Legends & Lore: A Bit More on Feats

[Dausuul]

What do you mean it's not easily made modular? It's super easy. In fact, in 3ed it was quite common to see groups change the basic rate of ability score increase, for example granting two +1s to two scores instead of one.

If you default the game to no ability score increase by level, adding them later is a piece of cake. "Modular on a group basis" is unbelievably simple in this case.

Except that it affects PC power level relative to monsters, in ways that are somewhat challenging to calculate (since ability scores cap at 20, you can't just assume that PCs will gain +X to hit at level Y). Whatever system 5E will have for estimating encounter difficulty would be thrown off. Furthermore, if they do in fact go with the plan to have different classes gain feats/stat boosts at different rates, it will affect intra-party balance as well.

Obviously in one sense you are right; it's simple to say, "No level-based ability increases in our game." But the game won't work as well out of the box if you do. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this would be an "advanced" module, the sort that DMs are advised to implement at their own risk.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I meant, if their current design direction is to "merge" previous feats 3-by-3 or something similar, you have to take the whole package. You still probably get more than one package (i.e. the new mega-feats) in the course of 20 levels, so you still have some choice compared to choosing one specialty that defines all your feats. But at the same time it's less choice compared to before.

[video=youtube;VO6XEQIsCoM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO6XEQIsCoM[/video]

These sample feats are just sample, so they shouldn't be taken too seriously yet, but I think they set the idea. What if I was interested in getting heavy armor proficiency? Now I have to take a whole mega-feat that also gives me 2 additional abilities I'm not interested in.

I think the question would be: why are you interested in heavy armor proficiency? Typically, it's because you want your character to be tough and defensive. Hey presto, this does that.

I also imagine there's multiple feats that would grant that proficiency. Maybe a Defender feat grants heavy armor proficiency and gives you the ability to take damage for allies. Maybe a Swift Slayer feat gives you a movement boost, plus the heavy weapon proficiency.

What is the goal you had in mind when deciding you wanted that proficiency? The feat can now support all of that goal at once, instead of requiring a series of minor choices.

Let's see what they do when they come to non-combat feats then. For instance, what if I want my Wizard to have a Familiar? Until now, I spend a feat and get a familiar. They can't combine this with other feats, it just makes no sense that to get a familiar I also get herbalism or something else unrelated. So it will have to be related, but how? Are they going to suddenly give me a giant-uber familiar, since it has to be worth 3 feats at once?

I can imagine a familiar that comes with a particular spell/ritual you can add to your list. Like, a raven that grants you comprehend languages, a toad that grants you resist poison, a bat that grants you darkvision (or somesuch). Familiars in 3e also came with a skill bonus, so maybe we roll that into there, too. Now you have a character-defining pet, a skill bonus, and a spell.

If you mean fiddly bits are boring, I'm with you... but a mega-feat has to be worth 3 older feats, so it either gives you a single large bonus, or it gives you 3 times more fiddly bits, or 3 special actions. The first one might not be appropriate with bounded accuracy, the second is bread, the third means you have to take the whole package or nothing and IMHO it's not good to get 3 new special actions at one level and then no special actions in the next 8 levels.

Feats are only one component of your special actions, not your whole character, so a player is going to get a series of abilities over those 8 levels. Just perhaps not from a feat.

As if there was no sense of character development prior to 3e (when there was no ability score increase by level)?
As if there is not enough sense of character development when you get class abilities by level, spell levels, skills, regular feats and possibly more?
Anyway, I suggested you can still have ability scores bumps with magic, and it's easy to rule the bumps by level back, if "sense of character development" is not enough.
What I am saying is that these ability score bumps are not only bloated by now but are also conditioning the design of other parts of the game that were fine.

No, just that character development and growth are important parts of the D&D play experience, and that increasing your physical capabilities is part of that growth.

The bumps aren't forcing the design's hand -- it's not like they're scrounging around to make feats big enough. They're actually opening up new design space, giving you more breathing room to design an interesting and powerful feature that is going to be notable.

