D&D 5E Which feats shouldn't be feats

[Gargoyle]

I think Specialties are a way to tame the uncontrolled growth of feats. If you always make sure to have such a theme for your crunch, it necessarily becomes more compact. Of course, to achieve that each feat would actually have to be part of a Specialty.

I think that while that is one way to limit the numbers of feats it seems arbitrary. I wouldn't want to add a specialty just to support good feats, or remove good feats just because they aren't in a speciality. I'd prefer designers just leave the bad ones out, and keep the good ones in based on their own merit.

 

[Gargoyle]

I can't agree with that at all. The reason that there are so many bad feats is that they are too easy to make, causing designers to churn them out without much reflection.

I could have been clearer. You are correct of course, and this is precisely what I meant.

On the point of "combat oriented" feats, I understand that some skill oriented feats indeed influence combat, and I certainly didn't mean to imply that combat is the only important thing. I only posit limiting feats to "combat oriented" as a means to limit the problem of forcing players to choose between a feat that makes a character more interesting versus one that is feels mandatory for the player character to pull their weight in combat. If the feat list is made so that each choice feels compelling, then I'd be happy with feats that focus on the other tiers in the game. I just don't have faith in the designer's ability to do this, again based on history of the last two editions.

 

[Celebrim]

I just don't have faith in the designer's ability to do this, again based on history of the last two editions.

There is that.

My guidelines on feat creation:

a) A feat is a power. It represents the ability to do something above and beyond the normal.
b) A feat provides for an archetypal distinction within a class. It's part of what separates the abilities of two individuals within the same class; abilties that a class often has but which you've decided that they don't always have. The best feats are interesting to multiple classes, but they don't have to be. If every single member of the class is going to want this feat, it's either too strong or else should be a class ability (avoid feat tax). Every single player regardless of class wants the feat, either it is too strong or something is wrong with your system as a whole. One obvious problem might be that you have too many junk feats.
c) Most feats should be acquireable by 3rd to 6th level. If the feat can't be acquired by that point it's because the feat represents as superpower - something so far beyond the ordinary that it seems or is magical. After 10th or 12th level, most feats that the player of martial character is inclined to select should be of this stature so go ahead and open up the power level.
d) Don't be afraid of lengthy feat write ups. If your feat tree is six or more feats deep, consider whether the last 3 feats of the tree can be consolidated into a single capstone feat. Spells go up in power with level; feats can too. You devoted 200 pages to spell descriptions and only 20 pages to feats, of course spellcasters are more powerful than non-spellcasters and the fighter is a tier 4 class.
e) If your feat is weak, consider whether it can be consolidated with 2 other weak feats that provide for the same idea to form an archetype. This is especially true of martial abilities, since feats are the backbone of martial power.
f) Beware feats that aren't powers but generic skill uses. Change your skill description instead. Beware feats that are generic combat manuevers. Add them to your combat manuever lists instead. Beware feats that are spell-like abilities; they almost always have 'One per day...' in them. These are almost always better provided by good class design or multiclassing. Good feats are almost always like at-will class abilities. Don't try to turn your martial classes into spellcasters.
g) If two feats differ by just a few words, they probably should be the same feat with customizable options. Figure out ways to make your feats less narrow and redundant. The only real reason to separate two similar feats like this, is if you want them to be easily nameable prerequisites for other feats.
h) Don't make redundant feats.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

... in my opinion the ideal number of classes is about 8-15, the ideal number of skills is like 20-40, but the ideal number of feats is probably 1000 (or more).

It is rare that I disagree with someone by over an order of magnitude, so I'm impressed. I think the optimal number of feats is somewhere around 50, and even then only begrudgingly.

For me, even better than feats would be entirely self contained specialties. You have a character concept that's smaller than a class? Build a new specialty that includes what you need to support that concept.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Restore Life - are you kidding me? Mundane ability that offers resurrection? This should be a supernatural ability of cleric or a spell. Oh wait, it already is.

Because in real life there is no way reanimating someone who has died within the last minute?
No, never heard of it. Really... oh wait...

