Khuxan said:
Mearls polarises me - half the time I think he's a genius, the other half of the time that he's misguided. Unfortunately, this is one of the latter times. I think choice is one of the best parts of D&D.
Choice is fine.
Too much choice is like too much of anything else. In this case, it can cause analysis paralysis as players wade through dozens of books when designing a character. And, it becomes worse for DMs who might want to design dozens or more NPCs.
There are so many feats that one cannot see the forest through the trees.
Moderation in all things, but WotC does not have this philosophy. Their philosophy is that any idea which can be made into a feat, should be made into a feat because it will sell books. So, you get combat maneuvers and combat modifiers which become feats. You get dozens of similar skill feats (i.e. +2 to x and +2 to y) where one feat would suffice. For example:
Synergy Skill Feat: You get +2 to two different but similar skills. For example, a +2 bonus on all Jump checks and Tumble checks (as Acrobatics). The DM has the final say on which skills are considered similar and can be combined into this feat. Note: This feat can be taken multiple times. Each time it applies to a different set of two skills and the same character cannot take this feat for a skill for which he has already taken this feat (i.e. no Acrobatics +2 to jump and tumble, and another High Dive +2 to tumble and swimming).
Such a feat would have been fine. Ditto for a single feat to replace Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, and Great Fortitiude. The same amount of choice, but with fewer overall feats is a better design than the plethora they have today.
Since 3E came out (almost 6 years now), our group may have used 40 or 50 total feats out of the thousands. Maybe. Maybe fewer since so many feats are used over and over again. The rest are just a waste of paper and time.
It's not about choice. It's about decent game design where feature creep does not run rampant.
Btw, we will see the same thing with swift and immediate spells and actions in the near future. Now that they are introduced into the game, we will see hundreds of examples of them within the next few years within various game supplements to the point that DMs will have a hard time keeping track of all of the effects happening in the game.
When the BBEG attacks, someone in the group will have an immediate spell or action that will blunt it. It might get to the point that the game could slow to a crawl as everyone decides whether they should use one of their immediate actions or spells now, or hold off.
And, this will make the feat arms race look like a sedate walk in the park. At least feats are typically found in one section in each book (aside from a few sidebars). Immediate actions and spells will be over vast areas of the books (e.g. in sidebards, across the spell section, in the feat section, in the special ability section of PrCs, etc.).
