stat points for a feat.

[brehobit]

Hi folks,
I'm planning on starting a new 5e game. I _really_ like 5e, but I've found, especially at lower-levels, that alt-human is a bit overpowered. That first feat makes a huge difference. I also think that feats are really fun for 1st level characters to have. Also, the standard human seems pretty weak. I've been finding that alt-humans can dominate a party, especially the martials (polearm mastery, the bow thing, heavy armor feat, etc.).

How about the following:

• Standard humans get an extra skill.
• No alt humans
• You can take a feat at the start, but if you do A) no stat can start above 15 (including racial modifiers and feat bonuses) and you get 25, not 27 points to spend on character stats.

I *think* that option would still be good for some feats. Tempted to allow a 16 with feat bonuses, but I'd think heavy armor mastery would be too good (it's really good at lower levels). Humans *still* feel a bit weak.

Thoughts?

 

[Blue]

Variant humans are just that - an optional rule. I don't allow them in my game.

With them, normal humans lose out. Without them, well there's something to be said for +1s across the board. I think you'll find that without the variant option, humans will be picked on par with other races. Mind you, there are a few races that are picked a lot - human AND a bunch of the others are less likely to get picked with them.

As to the second part - max 15 and losing two points of point-buy for a feat. that's interesting. More the max 15, the two points is just a nudge. (When you take your first ASI, overwhelmingly players are advancing character's main abilities scores, which are already at the point that they cost 2 points in point buy. So an ASI - +2 or +1/+1, is worth about four points of point buy.

But that doesn't make it uninteresting. Max 15 - +2 modifier - can be quite felt. People who go for things like -5/+10 feats will be delaying in getting the to-hit bonus to really use them regularly. Hmm, might work.

Another option I've seen is give everyone a half-feat - one that grants a +1 to an ability score - but without the ability score increase. So they get something that helps define them and make them unique, but it cuts out most of the more powerful combat focused feats.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Adding the skill proficiency to the standard human helps shore up that option and I would personally be quite happy choosing it over the variant. While it still doesn't get any fancy unique abilities, I think the versatility makes up for it.

As for the feat option it certainly looks balanced on paper. You're keeping the trade off between high ability scores and a feat which is a trade off I quite like so it's good to see it enforced at character creation.

 

[Salthorae]

I think just removing the variant human, giving a bonus skill to standard human is probably fine and will push people to other races, but watch out for half-elf then, they are probably the most powerful PC race in terms of all that they get (better than variant human arguably from a crunch perspective).

As to stat maxes, if you do that, I wouldn’t mess with the point buy in my mind. They’re already hard capped at 15, so characters are going to be very stat diverse. If stat max is 15 with feats then I’m taking that 25 points buying 13’s in 5 stats for 25 points and using a feat to get my “primary stat” to 15 or the low to 10. Final array: 15,14,14,14,14,9 or 14,14,14,14,14,10. I’ll have 1 score of 10/8 and almost every other score near the top of starting max. +9 or +10 overall modifiers

If you do 27, that person is going to end up buying 5x 13’s and 1x10. As a human with a feat still I’m going to have either 15,14,14,14,14,11 or 14,14,14,14,14,12. +10 or +11 overall modifiers.

Some difference I guess but with this kind of flat arrays, not sure it matters.

Would other races get the ability to get a feat with a stat cap of 15?

Half-elf would end up with 15,15,14,12,12,8 or 15,14,14,12,12,10 with 25 points and a +1 stat feat. +7 or +8 total modifiers.

With those options from a crunch only perspective I’m going human every time still. I get a great +10 overall modifiers with 25 points and a +1 feat to start (better than standard array when using standard human). Now flavor wise I could pick up any race and start with a feat to tell a great story, but from a #’s perspective I think I’d still land human with those rules.

 

[ccs]

Hi folks,
I'm planning on starting a new 5e game. I _really_ like 5e, but I've found, especially at lower-levels, that alt-human is a bit overpowered. That first feat makes a huge difference. I also think that feats are really fun for 1st level characters to have. Also, the standard human seems pretty weak. I've been finding that alt-humans can dominate a party, especially the martials (polearm mastery, the bow thing, heavy armor feat, etc.).

How about the following:

Standard humans get an extra skill.

