Should there be more Feat restrictions?
- Thread starter Aluvial
- Start date
KrazyHades
First Post
I think that WotC should NOT add more restrictions. At first, feat, spell, and skill choice were supposed to be the main things that allowed character customization. What actually ended up happening is that everybody created new base and prestige classes (rather than feat progressions) to represent each major society, "type" of character (say, Necromancer or Cat Burgler or Ambassador or whatever. Though I am guilty of doing the same, I feel that feats are still a very important way to allow unique characters from within the same class.
Charwoman Gene
Adventurer
Fighters having different stances that let them use a subset of their powers???
WoW! What a great idea! ;-)
WoW! What a great idea! ;-)
Steel_Wind
Legend
It seems to me that you could, if you wanted to, design an entire system of branched feats, with one path chosen potentially closing off others.
Or if not an overt restriction, the crunch in your rules could inherently have the effect of restricting the number of choices available at any one time to a given level character. This is already the case in D&D, and if we had additional feats with numerous pre-requisite "chains" of feats required (and limited feat slots to acquire), the effect is to exclude multiple feat chains.
In the result, we would get a more WoW like - or at last a more CRPG like character leveling mechanism.
In many computer games, the designer employs these means of character progression to provide an illusion of choice - but the real reason is to restrict the powers that need to be playtested at any given level. By daisy chaining character progression along restricted paths, the overall number of features can be bullet-pointed and claimed, but the demands on testing are reduced. Play balancing for player challenge at higher levels of play is much easier to do because skill/power progression is far more predictable and manageable.
Moreover, by making certain paths mutually exclusive (or practically so) the idea was then pitched that these restrictions add "replay value" and "distinctive play styles".
So that's the design ethos behind these sorts of elaborate tree branch systems within CRPGs. The fact that some CRPG designers have exploited these character levellng skill trees and refined them so that they are interesting thematically to PnP players is a testimony to good designers making bad medicine taste good and smell even better.
But in the end - all of this was born out of a need to make testing and play-balance an easier task for the QA department.
So what does all this CRPG design crap have to do with the question?
Easy. The issues which face a CRPG designer are frequently encountered by PnP designers as well - but I don't think this is one of those times.
Could you harness all of these ideas to create a potentially more balanced RPG character levelling system? Sure you could. 100% "yup" to that. But to what end? Is "balance" better than flexibility?
I'd say that the history of modern PnP game design suggests a resounding "no" answer to that question.
The tendency in all RPG systems over time is that players want to break free of restrictions that say "no" to a given combination of skills and powers. Whether the squawking is over races and classes, multi-classes, class abilities, spells, armor and weapon types - or skills feats and reserve feats and tricks....
In D&D or any other system. It doesn't matter. Nature abhors a vacuum - and players seem to abhor what they perceive are "artifcial restrictions".
No matter that you call it - the basic instinct of players is to rebel against these restrictions which are viewed as "artificial" and "limiting". Even if they are limiting for very good reasons.
Which is a nice way of saying that while you could do this with a new edition of the game - I think it's borrowing trouble to no particular purpose - and without a very compelling reason to do so.
Or if not an overt restriction, the crunch in your rules could inherently have the effect of restricting the number of choices available at any one time to a given level character. This is already the case in D&D, and if we had additional feats with numerous pre-requisite "chains" of feats required (and limited feat slots to acquire), the effect is to exclude multiple feat chains.
In the result, we would get a more WoW like - or at last a more CRPG like character leveling mechanism.
In many computer games, the designer employs these means of character progression to provide an illusion of choice - but the real reason is to restrict the powers that need to be playtested at any given level. By daisy chaining character progression along restricted paths, the overall number of features can be bullet-pointed and claimed, but the demands on testing are reduced. Play balancing for player challenge at higher levels of play is much easier to do because skill/power progression is far more predictable and manageable.
Moreover, by making certain paths mutually exclusive (or practically so) the idea was then pitched that these restrictions add "replay value" and "distinctive play styles".
So that's the design ethos behind these sorts of elaborate tree branch systems within CRPGs. The fact that some CRPG designers have exploited these character levellng skill trees and refined them so that they are interesting thematically to PnP players is a testimony to good designers making bad medicine taste good and smell even better.
But in the end - all of this was born out of a need to make testing and play-balance an easier task for the QA department.
So what does all this CRPG design crap have to do with the question?
Easy. The issues which face a CRPG designer are frequently encountered by PnP designers as well - but I don't think this is one of those times.
Could you harness all of these ideas to create a potentially more balanced RPG character levelling system? Sure you could. 100% "yup" to that. But to what end? Is "balance" better than flexibility?
I'd say that the history of modern PnP game design suggests a resounding "no" answer to that question.
The tendency in all RPG systems over time is that players want to break free of restrictions that say "no" to a given combination of skills and powers. Whether the squawking is over races and classes, multi-classes, class abilities, spells, armor and weapon types - or skills feats and reserve feats and tricks....
In D&D or any other system. It doesn't matter. Nature abhors a vacuum - and players seem to abhor what they perceive are "artifcial restrictions".
No matter that you call it - the basic instinct of players is to rebel against these restrictions which are viewed as "artificial" and "limiting". Even if they are limiting for very good reasons.
Which is a nice way of saying that while you could do this with a new edition of the game - I think it's borrowing trouble to no particular purpose - and without a very compelling reason to do so.
Last edited:
Li Shenron
Legend
Aluvial said:
I think it's impossible in practice. You can do that between feats in the core books. You can also do it when writing a supplement, to reference when a new feat/whatever works in combination with a core feat. You CANNOT do that between supplements, it's simply impractical, and problems almost always arise when using 2 or more supplements written by different authors.
And anyway, restrictions on using 2 feats at the same time would be ok, but not restrictions on TAKING those 2 feats by the same character. I think that character-build restrictions should be only imposed by flavor/setting issues. Saying that you cannot take a "Servant of the devils" and "Servant of the demons" feat at the same time because in your setting you cannot be both, is OK even if the feats' benefits themselves don't give problems (e.g. a +4 in a different skill each).
Li Shenron
Legend
Also, it would be already a step forward if the next PHB/DMG simply held a sentence that clearly says: "Whenever two rules of the game combine together for questionable results, the DM must decide how they work". This would kill all the blinking barbarians and bag'o'puppies on the spot.
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