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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Silam" data-source="post: 9890413" data-attributes="member: 7055898">This is a bummer, but also an opportunity.It is seen as normal to reach 20 in your main stat by level 20. With a stat at 15 from point buy and a +2 from a background, that means you can start at 17 and need just 1.5 ASIs or 3 half-feats. If you were frugal with point buy and/or you slammed the wall of sucky backgrounds at a table that didn’t allow custom ones, you may be further away from the goal of a 20. Then there are MAD builds who would ideally end up with 2 x 20s, which is 3.5 ASIs or a whopping 7 half-feats if starting from the optimal 16 and 17 (often difficult with PHB backgrounds).Why am I saying this is an opportunity, rather than a major bummer?Because it means the ceiling for acceptable power creep in new feats is still fairly high above the status quo.Consider that a +1 bump to a stat mod provides +1 to attack/damage/DCs, one save, a few skills, and maybe other mechanics (AC, init, feature usage / day…). It’s a lot, and that’s why we want those stats at 20. But in terms of creating new feats, it means (roughly speaking) that if a feat gave a +1 to ALL of that it would be balanced! (That’s not quite true because if you had a stat at 20 and tacked on that hypothetical feat on top then you’d get effectively to 22, and let’s say that’s too much…).But what it means is that half feats and especially full feats can afford to be more powerful than the current crop of available feats without utterly breaking the game. There is slack in the system. If a collection of many good full feats are competitive with ASIs, then a player might not mind letting their build finish level 20 with a main stat of 18 or maybe  even 16. If they do choose to have their main stat at +4 or even +3 rather than +5, then that is a fairly big nerf, and it can justify getting a big boost from cool feats in exchange.Emphasis mine. This is key. Presenting feats well and not just alphabetically is critical for adoption.</blockquote>

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