I do like that feat. One way mundane healing can work...

 

[Celebrim]

It is rare that I disagree with someone by over an order of magnitude, so I'm impressed. I think the optimal number of feats is somewhere around 50, and even then only begrudgingly.

For me, even better than feats would be entirely self contained specialties. You have a character concept that's smaller than a class? Build a new specialty that includes what you need to support that concept.

I loathe kits, subclasses, specialties and archetypes and pretty much anything of the sort. I believe the ideal number of specialties in a system is exactly 0. How many orders of magnitude of disagreement is that?

Consider the fighter archetypes in the Pathfinder Advanced Player's guide (easily purusable from the PrD). Suppose I want to be something of an archer, but I also want to be a bit more versital and fight as a free hand fighter some of the time. If the class abilities of the archetypes were feats, I could essentially be a 10th level Archer/10th level Fencer, mixing and matching feats to build up the particular sort of fighter I want. But if we make the feats in to fixed unconfigurable progressions, then I'm locked into to whatever ideas the designer thinks I should pursue and worse yet I can't even get around this by multiclassing.

There is no advantage to a 'specialty' over a feat tree unless you've badly designed your base classes to begin with (in which case, they exist as a way to retcon your earlier poor design choices). Specialities can't be shared between classes (remember 2e splat books with identically named kits for rogues, fighters, bards, etc.). Specialties are inflexible. You can't choose what portion to take. Specialties lock a player into a choice at chargen. Specialties are redundant with feats. Specialties make design and balance more difficult by forcing all archetypes to be assumed to be of the same scope and power. With feats, a concept can be captured in 1, 3 or 11 feats depending on its utility and scope. A kit/specialty/archetype is one size fits all, and as such tends to lock out small archetypes that represent a narrow portion of your ultimate abilities ('Master Ventriloquist', for example) or else force the kludging together of several smaller archetypes ("Every Master Ventriloquist must also be a Master Juggler"). Specialities multiply even faster than feats in the long run, especially in terms of page count they consume, because to make everyone happy you have to end up mixing and matching. There are nearly as many specialties as there are combinations of feats.

All a speciality is as a fixed progression of bonus feats that someone thinks is related and wants to pigeon hole your character into. If you can envision a kit, specialty, or archetype, then you can envision transforming that idea into a small feat tree and provided you've designed your base classes well it will just work better. Feats mitigate against the problems of a class based chargen system. Specialties magnify them.

 

[Celebrim]

Because in real life there is no way reanimating someone who has died within the last minute?
No, never heard of it. Really... oh wait...

I do like that feat. One way mundane healing can work...

Feat? Why should this require a feat? I've basically beyond this design point for about the last 8 years.

HEAL (WIS)
Check: The DC and effect depend on the task you attempt.

Task Heal 	DC1
Stabilize	15
Long-term care 	15
Remove arrow	15
Treat wound from caltrop, spike growth, or spike stones 	15
[B]First Aid	15[/B]
Treat poison 	Poison’s save DC
Treat disease 	Disease’s save DC
[B]Revive	30[/B]

