Robert J. Schwalb Blog Discussion; Feats: Do We need them?

[Nemesis Destiny]

While I like that idea - it opens up tactical flexibility -

Glad we agree on something

there are two problems with it. 1) You'd have to be using inherent bonuses, or you'd be boxed into using a given magic weapon (or finding one of those shape-changing weapons)

I'm a huge fan of Inherent Bonuses, and use (an increasingly customized version of) it all the time now, so this is a no brainer for my campaign. Short of that, and it's a bit of an issue, though at that point no worse than being shoehorned into it by other class features (i.e. implement mastery, battlerager vigor, power strike riders, etc.)

and 2) it's not really the kind of character custimization given by feats, anymore, it's just a cool feature that all characters of that class can play with.

I suppose this is true, though if you add enough of these "features" as you level, after a while, all characters of a given class will start to look much different from one another. I'm no Schwalb or Mearls or Cook (Monte or Zeb), but I think this is how it would work, at any rate.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

snip ...
The real difficulty is in making feats interesting. A lot of people have commented about how "math feats" are boring. That's an inherent problem to feats as a general whole. Feats are static; unlike powers, you don't get to choose when to use them - they're always on. That makes them inherently less tactically interesting than something dynamic like powers. Making them dynamic leads you down the path to skill powers.

....

I do not see making feats interesting a problem, there are lots of interesting feats out there but the the math feats are such a must have that one is inclined to take them before taking an intersting but situational feat.

 

[triqui]

While it's kind of off-topic: Conversely, "floating" powers would also be quite nice, and could eliminate some measure of power bloat where the only differences are stat mods. Skill Powers are excellent examples of these.

Yes, actually that's a road I wish WotC would walk someday. They already hinted about classes being able to share powers ("defender's aura" for Knight and Cavalier, "leaf wall" in Sentinel and Hunter, skill powers, and so on).

I think it's not that difficult to achieve. Sure, it's quite hard to do into 4e (just like removing feats would be). But if you build the entire game with that in mind, it's not. Lot of powers do the same thing, or quite similar, in different classes. "footwork lure" and "luring strike" are quite the same thing, with just minor difference to make 2 different powers to what would be exactly the same thing otherwise.

I think the game could easily build "power lists". For example you could build a power list named "shield fighting", and put there a couple "shield block", "shield bash", "shield ram", "shield wall" etc. Then you can give access to it to any class you feel they should (ie: fighter -or some theme of fighter-, paladin -or some theme of paladin-). Thus a paladin, a ranger, and a fighter might have all of them access to the same "cleave", "sweeping strike" and "whirlwind", while only the paladin has access to "smite infidel", "exorcism" and "rightneus might", only the ranger has access to "twin strike", "double swing" and "hurricane of blades", and only the fighter has access to whatever signature power list you want to give them. You can even make it so no spell list is class only (ie: the avenger might get access to "smite infidel" list, and a dual wield rogue might have access to "twin strike" tree).

You could then give the classes some perks that modify the powers sometime, if you want to give each class a "special feeling" about the power.

For example, while the warlock, sorceror and wizard might have all of them access to "fire spells", including "burning hands", "fireball" and "firestorm", you could give the warlocks a trait named "hell flames" so all their fire spells grant vulnerability 5 to fire, sorceror might have "ignite", so all their fire spells do ongoing fire damage, and Wizards have "explosive", so all their fire spells knock their targets prone.

This will save a lot of space. Instead of listing 10 fire spells for fire themed wizards, then listing 10 fire spells for fire themed warlocks, then 10 different spells for fire themed sorcerors, you could just build 10 (or, as you have more space free now, maybe 20) different spells. Each class could have a unique and distinctive "feel", (That is consistent through all the list, as all wizard fire spells knock prone in adition to whatever other effect they do), and are easier to remember (once you have played a sorceror, you know how a fireball from a warlock works. It's the same with everything -range, area, damage, riders- except that you no longer use the "ongoing damage" but the "vulnerability" rider.

 

[Incenjucar]

Yeah, it's one of the major unfortunate things about 4E not being nearly as open to third parties as 3E was - 4E is incredibly modular in structure, and could very easily be designed into a build-a-class structure. Classes are perfectly awesome, but there are some other really interesting possibilities if you're basically multiclassed with everything.

 

[Vael]

There are two major categories of feats that I think need to be cleaned out.

There's the other type of "math feat" that I'm starting to get annoyed with ... the "Improved class feature feat". All those class and build specific feats that tack onto your class features. Everything from "Backstabber" to "Improved Swordmage Warding", etc. I don't think feats should be used to bring up my class features to par.