I mean, I just leveled up in one of my 4e games. It came with a feat. Pretty much everyone hemmed and hawed over what feat to take because none of them really mattered, but it felt like we'd be missing out unless we carefully selected the right one. This is not what you want.

 

[Weather Report]

I think the question would be: why are you interested in heavy armor proficiency?

...because you want your wizard to cast spells in plate?

 

[Li Shenron]

What is the goal you had in mind when deciding you wanted that proficiency? The feat can now support all of that goal at once, instead of requiring a series of minor choices.

The whole problem started off when they wanted to have players to choose between feats and ability score bumps at the same table. The original reasons for that target are that (1) some players just don't like feats while others do and (2) some players want simpler characters and feats add complexity.

But a player who want a simple character can still want heavy armor proficiency. If there's another way to get it in the middle of a PC's life then good, but these sort of feats just don't cut it. This player just wants her PC to use heavy armors (at some point, not at level 1), if she needs to take a feat with additional properties, it's complicating her life a lot.

In the meantime, another player who actually likes complexity wants the other features of the feat, but he already has heavy armor proficiency, and is going to complain that he is wasting 1/3 or 2/3 of a feat just to get what he wants. This sort of thing happens all the time with high-complexity players, they want full control over what they get. I just don't think having mega-feats will give justice to either of these players.

OTOH, mega-feats that indeed grant a single mega-ability, would be fine for me. I have doubts that this can be done for combat feats, but non-combat mega-feats are ok in my book. For example, a Herbalism feat extended to be huge in application, or an Alchemy feat, or a Craft Magic Items feat... these can be huge without being a bunch of vaguely related abilities.

Except that it affects PC power level relative to monsters, in ways that are somewhat challenging to calculate (since ability scores cap at 20, you can't just assume that PCs will gain +X to hit at level Y). Whatever system 5E will have for estimating encounter difficulty would be thrown off. Furthermore, if they do in fact go with the plan to have different classes gain feats/stat boosts at different rates, it will affect intra-party balance as well.

Obviously in one sense you are right; it's simple to say, "No level-based ability increases in our game." But the game won't work as well out of the box if you do. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that this would be an "advanced" module, the sort that DMs are advised to implement at their own risk.

Well it worked well for 25 years before having level-based ability increases...

Yes, it's true that it affects relative level. But it already is too challenging to calculate, when one PC decides to always boost abilities, and another PC decides to always pick feats that don't give bonuses but a more horizontal growth, then we can have a PC that reaches 20 in several stats while another still uses the scores she rolled at 1st level.

If the whole gaming group follows the same rate of stat increases, the PCs will be (slightly at least) more balanced. If a gaming group decides to change the rate, of course the monsters relative balance with the PCs change, but at least the balance between PCs themselves is quite stable.

 

[tuxgeo]

In the current package, isn't 15 the highest you can point-buy? Add to that perfect class/race synergy and your highest stat can only be as high as 17 (and there's still the cap at 20... or is it 20 + racial modifier?). < snip >

The cap is 20. In the latest packet, in the file named "032013 Character Creation.pdf," in Step 5 it says, "Afterward, make any changes to your ability scores as a result of your race and class choices. After these adjustments, a score can be no higher than 20."

Also, at the end of the same file, in the section named "Beyond 1st Level," is says: "Additionally, at certain levels, you choose two of your character's ability scores to increase by 1 each, abiding by the rule that a character's ability scores cannot go above 20."

 

[tuxgeo]

. . .
If the whole gaming group follows the same rate of stat increases, the PCs will be (slightly at least) more balanced. If a gaming group decides to change the rate, of course the monsters relative balance with the PCs change, but at least the balance between PCs themselves is quite stable.

That may be the key to the whole mess right there: set the ability score boosts and feat acquisition rate for the party as a whole, not on a PC-by-PC basis. That's a much cleaner solution.

