I am preparing to run a game for a few of my friends and want to give them more options to make a unique character, and one of the ways I was thinking of going about that was giving my players extra feats at certain levels (I was thinking lvl 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 or 1, 10, and 20). The reason why is that I really dislike how the fact that you need to give up your asi to get one makes the weaker but really flavorful ones almost never see play.

I was planning on handling it in the following way: when my players reach a level that gives them an extra feat, they can show me the feat they want, and if it makes sense for their character to get that feat, they can have it. If it's a half feat, they don't get the ability score increase, and I may give it a little boost that fits the feat's flavor to get it more on par with a full feat. I intend this to be a full-on extra to what you can already do, so you can still play a race that gives you a feat or give up your asi to get a feat (and I would be more lenient with what feats you can take this way because you are actually giving something up to get these feats), but you don't have to.

I know that by doing this I am going to obviously increase the power of the characters at my table, but besides that, are there any other consequences, and should I add any additional limitations to this?

This is fine. There's little problem with increasing character power as long as you 1) do it evenly and 2) increase the challenge of the stuff you throw at them accordingly.

I don't think you need to change the half-feats either. They're already balanced with normal feats, so just let them have it. I'd love that for a MAD class like monk or barbarian.

I ran a group of players through Lost Mines of Phandelver and I let everyone take a feat at level 1 just for fun, and I played the adventure more or less as-written and the players were never really challenged at any point because they were, functionally, always 1 level higher than they were expected to be at that point.

So, for example... a level 5 character should be treated as a level 6 character if they get a free feat at that same level... they don't quite have the same HP as a level 6 character, but they've got the ability to face challenges that a level 6 character will. Possibly even higher if they build synergy well with their feat choices.

Yeah, like scatterbraind said, it should be fine if you just up the difficulty of your encounter a little bit - or a lot bit, if someone gets the (honestly pretty obvious) idea of taking Vuman or Custom Lineage to get Sentinel and PAM, or some combo like it, at level 1. I personally would just not let them take more than one from this list at level 1: Sentinel, PAM, SS, GWM, Elven Accuracy. SS and EA (not that they particularly complement each other, but still, they’re both great feats), Sentinel and PAM - stuff like that would put a character far above most others.

So in general, make sure your players know they have to be reasonable with their choices. (This has the added bonus of you hopefully not having to veto as many feats before they find one they want and can have.)

The real problem is not that you are increasing the power of characters, but that you are taking race and class abilities of others and giving them to everyone.   Standard characters get feats at every 4 levels.  Rogues get an extra one at level 10.  Fighters get extra feats at level 6 and at 14. Some of the appeal of taking these classes is to get those extra feats.

I were to do this, I would do it at level 1. I would also make sure that people that take a race that grants a free feat get that free feat on top of level 1 free one. If you think giving a human variant two feats is too over-powered, than honestly giving one to everyone is overpowered for EVERYONE, you just didn't realize it.

Quote from Mog_Dracov >>

I would also make sure that people that take a race that grants a free feat get that free feat on top of level 1 free one. If you think giving a human variant two feats is too over-powered, than honestly giving one to everyone is overpowered for EVERYONE, you just didn't realize it.

 

 Yes and this is not only what I said in my original question I also said that I would be more lenient with what feats I would allow someone to take if they get it from their race or if they use a asi to get one i am not planning on taking anything away from any class/race i just want to make it so that feats like Chef or tavern brawler that have really good flavor but are not really too strong have more appeal because you can get them for free

As others said it should be fine in terms of balance as long as you're aware that it will be making the party stronger, though this depends heavily upon what they take; the Alert feat for example is fantastic, but doesn't necessarily make the party more dangerous in a straight up fight, Chef is very characterful but unlikely to up the difficulty either and so-on. It's a good idea to encourage players to take thematic choices using their free picks, rather than optimal ones.

Also I would caution against handing out too many; two is probably more than enough, as more than that is only adding to the list of things players need to remember that they can do. My groups tend to prefer a 3rd-level start with a free feat, because it lets us to create more fully developed characters early on with full access to sub-classes for everyone, or an early multi-class (though that's usually not recommended). In one of our campaigns we got a second free feat, and the DM was quite generous with magic items, but it's made encounters feel trivial for our 12th-level characters as the DM still doesn't seem to want to accept that we need to be balanced as a party of level 14's at a minimum.