Does anyone else feel as if 5e is sorely lacking in (official) feats? If you're one of the core races, you've got some new options but even they leave a lot of gaps in the matrix of possibilities for character creation. In particular, I feel there isn't enough in the way of half-feats, that is feats which give a +1 to an ability score and some other interesting features. There are a lot of builds where I have an odd stat and look at my feat options and just don't feel as if the available choices fit the character.
5e is over four years old now and we still haven't gotten much in the way of feat expansion. We have a ton of new subclasses and races but only a few niche feats for a select few races.
Do you feel the same way and, if so, what feats would you like to see officially released (from Wizards)?
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"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
Honestly no, I sometimes feel as if there are too many feats as is. One of the things that really draws me to 5e after playing in 3.5 and 4e is that it doesn't suffer the same bloat that the others did.
It might be "short" on official racial feats, but I don't feel there is a lot of mechanical ones missing. There feels to me a nice tension between ASI and feats in terms of what to choose, without being overwhelming.
Well Between 4th and his 2000 feats and 5th and his 35 feats, yes there is a huge gap, and its difficult to find an equilibrium because there's always the feats that gonna be used a lot and those that are absolute garbage.
Problem is that there is feats that are really specific and those that are way too loose and you really dunno when or where it would become relevant...
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"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
One must always remember: Feats are *optional* just like magic items. I am just fine running games with out feats, and playing PCs with out them as well.
As a player who went from the 1980's with Advanced D&D, went dark during 1992-2016, and began playing again with 5e, Feats are one of my favorite changes. I do not know what happened with the other versions so I am not able to compare. That being said. I have read nearly every homebrew feat that has been made and have not seen even one that I find to be cool. Please let me know if you have found one that you think is cooler than what is already presented...
As a player who went from the 1980's with Advanced D&D, went dark during 1992-2016, and began playing again with 5e, Feats are one of my favorite changes. I do not know what happened with the other versions so I am not able to compare. That being said. I have read nearly every homebrew feat that has been made and have not seen even one that I find to be cool. Please let me know if you have found one that you think is cooler than what is already presented...
Like i said in 4th there was a lot and i mean a LOT of feats, the way it worked was that every 3 levels you could take a feat.
A lot where meh at best and there was quite a few that where cool, or allowed for you to do coll stuff.
One of them was a racial Feat that allowed Tiefling characters to transform into a Hulking Devil form once per day.
Lots of them also changed the way you used your weapons, or modified your spells(Meta magic feats).
The way Multiclassing worked in 4th was also very different, and the Multiclassing feats depending on your multiclass was also very different.
And the way the leveling of the game worked was divided in 3 tier Heroic(lvl1 to 10), Paragon(11to20) and Epic(21 to 30), with each tier its own sets of feats...
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"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
It's true that there aren't a lot of feats in 5e compared to previous editions of the game and this means any given character is going to have fewer customization options - you don't even need to have feats at all, after all, you could just go with Ability Score Improvements. But, I think that's an intentional part of the design - feats are de-emphasized for the sake of streamlining, which is naturally going to come at the cost of customization. It's both a good and a bad thing. Not having to deal with feat trees is a nice adjustment, although it would be interesting to see an adjusted 5e rule set where feats become a larger part of character building.
Yes but I'd rather have the amount we have then WAY too many like previous editions. I feel like a few class-specific feats the way we have race-specific (maybe 1 or 2 per class) would be nice but not mandatory.
It's true that there aren't a lot of feats in 5e compared to previous editions of the game and this means any given character is going to have fewer customization options - you don't even need to have feats at all, after all, you could just go with Ability Score Improvements. But, I think that's an intentional part of the design - feats are de-emphasized for the sake of streamlining, which is naturally going to come at the cost of customization. It's both a good and a bad thing. Not having to deal with feat trees is a nice adjustment, although it would be interesting to see an adjusted 5e rule set where feats become a larger part of character building.
In terms of optimal builds using point-buy, most characters can only get away with one feat if they want to get their primary and secondary ability scores to 20. This is why feats are so important to character customisation and why they were made to be far more substantial than in previous editions. But in supply so few feats, even with their beefed up nature, you severely limit interesting choices that differentiate your character (mechanically) from any other.
In fact, as things stand, you tend to get far more customisation from the character's race than most other facets of the system.
All I'm saying is that there are numerous possibilities that could be added to the 5e feats system that would not come at the cost of bloat or overwhelming people with too many choices. Again, you most often only get one feat to define your character, and so your options are very narrowly defined already.
That being said. I have read nearly every homebrew feat that has been made and have not seen even one that I find to be cool. Please let me know if you have found one that you think is cooler than what is already presented...
Eh, mileage varies. The idea that feats are less often used only argues in favor of keeping the list of feats shorter, in my opinion. I already feel like there is some 5e bloat after the release of Dragonmark feats and Ravnica backgrounds, and would prefer it if they cut back for the next release(s).
All I'm saying is that there are numerous possibilities that could be added to the 5e feats system that would not come at the cost of bloat or overwhelming people with too many choices. Again, you most often only get one feat to define your character, and so your options are very narrowly defined already.
Fair point, plenty of the feats that in previous editions came in trees could be re-implemented as single feats. That would be good to see. Although a shorter basic list is easier to deal with for new players, there could be a later supplement with a large number of extra feats - and if not, well, we can homebrew that, but then the content in question doesn't reach nearly as wide of an audience.
