Is restoring Feat chains to 5E workable?

[oudeis]

I was originally going to ask if feat chains were really as bad as people said, based on how much I enjoyed them in The Temple of Elemental Evil (at least after The Circle of Eight community whipped it into shape), when I remembered/realized


I never actually played 3.X on the tabletop (had gotten away from D&D when it came out)
I've never played a fighter as my primary character or as my primary class
The feeling of expectation waiting to level up so you can grab the next feat in line is probably a lot more enjoyable when you have an entire party to play with than when your dude is essentially stuck in neutral pending his next upgrade


With that said, I still miss them. Like most respectable gamers nowadays, I've been playing a ton of Baldur's Gate 3, and Great Weapon Fighting (style) -> Great Weapon Master (feat) don't really hold a candle to Power Attack-> Cleave-> Great Cleave->, and that's just for one of my companions. Having Dodge-> Mobility-> Spring Attack and/or Point Blank Shot-> Precise Shot->etc... on my Tav would be pure gaming Nirvana.

I know this topic was discussed unto death when 5E first came out, but what do most current players think? How do you or your group feel about these? I'm sure many others have ported 3.X feats into 5E, but have any of you actually done it in your games, and what was the result?

[DarknessEternal]

No, nothing gets enough feats to warrant any costs now.

[Psyren]

5e does actually have a limited number of feat chains again, but they're a lot shorter and tend to focus on 1st-4th. Some examples:

Dragonlance
Initiate of High Sorcery -> Adept of the {X} Robes
Squire of Solamnia -> Knight of the {X}

Planescape
Scion of the Outer Planes -> Baleful Heritor
Scion of the Outer Planes -> Righteous Heritor
Scion of the Outer Planes -> Cohort of Chaos
Scion of the Outer Planes -> Agent of Order
Scion of the Outer Planes -> Planar Wanderer

Bigbys
Strike of the Giants -> {X} of the {Y} Giant

Crawford and Kenreck discussed a bit of their approach to feat chains in 5e in one of their Unearthed Arcana videos (I think the Dragonlance one?) I'll see if I can dig it up.

[Amnestic]

Yes, if your table gives out bonus feats either as general character building or as 'quest rewards'.
No, if you play by the book.

Personally I'd see any 'chain' as needing a minimum of 3 pieces to be called a proper 'chain', and three feats is 12 levels of ASIs for most characters. 8 for Fighters. Balancing that would be tricky, to say the least.

[TrueAlphaGamer]

I think the barriers to it in the base game are threefold, though I'm sure there are more to consider (like design space, dev intent, etc.).


Feats are too scarce
Feats are too strong
Feats have an opportunity cost


All of these are connected, of course. Feats are scarce because ASIs are scarce, and they're strong because you need to give up an ASI to take one, or give up stats to take one (bringing us back towards that opportunity cost).

I have played around with breaking up feats so that they're more 'digestible', porting stuff from 3.5, making them give smaller bonuses but giving players more options to get them, giving a choice of 1 feat and +1 stat with an ASI . . . but I think the fact that they're linked to ASI is the greatest barrier. Why would someone devote a resource at level-up to getting a certain feat when they can just boost a stat? You'd have to rework everything, and make feats that really entice players (AKA are busted OP) and even then it will take a lot of time.

[Psyren]

Yes, if your table gives out bonus feats either as general character building or as 'quest rewards'.
No, if you play by the book.

Actually - Dragonlance does give you bonus feats even if you play "by the book," with the explicit purpose to make picking up their feat chains easier :smallsmile:

You get a bonus 1st-level and 4th-level feat from a specified list, which include the feat chains. In addition to making the feats easier to grab, their reasons for doing this were twofold:

1) Narratively, Krynn is a world at war and so they upped the power level of its heroes to reflect that.
2) They viewed feat chains as more generally useful than the special rewards other settings used, like Ravenloft's Dark Gifts and Theros' Piety, and thus more deserving of the design time.



Personally I'd see any 'chain' as needing a minimum of 3 pieces to be called a proper 'chain', and three feats is 12 levels of ASIs for most characters. 8 for Fighters. Balancing that would be tricky, to say the least.

And 10 for rogues.

