Greywander
2022-08-18, 05:14 PM
I'm not actually asking from the perspective of a player wanting to swap one for the other, but rather from the perspective of a designer curious about the underlying design principles. None of these would necessarily need to be balanced against each other, since they don't really have to compete for build resources. Although... that's not entirely true. Some feats give spells or invocations, and you might be in a position where you need to choose between taking an ASI level in one class to grab a feat vs. taking a non-ASI level in a different class to gain class features.
Not all class features are equal, but it should be simple enough to compare one level's worth of class features. Most levels will only give you one feature anyway, except for early levels which tend to front load. Generally, ASI levels only give you an ASI, indicating that a feat has approximately the same value as a level's worth of class features. A feat can give you a single invocation, implying the two are of equal value. A feat can also give you one 1st level spell and one 2nd level spell, indicating that a feat is worth about two leveled spells, or one 1st level spell and two cantrips. A lot of invocations also give access to spells, sometimes at-will, sometimes once per long rest, and sometimes you just learn the spell and have to spend slots to cast it. And class features are actually the normal way to get spells.
There's a lot of nuance that mucks up the comparison. But let's say you did have a player who wanted to swap one for the other. Or maybe you were writing homebrew and were thinking about swapping these around (e.g. a warlock who gets feats instead of invocations). Now, not all class features have the same value as one another, ditto for the other three, but we can assume the game is balanced around class features having roughly the same value as other class features, and likewise for the others. So if we were to assign some average value to class features, feats, spells, and invocations, how would those values compare to one another?
Not all class features are equal, but it should be simple enough to compare one level's worth of class features. Most levels will only give you one feature anyway, except for early levels which tend to front load. Generally, ASI levels only give you an ASI, indicating that a feat has approximately the same value as a level's worth of class features. A feat can give you a single invocation, implying the two are of equal value. A feat can also give you one 1st level spell and one 2nd level spell, indicating that a feat is worth about two leveled spells, or one 1st level spell and two cantrips. A lot of invocations also give access to spells, sometimes at-will, sometimes once per long rest, and sometimes you just learn the spell and have to spend slots to cast it. And class features are actually the normal way to get spells.
There's a lot of nuance that mucks up the comparison. But let's say you did have a player who wanted to swap one for the other. Or maybe you were writing homebrew and were thinking about swapping these around (e.g. a warlock who gets feats instead of invocations). Now, not all class features have the same value as one another, ditto for the other three, but we can assume the game is balanced around class features having roughly the same value as other class features, and likewise for the others. So if we were to assign some average value to class features, feats, spells, and invocations, how would those values compare to one another?