Some of the people I play with like to use all custom backgrounds with 5th edition, such that every character gets a (usually personality-related) custom feat at 1st level. Obviously this requires some balance judgment on the part of the GM, but it does add more personal customization to characters, and not the choosing-from-a-list kind.
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Does anyone else feel as if 5e is sorely lacking in (official) feats? If you're one of the core races, you've got some new options but even they leave a lot of gaps in the matrix of possibilities for character creation. In particular, I feel there isn't enough in the way of half-feats, that is feats which give a +1 to an ability score and some other interesting features. There are a lot of builds where I have an odd stat and look at my feat options and just don't feel as if the available choices fit the character.
5e is over four years old now and we still haven't gotten much in the way of feat expansion. We have a ton of new subclasses and races but only a few niche feats for a select few races.
Do you feel the same way and, if so, what feats would you like to see officially released (from Wizards)?
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ModeratorHonestly no, I sometimes feel as if there are too many feats as is. One of the things that really draws me to 5e after playing in 3.5 and 4e is that it doesn't suffer the same bloat that the others did.
It might be "short" on official racial feats, but I don't feel there is a lot of mechanical ones missing. There feels to me a nice tension between ASI and feats in terms of what to choose, without being overwhelming.
100% opinion.
When in doubt there's always the Resilient feat. It increases an ability score by +1 and gives you proficiency in saving throws for that ability.
Professional computer geek
Well Between 4th and his 2000 feats and 5th and his 35 feats, yes there is a huge gap, and its difficult to find an equilibrium because there's always the feats that gonna be used a lot and those that are absolute garbage.
Problem is that there is feats that are really specific and those that are way too loose and you really dunno when or where it would become relevant...
"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
Kain de Frostberg- Dark Knight - (Vengeance Pal3/ Hexblade 9), Port Mourn
Kain de Draakberg-Dark Knight lvl8-Avergreen(DitA)
One must always remember: Feats are *optional* just like magic items. I am just fine running games with out feats, and playing PCs with out them as well.
As a player who went from the 1980's with Advanced D&D, went dark during 1992-2016, and began playing again with 5e, Feats are one of my favorite changes. I do not know what happened with the other versions so I am not able to compare. That being said. I have read nearly every homebrew feat that has been made and have not seen even one that I find to be cool. Please let me know if you have found one that you think is cooler than what is already presented...
Blind Fighting fits into several Monk and Assasian conceptions. But you’re right, there’s not much there.
Professional computer geek
Like i said in 4th there was a lot and i mean a LOT of feats, the way it worked was that every 3 levels you could take a feat.
A lot where meh at best and there was quite a few that where cool, or allowed for you to do coll stuff.
One of them was a racial Feat that allowed Tiefling characters to transform into a Hulking Devil form once per day.
Lots of them also changed the way you used your weapons, or modified your spells(Meta magic feats).
The way Multiclassing worked in 4th was also very different, and the Multiclassing feats depending on your multiclass was also very different.
And the way the leveling of the game worked was divided in 3 tier Heroic(lvl1 to 10), Paragon(11to20) and Epic(21 to 30), with each tier its own sets of feats...
"Normality is but an Illusion, Whats normal to the Spider, is only madness for the Fly"
Kain de Frostberg- Dark Knight - (Vengeance Pal3/ Hexblade 9), Port Mourn
Kain de Draakberg-Dark Knight lvl8-Avergreen(DitA)
It's true that there aren't a lot of feats in 5e compared to previous editions of the game and this means any given character is going to have fewer customization options - you don't even need to have feats at all, after all, you could just go with Ability Score Improvements. But, I think that's an intentional part of the design - feats are de-emphasized for the sake of streamlining, which is naturally going to come at the cost of customization. It's both a good and a bad thing. Not having to deal with feat trees is a nice adjustment, although it would be interesting to see an adjusted 5e rule set where feats become a larger part of character building.
Yes but I'd rather have the amount we have then WAY too many like previous editions. I feel like a few class-specific feats the way we have race-specific (maybe 1 or 2 per class) would be nice but not mandatory.
In terms of optimal builds using point-buy, most characters can only get away with one feat if they want to get their primary and secondary ability scores to 20. This is why feats are so important to character customisation and why they were made to be far more substantial than in previous editions. But in supply so few feats, even with their beefed up nature, you severely limit interesting choices that differentiate your character (mechanically) from any other.
In fact, as things stand, you tend to get far more customisation from the character's race than most other facets of the system.
All I'm saying is that there are numerous possibilities that could be added to the 5e feats system that would not come at the cost of bloat or overwhelming people with too many choices. Again, you most often only get one feat to define your character, and so your options are very narrowly defined already.
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ModeratorEh, mileage varies. The idea that feats are less often used only argues in favor of keeping the list of feats shorter, in my opinion. I already feel like there is some 5e bloat after the release of Dragonmark feats and Ravnica backgrounds, and would prefer it if they cut back for the next release(s).
Fair point, plenty of the feats that in previous editions came in trees could be re-implemented as single feats. That would be good to see. Although a shorter basic list is easier to deal with for new players, there could be a later supplement with a large number of extra feats - and if not, well, we can homebrew that, but then the content in question doesn't reach nearly as wide of an audience.
Some of the people I play with like to use all custom backgrounds with 5th edition, such that every character gets a (usually personality-related) custom feat at 1st level. Obviously this requires some balance judgment on the part of the GM, but it does add more personal customization to characters, and not the choosing-from-a-list kind.