Then the glut of spells is a bad thing, right?
I really don’t know why it’s so hard to get that they’re different things. Having 300 spells in the PHB to split between all the Spellcasting classes is great. Having 300 feats in the PHB would make me not want to play the game. Because they serve different purposes in the game. There are more feats than subclasses, is that a problem? Of course not, because they aren’t like objects. It’s apples to mushrooms.
The only game object that is the same type of object as spells are manuevers, and those are limited because it would be absolutely pants on head irrational to have the same number of unique items to choose from for one class and one feat, as for several feats, 8 classes, and at least one subclass for each remaining class.
And it would still be just as pants if the 4 non-caster classes had no subclasses with spells and there were no feats that granted them, because 8 classes is obviously and objectively vastly more important than one subclass of one class. Tbh it was buck wild to see so many additional manuevers in a supplement.
And they have tried to expand manuvers beyond that subclass and feat, and the community has shot it down every time. The majority of players who care at all about what martial characters have don’t want anyone else to get manuevers, because they see that as entirely the BM’s thing.
So…what do you think would be in supplements as a balance to more spells? More expansions on individual martial subclasses? Even more maneuvers for an already over supported subclass? Even more feats in a game that could stand to stop adding more feats? I guess more fighting styles could be cool if they have good designs in mind, but when they tried to get weird with fighting styles people hollered “power creep” and they stepped back.
And if none of that makes sense to add, for whatever reason, would you just arbitrarily shrink the spell list in order to serve some misguided sense of symmetry? Because it isn’t balance. 100 spells could be just as powerful as the current number, if those spells are the 100 most powerful spells. The number of spells isn’t a balance issue. It’s just symmetry. It’s no different than making the “ardent” and “battle mind” so that the psionic power source had a leader and a defender, in 4e.* Design symmetry is the enemy of good design in TTRPGs. You don’t need there to be neutral outsider descended people, just because there are tieflings and aasimar. Having fiendish blood and having celestial/angelic blood are both concepts that exist outside of D&D, that D&D is modeling. If you have a concept for fire people, you don’t have to force water people into the game to stand opposite them. You don’t need to have 8 martial classes just because the phb has 8 Spellcasting classes, and you don’t need more feats or other singular options just because you add more spells.
Balance is important (up to a point), symmetry is not.
*what it isn’t like is a hypothetical martial controller, which had several strong archetypes but got shot down constantly as people very flalsely claimed it was just grid filling. No, f the grid, we wanted it because there were concepts that could only be approached with existing classes, never actually fulfilled, that a martial controller would have been able to fulfill.
There have been three editions with feats. One split them up too far, one had the feats be extremely weak, and the last doesn't have nearly enough for a class to take 15 of them as class features.
Which edition would that have been elegant?
4e or 5e. 4e has tons of great feats to take, plenty for 15 feat slots, though you’d have to have feats that give powers, too, but you could go pretty wild with fighter class feats. A lot of the most interesting feats in 4e are class feats. 5e has plenty as well.
First, all fighters benefit from a handful of feats like toughness, and the fighter class features could be fighter specific feats with level requirements where necessary. And then stuff like action surge can be more variable in the feats, or a few features could be in the class at 1st, 2nd, and 5th, level, and you could add feats that add to them.
Champion super simple guy takes maybe 2 or 3 active feats and the rest are either ASIs or something like toughness
the BM gets more manuvers, multiple weapon type specialization feats to be just as deadly with a glaive as with a longbow, with room for more odd stuff like skill expert, alert, actor, skulker, (skill expert stealth and skulker makes you Dex BM basically an alternate take on a stealth rogue) or go all genius swordmaster and take keen mind because you have room to do that with no loss anywhere, and still takes a couple ASIs
ignoring CharOp here we got the Cavalier who can take martial adept for the social manuevers, skill expert and/or skilled, dip toes into magic with magic initiate cleric maybe, some of the same stuff as BM but more focused, inspiring leader, maybe healer, etc
Eldritch Knight is taking Fey Touched and/ Shadow Touched, maybe a Stryxhaven feat, Warcaster, sentinel, ritual caster: wizard, on top of normal weapon spec stuff, etc
Some stuf like arcane archer could just be a feat chain with like 4 feats, and advice on what general feats will support the archetype further
And that isn’t even getting into the idea of making all fighter subclasses just be feat chains that require XYZ levels of fighter for each feat, so the class is just literally exactly the 3.5 fighter. (Aside from bab and other stuff that works differently)
Damn I kinda wish this is what they’d have done…
