Talent Trees - Your Thoughts?

[Quickleaf]

All of the above criticism is entirely valid. Maybe talent trees really are just presentation of feat choices with strict prerequisites.

The thing is unless you're an experienced D&D player, choosing from the mountain of options in 3e or 4e is daunting. Even more so if you're unleashed with a character gen program. And then there are gamers like me who enjoy character creation but don't want to spend an hour or hours pondering over power/feat choices.

So from a presentation angle, a tree appeals to me because I can understand it graphically and if I have an idea in my head of what I want my PC to do I could scan the list of talent trees (rather than the much larger list of feats/powers/spells/class features).

You'll notice 4e essentials started grouping feats - that helped immensely.

The reason I liked the idea of trees with prereqs is because there are many feats/powers/spells which are just level upgrades from a basic talent. Having that built into a talent tree makes a lot of sense, rather than scattering them as separate parts put them under the same tree with similar rules. Save space & make it easier to find.

However, done poorly or in excess it could end up being arbitrary and bloated.

I was trying to focus on some of the positives.

 

[mmadsen]

Maybe talent trees really are just presentation of feat choices with strict prerequisites.

Indeed, talent trees are just bonus-feat lists with (unnecessarily) strict prerequisites.

The thing is unless you're an experienced D&D player, choosing from the mountain of options in 3e or 4e is daunting.

When I first saw how 3E implemented the Fighter class, with its bonus-feat list, I thought it would be perfectly natural to list Fighter sub-classes and which feats would go with which. So a samurai swordsman, for instance, might have Quickdraw, Cleave, etc.

And the Barbarian, Paladin, and Ranger could probably be folded back into the umbrella Fighter class.