Secondly, there's the Race/Class feats. It seems Essentials has put a hold on the plethora of these, but it's still a massive glut. On the one hand, I do kinda like that some of those feats encourage unusual race/class combos ... a feat for Gnome Fighters is more interesting than a feat for Dwarven Fighters. But they've become an ever-expanding grid of slots to fill, and it's a bother.

That said, I'm still a fan of feats. I think they are needed as a general way to customize characters. I don't want all my choices to be constrained by menu picks off my race and class (and theme?). I also want some free choice, I don't think they need silo-ing. What I think I'd like to see is that instead, combat-related feats have less impact on your PC's combat capabilities than non-combat feats have on non-combat situations.

 

[eamon]

Frankly, if I had to choose between feats and powers, I think I'd get rid of powers, not feats. Really though, both feats and powers add something to the game; I'd prefer removing 99% of all powers and 95% of all feats.

The problem is that there are just pages and pages and pages of bog-standard feats+powers. It's particularly egregious with powers: different classes have powers that are virtually identical; yet due to the class-based silos powers are in, there need be tons and tons and tons of them. And of course, it also means that each class's support is completely independent from others; an artificer can't take wizard powers and a rogue can't learn a fighters tricks (not reasonably, anyway).

The same thing with feats. There's just too many of them, and there are in particular too many that are identical.

The bloat makes character creation tedious (because each new class you play has zero overlap with the previous one - even if the content of the powers is actually kind of the same), and it means player's and DM's understand each others powers less. People at our table hardly ever bother mentioning the "fluff" of the power because, after power #3215, the fluff is often just nonsense and sometimes confusingly distinct from the mechanics. No thought seems to be given to power fluff anyway - which is to be expected if so many are being churned out. There's also far to many terrible powers out there; traps for the unsuspecting player - again, a sign of too many and too few fixes. Finally, despite the absurdly huge number of powers, there's hardly any choice most of the time: a character is almost defined by his class and build, and given those two factors, when levelling, there's often just one reasonable power choice (or if there are multiple, the power's are hardly different from each other and the lower level options the character alread has).

Many feats have the same problem. Take race/class specific feats: there are a ton of these, but for some types of feat are duplicated for many other races and classes; this just adds confusion. But - and this is why if I had to choose between feats+powers, I'd save feats before powers - some feats really do have unique qualities that really do make a character feel different. Feats (and to a lesser extent utility powers) help avoid blandness, and that's why some feats at least should stay.

 

[Balesir]

I rather like the idea of replacing a lot of the feats with "pick-an-effect" class features that are based on a character decision point, such as the way in which Knights and Fighters' weapon choice determines how the rider on Power Strike works (it would be even better if it worked dynamically based on whatever you had in your hand at that moment).

OK, but if you have a "class feature pick" at certain a level or levels, aren't you going to end up with something like the (new) weapon "expertise" feats? If so, and since they will be pretty similar for several classes, would you not get more flexibility and less repetition of the feature if you just included them as feats?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

It is rather ironic that one of the two major reasons for siloing--that you can limit the options a player needs for a particular character at a given time thus vastly simplifying the organization--is more or less rendered moot by a functional software character builder.

 

[Zaran]

I think getting rid of feats is crazy talk. Feats are the only real way to customize your character. I would never go back to pre feat editions just because I love to be able to distinguish my fighter from another.

I do wish there was a non combat system for profession skills and status. Supposedly we are getting such a thing sometime this year.

 

[Cascadian]

I started getting tired of feats toward the end of 3.0, so nearly 10 years later I'm ready to consider ditching them.

Here's what I'd like: The core of D&D is the class and level mechanic. That should be stressed. Everything that is now a class ability, race ability, power, or feat should be a class ability that is scaled to level. Yes, that means that every race should be a class.

Each class (and race-as-class) should have a default progression to use as the archetype for quick character creation (particularly for new players). Then you allow customization through multiple choices for each class at every level. Have a set number of class ability slots per level. At each level, a character can select any combination of class abilities for all current classes. Allow any combination of classes that can be justified in game, though mechanically some combinations might be inferior to others. You could even deal with half-races by allowing multiple race classes if they are chosen at character creation time.

The hard part is getting the number of abilities per level at the right amount to allow customization without overcomplicating everything. The goal should be to have a quick and easy standard option while allowing players to choose increasing complexity if that's interesting to them. Requiring that complexity for everyone is a bad thing. In fact, I'd like to see core books focus on the classes in standalone form and leave customization and multi-classing to supplements or subscriber-only online content.