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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 7433054" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya! Full Disclosure: I don't allow Feats in my game (nor Multiclassing), and we play with PHB, DMG, MM. That's it.Right. Two things I've harped on about "Feats", but these two and a few others in particular. Many don't agree with me, but that's par for the course really. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Number One: It's fine and dandy if the players roll 3d6, in order, and keep what you get (hard-core old school). As better and better odds rolling dice go, it gets worse and worse. Heaven help you if your DM uses point buy or some other "choose your stats" method. Why? Someone rolls and gets a 15 for Str, but only a 9 for Dex and a 12 for Con. Having GWM IS going to feel like a trade off. But if that player rolled well, or it's point buy/set group...now the player has high Str, Dex AND Con (e.g., all the important melee combat stats; and "high" I mean no less than 12, with 16, 18 or even 20 being likely for one of them). Next we assume the same sort of "PC Build" focusing for others in the group. We now have Wizards, Clerics, etc that have the same sort of "build focus". After an hour or two of play everyone is 2nd level, but the end of the second session everyone is probably 3rd. Assuming no "Alternate Human Option" was available at level 1, is is now that the PC's get their "Feats". The Fighter takes GWM. He was at +6/+4 (Str 18, +2 for Prof). So when using GWM he drops to +1 th, but increases to +14 damage. "I only use it for big fights"...great...but at that point the Cleric slaps down a Bless and some other PC provides another bonus To Hit for the Fighter (maybe a bard, or a Druid using Faerry Fire or something). All it takes is a +1 or +2, with the Bless, and...POOF! That -5 To Hit penalty is removed completely...leaving the Fighter with no "real" drawback, and the gigantic bonus of adding +10 to damage.That's why we found it borked. It was fine if the players didn't do anything to mitigate the -5 to hit; but the second they did...problem.Number Two: It made PC's and NPC's extremely "same'ey". If you are a fighter, you take one of the "big ones" (GWM, PAM, SS, etc). If you don't, you WILL be at a disadvantage fighting pretty much any NPC fighter-type, because when you get right down to it, a guard being able to one-shot an uppity peasant with a single polearm thrust GREATLY outweighs the risk of trying to hit him two or three times before you get him. As a PC, you go from being able to last a couple rounds vs two Polearm wielding guards, to being skewered at round 1 because you just took +30 points of damage you wouldn't have otherwise taken. So...Feats didn't "expand and customize for interesting and unique PC's and NPC's"; it did the exact opposite. Two fighter's in the same group? If one of them takes GWM/PAM/SS/etc, then the other HAS TO...or he will, in comparison, "suck as a fighter". PC Fighter 1 = "I do +14 damage with my Polearm"...Fighter 2 = "I get +1 To Hit and +1 to Damage with my Polearm" (because F1 was "big damage brute", and F2 was "well-rounded combatant"). In a game where Hit Points from a large pool determines if you are dead or not...anything that boosts your ability to reduce that pool of Hit Points faster will win.Anyway, that's my argument in a nutshell. Can Feats be used "well" in a campaign? Sure! I have no doubt. But the Players and the DM would have to "mitigate everything so nothing gets too overpowering". And if you get to that point, my question is: Why even use Feats at all then?I've always thought that Feats were a cool idea...but VERY poorly implemented. They should have been more towards giving the PC's "more impressive...but less numbers". It's really hard to describe, but, for example, I think there should have been one Feat called "Weapon Expert" that gave at most +1th/+2dmg and the PC pics a single weapon. The Feat would mostly allow the user to do things "not normally done"; say, use a long sword as a blunt weapon but keep full damage, the PC would also be able to determine the quality of a long sword and would have a chance to identify a magical long sword, maybe the PC could also try and 'show off' or otherwise intimidate foes by, well, showing off with a cool flourish of swings, jumps, ducks and all that 'movie coolness' type thing. All those more "ephemeral" things that really would show that the PC is an actual expert at Long Swords. So, uh, yeah. I don't like feats and find them detrimental to the type of campaign I enjoy running (and, apparently, the type of campaign my players enjoy playing).^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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