You suffer a -5 penalty on heal checks if you are trying to treat yourself.  You must normally have a healer’s kit to attempt effective heal checks.   Exceptions to this rule are noted.
Stabilize: You may stabilize an injury which is causing continuing loss of hit points, such as a bleeding wound, an amputated limb, or a dying character.  A stabilized character regains no hit points but stops losing them.  You do not have to have a healer’s kit to attempt to stabilize a dying character, but if you lack it you suffer a -5 penalty.
Long-Term Care: Providing long-term care means treating a wounded person for a day or more. If your Heal check is successful, the patient recovers hit points or ability score points (lost to ability damage) at twice the normal rate: 1 hit point per level for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 2 hit points per level for each full day of complete rest; 2 ability score points for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 4 ability score points for each full day of complete rest.
You can tend as many as six patients at a time. You need a few items and supplies (bandages, salves, and so on).  These are usually easy to come by in settled lands, but cost 5 sp per patient per day.  Providing long-term care counts as light activity for the healer. You cannot give long-term care to yourself.
Remove Arrow: You can remove an embedded arrow (for example, from a critical hit) and cause no additional damage with a DC 15 heal check.  If you fail the check, removing the arrow causes 1 point of damage.  If you fail the check by 5 or more, removing the arrow causes 1d4 points of damage.  If you fail the check by 10 or more, you inflict 1d4 points of damage and the arrow remains embedded.
Treat Wound from Caltrop, Spike Growth, or Spike Stones: A creature wounded by stepping on a caltrop moves at one-half normal speed. A successful Heal check removes this movement penalty.
A creature wounded by a spike growth or spike stones spell must succeed on a Reflex save or take injuries that reduce his speed by one-third. Another character can remove this penalty by taking 10 minutes to dress the victim’s injuries and succeeding on a Heal check against the spell’s save DC.
First Aid: You may use first aid to treat any recently suffered wound.  If you are successful, you reduce the pain and trauma caused by the wound and mitigate some of the damage so that the wound heals quickly and bothers the patient less.  As a result, the treated character heals 0-3 hit points (1d4-1) up to the maximum amount of damage that has received in the last 24 hours or since the last treatment.  However, you may not retreat the patients wounds unless they suffer further damage.
Treat Poison: To treat poison means to tend a single character who has been poisoned and who is going to take more damage from the poison. Every time the poisoned character makes a saving throw against the poison, you make a Heal check. The poisoned character uses your check result or his or her saving throw, whichever is higher.
Treat Disease: To treat a disease means to tend a single diseased character. Every time he or she makes a saving throw against disease effects, you make a Heal check. The diseased character uses your check result or his or her saving throw, whichever is higher.
Revive: As first aid, except that you treat a person who has just died within the past minute.  If the check is successful and if the gained hit points are sufficient to restore the character above their minimum hit points, the character is returned to life.  You cannot revive yourself.

There are feats to get better at that stuff, perform better first aid, more miraculous revivals, allow you to perform surgery to heal injuries, etc. But why should you need a feat to perform something so basic (conceptually, CPR) that even people with minimal training as a healer can do it? Isn't it wierd that a guy with superheroic heal skill (+20 bonus or something), doesn't have even a chance of pulling off a revive without a 'feat'? What does the skill and the feat represent in that case?

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I loathe kits, subclasses, specialties and archetypes and pretty much anything of the sort. I believe the ideal number of specialties in a system is exactly 0. How many orders of magnitude of disagreement is that?

About one and a half.

I often like what you describe in a system, but not in a class based system. The joy of a class based system is the simplicity of creating and describing a character. It's about having limited options to provide a simpler, more stress free game. Feats are the antithesis of this.

When I want a deeper, more granular game where I can build what I want, I don't play D&D. I play something like Shadowrun with over 70 skills, each with three or four specialties, and dozens of qualities that let me craft exactly what I'm looking for.

 

[Celebrim]

About one and a half.

I often like what you describe in a system, but not in a class based system. The joy of a class based system is the simplicity of creating and describing a character.

The joys of class based system also include predictable diversity, easier balancing, easier design, smaller learning curve, and strong archetype support. I'm not sure that I would consider 'limited options' to be one of its joys, though I understand that opinions differ on that. I'm even less sure that limited options in chargen tranlates to 'less stress free game'. There are lots of sources of stress in Shadowrun that have nothing to do with chargen diversity.

I guess I can understand a desire for simplicity at least as far as it relates to speed of play, reduced bookkeeping, and other desirable attributes. I guess fundamentally I don't understand is how specialities are any less complex than feats. The only possible advantage I can see is if you are doing lots of one offs and starting at high level you don't have to think hard about a build, but its mainly the GM that benefits from that and the GM can just rely on a library of stock characters or 'close enough' skeletal NPCs or generic for the level NPCs.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Feat? Why should this require a feat? I've basically beyond this design point for about the last 8 years.

HEAL (WIS)
Check: The DC and effect depend on the task you attempt.