 

[Klaus]

Optimizing and min/maxing is more or less synonyms, so you are basically just agreeing with me?

I am, but a little clarification is in order:

For the past few years (since 3e or so), "optimization" meant making your character extremely efficient in the chosen field (be it biggest damage, crit-fishing, enemy lockdown, nova, etc), without regard for weak spots. Having a couple of "8" in ability scores was perfectly fine if it meant starting with a "20" in your prime stat, for instance. Whereas "min/maxing" advocated being as best as you can be, but without leaving any crippling weaknesses (no glass tigers, as it were).

 

[Grydan]

I think the question would be: why are you interested in heavy armor proficiency? Typically, it's because you want your character to be tough and defensive. Hey presto, this does that.

I also imagine there's multiple feats that would grant that proficiency. Maybe a Defender feat grants heavy armor proficiency and gives you the ability to take damage for allies. Maybe a Swift Slayer feat gives you a movement boost, plus the heavy weapon proficiency.

What is the goal you had in mind when deciding you wanted that proficiency? The feat can now support all of that goal at once, instead of requiring a series of minor choices.

The thing is, the number of possible reasons that someone could have to want proficiency in heavy armour (or any similar game element) is—pretty much inevitably—going to be higher than the available number of feats that grant that game element as one of their components. I mean, unless we're expecting to fill up entire books with heavy armour proficiency feats with varying additional bonuses.

There's no way for [Heavy Armour Proficiency,X,Y] feats to ever be as flexible an option as [Heavy Armour Proficiency], [X], and [Y] feats. You'd have to offer dozens of variations to keep up, which in the end would simply be the same as offering the benefits as separate elements … only taking a lot more words and pages to do the job.

People have complained before about this class or that carrying unwanted baggage. This approach means that inevitably we'll have feats with unwanted baggage. People will want two out of three elements, or one out of three elements, and have to take the unwanted ones as well just to get them. Your multiple-feats-grant-the-same-thing approach seems destined to cause far more feat-bloat than either 3E or 4E ever suffered from, because those systems only needed a single proficiency feat for each type of armour (or any other specific game element), whereas this approach would require multiple ones.

I mean, I just leveled up in one of my 4e games. It came with a feat. Pretty much everyone hemmed and hawed over what feat to take because none of them really mattered, but it felt like we'd be missing out unless we carefully selected the right one. This is not what you want.

I must say that my own experience in 4E is vastly different. I usually feel feat-starved (even when the majority of characters I end up playing are human, and thus get a bonus feat). You could grant my characters a feat at every level and I'd still have to pass up feats I'd like to have, feats that I feel would matter.

The latest character I'm playing just reached level 2, and I'd say that each of his four feats (human, class bonus, level 1, and level 2) matter. Heck, every feat the character will take in heroic tier (assuming he and the campaign last that long) is already planned out, including retraining along the way.

—

When they said they'd be making feats more significant, I—perhaps foolishly—thought that meant that feats were going to have more benefit in terms of quality, rather than more benefits in terms of quantity. 'Feat X grants you benefit y' being replaced by 'Feat X grants you Benefit Y!'. Instead, they seem to be going for 'Feat X grants you benefit y, benefit z, and a side of fries' … whether you wanted fries with that or not.

 

[VinylTap]

I think this direction sounds great.

If anyone's done any game design you know the math is going to be off before a lot of play testing gets done, so the actual numbers are really meaningless right now, but it sounds like a lot of fun to play.

Lower starting stats sounds like a great solution for a lot of this, especially with the less dynamic hit ranges they've been working with. Seems like a no-brainer. Class/race stat bonuses should probably go as well.

 

[MarkB]

It might be possible through Background Traits. They mentioned that proficiencies are Background options, and that PCs can expand upon their Backgrounds during play. That way it wouldn't even require anyhting but time and maybe money.

Becoming proficient with a new weapon also seems like a pretty good application of the Downtime system.