This seems more of a benefit on paper than it is in reality.
Because everyone can roll to use any of the skills & there's already ways to gain bonuses/advantage/both when needed. So another +2 to begin the game with.... Meh.
If skills were important to your players you'd already be seeing them choosing options to get more of them (hey, there's even a feat for that!).
I'll bet they aren't doing that, are they?
And they aren't doing that because YOU aren't running a game where that's more important than whatever else they're picking.

I'm going to predict this change won't result in you seeing any more standard humans than you do now.

No alt humans?

At least this is honest, unlike your next idea.

You can take a feat at the start, but if you do A) no stat can start above 15 (including racial modifiers and feat bonuses) and you get 25, not 27 points to spend on character stats.

Blech!
I could've sworn you said you thought feats were really fun for 1st lv characters?
But you're going to punish ALL the feat choices the alt human could take two - three times over??? Just because you have a problem with a handful of the combat related ones during the early lvs (lv 1-3 I'm presuming?)?

1) For those combat feats: How many sessions do you spend at lvs 1-3? 6 or 7? Less? And you generally expect the low lv characters to survive those sessions, right? Wich means that the goblins, orcs, etc get killed.
So what's it matter how dead the combat feat taking PCs make them, @ 1 attack per round? Maybe 2 if Op Attacks.
You want a fight to be a bit harder? Add a few more enemies, increase a few of the orcs HPs to max (or more), design your combat encounters environment better to limit PC options/movement/LoS/etc.

2) This double+ whammy will NOT encourage players to choose (almost) any feat that you don't already have a problem with.

I *think* that option would still be good for some feats. Tempted to allow a 16 with feat bonuses, but I'd think heavy armor mastery would be too good (it's really good at lower levels). Humans *still* feel a bit weak.

Really? You can't handle doing -3 pts of damage vs the heavy armour users? Especially there in the early lvs where you don't particularly want them to die anyways?
Besides, if the player chooses this feat they aren't killing the monsters even more via GWM/SS etc.
But if you want to do those few extra pts of damage....
Use a few more monsters, targeting the HAM PC. More rolls = more hits/dam. I
f you roll behind a screen just fudge a few Hit or Damage rolls,
DO NOT provide access to any armors you don't want the PCs wearing (& it'll reduce the # of fudged Hit rolls on your end)

 

[shadowoflameth]

I don't think either of these alternatives are terrible but I would not think any alteration is needed. You can just rule 'no variant human' and that's that. some feats can be very potent at low levels but most balance out pretty quickly as the game goes on. Heavy Armor Mastery is one of these. Others like Lucky and Pole Arm Master give you a lot of benefit in combat that stays useful, but it's always at the expense of that ASI. In 3 campaigns so far in 5E I haven't had anyone even care about taking the variant human and I've allowed feats each time and not had anyone take something that broke the game.

 

[Hriston]

The variant human is paying 4 ASI points in exchange for a feat and a skill. I'd charge a member of a non-human race at least 3 ASI points and take away a minor racial benefit like damage resistance or something.

 

[jgsugden]

I tried a few things, but in the end I decided that no change was necessary. It is ok, in my game, to see more humans and for humans to have a conceptual leg up at low levels with the benefits of GWM, SS, or Polearm Master earlier. I also considered balancing feats by having their abilities be contingent upon character level prerequisites. For example, GWM's +5/-10 might only become available once you hit 8th level (or might be limited to -1/+2 at first, -2/+4 at 3rd, etc...

If I were to design the game from scratch right now, I would break feats into 'greater' and 'lesser' feats. A greater feat is worth 2 points of ASI, while a lesser feat is worth 1. Then, human variants would get to pick a lesser feat at level 1, but not a greater feat. I think that would solve things. I would also make quite a few more 'lesser' feats and turn a few of the feats that do not give a specific ASI in the PHB into ones that did. There are only a dozen or so feats that are really worthy of being treated as greater feats and scores of feats that are much weaker in power.

 

[brehobit]

Thanks folks,
I think the biggest problem, as jgsugden calls out, is that the "weaker" feats _still_ won't have any takers. And that is a problem. Only a handful are really powerful. But those are really powerful. So much so that, IMO, they are much more useful, especially at lower levels, than the racial abilities.

I'm guessing we'll be playing once every 3 weeks or so. So levels 1-3 is for quite a while (4 months?).

Humm, thanks for all the thoughts.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I doubt I'd pick a human in that situation, with Half Elf getting +2 cha, +1 to 2 other stats, darkvision, 2 skills, and other goodies. +1 to your 5th and 6th most important stat really isn't a draw IMO.