D&D 5E Feat Training - An Incremental Approach

[Tyler Culleton]

As a player, I never liked the way feats where problematic because 1) the "optimal" feats represented suc an immediate power increase, and 2) "roleplaying" feats came at too high an opportunity cost. As a DM, I am looking to mitigate both these issues (and reduce the pressure to go V.Human) in my games with a training approach.

1. Feat Bullets When training a feat, a player unlocks them one bullet point at a time. Players may still take a feat as normal, unlocking all bullets. The skilled feat is exempt from training.

2. Bullet Cap A player is limited in bullets known. The cap equals their Int mod + their Prof bonus.

3. Training When a player has at least 3 uninterrupted hours of downtime they may train toward a feat bullet. They receive feat xp equal to hours trained + Int mod. Training 3 hours is considered light activity; anything in excess is considered strenuous for rest purposes (elf trance balance attempt).

4. Getting Bulllots A bullet takes 200 feat xp to learn. When a character levels up they may "spend" the required xp to learn 1 bullet. They may forget an earlier bullet to gain a new benefit. Forgotten bullets must be retrained entirely.

5. New Human Rules There is no V.Human. The standard Human gains the following benefit: Ingenuity - You may learn one additional bullet. You gain 1 additional xp each time you train.


I am tempted to apply these same rules to learning additional skills and tools, all using the same capacity pool of Int mod + Prof.

Additionally, these rules where written with an attempt to add value to Int. in mind.

Let me know what you all think!

 

[Warmaster Horus]

Training never sat well with me as a mechanic. What do you think adventuring is? Assume necessary training is already occurring behind the curtain during downtime, etc and that 'field promotions' (ie leveling on an adventure) is just the various facets of the underlying training finally taking hold.

 

[Eric V]

AiME has something similar to this I believe...some virtues (the term for feats in that game) are broken up into different effects, and you unlock the "next level" of the virtue if you declare that during your downtime.

 

[Tyler Culleton]

Training never sat well with me as a mechanic. What do you think adventuring is? Assume necessary training is already occurring behind the curtain during downtime, etc and that 'field promotions' (ie leveling on an adventure) is just the various facets of the underlying training finally taking hold.

From your writing, it looks like you are interpreting my plan as similar to the DMG alternate rules, wherein players have to train and meet XP requirements to level. I'm not suggesting that at all.

I would like there to be avenues for players to customize their characters without sacrificing the feel of a bad ass. This is a way to do more behind the curtain training- not mandate it.

 

[GlassJaw]

Overall I like the intent behind this approach. Not sure I'm a fan of tying it to a training system but there's no doubt in my mind that feats need to become more granular, exactly for the reasons you listed.

Have you taken a crack at "bulletizing" the feats?

 

[Tyler Culleton]

Overall I like the intent behind this approach. Not sure I'm a fan of tying it to a training system but there's no doubt in my mind that feats need to become more granular, exactly for the reasons you listed.

Have you taken a crack at "bulletizing" the feats?

I took a run at bullets in one campaign and the concept worked well. Players used it to customize aspects of a character that they deemed important and ignored the rest.

My rogue, for example, plucked immunity to surprise from alert and ignored the Init bonus. It made sense for his character, who prided himself on his awareness. My favorite element to this approach is allowing poor performing feats to be used as intended - character flavor- without reducing spell saves, AC, etc.
The intent is not to penalize players in combat for the occasionally useful and flavorful specialization.

The power creep aspects dont don't bother me; as a DM I can adjust challenge accordingly. What DOES bother me is, after playing for 3 years, seeing only the same 3 or 4 feats hit the table because the other 25 aren't worth the ASI.

 

[GlassJaw]

I took a run at bullets in one campaign and the concept worked well.

Could you post the work you did? I'm definitely interested.

I've toyed with the idea of breaking everything down into half-feats or, in a more complicated system, cost everything on a scale from 1-4. Each ASI grants 4 "points". You can then spend these points on +1 ASI (2 points), a new language, skill, or tool proficiency (1 point), double your proficiency bonus for a skill (1 point), shield proficiency (1 point), armor or weapon proficiency (2 points), or a feat (1-4 points).

It's definitely more complicated and would need some restrictions but it would open up a TON of character customization without much unbalance, especially if the problem feats were re-costed appropriately (which would be the challenge of the design).

 

[MoonSong]

There's an easy way to solve this without going out of the way and rebalancing everything and all of that bean counting and fiddleness. But it is a secret n_n

 

[FieserMoep]

Just give them an ASI and a free feat.
Given you stated balance is no concern for you that seems to be the easiest solution.

 

[Blue]

So, can my 300 year old elf start off with a bunch of feats trained?

I understand the concept, but it breaks narrative pretty badly if people can pick these up just spending time. Except that no matter hold old your character you can't have spent time prior to day one of the campaign.

Additionally, it requires the DM never to allow downtime between adventures, else feats will spring up like crazy. But that means that characters are adventuring al the time and they can go from 1st to 20th in something ridiculously short like less than 2 months. Someone did the math for how many encounters per level, and when you assume the 6-8 encounters it made 1-20 a really short period unless there was significant "non-adventure days, be they downtime or travel.

Talking about travel, can I train while riding a horse? Can I train while riding in a wagon? In a cabin on a ship?

Now, if all bullet points are equal, can I train up the +1 ability score from half-feats? Say I'm a starting high elf wizard with a 16 INT. A 3 hour training gives me 6 feat XP, so I need 100 hours per bullet point at it's most efficient. I start with the various +INT bullet points both to get better at being a wizard plus accelerate feat XP and increase m cap of number of bullets allowed.

Recommendations

I think that these break down the sense of realism that older PCs wouldn't already have them. Capping them based on level would avoid most of that issue.

They make downtime something that directly adds to character power. If you connect it back to levelling that helps hold it in check, just making it linear power creep.

I also don't think that all bullet points are created equal and allowing cherry picking between them can get you soem very strong results. I'd suggest that once you start training a feat, you need to complete training all of the bullet points fo that feat before moving onto a new one.

On a related topic, instead of having a flat cost per bullet point, I'd suggest breaking it up based on the number of bullet points of a feat. A feat with 2 bullet points that's the same power as a feat with 4 lesser bullet points shouldn't be only half the cost. Maybe 600 feat XP / number of bullet points. This still gives your 200 for a comon 3 bullet point feat, and 600 is evenly divisible if it has 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 bullet points.