But personally, I'm happy that 5e's "chains" are limited to two. That feels like fitting them in as bonuses would be an easy ask for a lot of DMs.

[Sorinth]

I think I'd prefer having level requirements for feats rather then explicit chains. So for example if they added a Great Cleave feat that required you to be level 11+ and gave even more bonuses to attacking with two-handed weapons you wouldn't need to have already taken Great Weapon Master but there would probably be some good synergy so taking both would make sense for many characters, but it would also be viable to spend your ASIs on maxing your main stat and then only taking Great Cleave.

[Dr.Samurai]

Yes, if your table gives out bonus feats either as general character building or as 'quest rewards'.
No, if you play by the book.

Personally I'd see any 'chain' as needing a minimum of 3 pieces to be called a proper 'chain', and three feats is 12 levels of ASIs for most characters. 8 for Fighters. Balancing that would be tricky, to say the least.
I think this is accurate.

There is an option in the DMG to provide training as a reward to the PCs. This training can provide them with a feat. You can use this as a way to provide them with more feats than would normally be expected, and then can introduce feat chains.

Otherwise, 1 every 4 levels and in place of ASIs is a bit too much to support chains in my opinion.

[Theodoxus]

For me, I'd rather see something along the line of 'talents', that can chain up. Basically, as TrueAlphaGamer noted, smaller bonuses than feats typically give. Grant them every 3 levels (perhaps giving the Barbarian, Fighter, Monk, and Rogue a bonus one at 1st), and call it a day.

[Kane0]

You can work them in, but it would take some massaging. Bonus feat at level 1, DM Boons, splitting down feats/ASIs and granting then more frequently, etc etc

[Amechra]

The thing is that feat chains weren't conceptually bad in 3.5 — there were some pretty decent implementations of the idea later in the edition, which usually involved tiered categories of feats instead of a strict chain. The core issue was that Ivory Tower game design meant that the vast majority of feats were hot garbage, and almost all of the feat chains built off of the worst ones all higgledy-piggledy. To give you an idea of how rough this was, let's look at the chain that you'd need to follow to get Whirlwind Attack, a pretty cool feat that let you AoE the enemies around you:



First, you have to take Combat Expertise, which required an Intelligence of 13, which let you get up to a +5 to AC by trading your attack bonus on a one-for-one basis (up a maximum trade of your Base Attack Bonus). Not a great feat, honestly, especially since Int 13 was kinda annoying for a Fighter.
You'd also have to take Dodge, an absolutely garbage feat that required a Dexterity of 13 and gave you +1 to AC against a single enemy of your choice that you picked at the start of each turn. It was so bad that a bunch of later books added new feats that counted as Dodge for the purposes of prerequisites... but this would be what you'd be stuck with if you just had the PHB.
Having Dodge lets you take Mobility, which gave you a +4 to AC against opportunity attacks. Not an insignificant bonus, except you could just avoid opportunity attacks with good positioning and... wait, doesn't the feat we're aiming for want you to be in the middle of multiple enemies? Huh.
Having Mobility and a Base Attack Bonus of +4 meant you could take Spring Attack, which let you attack once and move as part of a full action. Bear in mind that a full action consisted of a standard action (which you could use to make a single attack) and a move action (which let you move), and... yeah, Spring Attack was kinda niche? Also not terribly pertinent to our dream of standing in the middle of a bunch of guys and attacking all of them.
With Spring Attack and Combat Expertise, we can finally take Whirlwind Attack! And it only took taking three other feats that have literally nothing to do with Whirlwind Attack!



Whirlwind Attack is a bit of an extreme example — it has notoriously terrible prerequisites — but the thing is that a lot of feat chains were like that. You'd see some feat that did something nice (like, say, Combat Archery, which made it so that your ranged attacks didn't provoke opportunity attacks), and then you'd check the prerequisites and oh look it requires three crappy feats that you can't even make use of! The only reason that it was at all workable was because feats were pretty plentiful.

