New blog: Avoid Trap Choices [duplicate thread]

[dkyle]

Nevermind, Got beaten to the punch. Mods, please delete.

New blog post: Avoiding Trap Choices

Now we could do this another way. We could just bite the bullet and say feats are generally combat focused. Feats reflect customization options that speak directly to the combat pillar. Then we could let skills (delivered through backgrounds) carry the weight of exploration and interaction. And then we could have a third element, call them traits, to address the roleplaying pillar. This ensures that we never have to worry about Power Attack = Fast Hands = Ennui, because they’re all different things.

Yes! This is exactly what I've been asking for. Although I'm a bit confused because I thought interaction was the new name for the "roleplaying" pillar, not a separate thing?

In any event, I think it's a great idea to just focus "feats" on combat, make "skills" be for exploration (that work basically like the skill-based feats in 3.5/4E), and "traits" for interaction (some skill-like things for social rolls, maybe some "gain a noble title" type stuff). Although, I do think "skills" and "traits" could be combined into just "skills". I'm more concerned about not forcing tradeoffs between combat and non-combat, than between two forms of non-combat.

I'm not a fan of the "one feat has stuff for all three pillars" approach, because it reduces flexibility in character creation. I'd rather each pillar allow independent choices.