Giving my players feats?

[Celcey]

Greetings, Playgrounders! I'm going to be running some games at my school starting probably this week, and I was wondering what you guys think about allowing them to take feats as they level up, as opposed to having to take them instead of an ability score increase.

I remember reading somewhere on here that someone allowed their players to take a feat every third level, so I'm thinking either every 3rd or 4th (I think 5th would be too high, since I don't know how far along we'll actually get). Or maybe when you up an ability score, you can also choose a feat? (I'm not sure about that, because that might give too much of an advantage to my fighter and rouges.) What do you guys think? Do you/your DMs allow feats without giving up your score increases? Do you think it makes the system terribly unbalanced? Would you want to do that, or do you think it's too much?

[bloodshed343]

Most builds only want a couple of feats, anyway. You should make sure they don't get any of the Stat boosts feats or resilient, since a character could become proficient in all saves. The other feats should be fine to give out.

[bloodshed343]

If I were dming, I would give toughness as a first level bonus feat because I like combat encounters to span multiple environments and be much longer and more epic in general, but doing that wears a party down pretty fast.

[Demonic Spoon]

I don't recommend it. Some characters are going to get a lot more out of it than others.

[Celcey]

Some characters are going to get a lot more out of it than others.

How do you figure?

[mr_odd]

I gave my players a free feat at level one, it seems pretty balanced. I wouldn't suggest giving them feats every few levels though. Not only are feats really good in this edition, I've noticed that my players like to embody the feat they have in their roleplay. Having a ton of feats could water this down or hinder it.

[Demonic Spoon]

How do you figure?

Feats aren't flat bonuses, they provide circumstantial abilities which are going to be more useful for some characters than others. Some character concepts get a lot out of feats, others less so, whereas everyone benefits a lot from attribute increases.

Most characters will get benefit from one feat. Beyond that, it varies. Example: If I'm a melee fighter, and I'm going to get 2 feats anyway, I might as well use a polearm because polearm master + sentinel is better than great weapon master or defensive duelist + anything else.


Moreover, if everyone gets a feat, feats are less interesting - they're not really a choice. Relative to other feats, some feats will pretty much always be straight better.


It's not a major problem - your game won't break because of it - but I question the reasoning. Why do you want to do this in the first place?

[Kurald Galain]

I gave my players a free feat at level one, it seems pretty balanced.

This is a great suggestion.

[Demonic Spoon]

It kind of invalidates the point of variant humans, though. I suppose regular human is available, but it's kind of meh both from a power and from a "cool" perspective.

[McBars]

I gave my players a free feat at level one

I do the same thing; some 3.x habits die hard. Didn't cause any balance issues and everyone had fun

[Celcey]

Feats aren't flat bonuses, they provide circumstantial abilities which are going to be more useful for some characters than others. Some character concepts get a lot out of feats, others less so, whereas everyone benefits a lot from attribute increases.

I disagree that some benefit more from specific feats that others, but I think every build can benefit from at least one feat. Any caster, for example, would benefit from War Caster, any melee fighter would benefit from Savage Attacker, and anyone in general would benefit from Skilled. There are feats for every build.



Moreover, if everyone gets a feat, feats are less interesting - they're not really a choice. Relative to other feats, some feats will pretty much always be straight better.


Again, I disagree- I don't think it makes feats any less interesting, although I do think it takes away some of that unattainable glamour. But that tends to be necessary in order to make something attainable.



It's not a major problem - your game won't break because of it - but I question the reasoning. Why do you want to do this in the first place?

Because I enjoy feats. I think they're fun and cool and helpful, and they add some extra flavor to the game.

Also, I definitely don't want to give them a free feat at level 1, because I do have a variant human in one of my groups. Maybe I'll give them one at level five and one at level 12. Or maybe just the one... hmmm...

[Kurald Galain]

Also, I definitely don't want to give them a free feat at level 1, because I do have a variant human in one of my groups.

Why not? Give the human two feats, then.

Also, I don't know how long you're planning to run this campaign, but most campaigns probably don't get to level twelve.

[Iolo Morganwg]

The jury is still out for me on this question. My players are all approaching level five at this point, with roughly an equal split taking a feat or ability-increase at fourth level. I do have one player who is feeling the multi-class pain however as a Fighter 2/Warlock 2, no feat/increase for him.

We'll keep playing this campaign with the rules as-printed though w/regard to feats vs. ability increases. I'd like to see how it works before house-ruling feats for everyone.

[Shining Wrath]

The feat in place of the ability scores seems to me both balanced and flavorful, as it increases character variety. I encourage this variant.

If you wish to dabble with homebrew, let them substitute a feat in place of the two skill proficiency improvements granted by their background. But at a terrible price - they must write up a back story which you, the DM, judge to be of sufficient merit to explain how they came by that ability. Be firm.

