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

[Minigiant]

For power games and optimizers, which are a small minority of players. For casual players and the rest of us who don't care about that sort of thing, terrible does not exist.

It still does.

Even 5e weak stunted monsters will chew up poorly multiclassed terrible PCs in Tier 2 and beyond.

 

[SkidAce]

The problem I have seen in every "feats" based system (or the equivalent, with skills) is twofold: 1) greater system mastery needed to create a strong character, leading to 2) greater homogeneity as the system masters home in on a relatively few optimal builds, with slight variations. So even though such systems theoretically allow for much more diversity, in practice they lead to much less.

I strongly prefer the 5e system because it is easier, especially for beginners, which is very important to me me, and it builds in more meaningful variety. But I get that for optimizers a feats-based system is very appealing.

An honest question to gain perspective....

How much does "homogeneity" matter for you? It seems to matter on the internet, cause many of us read the class guides with letter ranks and color codes, and over time as you say they "home in" on certain builds.

While they were doing that our group might be in the position to have created an additional character? Maybe not.

If you play with a constantly changing set of players, and a lot of them, I can see that repetitiveness could show up (if they online searched optimal builds) and become annoying.

I note that you play with a lot of beginners (at a school I think? Huzzah!).

Do a lot of those beginners fall into the optimal build trap?

 

[SkidAce]

...
Subclasses in different levels with different classes means you cant have an universal subclass shared between several classes.
...

I agree and feel that was a big missed opportunity.

 

[Minigiant]

An honest question to gain perspective....

How much does "homogeneity" matter for you? It seems to matter on the internet, cause many of us read the class guides with letter ranks and color codes, and over time as you say they "home in" on certain builds.

While they were doing that our group might be in the position to have created an additional character? Maybe not.

If you play with a constantly changing set of players, and a lot of them, I can see that repetitiveness could show up (if they online searched optimal builds) and become annoying.

I note that you play with a lot of beginners (at a school I think? Huzzah!).

Do a lot of those beginners fall into the optimal build trap?

Its not about homogeneity.

Its purposefully design and futureproofing.

Its not that 5e is bad.
Its that te was designed with the assumption nothing new seriously would be added to it.

So if ANYTHING is thought up and some someone say "Wouldn't it be cool if...", ... it hits major hiccups in 5e.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think we're just going to have to disagree on this one. The premise that most players will go thematic over powerful doesn't seem to hold true to me, for instance I know of only a single martial character in ten years of (2014) 5e that intentionally used a non-magical trident over other options, because other weapons were better. Players in my experience both locally and on discussion boards often look over the options available, like feats, and pick the one that best enhances what they want to do. Your core premise that that is only limited to "relatively few power gamers" has not been my experience, it's wider than that, perhaps even a majority of players.

I think everyone has a an acceptable power threshold. So everyone prunes away the really bad options. But as long as that threshold is met I think people often weight thematics more than power. Really high optimizers really just have a much higher acceptable power threshold. They tend to explore games more as puzzles to be solved and then playing as testing their theories. I don't think most people approach the game to that extreme either.

 

[Maxperson]

It still does.

For you.

 

[SkidAce]

Its not about homogeneity.

Its purposefully design and futureproofing.

Its not that 5e is bad.
Its that te was designed with the assumption nothing new seriously would be added to it.

So if ANYTHING is thought up and some someone say "Wouldn't it be cool if...", ... it hits major hiccups in 5e.

I understand your points, but the person I quoted was talking about homogeneity, so I was wondering about their viewpoint.

You thoughts also make sense and help me see the span of influences from a different viewpoint.

 

[FrogReaver]

That said, I struggle to understand why there is such a push in favor of the subclass design, which incentivizes multiclassing.

I feel like pushing subclasses to level 3 in 2024, outside of theory crafting level 20 characters has mostly put a stop to multiclassing based primarily on subclass abilities at actual tables. Most multiclassing now is for armor, particular low level spells/cantrips, or when a class like ranger and to a lesser extent class abilities like rage or monk's martial arts. Maybe after level 5 on some martials it's still around because their class features are pretty bad after that. Not true of Fighters, Monks, Paladins. Barbarians are right on the borderline.

If feats were more interesting, it may be possible to have more builds which are single class + the right feats rather than multiclass, or at least MC with fewer number of classes in them. Why is it so frowned upon to have options for "lightweight multiclassing via feats"?

IMO, Feats are very interesting, you just don't get enough of them as is, let alone if trying to add in using them for lightweight multiclassing, which due to the current design will ensure that at best this will be good for a few classes and bad for all the others.

Having more interesting feat options could also lead to more players choosing them over ASIs, and accepting that they won’t have any stat at 20 by 20th level.

We are already mostly there. For 2024, most characters in 1-10 level range (most played range) are choosing feats ahead of ASI's.

I think the big problem is looking to level 20. That's not where the game is played. Except as an intellectual exercise those levels really don't matter.

With current 5e rules, it’s almost guaranteed that any moderately optimized character has 20 in at least one stat, and maybe even two, by 20th level. Why is such sameness and homogeneity considered ideal? In the name of simplicity? Maybe it’s too complex if builds aren’t all mostly the same? But I thought the big fear of having more feat options was that it inevitably led to sameness … well, if sameness is already what we have anyway, then why does it matter?

Part of the issue there is that players are shoring up major class weaknesses with their feats. Casters taking Warcaster because concentration. Martials taking mage slayer because weak wisdom saves. Often Martials taking a damage increasing feat because their damage is fairly anemic otherwise (especially compared to casters using spirit guardians, moonbeam, conjure animlas etc).

Essentially the structure of the game as is incentives using feats not for thematic reasons but to fix major class deficiencies. And your right there aren't many feats to shore up those deficiencies. But what this means for the current state is that all these feats you want to make aren't going to be used unless their similarly as useful (in which case you don't really need prereqs or feat chains), and they will only possibly be highly useful for a small subset of classes - striking down the primary purpose you wanted them for at the beginning (as universal prestige paths / feat chains).

I'm fine adding more feats, but there are pros and cons for the game design embracing feat chains/prestige paths using feats/mutliclassing using feats and for me those cons outweigh the few pros we might get. Almost everything that you want to achieve can be acheived by making stand alone feats and allowing the player to freestyle pick them as they already do.

 

[FrogReaver]

That might be true… but if it is, then I don’t see how any addition to the game can ever attain this ideal that it "applies roughly equally to every class that can take them".

It doesn't have to if you aren't trying to make universal prestige paths out of them. But since that's the justification for feat chains then

I'll try to address more later.

 

[bedir than]

One of the interesting things about Paths leaning into Feats is that Fighters and Rogues both have more opportunity for Paths than spellcasters