Front-Loading ASIs

[Amechra]

Imagine you were going to play a game with the following rules in play:


Standard array (you can use Tasha's to swap around ability score bonuses, since that is the fashion of the time - this probably won't matter too much.)
No multiclassing (this'll make sense in a moment.)
The party skips 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th levels. Any non-ASI feature that you would have gained at those levels (like a Cleric's 8th level archetype feature or a Monk's Slow Fall and Quickened Healing) are picked up at the next level.
You start the game with all of the ASIs that you would otherwise skip over. That's a total of five ASIs, which you can use to improve your ability scores or pick up feats as desired.


How would you approach building a character for this kind of game? Note, I'm not asking this because of an actual game — I'm just curious about how much front-loading your character like this would change "the meta".

[Warder]

The stupid non-helpful answer I'd give is that I'd probably not play in that game - one of 5e's greatest weaknesses is that you have so few choices while levelling up, ASIs/feats being chief among them, and taking those choices away would make levelling up even more dull.

But as part of this thought experiment, I'd probably happily spend a few ASIs on flavor picks and stuff that's hard to justify picking up otherwise. I'm not a huge optimizer anymore so I don't tend to shy away from those choices anyway, but I think I'd feel even more free to get some odd feat that'd let me emphasize what my character is like, Keen Mind etc.

[Chaos Jackal]

Honestly? Probably the exact same picks I'd do in a regular game.

The thing about 5e feats is that, since they don't carry any level requirement and aren't parts of feat chains (well, except for the new Strixhaven feats) and their other requirements are either racial or very unrestrictive, what you do with them is basically the same at all levels, with few exceptions that don't deviate much anyway. You pick a number of feats for your core build or to cover some standard needs (like CBE+SS+EA for your crossbow fighter, or Res: Con+Alert for your average wizard), you max out your main stat, and then whatever's left goes into Con or a secondary stat, if you have one, or to general purpose feats like Lucky, or something flavorful.

Think of this: you'll rarely see Lucky suggested as an early feat, because other feats and your primary stat are fundamental to your character's gameplay and you want that online as soon as possible, but after you've got that finished you'll see Lucky being pretty much universally suggested; it's always good and useful, it just doesn't unlock some layer of your build the way CBE or PAM or even Res: Con do.

So if I had all my ASIs up front... well, I'd just distribute them the same way. Great, I've got the key pieces from lv1 already, and my main (and possibly secondary) stat is maxed out. What else? Well, Lucky is definitely not bad. And maybe a Con boost, just to be on the safe side.

If the game were to go to lv7 or something, maybe I'd do it differently. I could see sacrificing some secondary ASI or maybe a more general purpose feat for something that might be better earlier but that I wouldn't want as much in the long-term (like Heavy Armor Master). But if I was playing with the intention of going to lv20, I see no reason to deviate from my normal build path.

[diplomancer]

Without getting into party-dependent specifics, I'd probably get a ton of half-feats. I like half-feats so much that I even sometimes go from even-to odd- to even with two half-feats, but knowing I will be 4 levels with an odd score still hurts.

[sithlordnergal]

I'd approach it like Chaos would. I generally pre-plan and pre-optimize my entire character, this includes feat and ASI choice. Doing this just lets me gain all of my feats and abilities early on instead of having to wait.

EDIT: A small question, do Fighters and Rogues still gain their bonus ASIs?

[Greywander]

I will say that one of the problems with analyzing feat choices is that you won't get those last couple feats until very late in the game, if it even goes on that long. As such, you can plan out an interesting build, but depending on how heavily you're leaning on feats, it might not fully come online until 16th or 19th level. Being able to get everything at 1st level allows you to actually make use of all your ASIs.

TBH, I think I'd actually rather see a scheme whereby you get ASIs as normal as you level up, but the way you get feats is completely changed. I do advocate for giving everyone a free feat at 1st level, but that's only a first step. For example, one possibility might be to allow spending XP on feats, but at an escalating cost, e.g. you can spend 1000 XP to buy a feat, and the price double every time (so the next feat is 2000 XP, then 4000 XP, then 8000 XP, etc.). Something like this would give you more control over when you pick up a feat, as well as how many you want; fewer feats means hitting 20th level sooner. Other options might be allowing feats to be trained during downtime (again, probably with an escalating cost, e.g. 10 weeks for the first feat, and +10 weeks for each subsequent feat), or giving them out as a quest reward (which is actually in the DMG).

Anyway, I don't know that the rules you've presented would change much, aside from getting early access to the feats I wanted. I know there are some feats that are viewed as being stronger early on but dropping off in value later, but I generally wouldn't pick feats for short-term value. And besides, I think something like HAM actually retains decent value into the higher levels, it just becomes a bit more niche. I do like my multiclass builds, so obviously those wouldn't be an option, but I also have some single-classed character concepts I could use instead.

[Sigreid]

This would be an issue for me as a player just because sometimes my ASI/Feat choices go a different direction than I initially thought they would as the campaign evolves. This would front load characters getting to have some of the cool, but reduce their ability to adapt in response to campaign events.

[Mastikator]

It would throw off the balance quite wildly and make things really difficult for a DM. It would also really increase the power disparity of low level characters. Would it change the meta? Yes it would be a low level buff for fighters and rogues for one.

[Amechra]

The stupid non-helpful answer I'd give is that I'd probably not play in that game - one of 5e's greatest weaknesses is that you have so few choices while levelling up, ASIs/feats being chief among them, and taking those choices away would make levelling up even more dull.

This is honestly more helpful than you'd think. :p

My thought was that Fighters and Rogues would still get their "bonus" ASIs at the normal levels — unlike the ASIs at 4th/8th/12th/16th/19th, they aren't an expected part of everyone's character progression.

Something I'm curious about is whether or not this kind of set-up would change what classes/builds you'd be looking at.

[Sigreid]

For me personally, I don't usually multi-class anyway so this would rarely if ever affect any of my character creation decisions.

[Sorinth]

In terms of how it might change what you choose to play it's something that will help out the more MAD builds. A monk or Paladin (No Hexblade dipping for SADness) come to mind, but frankly given that this is a pretty big power boost considering going with a class/subclass that you normally consider weak and avoid.

[Angelalex242]

I do think the Fighters and Rogues should get their 2 or 1 bonuses at level 1 in this sort of build.

Never do things halfway, and let those two classes shine.

However! If they take those bonus ASIs, they don't get to multiclass anymore.