[Felvion]

If you wish to dabble with homebrew, let them substitute a feat in place of the two skill proficiency improvements granted by their background. But at a terrible price - they must write up a back story which you, the DM, judge to be of sufficient merit to explain how they came by that ability. Be firm.

If i were a player under this ruling i'd trade two skills from background to take the skilled feat. Then i'd take back the exaact same feats i had given up right before plus one more, probably some random tools or something relatively useless. My reasoning would be that i just happen to be a bit more skilled than enyone else which comes with the price of getting proficiency with things most people find useless or just a waste of time and effort.

Refering to the op, if the campaign is definately going to be short i think it's ok to give a feat at level 5 or even earlier. You could even grant them a feat at every 3rd lvl instead of every fourth. Leave the rogues' and fighters' extra feat as it is since it get it comes as a replacement of an extra class feature in very versatile classes.
Alternatively, if you could do it at lvl1 i'd suggest giving the a free starting feat but they should pick something that would be very representative of their character. Even an ability score increase could make sense with some good reasoning.

[Doug Lampert]

If you want everyone to have a feat why not just start at level 4?
What's the downside?

If you want more powerful and versatile characters, well, the rules provide you a way to have them. It's called character level.

If you've played the system level 1 to 20 and still think there are too few feats, then fix it. But at this point the DMG isn't really out yet, why fix things prior to at least attempting to play as the designers wanted the game played?

The designers wanted people to be able to start at levels higher than 1, starting at level 4 fixes many people's problems with the system. So why not at least try the solution the designers have given us?

[Pex]

It kind of invalidates the point of variant humans, though. I suppose regular human is available, but it's kind of meh both from a power and from a "cool" perspective.

A variant human would have two feats at 1st level.

[Hytheter]

A variant human would have two feats at 1st level.

That said, if I were giving my players a free feat at level 1 I'd probably disallow variant human altogether. 1 feat at level 1 gets the ball rolling, two seems like overkill.

[Easy_Lee]

For my group, I did two things: decoupling attribute boosts from classes (except for rogue and fighter bonuses), and granting feats and attribute boosts separately. Characters get a feat every four character levels starting at two, and an attribute boost every four character levels starting at four. This way multiclass builds are not punished (though none of my players want to multiclass), and players can specialize their character to a far greater degree.

As a result, my players are stronger than an equivalent character with the standard rules. So I throw harder challenges at them. It's not like there's a feat or stat that magically makes it not hurt when a dragon bites the hell out of you, after all.

Regarding some options being stronger than others, such as the polearm mastery listed above, two things:

It's unlikely to actually come up in a game, where you have both a great weapon fighter (greatsword) and a great weapon fighter (polearm) IMO
Even if it does come up, it's easy enough just to spend the extra feats on other options that can majorly boost the character (alert, resilient stats, mage slayer, mounted combatant, etc)
As a nuclear option, just create more feats to work with a target player's concept

[Submortimer]

So, something I'm trying this next game is allowing players to burn stat points at level 1 for a feat. More specifically, my group rolls with a 18 16 14 12 10 8 spread, done however you like; this is more powerful than the regular rules permit, but since stuff caps at 20 anyways, it's not been bad.

Now, this time, i'm letting players burn two points from any one stat to gain a feat. Just one, at first level. As far as I can tell, this seems about as balanced as the usual "+2 stat points or feat" breakdown, and lets them access something they want much sooner.

[Theodoxus]

I run with the rule of cool more often than not. If a player has a specific build, and needs a specific feat to make it operate (or even a feat from a previous edition - Drow Noble feats from PF came up most recently) - then I'll typically roll with it.

If the player is simply trying to create the hardest hitting MOFO on the planet, I'm less sympathetic - the options are there, just level your toon and grab them. But if the build is less optional and would benefit from a bit of flair - a sage who wants ALL the skills; the hyper alert watchman who wants Alert and Observant asap, but can only get 1 as a human... etc. I'm happy to bend the rules a bit.

Not that I'm a believer in the Stormwind Fallacy, but there are legitimately less optimal combinations that can benefit from a bit of a boost - and as long as everyone is having fun, it's easy to handwave the specifics.

I still haven't decided on a hard and fast list of houserules for a legit 5th ed game - but I like Easy_Lee's suggestion of decoupling them. I like multiclassing, and feel the current rules really railroad characters into single class mode. The level 20 cap should be the deciding factor, not lack of a timely feat or ASI.

[mr_odd]

That said, if I were giving my players a free feat at level 1 I'd probably disallow variant human altogether. 1 feat at level 1 gets the ball rolling, two seems like overkill.

That's what I thought originally. I ended up letting my players take variant human though, and it isn't that overkill. There is only so much a level one can do.