D&D 5E Playing with only feats for ASI's and no racial ability bonuses.

[Horwath]

Feat are fun and always have been that personal touch to the character(for good or bad), flavor or min/maxing, whatever.

But in 5e they share "character slots" with ability improvements, and in all calculations it's best to boost your primary(sometimes even secondary) stat to 20 ASAP.

That leaves one or two feat slots available to the character, and one feat is always "a must have" for every character build.

Also ability bonuses from races are cool in description but if your race does not have +2 or even +1 to your primary ability for class you need to invest 3 of your 5 ASIs to max it out. That leaves even less room for feat customization.

So why not have fixed stat array for 1st level(for all races equal) and there is no increases per level to abilities. Only maybe from "wish", some magic items(rather not), or some epic boons.


No racial ability modifiers, all ASI's are spent on feats. If you like a half feat, take two of them without ability boost as a single ASI.

Standard ability array for all characters could then be:

18,16,14,14,12,10 for more or less standard game and,

20,18,16,14,12,10 for high powered campaign, or

16,14,12,12,10,8 for low powered campaign.

or tweak the numbers how ever you like.


Would this make PC's more powerfull? Yes, but it would also made them more diverse as you only really need one feat, maybe two to make your character idea work so there is lots of room for flavor feats.

 

[Colder]

It kind of makes mountain dwarfs completely useless for the classes they're supposed to favor, makes Variant humans even more powerful, and makes stock humans completely pointless, so if you decide to use this system you should probably rewrite all three of those races. Would you change the innate spellcasting traits for races that have those as well?

Not to mention you'd need to do something about the half-feats, too.

 

[CydKnight]

I'd have to play with these modified rules to see how it works. They could work fine with some additional tweaks but I suspect that they will effect how encounters are put together with CR or XP ratings among other things.

Another thought is that while getting a primary stat boost does indeed ideal and optimal, there is nothing wrong with having sub-20 score for ability scores including the primary.

I also do not necessary feel it is wrong or right to have or not have a certain number of feats up to and including none at all depending on your character and your style of play.

Taking away racial modifiers, for me, removes some of the flavor of choosing a particular race. I also feel that if you aren't giving the proposed racial ability score bonuses you will either have to take away other racial abilities like Darkvision, Dwarven Toughness, etc. or live with potential imbalance there.

 

[Horwath]

I'd have to play with these modified rules to see how it works. They could work fine with some additional tweaks but I suspect that they will effect how encounters are put together with CR or XP ratings among other things.

Another thought is that while getting a primary stat boost does indeed ideal and optimal, there is nothing wrong with having sub-20 score for ability scores including the primary.

I also do not necessary feel it is wrong or right to have or not have a certain number of feats up to and including none at all depending on your character and your style of play.

Taking away racial modifiers, for me, removes some of the flavor of choosing a particular race. I also feel that if you aren't giving the proposed racial ability score bonuses you will either have to take away other racial abilities like Darkvision, Dwarven Toughness, etc. or live with potential imbalance there.

Some tweaks are always needed if you impelment this. This is just an idea as most characters that are focused on boosting abilities outperform those focused on feats. Not to mention if they take "low tier" feats for flavor/character concept.

Racial bonuses do give some flavor but as abilities are capped at 20 whatever your racial bonus to that ability is, all flavor is lost at lvl8, latest at lvl 12. As most dexterous elf and dwarf will have same dexterity.

So why not cut it at 1st level and focus on racial differences out side ability bonuses.
[MENTION=6807965]Colder[/MENTION]; Mt dwarf realy does little to support any class focused. +2 str,+2 con is great for martial melee, but that is it. Outside darkvision it adds nothing as you double up on all racial proficiencies.

It's OK for wizards as you get nice armor and +2 constitution but +2 str and melee weapon prof are mostly wasted also.

 

[Colder]

Mt dwarf realy does little to support any class focused. +2 str,+2 con is great for martial melee, but that is it. Outside darkvision it adds nothing as you double up on all racial proficiencies.

Exactly​ my point. Mountain Dwarves are fluffed as having a strongly martial society, making excellent fighters, barbarians, etc. That's why they have the armor proficiency (all mountain dwarves have knowledge with arms and armor) and the ASIs they do (because the armor proficiencies are useless for the culturally appropriate fighters, paladins, clerics, etc). So without those ASI, they either need a new trait that isn't redundant for those classes, or they need rewritten fluff, else the problem is going to get even worse.

But if you don't care about mountain dwarves at all you could probably just delete them from the game and only have hill dwarves and duergar I guess.