No ASI, Feat Only.

[iTreeby]

Would you play in a game where the DM made feats mandatory?

What kind of character would you play?

Would the higher tiers of play still be balanced?

In this hypothetical game, half feats still function normally.

[Zetakya]

Character Stats generation method becomes a lot more important.

Half Feats become much more valuable.

Fighter will run out of Feats to take.

[Quoxis]

Fighter will run out of Feats to take.

Maybe not that, but i could imagine they’re gonna get a whole lot less specialized - only so many feats can be applied to two handed heavy weapons...

Regarding the original question: the game would get messy and slow with many players* - too many options for your limited actions in combat. The champion doesn’t just hit the target, they might instead want to attempt a grapple because they took that one feat, or wait, didn’t i get magic initiate at level 6, what are the spells i got from that again, or, uh, i could attack and use my superiority die and trip the opponent and, uh no, uhm, i guess i could also...

*not saying that people are stupid in general, but... wait, that’s kind of the gist of it. The more options you get (and mostly you‘re going for either passive „advantage on X“ or for cool combat options, i can’t recall a player who ever took a feat that lets them always know where north is and what time it is...) the more you have to think before choosing the apparently best one to take.

[Imbalance]

Only if UA feats are also allowed.

Dragonborn eldritch knight.

Maybe, if players ignore feats that increase stats.

What's a half feat?

[Quoxis]

What's a half feat?

The „you get +1 to intelligence (or another random stat) and some features people don’t care about“ gang - athlete, keen mind, observant and the likes.

[Particle_Man]

I would be lost. I prefer ASI only or at most one feat.

[Aprender]

If there's no ASI and only feats, then sticking with a class until a "feat break point" is less appealing. There'd be some relatively useful multiclass combos that are often tweaked a little bit to get those extra ASIs.

It's be interesting enough to try.

[Nagog]

I feel like casters would really suffer under this system. While there are plenty of feats for martial classes to take to improve their abilities (rightfully so considering the Fighter's extra ASIs), spellcasters have noticably less feats for their play style. On top of that, the ASI's are often the only way to raise their Spell Save DCs, unless they rolled really well and built their character to have those maxed from level 1. Also classes like Monks, while having a lot of martial prowess, would suffer as they depend on 3 Ability Scores (Wis, Dex, and Con), and no matter how lucky your rolls are, you can't start the game with 3 maxed stats. Half-Feats would help, but these classes would still suffer greatly without access to ACIs to help them scale properly.

[False God]

Since I almost always take feats anyway...

Half-feats rock.

Fighter/Rogue multiclass "swashbuckler" (but not the actual swashbuckler) with Magic Initiate so I can have a parrot familiar.

[DeadMech]

I'd be more likely to play a game with feats only than a no feats game. Feats generally give you new ways to deal with things and interesting options so I like having access to them. Also half feats can be used to pump up your critical stat so you won't be totally hosed. As for fighters... I mean Resilient (stat choice here) never goes amiss.

[Nhorianscum]

Would you play in a game where the DM made feats mandatory?

What kind of character would you play?

Would the higher tiers of play still be balanced?

In this hypothetical game, half feats still function normally.

Yes.

Same one's I do now. ASI's do less at lower levels than the really strong feats and half feats. I'm heavily in the feats > ASI's camp.

High tiers would be identical in a not-itemless-white-room. Stat boosters make feats and racials far stronger than ASI's here.

[zinycor]

My biggest problem is that I would never play a caster, generally, I only take 1 or 2 feats as a caster, then ASIs only.

[Rukelnikov]

Race choice becomes much more important for mental attributes

Cha 20: Tiefling, Half-Elf, Dragonborn
Wis 20: No one
Int 20: Any Int+1 or higher

[Misterwhisper]

You would have zero people with playing monks.

Casters save dcs and martial to hits would be below average after low levels.

I imagine there would be a lot of multiclassing considering no build of any class needs more than 2 feats or 3 at most.

Archery fighting style is even more broken than normal.

Just about everyone would take crossbow expert because you never know when you may need it.

With so many feats around, opportunity attack and attacking with disadvantage will be rare.