Quality of life improvement: half-feats and ASIs

[diplomancer]

I love half-feats. The possibility of getting a few fun features while simultaneously boosting my ability scores is great. One significant downside, though: when you want to get 2 half-feats on the same ability, you have to suffer through several levels of having an odd score, which I find very annoying.

So, would this houserule break anything?
"When you use your ASI to increase one ability score by 2, you can, on your next ASI, choose the non-ASI benefits of two-half feats that increase the same ability score you've previously raised" (wording needs to be improved, but I guess the intent is clear).

And would it be too powerful to invert it (i.e, you get the non-ASI benefits first, but your next ASI is locked into raising the ability of the half-feats)?

I have the impression option 1 is fine, but option 2 might be too powerful. What does the Playground think?

[Catullus64]

I love half-feats. The possibility of getting a few fun features while simultaneously boosting my ability scores is great. One significant downside, though: when you want to get 2 half-feats on the same ability, you have to suffer through several levels of having an odd score, which I find very annoying.

So, would this houserule break anything?
"When you use your ASI to increase one ability score by 2, you can, on your next ASI, choose the non-ASI benefits of two-half feats that increase the same ability score you've previously raised" (wording needs to be improved, but I guess the intent is clear).

And would it be too powerful to invert it (i.e, you get the non-ASI benefits first, but your next ASI is locked into raising the ability of the half-feats)?

I have the impression option 1 is fine, but option 2 might be too powerful. What does the Playground think?

Let me just say for the record that I don't agree that this is a problem that really needs fixing. I would hardly characterize having an odd score for a few levels as something through which I have to "suffer", at least not if the half-feat has benefits I really like (Heavy Armor Master, Fey Touched, Chef, et al).

That having been said, if this is a thing you really want to address, I don't think the change itself would destabilize too much. Since this is a houserule, I would also recommend making a ban list of combos for which this is ineligible; for example, Heavily Armored + Heavy Armor master would be too much power gain in one level. I also find it a little awkward from a roleplaying perspective, but I'll concede that could be worked around with a little creativity.

[clash]

I allow taking two half feats without the bonus instead of a feat at any asi without restrictions. The players love it and it hasn't caused any balance issues.

[diplomancer]

I allow taking two half feats without the bonus instead of a feat at any asi without restrictions. The players love it and it hasn't caused any balance issues.

Just for curiosity; would you then allow a wizard to get, as a V. Human, Lightly Armoured and Medium Armoured, getting thus proficiency in Medium Armor and shields straight? Because that seems somewhat unbalanced to me.

Maybe, when allowing this, having the proviso that "one of the half-feats cannot give you an ability that is a prerequisite for the other half-feat"?

[The_Jette]

Just for curiosity; would you then allow a wizard to get, as a V. Human, Lightly Armoured and Medium Armoured, getting thus proficiency in Medium Armor and shields straight? Because that seems somewhat unbalanced to me.

Maybe, when allowing this, having the proviso that "one of the half-feats cannot give you an ability that is a prerequisite for the other half-feat"?

If a Wizard really wanted to have proficiency with medium armor, doesn't a dwarf automatically come with that? And, with Tasha's rules for stats, they wouldn't even need to take a hit to Int to do it. So, at this point, I don't really see a v.human having Medium Armor proficiency as being all that unbalanced.

[diplomancer]

If a Wizard really wanted to have proficiency with medium armor, doesn't a dwarf automatically come with that? And, with Tasha's rules for stats, they wouldn't even need to take a hit to Int to do it. So, at this point, I don't really see a v.human having Medium Armor proficiency as being all that unbalanced.

The main thing is the shield, though. Medium Armor is a small improvement over Mage Armor (if at all, many wizards have 16 dex), and by level 3 pretty much any wizard is casting Mage Armor at the start of the adventuring day.

What I find more offensive about the Mountain Dwarf with Tasha's rules is not so much the medium armor proficiency, but the combination of it with two +2s (which was *clearly* balanced by the fact that most builds who wanted the original +2s didn't need medium armor proficiency in the first place). But let's not derail the thread over that :)

[Catullus64]

If the exact wording of what you write matters (for houserule, it may very well not), then a Variant Human can't take two half-feats, since selecting a feat is a racial feature and not part of an ASI.

[clash]

On my games I was totally fine with variant human taking the two half feats off the start and with great chains taken at the same time. There's nothing really that broken that's fine up from the half feats.

[Psyren]

I love half-feats. The possibility of getting a few fun features while simultaneously boosting my ability scores is great. One significant downside, though: when you want to get 2 half-feats on the same ability, you have to suffer through several levels of having an odd score, which I find very annoying.

There's a bit of an issue with your premise here, namely that every character is guaranteed to exit character creation with all even scores, and thus taking a half-feat will inevitably leave them with an inelegant odd score "hanging chad" for several levels after being selected.

In reality though, two of the three core generation methods (standard array and rolling) very often give you no choice but to have at least one odd score, if not more than one - and even for the one where you're guaranteed to be able to avoid an odd score if you choose (Point Buy), you can set things up so that you benefit from not smoothing out your attributes perfectly at chargen.

Concerning the houserule, for the reason above I think it is overkill/unnecessary.

[diplomancer]

There's a bit of an issue with your premise here, namely that every character is guaranteed to exit character creation with all even scores, and thus taking a half-feat will inevitably leave them with an inelegant odd score "hanging chad" for several levels after being selected.

In reality though, two of the three core generation methods (standard array and rolling) very often give you no choice but to have at least one odd score, if not more than one - and even for the one where you're guaranteed to be able to avoid an odd score if you choose (Point Buy), you can set things up so that you benefit from not smoothing out your attributes perfectly at chargen.

Concerning the houserule, for the reason above I think it is overkill/unnecessary.

Sure, if you have an odd score and only want to take one half-feat, there's no issue. But for someone who loves half-feats, one is not enough ;)