Task Heal     DC1
Stabilize    15
Long-term care     15
Remove arrow    15
Treat wound from caltrop, spike growth, or spike stones     15
[B]First Aid    15[/B]
Treat poison     Poison’s save DC
Treat disease     Disease’s save DC
[B]Revive    30[/B]

You suffer a -5 penalty on heal checks if you are trying to treat yourself.  You must normally have a healer’s kit to attempt effective heal checks.   Exceptions to this rule are noted.
Stabilize: You may stabilize an injury which is causing continuing loss of hit points, such as a bleeding wound, an amputated limb, or a dying character.  A stabilized character regains no hit points but stops losing them.  You do not have to have a healer’s kit to attempt to stabilize a dying character, but if you lack it you suffer a -5 penalty.
Long-Term Care: Providing long-term care means treating a wounded person for a day or more. If your Heal check is successful, the patient recovers hit points or ability score points (lost to ability damage) at twice the normal rate: 1 hit point per level for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 2 hit points per level for each full day of complete rest; 2 ability score points for a full 8 hours of rest in a day, or 4 ability score points for each full day of complete rest.
You can tend as many as six patients at a time. You need a few items and supplies (bandages, salves, and so on).  These are usually easy to come by in settled lands, but cost 5 sp per patient per day.  Providing long-term care counts as light activity for the healer. You cannot give long-term care to yourself.
Remove Arrow: You can remove an embedded arrow (for example, from a critical hit) and cause no additional damage with a DC 15 heal check.  If you fail the check, removing the arrow causes 1 point of damage.  If you fail the check by 5 or more, removing the arrow causes 1d4 points of damage.  If you fail the check by 10 or more, you inflict 1d4 points of damage and the arrow remains embedded.
Treat Wound from Caltrop, Spike Growth, or Spike Stones: A creature wounded by stepping on a caltrop moves at one-half normal speed. A successful Heal check removes this movement penalty.
A creature wounded by a spike growth or spike stones spell must succeed on a Reflex save or take injuries that reduce his speed by one-third. Another character can remove this penalty by taking 10 minutes to dress the victim’s injuries and succeeding on a Heal check against the spell’s save DC.
First Aid: You may use first aid to treat any recently suffered wound.  If you are successful, you reduce the pain and trauma caused by the wound and mitigate some of the damage so that the wound heals quickly and bothers the patient less.  As a result, the treated character heals 0-3 hit points (1d4-1) up to the maximum amount of damage that has received in the last 24 hours or since the last treatment.  However, you may not retreat the patients wounds unless they suffer further damage.
Treat Poison: To treat poison means to tend a single character who has been poisoned and who is going to take more damage from the poison. Every time the poisoned character makes a saving throw against the poison, you make a Heal check. The poisoned character uses your check result or his or her saving throw, whichever is higher.
Treat Disease: To treat a disease means to tend a single diseased character. Every time he or she makes a saving throw against disease effects, you make a Heal check. The diseased character uses your check result or his or her saving throw, whichever is higher.
Revive: As first aid, except that you treat a person who has just died within the past minute.  If the check is successful and if the gained hit points are sufficient to restore the character above their minimum hit points, the character is returned to life.  You cannot revive yourself.

There are feats to get better at that stuff, perform better first aid, more miraculous revivals, allow you to perform surgery to heal injuries, etc. But why should you need a feat to perform something so basic (conceptually, CPR) that even people with minimal training as a healer can do it? Isn't it wierd that a guy with superheroic heal skill (+20 bonus or something), doesn't have even a chance of pulling off a revive without a 'feat'? What does the skill and the feat represent in that case?

???

Why did I deserve that reaction? I replied to a thread post... the one I quoted...

I just wanted to say, that I think this is definitely in the realm of mundane healing... I don´t really care, if it is a feat...
I believe all those feats should only giving advantage on those tasks, or remove disadvantage on them or make them easier... I don´t see a point for any of those feats forbidding the application of a skill in the described way...

I´d like all those abililities as: DC one step up, advantage if you have the feat. Maybe some of them allow a "rushed" application, which grants disadvantage... and the feat negates that. Actually granting advantage on checks seems appropriate, as you can never go below a standard check...