[Chaos Jackal]

The thing is that feat chains weren't conceptually bad in 3.5 — there were some pretty decent implementations of the idea later in the edition, which usually involved tiered categories of feats instead of a strict chain. The core issue was that Ivory Tower game design meant that the vast majority of feats were hot garbage, and almost all of the feat chains built off of the worst ones all higgledy-piggledy. To give you an idea of how rough this was, let's look at the chain that you'd need to follow to get Whirlwind Attack, a pretty cool feat that let you AoE the enemies around you:



First, you have to take Combat Expertise, which required an Intelligence of 13, which let you get up to a +5 to AC by trading your attack bonus on a one-for-one basis (up a maximum trade of your Base Attack Bonus). Not a great feat, honestly, especially since Int 13 was kinda annoying for a Fighter.
You'd also have to take Dodge, an absolutely garbage feat that required a Dexterity of 13 and gave you +1 to AC against a single enemy of your choice that you picked at the start of each turn. It was so bad that a bunch of later books added new feats that counted as Dodge for the purposes of prerequisites... but this would be what you'd be stuck with if you just had the PHB.
Having Dodge lets you take Mobility, which gave you a +4 to AC against opportunity attacks. Not an insignificant bonus, except you could just avoid opportunity attacks with good positioning and... wait, doesn't the feat we're aiming for want you to be in the middle of multiple enemies? Huh.
Having Mobility and a Base Attack Bonus of +4 meant you could take Spring Attack, which let you attack once and move as part of a full action. Bear in mind that a full action consisted of a standard action (which you could use to make a single attack) and a move action (which let you move), and... yeah, Spring Attack was kinda niche? Also not terribly pertinent to our dream of standing in the middle of a bunch of guys and attacking all of them.
With Spring Attack and Combat Expertise, we can finally take Whirlwind Attack! And it only took taking three other feats that have literally nothing to do with Whirlwind Attack!



Whirlwind Attack is a bit of an extreme example — it has notoriously terrible prerequisites — but the thing is that a lot of feat chains were like that. You'd see some feat that did something nice (like, say, Combat Archery, which made it so that your ranged attacks didn't provoke opportunity attacks), and then you'd check the prerequisites and oh look it requires three crappy feats that you can't even make use of! The only reason that it was at all workable was because feats were pretty plentiful.

That's the gist of it with old feat chains, really. It's less about how many feats you might've needed and more that half the feats connected to whatever your dream was were irrelevant and/or various degrees of bad. On top of that, many of these crappy prerequisites were kinda ubiquitous - Combat Expertise, for example, was at the root of pretty much anything related to combat maneuvers, so if you wanted anything to do with these, you'd have to spend points on raising Int to 13 on a character that typically had no use for Int and would probably never use the effect of CE to boot. Dodge could also be found all over the place.

Of course, there were also cases where the feat chains would just be too long or wouldn't be worth it because the end result didn't justify below mediocre prerequisites. See two-weapon fighting, which asked for pretty much all of your feats in the average game, or the joke about Pathfinder characters needing a feat chain to go to the bathroom.

Now, with 5e the problem is kind of the opposite - not only do you get very few feats, but also they're spread pretty widely around your levelling. There have been some "chains" introduced in later books. Not really chains per se, just feats with feat prerequisites, which wasn't the case for most of the edition's run. And even these feel kinda crappy, despite having just two "links", because it'll basically take forever to actually have them. It's kind of OK if you start with a feat-granting background or custom lineage/variant human and you can get them by lv4, though not great; it's flat out disappointing if you don't start like that and you need to wait until lv4 and subsequently lv8 to get your upgrade. In between... well, what a shame, hope you're happy with the entry level feat granting you a mediocre 1st-level spell once per day or whatever. Too bad your campaign ends at lv10 too, you'll barely manage to play with your big lv8 feat.

[Skrum]

Others have said it, and I agree; 5e doesn't give enough feats to make feat chains viable. The feat would have to be so powerful that balance would become a real concern because a specific character (vhuman fighter) gets 3 feats by level 6. If the 3rd feat in the chain is powerful enough to justify waiting till level 12 on most characters, getting it at 6 is probably a problem. And frankly if it isn't a problem, it's not worth locking in feat/ASI decisions till 12.

To make this work, I think you'd at a minimum have give all characters a bonus feat at level 1, and then also give an ASI and a feat when they'd normally only be getting an ASI (and get rid of stats boosts on feats). I personally think those are good things to do *anyway,* but that's just me. And if you really wanted to lean into chains, giving feats every 3 levels should probably be considered.

