D&D (2024) 75 Feats -- not nearly enough

[Horwath]

Feat: Do Whatever
+1 ASI
You gain one ability of your choosing. Work with the DM to determine a suitable ability. You can take this feat multiple times.

There. We combined all the feats into a single one. Look how much space we saved.

That's not the point though. All the space saving in the world is useless if feats are generic and flavorless.

Why is it flavorless?

It's flavor is that you are better spellcaster, or natural born spellcaster, just as you are with Shadow touched and Feytouched.

Sharpshooters flavor is that you are better archer than without it.

Same as skilled, you are more skilled.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

For certain classes it means more than others. Martials, in particular, probably get more benefits from feats because (so far in 5E, at least) feats have had big implications on how they interact with combat. +1 to hit is always good, but the +1 to damage is less meaningful. For Spellcasters, they get other effects like an extra spell memorized and increasing their Spell DC, which is very important. If you aren't maxed out in your spellcasting stat, you probably are better served unless there is some specific effect you are looking at (like maybe a Warcasting battle Cleric).

I am not sure what you are getting at here with respect to my post that you are responding to. All classes benefit a lot from a + 1 in their prime stat and this competes with any feat. So, players will gravitate to this choice as it is an easy one to make. Polearm mastery or heavy armour mastery take a bit more evaluating, but fighters are likely to take more feats instead of A.S.I.s since they have more opportunities to do so and once, they have pumped STR or DEX to the max there is room to experiment.

Warcaster is a good feat for some builds but Lucky is pretty much always good.

I think making it a choice is the mistake. Given how low the array is, I'm okay with ASIs as a benefit from level. I just think players should always get both, so that you can customize your character in two ways rather than one. Making you choose between the two always feels bad.

I think @dave2008 has a point though, the problem is in the choice. If stat increase were not in the game it would have been better. The choice of feats would have been meaningful and there would be room in the game for plussed weapons, which are, in my opinion kind of redundant. Stat increasing items would be more relevant also.

 

[Argyle King]

5e PCs can't take feats until level 4 and most games end before level 11.

Right.

Maybe you get 1 more with the new way backgrounds work. Even then you only really pick a few.

Many of those 75 will likely never get used.

 

[Minigiant]

IDK, I like the one size fits all of feats. I prefer they get rid of lvl on feats and fill that mechanical niche with something else. Since it is in the backgrounds, just call them background features. Then every actual feat has no level restriction / requirement. They are just feats.

It would be better to not call them all feats.

Traits. Traits would be equal to 1st level Feats. Appropriate for 1st level characters that improve them horizontally or give them narrative control in the setting.

Feats. Feats would be the balanced Feats now.

Quirks. Slightly stronger than a feat but has a penalty.

Specialties. Specialties would be stronger thatm Feats and often give large amount of vertical power offensively or defensively.

Paths. Paths would be major multiple level scaling alterations of the PC. This is becoming a Vampire or a Solamnic Knight. These usually have an in universe require to take an end with giving the PC a tier 3 aspect.

Boons. Overpowered high level stuff.

Only traits would be required. And tables and settings could determine if the rest are available.

I wish D&D just didn't lock onto feats as the sole customization paint to

 

[ECMO3]

The promise of 75 feats announced in the Gameinformer Magazine feature sounds promising, but I'm not sure it actually represents a big step forward. Let's tally what we've seen. (In some ways this is an update of the survey I did on feats post-Playtest 7, last September.)

Level 1 Feats:
10 Level-1 feats in PT 1 and 2.
5 feats without ASI in Tasha's.
6 Fighting styles in PT 6, framed as feats.

Level 4 feats:
1 ASI, framed as a feat.
29 feats with a +1 ASI in the playtest materials.
10 feats with a +1 ASI in Tasha's.

Epic feats: considered, but then removed.

So if the feats from Tashas were all brought into the game (in a revised form or not), and including fighting styles, we have good reason to believe we've seen 61 of the 75 feats.

Of the remaining 14:

• There are at least 5 fighting styles that could be added from Tasha's. These include unarmed and thrown weapons, which I'd really like to see included. If these were in, we'd really be looking at only 9 things we've not seen.
• As I noted before, there are three feats in the 2014 PHB we've not seen versions of yet: Dungeon Delver, Linguist, Martial Adept. Possibly that's three more.
• There could be species-specific feats, like what we saw in Xanathar's. I hope there aren't, but it's a possibility.

Of course I don't know whether everything from Tasha's will be included, but if it were (and I think it's a fair guess), then the amount of new feats may increase slightly, but not a lot.

All that's to say, 75 feats sounds like a lot, but I am not actually sure it will make as big a difference as it might have done.

During the 10-year run of 5E we have gotten more and more feats to where I think we have 103 total now and I can't say the game is any better for it compared to the 20 or so we got in the PHB.

 

[DEFCON 1]

During the 10-year run of 5E we have gotten more and more feats to where I think we have 103 total now and I can't say the game is any better for it compared to the 20 or so we got in the PHB.

