Legends and Lore: Uber Feats eat Prestige classes and Paragon Paths or give +1 to ability

[VinylTap]

I thought they were going to simplify feats by giving classes 'feat trees'?

I think the point about a lot of the problem being "no-good" or "no obvious" feat is a really fair one. They need to make the feat tree feel organic.

balancing the options so there isn't an obvious choice for power gamers is going to be really tough in this. I can't see them balancing things well.

 

[JasonZZ]

So you're this Fighter guy (or gall) and you adventure some, level up, the usual. Your Strength score started at 16 but now after some feat-choices you managed to get it to 19. Yeah! Progression!

And then in the next treasure hoard you find a girdle of hill giant strength.

Where is your god now?

Bringing the retraining rules....

 

[MarkB]

The ability boost feats aside, the concept seems to have some similarities with Talent trees in Star Wars Saga Edition. I wouldn't mind seeing such a system - it makes sense for classes which have a wide choice of class features - but this seems like an awkward way to implement it. Time will tell.

I'm really not keen on the system being combined with ability boosts. When you have to choose between versatility and raw power for a character, the interesting side options almost always lose out.

 

[GX.Sigma]

More tweets:

[Will there be both passive feats and active feats?] yes
[Does this replace ability bonuses from leveling?] yes, you get feats in place of ability bonuses
[Specialties?] they are still there and more important than before - having clear power path is key
[Will starting ability score be lower to accommodate this?] DM picks - do you start as Conan (strong, fast, tough) or have option to grow into him?

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Feats getting bigger and consuming Prestige Classes is a great thing. Fewer, more robust feats makes decision making easier and more interesting.

Different classes having different feat progressions is something I'll have to see. Mearls's tweet about classes getting the +1 ability score increase by default that they can instead trade for a feat makes this more viable. It works from a story perspective, as well. A fighter probably would spend a lot of time strength training (more than other classes), but he could, if he wanted, focus that training elsewhere.

I think the name "feat" should probably go. It was a poor label in the first place. Perhaps specialties should merge with these new, larger feats to create a single, more story-driven system.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I'm confused by some of the twitter information, will ability score increases be limited in some way?

 

[GX.Sigma]

I'm confused by some of the twitter information, will ability score increases be limited in some way?

All ability scores are capped at 20.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Apparently not (you can take the same one twice), which still makes me wonder how you balance an even->odd ability increase (worthless?) with an odd -> even ability increase. Granted, to reach 20 you'll have to buy an even->odd increase, but suddenly starting with a primary 17 becomes much much better than 16.

 

[Dausuul]

Hmm. Well, I'm still extremely skeptical, but Mearls's tweets have convinced me to at least give the new approach a chance. We'll see what the next playtest packet has to offer.

 

[zoroaster100]

The thing that most concerned me about this Legends and Lore is this - we are one year into playtesting, and yet this seems like possibly such a major reworking of the way classes are balanced against each other and the way character advancement works. At this rate DNDNext looks like it won't be finished for at least 2 years, or else it will get rushed at the end. Any way, with respect to the actual proposal, I suppose it could work but I'm very concerned about their ability to balance such strong feats against each other and against ability score modifiers.