D&D (2024) Rules Clarification: Fighting Style Feats

[Ruin Explorer]

No more elaborate than inventing feat categories so that pre-2024 feats couldn’t be taken at 1st level. And I wouldn’t say that making a level or two of Fighter, Paladin, or Ranger a requirement for gaining a fighting style through feats is minimal at all.

Well, no, the class feature already existed. They changed the way the class feature functions, in a way that has no apparent functional difference at all, except that it prevents non-martial characters can no longer acquire them without multiclassing. Unless you allow the Tasha’s feat to circumvent the prerequisite, in which case the change accomplishes literally nothing.

That doesn’t seem plausible to me. If they intended for the Tasha’s feat to be an exception, what was the point of even changing fighting styles into Feats in the first place?

But it gets around a restriction they clearly want to exist, otherwise they wouldn’t have re-written fighting styles to have such a prerequisite.

Correct.

Is it though? Every pre-2024 version of a Feat that has been reproduced in the 2024 PHB does nothing now. Fighting Initiate seems, in my view, to have been reproduced in 2024, just in the form of several individual feats instead of one single feat that gives you a choice of several benefits. But, due to the Tasha’s version having a different name than its various 2024 counterparts, it’s still technically selectable at tables that allow pre-2024 material (which is reportedly the intended default). And, selecting the Tasha’s version allows you to circumvent the one meaningful change present in the 2024 version. That definitely doesn’t seem like an intended outcome to me.

I gotta say this does not seem very logical or reasonable. It seems like you came in with a view and are bending the facts and coming up with some very dubious interpretations (which is very atypical for you, not sure why you're so married to this idea) to try and support the prima facie ludicrous conclusion that you're allowed to take a Feat but it does nothing. I do not for one cold second believe WotC intended you to be able to take a Feat that does nothing at all. I don't think WotC is in the business of shadowbanning Feats as it were lol. I think the whole "Fighting Style Feature" thing here is just another poorly-worded bit of inept backwards incompatibility in the supposedly very backwards-compatible edition - that directly contrary to your view they weren't even considering Tasha's et al when they wrote this, they were thinking solely about 5E 2024.

 

[abirdcall]

That doesn’t seem plausible to me. If they intended for the Tasha’s feat to be an exception, what was the point of even changing fighting styles into Feats in the first place?

I can see 3 reasons:

1. Future proofing. It provides structure for them to add new fighting style feats in a simpler way.
2. Organization. Fighting styles are all in one place now and can be organized under the section of feats without requiring their own.
3. In a digital format they can be categorized as a feat on the character sheet.

The downside for me is confusion. They're terrible as feats but are presented in a way that implies the classes that have fighting styles have the perk of being able to choose them as feats. At some point I'm going to need to explain to a new player that they are a bad choice for a feat and that player is going to understandably feel that they are poorly designed.

 

[Pauln6]

Of course, you don't have build npcs like characters. You can emulate classes in several ways. Giving the npc above average hp, heavy armour, weapon masteries, and multi-attack might be all you need to do but you could also throw in a fighting style, a battlemaster manoeuvre, or improved crit range in any combination.

 

[Charlaquin]

I gotta say this does not seem very logical or reasonable. It seems like you came in with a view and are bending the facts and coming up with some very dubious interpretations (which is very atypical for you, not sure why you're so married to this idea) to try and support the prima facie ludicrous conclusion that you're allowed to take a Feat but it does nothing.

Not at all. I’ve arrived at this conclusion based on the evidence present in the books: all pre-2024 feats that aren’t reproduced in the 2024 PHB are allowed. The Fighting Initiate feat is reproduced in the 2024 PHB in a different form, with a new prerequisite. But Fighting Initiate has a different name than its 2024 counterparts, so technically, can be taken, according to the guidance on using legacy material (so can Mobile, by the way). If we don’t interpret the prerequisite on Fighting Style Feats as applying to Fighting Styles gained via Fighting Initiate, then that prerequisite is meaningless, because there is no reason to ever take a Fighting Style Feat over Fighting Initiate. It’s the exact same thing but more restrictive. I therefore must conclude that the intent is for the restriction to also apply to Fighting Initiate.

You may have drawn a different conclusion from the same facts, but that doesn’t mean I started from my conclusion and worked backwards.

I do not for one cold second believe WotC intended you to be able to take a Feat that does nothing at all. I don't think WotC is in the business of shadowbanning Feats as it were lol.

I mean, I don’t think they intended for you to take Fighting Initiate at all any more; I think the new Fighting Style Feats were meant to supersede it. But, the way they phrased the guidelines on legacy content technically leave the possibility open to take Fighting Initiate. If you do, its original function kind of breaks down, since it doesn’t originally give you a Feat; it gives you a class feature that no longer works as it did when Fighting Initiate was written.

I think the whole "Fighting Style Feature" thing here is just another poorly-worded bit of inept backwards incompatibility in the supposedly very backwards-compatible edition - that directly contrary to your view they weren't even considering Tasha's et al when they wrote this, they were thinking solely about 5E 2024.