That just comes down to whether someone thinks having more options is better or not. Some folks want more things to select, others don't feel the need. How one feels about that is what would determine whether the game was better for it or not.

At the end of the day though... the game isn't going to be all that much different. Some folks will enjoy sifting through the several dozen feat options at each selection point, others will be happy to just take the +ASIs each and every time.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Doesn't feel bad to me. It makes a certain amount of sense to me from a verisimilitude perspetive. If you have to train to raise your stat, you can train to learn a feat. However, I don't really care that much. Though as I type this I realize actually don't like getting an ASI automatically - I want it to be a choice.

It feels bad to me because it's just an unnecessary limit: why do I have to choose between the two when I could simply have both? In a game where there are very limited choices outside of the class ones, allowing more options to customize them beyond the class structure would seem good.

I think martials should just get a bit more feats. Casters have enough.

Since increasing main stats is nearly always the best choice, I am not sure why you think that taking away the hard choice between feat or main stat increases choices...

I don't think it's necessarily a hard one, I think it's just a bad one. It's unnecessary to force someone to choose between the two when giving them both would just be a better option to allow more customization.

I am not sure what you are getting at here with respect to my post that you are responding to. All classes benefit a lot from a + 1 in their prime stat and this competes with any feat. So, players will gravitate to this choice as it is an easy one to make. Polearm mastery or heavy armour mastery take a bit more evaluating, but fighters are likely to take more feats instead of A.S.I.s since they have more opportunities to do so and once, they have pumped STR or DEX to the max there is room to experiment.

I was largely responding to this

In my opinion, apart from a very small number of exceptions in the current game, it is not clear that any feat is worth more than a +2 to an ability.

By saying that, for martials, there are a decent amount of feats that are probably better than a simple +1 to hit/damage. Those feats are largely known and talked about, though.

Warcaster is a good feat for some builds but Lucky is pretty much always good.

Warcaster is something I liked choosing for variant human clerics if the GM wasn't allowing a free feat in general. Lucky is a good take given its universality.

As it stands, the biggest problem with the current edition (not the new one coming out) is that Feats are very much broken down into two sides: "Useful" and "Incredibly Niche". There are some feats that are particularly necessary for Martials, while there are some things that are just incredibly niche and would be fine to fill out a character but not against an ASI. Moving away from those two being in competition with one another, as well as trying to gate feats by their effectiveness, will hopefully balance things out a bit. But even still, making it a choice rather than just getting both is the big mistake here.

I think @dave2008 has a point though, the problem is in the choice. If stat increase were not in the game it would have been better. The choice of feats would have been meaningful and there would be room in the game for plussed weapons, which are, in my opinion kind of redundant. Stat increasing items would be more relevant also.

I would much rather move away from plussed weapons as a concept in general and just move towards more interesting magical effects. That's just my view of it.

But personally I like the idea of having ASIs, especially given the stat array we are given. I just don't like them competing with Feats because I think they shouldn't be in competition with one another; you should just get both: you get both an ASI and a Feat at certain levels. There's nothing really gained from it, and right now it seems to section off people from engaging with certain parts of the game (as you describe).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don't think it's necessarily a hard one, I think it's just a bad one. It's unnecessary to force someone to choose between the two when giving them both would just be a better option to allow more customization.

Increasing the main stat in addition to taking a feat reduces customization...

Removing ASI altogether, maybe making that feat non repeatable would be more fun than just always increasing a few numbers so every character ends up with 20 main stat...

 

[Justice and Rule]

Increasing the main stat in addition to taking a feat reduces customization...

Not really? Like, in choosing both it creates more potential split points as well as allowing MAD characters to fill out better. Forcing a choice between the two things doesn't add to customization because it prevents it: it forces you away from certain choices because you have to abandon them for something that might come off as more "optimized". If you have both, you can take customization choices that you normally wouldn't because you'd be hamstrung by choosing them against an ASI.

Removing ASI altogether, maybe making that feat non repeatable would be more fun than just always increasing a few numbers so every character ends up with 20 main stat...

I could really care less about people ending up with a 20 main stat because that matters less to me than how the game allows you to interact with the world. Honestly anything that moves away from having equipment bear the burden of pushing the math forward is a bonus to me, so I much prefer ASIs compared to that.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Not really? Like, in choosing both it creates more potential split points as well as allowing MAD characters to fill out better. Forcing a choice between the two things doesn't add to customization because it prevents it: it forces you away from certain choices because you have to abandon them for something that might come off as more "optimized". If you have both, you can take customization choices that you normally wouldn't because you'd be hamstrung by choosing them against an ASI.

I don't like your idea. I think it makes things worse.
MAD classes actually benefit from not increasing main stats all the time as they don't fall behind.

I could really care less about people ending up with a 20 main stat because that matters less to me than how the game allows you to interact with the world. Honestly anything that moves away from having equipment bear the burden of pushing the math forward is a bonus to me, so I much prefer ASIs compared to that.

I see that you don't care for the impact of your change.