D&D General Path of Feats: a Superior Design than Subclasses

[Neonchameleon]

I see the feat chains in the Synergy Feats section. That’s interesting. I guess I can see @Neonchameleon’s concern that a feat chain might reduce customizability, and it might be true (but also, maybe overblown?)… In any case though, I would think a feat tree should not cause such adverse effect, at least not much.

And would require a lot of feats.

But this ties into my core problem with 5e from the player's side. How few character development choices you make. Once you've hit level 4 in 5e then, with most non-charisma casters, you are likely to make only a single character growth choice that's not just "what equipment do I use today" (and for non-charisma casters spells are equipment that you can change daily) before you hit level 12 (that choice of course being your level 8 feat). You're locked in to your class and subclass, and your skills. How you grow is on rails rather than responding to what you've done and what you think would be useful.

Feat chains of course lock in that feat while feat trees partially lock it in. (And prestige classes lock you in in similar ways).

 

[bedir than]

This is WotC's first real experiment in chains going beyond two links. They mostly did origin + upgrade.

I think I might see an issue though with the fact you are not obligated to complete the path and thus you could be a part lich or semi death knight. Not sure how I feel about that yet.

I think the semis are more likely to be heroes than villains

 

[Corinnguard]

I think the semis are more likely to be heroes than villains

More like Anti-hero IMHO. How many heroes are that willing to become an undead being? Further still, how many of those that do that take path stay heroic?

 

[bedir than]

More like Anti-hero IMHO. How many heroes are that willing to become an undead being? Further still, how many of those that do that take path stay heroic?

I think they're a semi because they left the path

 

[Corinnguard]

I think they're a semi because they left the path

Or they took a path that skirted the darkness to become the Deathless.

 

[Tonguez]

More like Anti-hero IMHO. How many heroes are that willing to become an undead being? Further still, how many of those that do that take path stay heroic?

could be an interesting role play opportunity - the obsessive alchemist working to find the secret of immortality who fails to notice that they have been poisoned by their own experiments and that they've been dead for three years

 

[Charlaquin]

Feat chains were in 5e before the start i.e. in the 2012-2014 playtest at some point. I don't remember if they were called "themes".

Themes were a thing for most of the D&D Next playtest, and their relationship with Feats was constantly in flux, mainly because Feats themselves were constantly in flux. In some packets Themes were Feat chains, in some they were Feat-like benefits that came at certain levels but were distinct from Feats.

The other thing is that, when they decided to make Feats equivalent to +2 ASIs, they pitched an individual Feat as equivalent to a full Feat chain from back in 3e or 4e. The fact that they’re now proposing chains of 5e Feats feels very strange to me.

 

[Silam]

Here’s what feat chains do to the character building process.

You no longer can just read the feat list and think how X fits your character, you read the list and think well this feat would be cool for my character but I must meet the prereq feat…. *Looks at prereq, well that isn’t nearly as good or cool and I have to replace one of my other feats I wanted to take this so I can take the thing I really wanted. Is that worth it?

I’m not a fan of that process, especially the ideal implementation of taking something worse now for something better later.

I hear you… but the issues you describe are exactly the ones I have with the class system…

Each level of a class is a "unit of progress" which has the prereq of possessing the previous level of the class. Subclasses make this slightly more complex but ultimately it’s still mostly the same.

If we consider just the classes and ignore the subclasses, that’s 12 x 20 = 240 atomic units of progress, all but 12 of which (the 1st levels) are free of prepreqs (and even the 1st levels are not totally free of prereqs since you need 13 in one or two stats to have them in a multiclass build).

If I’m interested in one of those atomic units of progress, I need every single prereq (i.e., previous levels of that class), to get it.

Now if we reintroduce the subclasses we left aside so far, the complexity is even greater, because there are about 20% of these 240 units of progress that are not actually a single thing, but rather one of 4 different options, with their own extra prereqs (e.g., Illusionist 6 requires Illusionist 3, in addition to requiring Wizard 5).

Those 240 class levels + 200-ish subclass levels are spread across >100 pages. Furthermore, all that stuff includes a fair bit of redundant info (i.e., how much boilerplate is there with all the spellcasting class features that are almost identical except very slight tweaks, and all the Extra Attack, and Weapon Mastery, and Fighting Style, etc which are redundant across classes?)…

To call this simpler is an opinion, and as far as opinions go it’s legitimate. But it’s not necessarily a fact that it’s actually simpler. Maybe if you just pick one of the 48 subclasses randomly and build a single class character with it, then yeah, it’s simple. But compared to reading a list of feats and working out the prereqs, it’s hard to make the case that reading a list of class features and trying to fit them into a build is actually simpler.

 

[BenjaminPey]

I don't see how three or four choices between ~ 50 feats can be more complex than 20 choices between five or six times that, frankly. (And that's not even speaking about the fact you can simply build your character only with ASIs, and that was the default in 5e14.)

I get that very invested people want very involved systems with lot of choices and customisation, but I, even as a really invested person myself, would rather play not only with other very invested people like me, but also with players well less concerned with that kind of minutia, who are many, and vastly more varied, and who like to put their creative minds elsewhere. Character mechanics are one aspect of TTRPGs, among many. I like TTRPGs that accept players interested in all kind of aspects, not just this one.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I hear you… but the issues you describe are exactly the ones I have with the class system…

Each level of a class is a "unit of progress" which has the prereq of possessing the previous level of the class. Subclasses make this slightly more complex but ultimately it’s still mostly the same.

As I said yesterday in another thread a class system and a level system aren't the same thing. PbtA games have classes but not levels and Daggerheart defangs levels. Meanwhile D&D 5e's are almost uniquely constraining (3.X for example has skills, 4e has powers, and AD&D is random equimpent based). But I agree with you about the basic problem even if I'd attribute it to levels not classes.

However feats are something that exists outside the class system. They are the slack in the system. They are what doesn't get hard-coded in at low level. Turning feats into feat-chains or even feat-trees takes away what little breathing room there is for individual characters.