[UPDATED] Most D&D Players Prefer Humans - Without Feats!

I've played in games that don't allow multiclassing, but never games that don't allow feats. Go figure.

 

[Azzy]

What is JC smoking? I went to a session 0 yesterday, and almost everyone rolled vhuman with Sharpshooter feats.

Personal experiences and anecdotes are not necessarily representative of the greater population.

 

[jasper]

Amen to that! All the optional rules should be in the book of rules options. We would cut down on so many arguments that way.

No will would not.

 

[Azzy]

Amen to that! All the optional rules should be in the book of rules options. We would cut down on so many arguments that way.

Ah, sweet Summer child...

 

[Hussar]

Not that this is the topic of discussion but it's worth brining up due to your post. I just want to point out that a character is going to have 1 fairly low stat regardless of anything the player does. If you as a DM plan on targeting low character stats then it doesn't really matter if you have 1 low stat or 3 low stats. You are boned either way.

Kinda sorta.

With one low stat, the odds of that stat coming up is a lot less than three, obviously. A character that dump stats Int, Wis and Cha (to make a combat monster character for example) is pretty boned in 2 of the pillars - exploration and talky bits. Does great in combat, but, blows chunks the rest of the time.

A character with a low Cha, for example, is still contributing in exploration and probably not too bad in the talky bits, since he can still attempt to see if someone is lying, or perhaps make Int/knowledge checks to contribute.

But three dump stats? Ohhh doggy. That's my kind of chew toy. I LOVES this kind of character.

 

[FrogReaver]

Kinda sorta.

With one low stat, the odds of that stat coming up is a lot less than three, obviously. A character that dump stats Int, Wis and Cha (to make a combat monster character for example) is pretty boned in 2 of the pillars - exploration and talky bits. Does great in combat, but, blows chunks the rest of the time.

A character with a low Cha, for example, is still contributing in exploration and probably not too bad in the talky bits, since he can still attempt to see if someone is lying, or perhaps make Int/knowledge checks to contribute.

But three dump stats? Ohhh doggy. That's my kind of chew toy. I LOVES this kind of character.

Key word = targeting

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Okay, but that type of decades of data is incredibly hard to integrate. As people have pointed out, he can't have decades of data on the feat question, since all non-5E editions have either required feats or not included them, and it gets complicated about how to integrate information about low-level characters into that feat data.

I trust the race data more, but it's still pretty rough, especially if it's from decades of data. And an important question is what does it mean for us, and it's hard to say without some more details. That's information that could come from more detail about the data; it's possible D&D has a lot of new, short-term players that play humans, and this applies mainly to them.

I think these are very good points, particularly about not differentiating segments of players. I also question how good the analyses they do are. I have no insight into their data or internal processes, of course, but speaking as someone in the profession of statistics I've not been super impressed by what I've seen from their analyses. In particular they don't seem to be too mindful of the issue of selection bias. Data in the hands of non-experts leads to frequent Dunning-Krueger Effect type errors. Of course, I am mindful I'm just speculating without having seen the data myself, but my general experience is that getting good data is much, much harder than getting shaky data.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I’m not surprised by these bits of info at all.

Humans have definitely been the most popular race over all editions in my group. This is likely because most examples of characters from fiction that a D&D player might take for inspiration are human. Conan, Aragorn, Fafrahd and the Grey Mouser, and so on.

I feel like the other races tend to be more archetypical. So if you make a dwarf, you’ve essentially made Gimli, and if an elf, you’ve made Legolas. Obviously there is some variety, especially based on class, but I think that’s a general trend.

I’m more surprised about feats, but I think it does make sense. In 3E, where feats were introduced and where they had the largest impact, feats were what made your character stand out from others of the same class. So you could go with a two handed weapon and power attack, and another fighter could go with two weapon fighting and get more attacks. And so on.

I think 5E has offered other means of making characters stand out. Background is a big one, and choice of subclass is the other. But even beyond those two, each class has decision points throughout progression...fighting style choices, and so on. Characters within the same class can feel and play quite differently from one another before feats are even taken into consideration.

On top of this, 5E has made feats less essential from a gaming standpoint. Feats tend to narrow focus so that the character excels in certain conditions. But this is balanced against the ASI which is a more generally beneficial increase across the board. I think many people would rather have their character be better at more things rather than really good at one thing and then okay at most other things.

 

[Mistwell]

Other than not being useful often enough, does Shield Mastery best describe how you envision your character?

Yes and no. He's very strong, and sometimes grapples things, and sometimes knocks them down. He can do all that with or without the feat, and with or without the ASI (which would have been to strength). So any choice I made would have helped my vision of those aspects of the character, but not really in particularly unique ways (I would have still described using my shield to knock things down if I didn't have the feat, I just wouldn't do it as an extra for my attack mechanically speaking).

Now if there had been a dwarf feat to emphasize some of the more dwarvish aspects of this PC, that would have helped more. Something focused on stonecunning would have been nice, as I didn't have enough mechanics to emphasize those role playing elements in my opinion.

One of the other PCs in our group took the Actor feat for his bard, and that DID help emphasize something the player envisioned about his PC. So there is that.

Is it possible that you & your ranged party members just need better teamwork?
Say, you knock them down, stab them & back off a bit.
Your teammates ready action & only shoot the target once its' spent 1/2 its' move standing up, but before it goes anywhere.
Next round you move in, prone it, repeat.

would that work?

Wouldn't I take an opportunity attack each round that way (though the attacks would be at disadvantage)?

 

[Mistwell]

"The forum" has never argued anything.

You are incorrect. The forum emailed me today about my request for an argument. I told it I didn't request an argument. The forum replied that I had. The conversation continued like this:

Me: I already told you, I didn't ask for an argument.
Forum: No you haven't!
Me: Yes I have.
Forum: When?
Me: Just now.
Forum:No you didn't!
Ne: Yes I did!
Forum: You didn't!
Me: I did!
Forum: You didn't!
Me: I'm telling you, I did!
Forum: You did not!

I told it under no circumstances was I going to pay for an argument I didn't request, and the Forum tried to argue with me that I had agreed to pay, and I stopped replying from there.

Good day sir!

 

[pming]

Hiya.

Of course few players can have feats when DMs,the gatekeepers, don't want them to have them?

Gatekeepers? Is this a GM term/title in some game (closest I can think of is Call of Cthulhu, where they are "Keepers"...iirc)? I've seen this term used once or twice somewhere on these boards to mean...I think... something like "the person in control of the game". Which is the same as GM/DM, or am I just waaaaay off and just don't know?

Anyway, odd nomenclature aside, in our group it was a group decision. I didn't outright decide "No Feats". As I said, we tried them. Probably for close to a year or so. I've written about this in other threads so I'll not rehash it all here. The bottom line of it all was simply that we felt Feats took away from creating unique characters, which was the opposite effect that the designers were going for I think. After all the trials, WE decided we didn't want Feats in our games. So...we now play with no feats (and no MC...but no MC is because of a different reason).

In short, it's not "just DM's" that don't want Feats in their games. Some players don't like them either.

^_^

Paul L. Ming