Heh, all I was trying to tell you was that you were missing the thrust of the early feat. The first was even "Respectfully,..." just trying to get us on the same page, but it didn't take.
I was focused on trying to get us on the same page - the early feat - because you were trying to discuss only the support half of the context and missing the entire reason that part of the rule was there.
I had no idea how your views would change when discussing the retraining as a support for the early feat to make sure new payers don't get locked it since you had missed that part.
I did post my rationalization about why in the original post. There is no need for insinuations that are contrary to what has been posted.
The short of it was to lower to allow flexibility for new players so they wouldn't be penalized for the life of their character for any misunderstanding of the mechanical impact due to lack of familiarity.
I think the 6e thread is what triggered this, as many experienced player bemoan a lack of an early feat and I wanted to discuss how to do it while still considering new players to our game.
That would be fine. I hadn't gone into details about rework and was looking for people's thoughts on the whole thing.
@dnd4vr earlier was talking about doing the same thing - allowing just early changes and then locking in, and that met the goals of what I was looking for.
I actually had not been considering it, but not in a "I don't want it way" but more in a "my scope is an early feat". Retraining isn't the goal of this thread, retraining is merely support for the early feat without it becoming a system mastery burden to new players.
If someone wants to make a thread and talk about general retraining options I'd be glad to contribute and to take lessons learned from there to here.
Well, see, it's less important for me what's on the wrapper as to what's inside.
It's about the early feat... that's fine and dandy but when the first rule is feats and ASI get to be retrained ( general, not restricted to one feat or even to feats in general but ASI as well) that is the "milky way" inside even if the wrapper says "Snickers".
If you goal is actually about the
barrier of entry for new players*and you somehow see your house rule for an extra early feat as somehow being a bridge to far even given the other major character long choices being made at the same time, then the *much broader in scope general ASI/feat retrain you bring in as item #1 is a rule that has impact way beyond that claimed scope.
Generally speaking, a rule which is supposed to be about "
barrier of entry for new players thats starting with features thst play into character tweaks and optimizations much much later is a pretty good example of going way out of the advertised scope.
So, yeah, as I have said, and others have also passed along, a better way to deal with the problem within the scope would be to allow early levrl reworks - whether its
@dnd4vr levels 2-3, cost so etc or my "changes allowed until 5th or the others - these focus it in on the scope you keep wanting to say it's about - those early decisions - instead of what you posted - something with impacts way beyond that.
Or let me ask another way...
How does a rule allowing a 9th level character deciding to respond his 8th level ASI from +2 strength to say Polearm Master after the party finds gauntlets if Ogre power serve the goal of easing the
barrier for entry goal, stay closer to the intent of "my scope is an early feat" as opposed to say a simpler more straight-up "rework until level x" rule?
What is the key bit about adding a rule to allow that which shows "yep, this is dead on about early feats"?
So, you can point to the wrapper where it says "new and improved for more early feats snickery goodness" but as long as your number one rule goes way way way outside of that scope, you are likely gonna get a lot of folks wondering why the more basic "early levels redo" is not considered and all those other cases are out of scope.
To me, in my experience, and frankly already seen in play with results for years... the "redo until 5th" is what o have used in multiple campaigns specifically to address the "new players getting actual play under their belt before locked down" issue.
I went with 1-4 because I did not figure enough play eith rnough features would occur by 2nd or 3rd. If I set it as " locked at 3rd" then dome folks would not have even seen the sub-class in play at all. But if you allow the play until level 5th yo be your intro and learning curve, all those key "barrier choices" including ASI/feat have had a chance to be made and see play.
However, let me tell you where that fails...
In my game, it seemed to me that by 5th level it was obvious that several of the PCs had made "conflicting choices" in their chsracters which were already showing as sort of "one will retire the other".
But, even though levels 1-4 were "intro" and it was stated level by level "reworks are fine at this level-up" and those conflicts were even discussed - the players were already attached to what had gone before so they were averse to making those changes.
So,really, the character-player combos which
need the rework options turned out to be the ones less likely to use it.
Those who value the optimal choices tend to not get scared away by a coiple dozen feats, dive right in etc.
Those who dont value that, may choose off the cuff, get s fest that mechanically fdoesnt deliver but then are also the ones more likely to not want to retro their previous choices because that goes against where their focus lies.
....
Which still drives me back to noticing that here, the number one rule of this this proposal, really offers more of what they value to the one who knows what they are doing by means of higher level redo than its likely to do for the wrapper's barrier of entry scope folks.
...
Perhaps a better focus might be on how to make sure the choices matter more in play, whether they are optimal or not, so that you font end up running a game where players feel bad about their choices. .
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