"Siloing" feats?

[Gort]

Back during the design phase of 4e there was quite a bit of talk about how powers were being split into two types, "attack" powers and "utility" powers, to prevent people just loading up on combat powers only, and allowing the utility powers to see some use.

I've noticed the same problem occurring with feats. My current character (human cleric of Kord) has nothing but combat feats. Every so often I look at other feats and think, "Hmm, that would be nice", but the trouble is that combat feats may prevent my death, and non-combat feats almost certainly won't. When was the last time your PC died from a failed diplomacy check?

So perhaps it would be a good idea if feats got siloed into "combat" and "non-combat" feats, leading to more rounded characters?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Back during the design phase of 4e there was quite a bit of talk about how powers were being split into two types, "attack" powers and "utility" powers, to prevent people just loading up on combat powers only, and allowing the utility powers to see some use.

I've noticed the same problem occurring with feats. My current character (human cleric of Kord) has nothing but combat feats. Every so often I look at other feats and think, "Hmm, that would be nice", but the trouble is that combat feats may prevent my death, and non-combat feats almost certainly won't. When was the last time your PC died from a failed diplomacy check?

So perhaps it would be a good idea if feats got siloed into "combat" and "non-combat" feats, leading to more rounded characters?

I think it wouldn't hurt to have such a thing.
Though note that the 4E style Utility powers still allow choices between combat and non-combat - but they are still never attacks. (Well, Dispel Magic kinda is, but not in the usual way.)

The Siloing could have gone further. In regards to feats and in regards to powers, probably also opening up more possibilities to flesh out the non-combat part and give it more depth.

 

[fba827]

it kind of depends on how often a situation comes up at your table.
if your current adventure is very social-political heavy then you'd do more skill checks and diplomacy stuff, making those types of feats more appealing.
if your current adventure is very dungeon crawl heavy then diplomacy is a lot less appealing.

personally, despite my best intentions to round out a character, i tend to retrain out powers/feats that aren't seeing use in the given campaign.

my current PC is in a fairly mixed type adventure where the skill based feats (and powers) are just as appealing as combat-oriented feats (and powers) because -it comes up that often- that either would be useful. if i were in a different style camapign, that wouldn't necessarily be the case and i definatly would be skewed to one side or the other in terms of choices i made.

 

[Gort]

it kind of depends on how often a situation comes up at your table.
if your current adventure is very social-political heavy then you'd do more skill checks and diplomacy stuff, making those types of feats more appealing.
if your current adventure is very dungeon crawl heavy then diplomacy is a lot less appealing.

Thing is though, not only are diplomacy checks just a single roll of the dice a lot of the time, but you can also get a lot of mileage out of being clever with what you say. In the same way that a GM won't let a character with high diplomacy just walk all over everybody, a GM won't let an average character get absolutely nowhere if they're talking sense.

In any case, even if you had serious political intrigue coming up as often as combat situations (unlikely, given what D&D is) you'd still be making a heck of a lot more combat checks than non-combat checks, and the combat checks would be more life-threatening as well.

 

[vagabundo]

Typically player's customise their characters to suit themselves and the campiagn. So you might be focusing on combat in the campaign. The campaign needs to reward non-combat choices.

Or that player might just be a slayer* and that is what they want from the game. If that's the case you can encourage them to role play that to the hilt. There are some people who revel in the physical aspects of life.

Silo-ing the feat system might be a little too much for my tastes.

* Term snagged from the 4e DMG...

 

[Runestar]

In the same way that a GM won't let a character with high diplomacy just walk all over everybody, a GM won't let an average character get absolutely nowhere if they're talking sense.

Isn't that what a good/lackluster diplomacy score is supposed to represent? Your character's ability to negotiate as opposed to the player controlling him?

Not that I don't recognize it as an incentive to encourage players to contribute rather than simply rely on mundane die rolls, but this is one aspect blurring the line between person and PC that I was never comfortable with.

 

[MrMyth]

Back during the design phase of 4e there was quite a bit of talk about how powers were being split into two types, "attack" powers and "utility" powers, to prevent people just loading up on combat powers only, and allowing the utility powers to see some use.

I've noticed the same problem occurring with feats. My current character (human cleric of Kord) has nothing but combat feats. Every so often I look at other feats and think, "Hmm, that would be nice", but the trouble is that combat feats may prevent my death, and non-combat feats almost certainly won't. When was the last time your PC died from a failed diplomacy check?

