My players for a new campaign are currently level 2 and I am considering doing something I have never done before, offering them the chance of a free feat at level 4. However i am in 2 minds on this, any other DM's allowed players to pick Feats for free, any advice on how it worked out? I am considering restricting it only to feats that don't give a + to an attribute.
I don't see it being massively game breaking but I may be wrong.
I haven't done it at level 4, but there are campaigns where I see what the background story is and their class and will give a feat for free at the beginning of the campaign. In one campaign, I offered a choice of a feat for Downtime training (over an extended period of time). As long as you aren't singling anyone out, it can be a great reward to hand out.
I've actually given a free feat to my players in the last few campaigns that I ran. Personally, I'm not a big fan of handing them out at first level, since it both detracts from the benefit of the variant human as well as potentially gives too big of boost to 1st level characters. However, there's no particular right or wrong time to do it if you want to.
Anecdotally speaking, I tended to reward the players with the free feat somewhere around the 5th-7th level mark. I saw "reward" because the feat was earned by some sort of quest/sidequest that they completed as part of the campaign. So instead of getting a couple more magical items, their characters earned some new abilities/features via the extra feat that they gained.
And, as the others said, it remains fairly balanced as long as you're consistent and fair with giving players a feat. If everybody gets one, then you're most likely going to keep things balanced.
In my first time DM'ing not too long ago I ran my friends through Lost Mines of Phandelver, and for fun I let everyone take a feat at level 1. Mostly it was just for fun, but partly it was because I was worried the players might die early on. The team was a bit imbalanced, especially our Ranger, who rolled particularly well on stats and started the game with Sharpshooter, and later picked up Elven Accuracy at level 4, so they ended up being a bigger damage dealer than the Wizard. Still, it didn't throw things off so much that there was never any challenge just by sticking to the book.
I (usually) give my players a free feat at the start of the campaign (regardless of the starting level). I limit the feat to those that could "reasonably" be picked up by non-adventurers (like [feat]tavern brawler[/feat], [feat]athlete[/feat], or the Xanathar's racial feats, but not something like the initiate feats, or feats related to classes). I also don't allow the variant human in my games, so the imbalance for doing this doesn't exist for me. All of this is communicated in session 0, and I think my groups like it (or at least have no complaints)
For 1st level characters, I find it gives them more options and improves their survivability until they can get a few additional levels and unlock their main class features.
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My players for a new campaign are currently level 2 and I am considering doing something I have never done before, offering them the chance of a free feat at level 4. However i am in 2 minds on this, any other DM's allowed players to pick Feats for free, any advice on how it worked out? I am considering restricting it only to feats that don't give a + to an attribute.
I don't see it being massively game breaking but I may be wrong.
I haven't done it at level 4, but there are campaigns where I see what the background story is and their class and will give a feat for free at the beginning of the campaign. In one campaign, I offered a choice of a feat for Downtime training (over an extended period of time). As long as you aren't singling anyone out, it can be a great reward to hand out.
I've actually given a free feat to my players in the last few campaigns that I ran. Personally, I'm not a big fan of handing them out at first level, since it both detracts from the benefit of the variant human as well as potentially gives too big of boost to 1st level characters. However, there's no particular right or wrong time to do it if you want to.
Anecdotally speaking, I tended to reward the players with the free feat somewhere around the 5th-7th level mark. I saw "reward" because the feat was earned by some sort of quest/sidequest that they completed as part of the campaign. So instead of getting a couple more magical items, their characters earned some new abilities/features via the extra feat that they gained.
And, as the others said, it remains fairly balanced as long as you're consistent and fair with giving players a feat. If everybody gets one, then you're most likely going to keep things balanced.
Giving out a feat as a reward isn't that much different than awarding a magic item when you think about it.
In my first time DM'ing not too long ago I ran my friends through Lost Mines of Phandelver, and for fun I let everyone take a feat at level 1. Mostly it was just for fun, but partly it was because I was worried the players might die early on. The team was a bit imbalanced, especially our Ranger, who rolled particularly well on stats and started the game with Sharpshooter, and later picked up Elven Accuracy at level 4, so they ended up being a bigger damage dealer than the Wizard. Still, it didn't throw things off so much that there was never any challenge just by sticking to the book.
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I (usually) give my players a free feat at the start of the campaign (regardless of the starting level). I limit the feat to those that could "reasonably" be picked up by non-adventurers (like [feat]tavern brawler[/feat], [feat]athlete[/feat], or the Xanathar's racial feats, but not something like the initiate feats, or feats related to classes). I also don't allow the variant human in my games, so the imbalance for doing this doesn't exist for me. All of this is communicated in session 0, and I think my groups like it (or at least have no complaints)
For 1st level characters, I find it gives them more options and improves their survivability until they can get a few additional levels and unlock their main class features.