You guys will have a god awful time hitting with spells and such towards mid to late game if you get there. Either that or end up really lopsided with one huge stat and nothing in any other stats. Is he planning to have low mid or high amounts of magic items? I mean the feats are very good and in certain combinations incredibly potent but that sounds... not fun.
If you have played a number of games and just want to mix it up it may not be so bad. I am guessing picking a race that has racial feats available is going to be a good idea, getting advantage on attacks is going to be even more important than normal. Also I suppose you can always pick up a stat at a time with the feats so stat growth isn't out of the question (probably what I would do).
Do I like it? Not really. Will it be playable and still enjoyable? More than likely. It just rubs me the wrong way considering feats are the optional rule normally.
What level are you all starting at? Fresh level 1s?
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
It's Tomb of Annihilation. We're starting at level 1. By my math, I should be able to get any "main" stat for a given character up to 18, which is 5% less chance of hitting and a single point of damage less. Not terrible.
Definitely not good for making optimized builds, but one of my best characters had his main stat at 18 when he was level 8 (mountain dwarf wizard), so unless I expect our party to hit level 12, my characters during this campaign won't be any different than Delg.
Yeah I also realized part way through post you can still gain stats through your feat choices, which mitigates the lack of the normal ASI's but it still feels a little sad not being able to shore up your stat weaknesses much.
I guess you guys will get a chance to explore the depth of feats and all they have to offer. My personal opinion is do the free first level feat, but still give people the option after that. Being a Fighter if you guys get a bit higher in level will be a little less enticing but most people seem to multiclass anyway.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Yeah I also realized part way through post you can still gain stats through your feat choices, which mitigates the lack of the normal ASI's but it still feels a little sad not being able to shore up your stat weaknesses much.
On the other hand, these house rules let them start with an 18, which is impossible using the normal rules and point buy or standard array.
This is, in my opinion, a bad rule because it compounds a fact of the system as it stands - there really aren't more than a handful of feats per character that a player is likely to really want.
Yes, everyone will be able to spend their feats on something, potentially even something that is useful, but for the most part each player is likely to only really want a small number of them - and would definitely rather choose to increase ability scores, if they could, than to pick up some of the less desired but still helpful feats.
And giving everyone a feat at 1st level just makes the process of not really wanting another feat, but having to choose one anyway, happen sooner.
This is, in my opinion, a bad rule because it compounds a fact of the system as it stands - there really aren't more than a handful of feats per character that a player is likely to really want.
And giving everyone a feat at 1st level just makes the process of not really wanting another feat, but having to choose one anyway, happen sooner.
If you went up to 20, that'd be an issue, especially for Fighters. But ToA only goes up to 11th level, which means you're looking at 4 feats for fighters/rogues and 3 feats for everyone else. That's super easy to fill up. There's usually 1-2 feats that'd interest specific character types (e.g. Sharpshooter, War Caster), plus Lucky and Resilient which are good for any character.
Really not a fan of dictating how characters progress though, or house rules that don't serve a clear purpose. Also, you can't hit 20 WIS with these rules.
That's super easy to fill up. There's usually 1-2 feats that'd interest specific character types (e.g. Sharpshooter, War Caster), plus Lucky and Resilient which are good for any character.
I didn't say it wasn't easy to pick out a few more feats than you actually really care about having - I said that there's only so many feats that are actually interesting, and the rest, no matter how easy they are to choose or how good they are for the character, are forcing a player to take something they don't actually care about having (that last part being what I view as a problem).
It's a rarity, for sure, but I've had players at my table that absolutely hated picking feats when playing 3.5, 4th edition, and pathfinder, specifically because they didn't really care about the things the feats were giving them, and couldn't abstain from taking them. The end result of taking all the "good for any character" feats wasn't satisfying to them either, since that just highlighted their reasons for asking "Why do I even have to take feats?" in the first place. One of them, my lovely life partner actually, has even said "I'd play old-school D&D and not even get anything for leveling up half the time than have to take another <expletive deleted> feat."
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So my DM announced a new rule we'd be doing for this current campaign for feats. The rule is as follows:
We will also be doing point buy, as usual. Any thoughts?
...I guess I think that is terrible...
You guys will have a god awful time hitting with spells and such towards mid to late game if you get there. Either that or end up really lopsided with one huge stat and nothing in any other stats. Is he planning to have low mid or high amounts of magic items? I mean the feats are very good and in certain combinations incredibly potent but that sounds... not fun.
If you have played a number of games and just want to mix it up it may not be so bad. I am guessing picking a race that has racial feats available is going to be a good idea, getting advantage on attacks is going to be even more important than normal. Also I suppose you can always pick up a stat at a time with the feats so stat growth isn't out of the question (probably what I would do).
Do I like it? Not really. Will it be playable and still enjoyable? More than likely. It just rubs me the wrong way considering feats are the optional rule normally.
What level are you all starting at? Fresh level 1s?
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
It's Tomb of Annihilation. We're starting at level 1. By my math, I should be able to get any "main" stat for a given character up to 18, which is 5% less chance of hitting and a single point of damage less. Not terrible.
Definitely not good for making optimized builds, but one of my best characters had his main stat at 18 when he was level 8 (mountain dwarf wizard), so unless I expect our party to hit level 12, my characters during this campaign won't be any different than Delg.
Yeah I also realized part way through post you can still gain stats through your feat choices, which mitigates the lack of the normal ASI's but it still feels a little sad not being able to shore up your stat weaknesses much.
I guess you guys will get a chance to explore the depth of feats and all they have to offer. My personal opinion is do the free first level feat, but still give people the option after that. Being a Fighter if you guys get a bit higher in level will be a little less enticing but most people seem to multiclass anyway.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
This is, in my opinion, a bad rule because it compounds a fact of the system as it stands - there really aren't more than a handful of feats per character that a player is likely to really want.
Yes, everyone will be able to spend their feats on something, potentially even something that is useful, but for the most part each player is likely to only really want a small number of them - and would definitely rather choose to increase ability scores, if they could, than to pick up some of the less desired but still helpful feats.
And giving everyone a feat at 1st level just makes the process of not really wanting another feat, but having to choose one anyway, happen sooner.
I didn't say it wasn't easy to pick out a few more feats than you actually really care about having - I said that there's only so many feats that are actually interesting, and the rest, no matter how easy they are to choose or how good they are for the character, are forcing a player to take something they don't actually care about having (that last part being what I view as a problem).
It's a rarity, for sure, but I've had players at my table that absolutely hated picking feats when playing 3.5, 4th edition, and pathfinder, specifically because they didn't really care about the things the feats were giving them, and couldn't abstain from taking them. The end result of taking all the "good for any character" feats wasn't satisfying to them either, since that just highlighted their reasons for asking "Why do I even have to take feats?" in the first place. One of them, my lovely life partner actually, has even said "I'd play old-school D&D and not even get anything for leveling up half the time than have to take another <expletive deleted> feat."