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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 6115506" data-attributes="member: 1465">The "mechanic" of Feats is so simple, that it really would be a pity to remove it as a whole from the game, it's the ultimate game mechanic for character customization that every DM can use to design their own campaign-defining or setting-defining special abilities for PC and NPC.OTOH it's true that WotC should really ask themselves what is the purpose of feats in the game, but with regard to what feats can do. What I mean is that the general purpose of the feats system as a whole is character customization, that's pretty much clear. But what needs to be re-thought carefully is the specific purpose of the feats available in the game.Personally I think the best feats are those who can potentially add something to all characters. Some examples in the current packets: Arcane Dabbler, Charming Presence, Combat Reflexes, Find Familiar, Healing Initiate, Herbalism, Improved Initiative, Iron Hide, Purge Magic, Skill Focus, Skill Supremacy, Superior Skill Training, Toughness, Track, Trap Sense and Use Magic Device.It doesn't matter what class you are or whether you focus on melee, exploration or spellcasting, ANY of those feats above is going to be potentially useful! That's my favourite type of feats, not those which apply only to some classes!But currently feats have a broaded but also less clear purpose, because they include combat feats which make you better at melee or ranged combat. What if instead we eliminated all combat feats? What if every feat that opens up an option is turned into just that: an option, an additional type of action in the "combat actions" list (obviously not in the Basic game)? This way everyone already can push, charge, fight with two weapons, shield bash etc, do we really need feats to allow an action that isn't better than doing a regular attack?Then there are also combat feats that indeed make your attack better (or something more specific than an attack). But why can't those be Fighter Maneuvers only? The more combat boosts we allow to all classes, the more we go back into 3e troubles with the Fighter class having less to offer, so why not having a game where only the Fighter can get Maneuvers that actually boost? Then for a gaming group which likes every PC to dabble into this, all that's needed is one feat that reads "You gain one Fighter Maneuver of your choice".This could then be generalized into a small list of "multiclassing feats", another one could grant you a Rogue's Skill Trick, another a single Wizard's Spell and so on... This allows for 4e-style multiclassing but it is so easily under the DM's control because if all this is not wanted, the DM only needs to "ban" a tiny bunch of feats instead of going through a list of hundreds. This "multiclassing feats" list can also be labelled "optional" in the book, to make it more clear.Then all that would be left as pure feats, are add-ons ability that can potentially affect any character no matter the class, which would be neat IMHO, as long as we bravely drop another issues with feats that we take for granted only out of habit: restrictions. Why do we really need restrictions? Why do we really need to require spellcasting in order to take Find Familiar, what would be so terrible in allowing a Fighter or Rogue to have a familiar? How about the Stark in Game of Thrones that have dire wolves familiars without being wizards, aren't they cool? Are they more broken than a regular wizard with the same familiar?</blockquote>

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