I think a large part of the goal was that feats would be small enough that it would be easy to choose a non-combat option over a combat option without feeling like that would make the decision between life and death in combat. And to some extent, that is true - I just think players often lose track of that, in the numbers.

Pretty much every weapon user I build will pick up Weapon Focus - but while +1 damage is nice, it is hardly a game-changer. Picking up Skill Training (Diplomacy) instead would not suddenly leave the character useless in combat. Yet even knowing that rationally, it is hard to get out of the mindset of going for the combat feats.

Part of the problem is that you can have a build that requires certain feats to work - whether because you are multiclassing, focusing on a weapon, or building around a certain feat combo. In those situations, you suddenly don't have any room for anything other than the 'needed' feats for quite a few levels - and once you get there, it starts feeling like you should pick up the generally 'important' feats first.

But outside of those specific builds, I think the feat system in 4E is less of the problem than simply gamer mentality, and how hard it is to change it.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I think a large part of the goal was that feats would be small enough that it would be easy to choose a non-combat option over a combat option without feeling like that would make the decision between life and death in combat. And to some extent, that is true - I just think players often lose track of that, in the numbers.

Pretty much every weapon user I build will pick up Weapon Focus - but while +1 damage is nice, it is hardly a game-changer. Picking up Skill Training (Diplomacy) instead would not suddenly leave the character useless in combat. Yet even knowing that rationally, it is hard to get out of the mindset of going for the combat feats.

Part of the problem is that you can have a build that requires certain feats to work - whether because you are multiclassing, focusing on a weapon, or building around a certain feat combo. In those situations, you suddenly don't have any room for anything other than the 'needed' feats for quite a few levels - and once you get there, it starts feeling like you should pick up the generally 'important' feats first.

But outside of those specific builds, I think the feat system in 4E is less of the problem than simply gamer mentality, and how hard it is to change it.

You pick weapon focus? There are way too many feats for me to take that...

I noticed though that if I have a strong story idea behind the character, I am far more willing to pick non-combat feats than when not.

For example, I play a "Paladin". He was a "real" Paladin in our 3E Curse of the Crimson Throne game, but when we converted to 4E I was more interested in playing a Fighter, so he's now a Fighter multiclassed into Cleric. I think I picked up two skill training feats plus the Cleric multiclass feat to give me back the skills I "needed" to make him feel like a Paladin (or at least my Paladin).

But when I am starting with a blank slate, I will only rarely pick non-combat feats. Typically it is still skill training to round out my skill selection.

 

[Gort]

Pretty much every weapon user I build will pick up Weapon Focus - but while +1 damage is nice, it is hardly a game-changer.

Well, quite. That's why Weapon Focus is like the tenth feat I would consider getting. Weapon Expertise, now, that's more like it. Toughness, too, and proficiencies. These are feats that can quite literally be the difference between life and death for a character.

+3 diplomacy? No. Diplomacy is a skill that's (outside of skill challenges) entirely down to DM fiat. And skill challenges are rubbish, so I hardly even count them.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is something that I think D&D could do... if it wanted to be more of a less combat-intensive roleplaying game. However, I do not think that's their focus. First and foremost, D&D 4E is a miniatures-centric combat strategy game with roleplaying aspects layered on top. Thus, anything that is not directly related to the miniatures-centric combat strategy game seems to be less emphasized, and the numbers of those rules is significantly less than the combat ones.

To currently gain what the OP suggested would basically involve player houserule, as I do not expect it to ever appear in the base game. For my money, the easiest method would be to take a cue from d20 Modern and create "traits"... which a PC would gain every non-feat level. The DM would go through the entirety of the Feat section of the CharGen and split the 'non-combat' or 'skill' feats out from the combat ones (like Skill Focus, Long Jumper, Linguist, the Ranger tracking feats etc.) Then when leveling up on the odd levels, players are allowed to take a Trait.

This would give you the best of both worlds... players would not need to sacrifice their Feat slots to ones that aren't optimal (or even related) to the main focus of the D&D 4E game (which as I said, is miniatures-centric combat strategy)... and they also get to take a bunch of the "flavor" feats (or Traits) that they want.

As a side note... if the idea of taking Traits every odd-level seems a bit much for some people... another option would be to consider all of these non-combat Traits to be "Background Traits", where a PC would get to select three of them at character creation to be representative of the 'fluff' of his/her character. And them maybe take on a new Trait at Paragon, and a fifth at Epic, or something. However you'd want to look at it.