters. I am happy that there are few, and hope that by and large it stays that . Certainly do not want the proliferation of feats in 3.5.

Having said that I can see scope for well chosen and crafted feats. For instance if/when Eberron comes online then Dragon Marks could well be feats.

 

[SilverfireSage]

I feel like I'll probably be alone in saying this, but... I think most of the feats kind of suck. A few are quite good (Heavy Armor Mastery) but most do NOT seem worth taking instead of just getting +2 to your primary ability score.

Isn't that the point?

 

[77IM]

Isn't that the point?

Why would that be the point? How is it good game design to present flavorful trap options? Why should someone who wants to play an Actor be forced to gimp their character a little bit?

I love the design of the feat system: balancing against +2 ability forces feats to be significant and character-defining. It's the feats themselves that fall flat, most being too weak to consider. This reduces feats to minor mechanical upgrades you might give your PC at 12th or 16th level, after you've maxxed the ability scores you care about.

 

[brehobit]

First of all, the human variant that starts with a feat is very strong indeed and should get feats in use from the start. Secondly, if you start with an odd primary stat, certain feats that give a +1 are very good choices.

I really like the feat system. Feats, for the most part, are character defining. If I had any worries they are A) under point buy, Hunan variant may be OP and B) lucky and durable May end up as feat taxes at higher level.

Mark

 

[Dausuul]

Why would that be the point? How is it good game design to present flavorful trap options? Why should someone who wants to play an Actor be forced to gimp their character a little bit?

Actor is an awesome feat if you have access to any kind of illusion magic. Play a warlock with the invocation that gives you disguise self at will, and Actor is incredible--being able to fake voices and having advantage on your Deception and Performance checks allows you to impersonate pretty much anybody, any time.

I think 5E did a solid job with the feats. Admittedly, a few of them are weaksauce--Durable and Elemental Adept come to mind--but there aren't any that look overpowered, which is a much more painful problem to have. Players very seldom complain when the DM powers-up their weaksauce feats.

 

[Mr Fixit]

I feel that feats have struck a great middle ground: not too good to automatically take instead of ability boosts, but good enough to add interesting and mechanically significant wrinkles to your character concept.

If I want to create a swashbucklery duelist, for instance, there are several feats that I may prefer over straight ability boosts: defensive duelist, mobile and even martial adept for a rogue that wants to display some cool battlemaster moves like riposte.

If you have odd scores, one of the feasts that improve a score by one could also be a worthwhile choice - hello, heavy armor master.

My main problem are caster-oriented feats. They seem to be pretty weaksauce.

 

[SigmaOne]

Why would that be the point? How is it good game design to present flavorful trap options? Why should someone who wants to play an Actor be forced to gimp their character a little bit?

I love the design of the feat system: balancing against +2 ability forces feats to be significant and character-defining. It's the feats themselves that fall flat, most being too weak to consider. This reduces feats to minor mechanical upgrades you might give your PC at 12th or 16th level, after you've maxxed the ability scores you care about.

I don't know, I think a lot of the feats are really cool, and I'd consider taking them over +2 in many cases. But given that, as [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION] said, overpowered feats are much more of a problem than underpowered ones, I think they were right to be cautious. Some are probably weaker than they should be and might not get chosen often, and perhaps these can be tweaked down the road to make them more appealing. But I think in general, there will be a fair number of people who, given the option, will take feats.

 

[BryonD]

I feel like I'll probably be alone in saying this, but... I think most of the feats kind of suck. A few are quite good (Heavy Armor Mastery) but most do NOT seem worth taking instead of just getting +2 to your primary ability score.

I think this is only true in a vacuum.
Most of the feats are actually quite good in context. (And "context" can be anything from the extreme of realizing a pure RP concept to the extreme of optimizing a build)

In 3E it was common to have feat chains that only got your character to "click" as *that guy* after you got the last feat. 5E says: "You want to be *that guy*? Bang, you are that guy". so now I have the best of both worlds. I have one game for building up and one game for diving in.

I've actually sat down and written up at least one character per class and then pushed it from 1 to 20, just to see how they evolve. Even for characters not built around a feat, more often than not those feats start looking really nice start looking REALLY nice somewhere around level 10. Not always. But often.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I like the general shape of feats with a few exceptions... but mostly minor details.

e.g.: I´d like the Alert feat to add your proficiency bonus to initiative checks. (reining in bard and champion fighter, adding even more to that ability check.
Or the grappler feat: its perfectly fine, but the general geapple rules should allow a large creature not to automatically escape, but able to move at half speed...
The polearm master feat should only work with a quarterstff wielded in two hands... and so on.

The Idea of trading a +2 bonus to your main stat for a valuable talent has been an interesting choice for all characters in my group so far. Sometimes a roleplaying bonus is worth much more than a +1 here or there. +1 seems great, but it is just 5% less chance to fail.
Actor allowing you to mimic voices with perfection can be an automatic win in the right situation. Circumventing a fight at all.

 

[W_K]

I´d like the Alert feat to add your proficiency bonus to initiative checks

Hmm... I think I like this idea. I've thought that a flat +5 to initiative in a system with such a gentle curve might be a little too much. Replacing it with proficiency would give the bonus stretched over many levels, and I might be more okay with that. I had previously be considering simply replacing the +5 with advantage, but I don't know how much of an effect that would have.