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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gargoyle" data-source="post: 1028474" data-attributes="member: 529">Yes, it's good to note that it isn't merely how many feats people get, it's the cost of them.  Whirlwind Attack, Greater Weapon Specialization, and Quicken Spell all cost the same as Skill Focus (Diplomacy) or Toughness.  They all cost 1 feat slot.  A player optimizing his character for combat will never take a weak feat over a strong one.  Even many roleplayers will hesitate to make a character weaker than the rest of the group; no one wants to slow the rest of the party down.  It's very campaign dependent...are you the type of DM that gives them appropriate rewards for using Diplomacy, thus making Skill Focus (Diplomacy) useful, or do your monsters never negotiate?  Give them more feats in a campaign where combat is the most important part of the game, and they'll choose combat feats.  But I don't think there's anything wrong with that.  Part of customizing your character is creating a fighting style.  Seven feats to create a paladin's fighting style may seem like enough on paper, but in actual play that paladin may only get to 10th level or so before the campaign is over, meaning that you've got only four feats to work with, less at lower levels.   It could take 6 months of play to get to 6th level in some campaigns, meaning that for 6 months you've got two feats to help characterize the way your paladin fights.  That doesn't seem like enough for any class, IMO.  To me, feats add a lot of flavor to a character's personality, even if the feats are combat oriented.  I agree, especially with the part about talents and bonus feats.   And while d20 Modern characters get more feats, their class and occupation limits what they can choose, so that the non-combat feats are often chosen.   Giving D&D player characters more feats while adding more restrictions on what they can pick might be the best approach.  Replacing some static class abilities  in a future edition with customizable talents would be cool as well.  I see no reason why every 10th level paladin (or druid, or whatever) should have exactly the same class abilities.   The Lawful alignment, Code of Conduct, and heavy armor proficiency cause paladins to lean in the direction of a knightly order.  The special mount in 3.0 and earlier also did this, but I agree that the new ability detracts from the archetype.  (Most knights do not have horses that don't magically appear and disappear)  Additionally, art and descriptions of paladins in past products promoted a knightly archetype for paladins.  So I can understand wanting to emulate a knightly archetype with the class.  Even if you don't do so, having more feats could help you customize your character more, which is good for swashbuckling paladins, highly charismatic sorcerer/paladins, ultra lawful monk/paladins or any other archetype you can come up with.But having said all that, I don't plan on actually giving my player characters more feats anytime soon.  It opens a can of worms that I'd rather leave shut for now, and it would be painful to have to take it away from them if it didn't work out.  It would be nice to see more in a 4th edition sometime in the distant future.  For now, if a player comes to me complaining that they don't have enough feats, I usually allow them to drop a class ability to get an extra one, and that usually works fine.</blockquote>

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