How should feats work?

[UngainlyTitan]

I think that a,b and c are 6 of one and half a dozen of the other, in my opinion hte cheif porblem with feats is that a lot of them appear and soon the player can never really experience all the possibilities.

Feats do two things, they can broaden a character, in that they give the character new options and additional tricks, or they deepen the character by adding more to an exisitng trick. I think there should be a lot less of the latter but when those feats are takes they should scale with level.

 

[Jhaelen]

Constant bonuses.

4e has a lot of conditional factors to track within the powers. Constant bonuses give a strong sense of meaning to feat as it changes how your character performs at all times.

Constant bonuses tend to lead to a problem, though:
Feats granting them become must-have feats. And once everyone has them, they're no longer serving the purpose of feats, i.e. helping to individualize your character.

Theoretically, conditional bonuses would be best, but they are only ever picked, if there aren't any feats granting constant bonuses.

C is the trade-off option that works best: grant a (minor) constant bonus, so you don't feel you've totally wasted the feat, and grant a (larger) conditional bonus when the somewhat rare but very cool circumstances are right.

 

[TwoSix]

I liked feats in 3e, and hate them in 4e. I'd rather see a structure where at odd levels you gain or retrain powers, and at even levels you upgrade your powers. Since most of the feats in the game affect powers, why not have the effects of the feats as selectable options within the power descriptions?

Hypothetically, you have a power upgrade tab in the CB, that's similar to the power selection tab. It shows you your current powers, your current skills, proficiencies, and a multiclass tab. You can pick then pick to upgrade one of your existing powers (with only upgrades from the relevant race, class, and tier showing). A power can only be upgraded once per tier. All available keywords should also be shown, with uprades also being available to keywords. (Say, an upgrade that adds push 1 to all weapon powers when used with a hammer, because you're a bad-dude dwarf. Now all weapon powers get that note attached to the power description.)

The skill tab lets you train new skills or improve existing ones. The multiclass tab lets you select which class you want to multiclass with, or purchase access to additional powers. THe proficiency tab lets you purchase new weapon proficiencies or implement proficiencies.

 

[Aspeon]

I liked feats in 3e, and hate them in 4e. I'd rather see a structure where at odd levels you gain or retrain powers, and at even levels you upgrade your powers. Since most of the feats in the game affect powers, why not have the effects of the feats as selectable options within the power descriptions?

I think you're on the right track. The structure and organization (and to a lesser extent quantity) of feats are probably a bigger problem than the little conditional things.

4E does a good job with powers of giving you a limited number of choices each level, but throws it out the window with feats. What if all feats were in trees? So at 1st level, you only have the base feat of each tree, and unlock more as you go. If the trees spread out, there'd only need to be 15 or so trees available to any given character, and the silly random conditional things can go on a leaf.

 

[Riastlin]

I agree that constant bonuses are generally more "powerful" but are also often less "sexy". Sure, a +1/2/3 to hit is good, but you rarely hear somebody exclaim "Thank you Heavy Blade Expertise!" What's more, it doesn't do anything to distinguish your long-sword wielder from the next.

Some constant bonuses do though (such as weapon proficiency), but even they tend to become fairly standard (what avenger wouldn't want an executioner's axe or fullblade)? That being said though, while conditional bonuses are often more flavorful (my guy really likes to play with fire), they also run into the problem of being, well conditional. What wizard would take a feat that grants +1 to hit with a fire spell before taking the appropriate implement expertise feat? Where I think that certain feats can really shine though is in the area of class or racial feats. No longer are you just a dwarf, but you're a particularly fast dwarf, or a dwarf that is particularly protective of his friends.

Ultimately though, I think the problem really does come down to bloat as others have mentioned. The constant bonus feats are attractive not just because they are always up, but also because it often requires less thought in even building the character. I don't need to look through all the different feats, powers, and items to see how I can make the most use out of implement expertise as I might with something that gives a bonus to fire-based attacks.

I think the idea of trees and leaves is a really good one, that if done right could lead to a) easy to build characters and b) fairly distinctive characters. At level 1, you have say 15 feat choices. At level 2, you now have 16 (since two options opened up with your level 1 choice). fairly quickly, you'll be ignoring half the branches while still having the chance to make your character feel different from the every other character of your class.

 

[Nullzone]

I think the idea of trees and leaves is a really good one, that if done right could lead to a) easy to build characters and b) fairly distinctive characters. At level 1, you have say 15 feat choices. At level 2, you now have 16 (since two options opened up with your level 1 choice). fairly quickly, you'll be ignoring half the branches while still having the chance to make your character feel different from the every other character of your class.

I play World of Warcraft in addition to tabletop games and one thing the developers have said often is that if you do this, you're also robbing players of meaningful choices. If you bury mechanically interesting feats behind mundane-but-flavorful ones, then you're going to inevitably compel people to simply take the same feats all the time because they'll always want the mechanically interesting bonuses. Further, it leaves no incentive to diversify, as there's an inherent investment cost with incrementally tiered feats that leaves you wanting to keep pushing further down the same "tree" instead of getting the specific benefits you want and then perhaps flavoring up your character with some added skill bonuses or extra languages.

CharOp will always occur when there are numbers involved, because no matter how much you try to avoid or obfuscate it, there will always be a mathematically "best" option. As gamers are often intellectual people who strive to find the "best" option available to them in a given scenario, you inevitably end up with many characters looking identical. There's not a lot you can do about this without removing all the adjustable math and leaving the game to a random set of dice rolls.