D&D 5E New Feats Survey!

[Guest 7034872]

Most of my experience with the game is from 1e, so feats are still strange to me. I haven't even read through all of them, and I've only ever used a few because I only got back into the game a few years back (well, "a few" for someone my age, anyway). I certainly foresee them complicating my life as DM in coming months, but I guess I also subscribe to the idea that DMs' lives ought to be complicated. Players "breaking the game" by creatively manipulating some feat, rule, spell, or ability is, to my mind, one of the most fascinating and enjoyable parts of the whole game. Why on Earth would I ever want to punish creativity?? So in that respect I'm inclined to say "Bring it on!" with all the wild 'n' crazy feats players can take (Magical Initiate seems awfully sweet).

On the other hand, I do often worry about players' ahh..."creative problem-solving" getting out of hand and ruining their own enjoyment of the game. I'm one of those guys who think players and DMs having fun is vastly more important than scrupulous rules-adherence, right? In my party, each player and the DM are spending a lot of time on this game every week, so the investment ought to find worthy emotional rewards. But in my party, we all graphically learned that no one really has any fun when the game runs on <Easy> mode. No challenge, no point. So if any particular feat becomes so strong that it always obviously beats gaining two core stat points, the shadow of the Phantom Minmax Monster stretches across the corners of my mind.

I love giving players lots of options for building their best character and really tuning him/her to maximum intended effect, but I hate the idea of a party successfully killing off a gargantuan MechaSmaug at 6th level (I'm exaggerating, of course). It does sometimes seem like an embarrassment of riches, but maybe that's only because I've not tinkered with the whole thing enough yet?

TLDR: I'm undecided.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

It would be interesting to know how many level 12 characters on DnDBeyond have a feat. That is the most likely place for that initial feat over ASI.

 

[Parmandur]

It would be interesting to know how many level 12 characters on DnDBeyond have a feat. That is the most likely place for that initial feat over ASI.

They put those numbers out at some point, when Adam was in charge.

 

[Scott Christian]

Maybe, maybe not. Surely people laying Theros, Ravenloft or Strixhaven campaigns have new options.

My gut says yes. I have played at three random tables (each with different players) this past year; dwarves, elves and humans were the minority. Granted, it is purely anecdotal, but I find it to be true. A good way to gauge it, might be to ask a poll on here: If you have started a campaign in the past twelve months, what race did you play?

 

[TerraDave]

The thread is alive!

Yes, WotC learned not to alienate particular players that might be in a minority, but could turn their group against a new edition. That's why tieflings, dragonborn, and gnomes--with appropriate irony--are in the PHB.

They will keep feats. They just need to fix them. Please vote on the survey.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I think the more they spell out, the less players will look outside of what the game is spelling for you. Back in 1e/2e a lot more players tried outside of the box actions. 3e then tried to spell out nearly everything and that creativity plummeted. 5e spells out far less and I'm seeing that creativity return slowly as my players are being retrained in the old ways.

I think this other thread makes is a good "sibling" to this thread...

 

[TerraDave]

There are a lot more cool Feats, particularly in more recent books: but 3E was gross, so gross. Fun fact: Feats actually come from the 2E Proficiency system, because the 3E team was tasked with implementing the boss's homebrew RoleMaster like Skill system, but were still attached to 2E Proficiencies because...reasons.

AD&D had proficiency slots for weapons. Then some of those slots could be used for weapon specialization. Then NWP were added, which included things like blindfighting. These were expanded over 2e, other optional options were added, and by the time 3E came along there were a bunch of proto-feats ready to transfer over.

But they still wanted a new skill system. At least they unified all those checks (which proficiencies did not).

I do know that XP was used for magic item creation so that it would not actually be done. In practice, what a PitA.

I also know that some of the main 3E designers were very into rolemaster and other non-D&D games.

Now I will read the article in the other post.

 

[JEB]

So, I took a big dump on Feats for the Survey, but my thinking about Feats did evolve after Tasha's: if a Feat can reasonably be used to characterize an entire culture or people as much as an individual, then the Geat is worthwhile. Using the Tasha's rules, I can make a culture of Mystical swamp Alligator people using the Whitherbloom Initiate Geat from Strixhaven, which is then a cool Rave option. Crossbow Expert...not so much.

This is an interesting point, because it makes me wonder what feats the designers intended folks to use for the Custom Lineage. Since they also included a skill proficiency as an option, I guess they hadn't yet turned against skills as racial traits as of Tasha's, and presumably assumed folks would pick stuff like Crossbow Expert or Tavern Brawler or the like. Though stealing from Xanathar's racial feats would be the more natural choice.

If Custom Lineage returns for 2024 edition, wonder how it'll be reworked.

 

[Parmandur]

This is an interesting point, because it makes me wonder what feats the designers intended folks to use for the Custom Lineage. Since they also included a skill proficiency as an option, I guess they hadn't yet turned against skills as racial traits as of Tasha's, and presumably assumed folks would pick stuff like Crossbow Expert or Tavern Brawler or the like. Though stealing from Xanathar's racial feats would be the more natural choice.

If Custom Lineage returns for 2024 edition, wonder how it'll be reworked.

The new book still has Races that can choose Proficiencies similar to Tasha's option, they just stepped away from "everyone gets the same Proficiency".

I think they meant the Feats in Tasha's to be the model for what people would want to cover a whole Race, like Fey Touched or Metamagic Adept.