So this is an idea that just popped into my head, and it is probably a terrible one. But I am curious about what the community thinks.
Several classes get a whole boatload of implicit feats as starting class features.
Just one example is that fighters implicitly get Moderately Armored and Heavily Armored, along with others.
What if you allowed a fighter to retrain these implicit starting feats. For example, you are building an Elf Archer Fighter with high dex, so he is never going to wear medium or heavy armor...probably never learned how to wear it. So at level 1 he takes a -1 in strength (heavily armored) and another -1 in either strength or dex, prob strength, (moderately armored) and loses these two armor proficiencies, but then has two starting feat slots...with which he can take Elven Accuracy and Sharpshooter.
Completely ridiculous and busted, or allowing the player to customize the class and jettison features he won't be using anyway?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Founding Member of the High Roller Society.(Currently trying to roll max on 4d6)
They aren't feats, they are proficiencies, your conflating them as feats to get an extreme advantage, which isn't the point of the game.
Optimizing characters can be entertaining, but they have little to do with how the game is played, your DM is either going to give you easy challenges or hard challenges... no matter how you optimize your character, the game is roleplaying, and your more likely to make a mess of party balance and character building than getting any actual fun from homebrewing absurd advantages.
You just need the info on pages 3-7, everything else is just some hombrew bits and pieces and character concepts but you can also use them if you want.
Disclaimer: You are free to agree or disagree with this, it works for my group of players as we've been roleplaying in one form or another for a very long time but it may not work for you and yours.
Additional disclaimer (and shameless self promotion): If you would prefer you can also download it for free via DrivethruRPG/Dmsguild under 5e homebrew edition players handbook.
Additional additional disclaimer: this was all cobbled together just after Volo's came out and I haven't updated it to reflect/include the feats newer books.
Completely ridiculous and busted, or allowing the player to customize the class and jettison features he won't be using anyway?
The answer is both. It is completely ridiculous and busted, and you would need to have a lot of trust in your players, but if your table is okay with that then yeah it allows the players to customize their class more.
Same with Rob76's system (for those who don't want to read, basically you can get any feat you fit the requirements for at any time limited only by your want to have a fun game. Most feats have slightly increased requirements.
It definitely won't work at many tables, but if it works in your table that's great for you. More character customization and ability to express your character concept? Sure I see the appeal, would i actually use this in my table? Probably not.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
So this is an idea that just popped into my head, and it is probably a terrible one. But I am curious about what the community thinks.
Several classes get a whole boatload of implicit feats as starting class features.
Just one example is that fighters implicitly get Moderately Armored and Heavily Armored, along with others.
What if you allowed a fighter to retrain these implicit starting feats. For example, you are building an Elf Archer Fighter with high dex, so he is never going to wear medium or heavy armor...probably never learned how to wear it. So at level 1 he takes a -1 in strength (heavily armored) and another -1 in either strength or dex, prob strength, (moderately armored) and loses these two armor proficiencies, but then has two starting feat slots...with which he can take Elven Accuracy and Sharpshooter.
Completely ridiculous and busted, or allowing the player to customize the class and jettison features he won't be using anyway?
Founding Member of the High Roller Society. (Currently trying to roll max on 4d6)
Broken as heck imho.
Look at other classes that don't get those things and tell me it's balanced at all.
They're not feats, they're just aspects of the class, if they don't use em, they don't use em, simple as that.
They aren't feats, they are proficiencies, your conflating them as feats to get an extreme advantage, which isn't the point of the game.
Optimizing characters can be entertaining, but they have little to do with how the game is played, your DM is either going to give you easy challenges or hard challenges... no matter how you optimize your character, the game is roleplaying, and your more likely to make a mess of party balance and character building than getting any actual fun from homebrewing absurd advantages.
I've had a few conversations about his over the last two years or so, here's a link to a google doc with the details:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dyjd58yAreoR1RFLpwpA1Yqh35vV3R7j/view?usp=sharing
You just need the info on pages 3-7, everything else is just some hombrew bits and pieces and character concepts but you can also use them if you want.
Disclaimer: You are free to agree or disagree with this, it works for my group of players as we've been roleplaying in one form or another for a very long time but it may not work for you and yours.
Additional disclaimer (and shameless self promotion): If you would prefer you can also download it for free via DrivethruRPG/Dmsguild under 5e homebrew edition players handbook.
Additional additional disclaimer: this was all cobbled together just after Volo's came out and I haven't updated it to reflect/include the feats newer books.
The answer is both. It is completely ridiculous and busted, and you would need to have a lot of trust in your players, but if your table is okay with that then yeah it allows the players to customize their class more.
Same with Rob76's system (for those who don't want to read, basically you can get any feat you fit the requirements for at any time limited only by your want to have a fun game. Most feats have slightly increased requirements.
It definitely won't work at many tables, but if it works in your table that's great for you. More character customization and ability to express your character concept? Sure I see the appeal, would i actually use this in my table? Probably not.
if I edit a message, most of the time it's because of grammar. The rest of the time I'll put "Edit:" at the bottom.