D&D 5E Remove feats and replace as magic items

[Helldritch]

Doing this would be going against what 5ed tries to accomplish. The power comes from the characters and not the magic items he might have. In 5ed, magic is there to enhance the powers of the characters. Making the feats as magical items is just a step toward 3.xed and 4ed where magic was mandatory to rise in power and to follow the power curve required to be competitive with the monsters.

On the other hand, both feats and magical items are optional in the current edition. But not the ASI. If you do go the way where feats are incorporated into magic, I would either raise the number of possible attunements by about two or remove it entirely. This would take some testing but it might work. Characters rarely go beyond two feats anyways.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad idea per see, but it really goes against the philosophy of 5ed.

Edit: Changed the word players for characters... I'm nitpicking myself now... go figure!

 

[Li Shenron]

I love feats, but sure why not?

If you as a DM feel that a certain feat is too strong, make it a potion. If you feel it's too weak, make it a permanent magic item. Since magic items are unlimited (attunement notwithstanding), at least no PC will ever refuse a free cloak of gourmand.

 

[dave2008]

You are completely right. How to balance that?

Well, you could allow ASI as normal. Then, though the treasure feats give a boost to players, you can distribute them to the players eveningly. SO the party remains balanced. Then all you need to do is: use stronger monsters, or use more monsters, or give monsters treasure feats, or some combination of these options.

 

[jgsugden]

I assign feats (or feat like benefits) to magic items all the time. About 50% of the magic items in my games are home brew items.

 

[TwoSix]

I'm all for it; at a fundamental level, I'd like to move the game in a direction where advancement is more random and less planned. Moving feats into magic items is a good first step towards that approach.

 

[Fenris-77]

I like feats, and I like having some significant portion of a Character's skill/power come from them and not an item. However, the feats are pretty obviously not created equal. There's a small handful that are awesome, a bunch that are OK, especially with odd stats, and then a bunch of stinkers. My problem lies more with the uneven feats than anything else. I do like some of the ideas I've seen for cutting feats down, and making them all essentially 1/2 an ASI, but have some synergy between feats as well. I'd have no problem playing in a game that had moved the feat power to items though, I just probably wouldn't do it for games I run.

 

[atanakar]

In editions prior to 3e characters mostly gained power via magic items. We often described our character by what items they had, the same way players described their 3e+ characters with feats. Class Talents were few are far between.

ASI were done by finding Tomes of [Attribute], Wizards were looking of Ioun Stones (for extra spells), Fighters wanted +5 swords, etc. It worked well if the DM was fair and understood the power creep level of encounters as the PCs gained levels.

But it was also problematic. Some DM gave too many items and destroy their campaigns. Other DMs were far too stingy and kept the PCs in a constant state of magic item starvation. Not fun.

Some DMs always gave random treasures which were very often useless to the PCs.

Also, magic items (thus character power) could be taken away via the narrative, some times as player punishment or as a way to rebalance the power level.

It was all about the DM making choices for the players. Which is the opposite of the player making choices for himself using Feats.

I would say there are more cons than pros, theoretically.

 

[the Jester]

Yes, keep the ASI, but sprinkle in feats as magic items on top. How do I do this balanced?

Since a game that bans feats is balanced by default, you just treat them like you treat other magic items. They're not necessary to maintain balance, so you use them as desired and put them out in place of other items that the party might find. How many or few really depends on how many magic items you give out as treasure.

 

[Nebulous]

Slow down and somehow randomize ASI so it's neither such a big deal nor a guaranteed event at any given level. Or get rid of it entirely.

Then maybe give out occasional items (maybe one every other average-PC-level or so) that when first used, instead of doing what they seem to want to do and what all identification says they'll do, instead perma-boost a random stat for the user by one and then crumble to dust.

That might be the best way to do it; remove ASI completely and then the DM has a tight rein on when and where and which treasure feats he hands out. I think this would be a great, great way to use all those crappy feats no one ever wants. And arguably broken ones, like Lucky, could be relegated to a consumable potion.

 

[Nebulous]

Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad idea per see, but it really goes against the philosophy of 5ed.

Agreed, it does kind of go against the philosophy of 5e, but I think it could be a workable system. I've mentioned it to two players so far and both are intrigued.