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Robert J. Schwalb Blog Discussion; Feats: Do We need them?
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<blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5517780" data-attributes="member: 51942"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>The same thing with feats. There's just too many of them, and there are in particular too many that are identical.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="eamon, post: 5517780, member: 51942"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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Robert J. Schwalb Blog Discussion; Feats: Do We need them?
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