I mean, I agree that it’s a result of incompatibility between the revised rules and the legacy rules. I just think the poor wording lies in their guidelines for using pre-2024 content, not in the 2024 Fighting Style Feats themselves.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean, I agree that it’s a result of incompatibility between the revised rules and the legacy rules. I just think the poor wording lies in their guidelines for using pre-2024 content, not in the 2024 Fighting Style Feats themselves.

You've presented no evidence which supports your contention that this is intentional incompatibility, I'm afraid. It seems that Occam's Razor (sorry) dictates that a simple lack of consideration/thought is far more likely than a roundabout unstated conspiracy to render a relatively popular Feat from another book into a state where it literally does nothing at all.

If we don’t interpret the prerequisite on Fighting Style Feats as applying to Fighting Styles gained via Fighting Initiate, then that prerequisite is meaningless, because there is no reason to ever take a Fighting Style Feat over Fighting Initiate.

Not logical.

By the same false logic there's no reason to ever take a 2024 Background, only the 2014 Custom background. In both cases it's an issue created by them not thinking through what they were doing.

The reality is D&D editions trying to be compatible with prior editions always create odd possibilities here and there (we saw this with 1E and 2E extensively). That doesn't mean we should make up fictional restrictions to block them and then assert those fictional restrictions are RAI, as you appear to be doing.

 

[Charlaquin]

You've presented no evidence which supports your contention that this is intentional incompatibility, I'm afraid. It seems that Occam's Razor (sorry) dictates that a simple lack of consideration/thought is far more likely than a roundabout unstated conspiracy to render a relatively popular Feat from another book into a state where it literally does nothing at all.

I think you’re reading “intentional” as a far more specific intent than I meant by it. Like, I don’t think they wanted to get rid of Fighting Initiate, and re-wrote Fighting Styles to accomplish that end. I think they wanted access to Fighting Styles to be more restrictive, so they added a prerequisite to them in 2024, which had the effect of breaking the original functionality of Fighting Initiate, which I think they were fine with, since the Feat would otherwise be a back door around the greater level of restriction they wanted to place on Fighting Styles.

Not logical.

By the same false logic there's no reason to ever take a 2024 Background, only the 2014 Custom background.

Well, custom backgrounds aren’t a thing in the 2024 PHB. But, yes, if your DM allows customizing 2024 backgrounds, there’s no reason to take a 2014 background.

In both cases it's an issue created by them not thinking through what they were doing.

I mean, we know they thought through adding categories to Feats, because they specifically stated that they did so, so that 2014 features that gave you Feats would not give background Feats, and 2024 Backgrounds wouldn’t grant 2014 Feats. You can see how this was developed over the course of the UA playtests if you look at how the wording of Feats and their prerequisites changed from UA to UA. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume the creation of Fighting Style as a Feat category and their prerequisites was part of this same process.

The reality is D&D editions trying to be compatible with prior editions always create odd possibilities here and there (we saw this with 1E and 2E extensively). That doesn't mean we should make up fictional restrictions to block them and then assert those fictional restrictions are RAI, as you appear to be doing.

The restriction isn’t fictional, it’s written in the book. Fighting Style Feats have a prerequisite of a Fighting Style class feature. I think it’s a natural assumption that the designers intended that restriction to be there, since they wrote it that way. Given that they did so, the most intuitive assumption to me was that they did not intend for Fighting Initiate to allow players to circumvent that restriction. I’m certainly open to an interpretation that they didn’t think about Fighting Initiate at all. But in that case, I would say it is still not RAI for Fighting Initiate to be able to grant a fighting style without meeting the prerequisites for that style’s Feat. Otherwise they could simply have not placed that prerequisite on the Feats in the first place.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, custom backgrounds aren’t a thing in the 2024 PHB. But, yes, if your DM allows customizing 2024 backgrounds, there’s no reason to take a 2014 background.

No, I mean all 2014 backgrounds are Custom background according to 2024, so there's never a point to taking a 2024 background if 2014 backgrounds are allowed at all.

The restriction isn’t fictional

intuitive assumption

...

 

[Charlaquin]

No, I mean all 2014 backgrounds are Custom background according to 2024, so there's never a point to taking a 2024 background if 2014 backgrounds are allowed at all.

That is an accurate statement. And because of that fact it’s pretty baffling that they decided to take custom backgrounds out of the 2024 PHB.

...

?

 

[abirdcall]

That is an accurate statement. And because of that fact it’s pretty baffling that they decided to take custom backgrounds out of the 2024 PHB.

?

It matters if the table is not using that 2014 content.

I am very happy they don't have custom backgrounds in 2024 because at that point they just shouldn't have backgrounds at all because there is no choice or theme to them.

 

[Horwath]

Fighting initiate looks like a decent Origin feat, so we can have damage option for origin feats instead of Savage attacker.