[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.

 

[Arial Black]

How many published adventures have NPCs which use feats? I think the answer is zero. It's assumed to not be part of the game.

No, what IS assumed is that NPCs are not made using the rules for making Player Characters!

NPCs in the published adventures do not have 'feats' as such, but the don't have 'class' or 'level' either! If your logic were sound then the logic that "published NPCs don't have feats, therefore feats are not part of the game" would ALSO lead to "published NPCs don't have class or level, therefore neither class nor level is part of the game".

Sure, you can reverse engineer and kind of replicate some NPC statblocks by saying that if it were this class and this level, then it pretty much resembles this statblock....if you squint a bit. Okay, do the same for the Parry ability of NPC nobles and knights and you realise that they have the Defensive Duellist feat...if you squint a bit.

If NPCs did have feats then they would not be listed under 'feats' in their statblock, just like their 'class' and 'level' are not part of the statblock even if you can infer what they must be; they would be listed under Special Abilities, Actions, or Reactions and what it actually does would be written there.

 

[Hussar]

The difference being though, classes ARE an assumed part of the game. You cannot actually play D&D without classes, at least, not 5e D&D as written. For example, magic items are based on class, at least in part. The entire magic system is based on classes. Yank out classes and you don't have much of a game left at all.

Feats, on the other hand, truly are optional and are not presumed in any part of the game. No feature in the game requires feats.

 

[5ekyu]

If i were asked "Do ypu think most, many or few PCs have feats?" my answer would be few to maybe many because the ASI trade off makes it less popular before level 12 and a smaller proportion of games run to that point than below it.

If you were to ask me "do you think most, many or few games allow feats?" my answer would be many to most based on experience and what they allow in terms of concept expansion to games.

But those are massively different questions which can easily be criss-crossed in misinformation or disinformation.

Once had doctor tell me organ donors live longer than the normal life expectancy and she was surprised when my immediate response was to point out to be a living donor you had to meet very strict "in good health" criteria so it was apples to oranges.

 

[Mistwell]

A couple of reasons. First, as I already mentioned, it's really a sop to newbies, not something intended to restrict the choices of experienced players.

Second, feats/MCing have always been, and remain, part of the menu of possibilities of levelling-up, just like every single other aspect of the game!

I am not sure why you cut and ignored all the language quoted from the PHB stating in no uncertain terms that feats are purely optional and purely up to the DM. But, feats are not optional just to help newbies...as I explained, a lot of very experienced DMs also don't allow them, and several have explained why. Feats have not "always" been part of the game. In 5 editions plus B/E+ versions, they were only expected in 3e and 4e. In 5e, they are purely optional. Stated as such.

As for the debated about the logic of feats reducing options under the illusion of creating them, I opened a separate thread for that topic and linked to it earlier in this thread. Some agree, some disagree, but nobody's been insulting about it and called it absurd logic.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

To quote a cool guy from a few months back.....

" Impressive… Every word in that sentence was wrong."

 

[Mistwell]

To quote a cool guy from a few months back.....

" Impressive… Every word in that sentence was wrong."

[video=youtube;LQCU36pkH7c]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c[/video]

 

[Pauper]

Some of it likely comes from organized play.

Possible, but unlikely -- I've participated in Adventurers League since its inception, and have never been part of an event where the players' race/class combinations were recorded. (It's not required in event reporting, for example -- all that's sent to WotC are the players' names and DCI numbers.)

It's possible that this sort of data might have been gathered for specific events like the D&D Open, but that would be very limited data and not guaranteed to be representative of all D&D games as a whole.

I feel like when Crawford is saying 'data across multiple editions', he's talking about the D&D Beyond data for 5E, the D&D Insider data for 4E, and a few bits of ad-hoc data like who played in Monte Cook's 3E playtest game for earlier editions.

--
Pauper

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Another factor: people like to feel that they have choices even if they choose not to take advantage of them.

 

[Arial Black]

The difference being though, classes ARE an assumed part of the game. You cannot actually play D&D without classes, at least, not 5e D&D as written. For example, magic items are based on class, at least in part. The entire magic system is based on classes. Yank out classes and you don't have much of a game left at all.

My point was that the stated reason that some players don't want feats to be allowed in their game (for anyone not just those players who'd rather have the ASI) is because the very existence of feats means that those who didn't choose that feat are not allowed to do the things that feat lets you do, while in games without feats any PC can try anything.

This reasoning is flawed on the grounds that if the rules for certain things exist and only the PCs who choose that option are allowed to try those things, therefore those rules are so restricting that players object to those rules existing, then this same objection also applies to character classes! Why don't they use the same logic to vote classes out of their game?

So they wouldn't have a game left at all? Well, they don't seem to mind a game where the DM decides on the fly whether or not any PC can try anything (because the lack of feats which let you do specific things 'frees' the DM to let anyone try anything), so why would they object to a game without classes, where the DM decides on the fly whether your PC can or cannot try to cast a spell or backstab an enemy or, well, anything which is a class ability in the rules?

It's that flawed logic that my post was about.

On the point about "no feature in the game requires feats": what about the feature where you can give yourself a penalty to attack with a heavy melee weapon and get a +10 damage bonus? Oh, yes, it requires a feat! The Heavy Weapon Mastery feat to be precise. I'm not being facetious; it may seem self-fulfilling that you require a feat to use that feat, but it is equally self-fulfilling that you require a class feature in order to use that class feature!

Feats and classes 'restrict' the DM's ability to run a free-form game in exactly the same way, so the fact that feats restrict the DM's ability to do this sometimes, while ignoring the fact that classes do exactly the same thing, renders that objection nonsensical. Other objections exist, but I deal with them individually.

 

[Arial Black]

I am not sure why you cut and ignored all the language quoted from the PHB stating in no uncertain terms that feats are purely optional and purely up to the DM. But, feats are not optional just to help newbies...as I explained, a lot of very experienced DMs also don't allow them, and several have explained why. Feats have not "always" been part of the game. In 5 editions plus B/E+ versions, they were only expected in 3e and 4e. In 5e, they are purely optional. Stated as such.

I only quoted the points to which I was responding.

As to "the rules clearly state feats/MCing are optional", I know! My point was that the reason that are called out as 'optional' is all about the sellers of the game want to make as much money as they can and so want to avoid putting off newbies with complex rules, and not because they don't want/expect experienced players to have the freedom to choose those options. This is definitely my opinion of why WotC made that choice, rather than disputing the fact that the word 'optional' accompanies these options in the PHB.

As for the debated about the logic of feats reducing options under the illusion of creating them, I opened a separate thread for that topic and linked to it earlier in this thread. Some agree, some disagree, but nobody's been insulting about it and called it absurd logic.

I don't mean 'absurd' in the sense that 'anyone not agreeing must be a silly poopyhead'; I mean 'absurd' in the sense of 'illogical', when the very basis of D&D always has been restricting what PCs can do based on their choice of....class! So the idea of restricting what PCs can do based on their choice of...feat...being somehow beyond the pale is...absurd. Illogical. Is not consistent.

Bear in mind that many other games that followed on from D&D are indeed classless and anyone can try anything (or be trained to try), like RuneQuest and other games. In those games the very idea that only certain creatures can try certain things may be anathema, but not D&D where such restriction is built into the very fabric of every edition of the game.