D&D 5E How They Should Do Feats

[Li Shenron]

You want a programmed progression of small cookie cut abilities each level for all classes and add in a couple of big choices every now and then from feats. Literally I want the opposite of that. I want big programmed class features that really matter and smaller feats. This offers greater character customization, which only apparently was a feature. Now it is a bug?

Yeah, the sound of this is really appalling... again it feels like one gamestyle ("character builds") is being labelled "badwrongfun" because it irritates a lot of people. As a matter of fact, it often irritated me too! But WotC should realize that "character builds" was probably the gamestyle that prompted gamers to buy bootloads of books in the 3e era. Maybe today they have a much slimmed down publication scheme in mind, but at least they could show some respect to gamers who granted them the cash flow for years.

My opinion is that 5e should keep up with its promise of being inclusive. Occasionally there might be one option that really just doesn't fit with the rest and needs to be sacrificed, but this isn't really the case! Those 2 opposites alternatives (1) programmed progression with few big choices and (2) smaller choices along the way, definitely ARE compatible and can coexist, in fact we had them both in 5e until last spring, when we could still choose between one specialty vs many single feats.

There are a lot of interesting things in character customization with background and sub-class choices. But feats, to me, are looking like a blunder. A real missed opportunity.

I agree. The current feats, taken individually, aren't generally bad IMO. But I have the feeling they don't fully fit with the rest. They are just too big "bumps" at once (with some exceptions like the spell-granting feats which IMO are weak - except the first in the chain) compared to class features and subclass features. And many feats are going to overlap with each other, or with what you already have.

The key here is that at its simplest form, the game needs to be like 2e: Choose a race and class, never pick anything again.

Plus, I'm fairly certain they are trying to get rid of remembering "fiddly bits" and creating "builds". Small feats tend to encourage people to mix and match feats to create extremely niche characters with powerful mixes of abilities. For new players especially this can be daunting.

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I really like the major themed feats from 5e because it allows me to look at the feats and say "Do I want to be offensive or defensive? I'll take the offensive feat.

But all this is already supported, thanks to the rule that nobody has to take feats. If all you want is to say "I want to be offensive", you take a stat bump to Strength without even looking at the feats list. If a second player thinks this is too generic, and wants to be offensive but in a more specific way, she can choose maybe one feat, and stat bumps every other time. If a third player wants even more fiddly bits, then she can choose a feat half of the times, and stat bumps the other half. Then comes the fourth player who wants max customization and always picks feats instead of stat bumps.

We have this system, and I think it's great. My idea is that it would be even better, if the choice was not "feat vs stat bump", but rather "feat vs stat bump vs proficiency" which (given the fact that there are lots of different proficiencies) is a much wider choice. So we don't have to drop this concept at all, but we can still improve it. But since proficiencies are "smaller", in order to match them with feats and stat bumps the solution is to cut feats in half and balance them with +1 bumps instead of +2. [Note: this does not mean that each class should get twice as many feats they get now, they could just get the same number and they would be fine]

That said, the even simpler option like 2e (never pick anything again) is in the Basic version of classes, where everything is pre-selected, and presumably the pre-selected choices will also be the least-complex ones.

I don't know. Archer! with just one capital letter and one exclamation mark seems underpowered. The game needs to prevent you from accidentally making a sub-optimal FIGHTER!!!

This is generally a good design target. I just want to say that it is a bit in contrast with another target, that of rewarding players for making good character design choices. There isn't a solution that hits both targets neatly. IMO the best that can be done is a compromise where the "spread" between an optimized character and a pseudo-random character is significant but not too large. Generally, the more choices allowed in character creation (both in the sense of how many times you have a choice in the course of 20 levels, and in the sense of how long is the list to pick from) the larger the "spread".

I think that the reason they've buffed feats up so much is that they're balancing them against ability increases. Which is a fine thing, except that I would rather ability increases be far less common, personally. I prefer the old days of "OMG, this magic pool gave me +1 Str!!!!!!" instead of the expectation that it'll happen that we have these days.

Absolutely agree... This would tie-in well with my idea that feats should be balanced against a +1 stat bumps, not +2 (without making them occur more often than now).

Once again, the only reason why they choose +2 is because of some gamers complaining that +1 on an even-numbered stat doesn't yield immediate benefits.

 

[Vague Jayhawk]

This is just my quick impression. It is the choice of a feat or a +1 stat boost. Feats are generally preferable, but since they are an optional addition to a game they may not be available. So even in games without feats, the players still get the +1.