If you wanted to do something akin to feat chains without changing too much, homebrew up some awesome feats and then give them level requirements. Granted, that probably means characters are nearly locked into picking those feats at given levels (I'm assuming you'd make good feats and not crummy ones), but it would be mechanically similar to feat chains.

[Goobahfish]

Others have said it, and I agree; 5e doesn't give enough feats to make feat chains viable. The feat would have to be so powerful that balance would become a real concern because a specific character (vhuman fighter) gets 3 feats by level 6. If the 3rd feat in the chain is powerful enough to justify waiting till level 12 on most characters, getting it at 6 is probably a problem. And frankly if it isn't a problem, it's not worth locking in feat/ASI decisions till 12.

To make this work, I think you'd at a minimum have give all characters a bonus feat at level 1, and then also give an ASI and a feat when they'd normally only be getting an ASI (and get rid of stats boosts on feats). I personally think those are good things to do *anyway,* but that's just me. And if you really wanted to lean into chains, giving feats every 3 levels should probably be considered.

If you wanted to do something akin to feat chains without changing too much, homebrew up some awesome feats and then give them level requirements. Granted, that probably means characters are nearly locked into picking those feats at given levels (I'm assuming you'd make good feats and not crummy ones), but it would be mechanically similar to feat chains.

Feat chains are just a weird way of multiclassing. If you think about what a class is, it is a series of mini-feats connected in an unending chain from level 1-20. Feat chains are basically that but at 'weird levels'.

In general it is a bad idea because it is just another way to make a 'broken/unplayable' character. It is (I think) why VHuman is so popular as feats tend to be more useful at lower levels and less obviously powerful at higher levels because of the lack of a chain mechanic.

Level requirements are just a better way of handling this kind of thing. That way you don't need to have things you don't want to get things you do want (the inherent problem in classes to begin with).

[animorte]

I'm glad we don't really have feat chains. That just felt awful in 3.5e when some of your prerequisite feats serve no purpose to what you're trying to do.

I much prefer the option of having extended feats that automatically have a built-in improvement at a certain level threshold.

[Witty Username]

Feats in 3.5 were also pretty small in comparison to 5e.
Endurance and Diehard could probably be a single feat in 5e, for example.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Yeah, 3.5/4th/PF style feats are designed to be frequent and smaller than 5E. You're supposed to have lots of them, so it makes more sense to have them as things that can build and upgrade one another.

In 5E, a feat is supposed to enable a different playstyle or specifically augment an aspect of your character, and is considered as an alternative to just taking your regular stat bump. It's conceivable that you could have a character with no feats at all. You'd have to completely rework 5E feats to do something like this.

[Luccan]

Is it the chain you're missing, i.e. "you must take this feat and then this one and then this one", or is it the complimentary nature of feats in a chain (which definitely wasn't always the case but that probably does apply to Spring Attack)? Because I don't think the former offers any inherent benefit, but I can understand missing the latter. There's a few feats that can go together well in 5e, but the list is shorter just because the feat list itself is smaller.

[Melil12]

For one dnd moving forward I could see level 1 background feats being pre requisite for leveled feats. (Exactly as dragon lance does it)

Or almost basically how racial feats work.

[Psyren]

Quoting myself to fulfill a promise:


Crawford and Kenreck discussed a bit of their approach to feat chains in 5e in one of their Unearthed Arcana videos (I think the Dragonlance one?) I'll see if I can dig it up.

Digging up the first Dragonlance/Heroes of Krynn UA video took longer than I thought it would - in part because they never actually call it that :smallsigh: It was under their "Sage Advice" umbrella instead.

But anyway, in it, they talk about 5e's approach to "feat chains":


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMV4A_qIVw

For those who prefer to read a transcript rather than (re)watch a devblog, here's the relevant quoted section:


Kenreck: "There's also something I've seen, is what many would call "feat-stacking," two feats that are related to each other. I actually rather miss this, so can you tell me a little bit about that?"

Crawford: "Yeah - we also in Strixhaven, in addition to having this background that you could take that gave you a feat, we then introduced a second feat that you could take, but you had to have the previous feat to take it; this is something that we also wanted to start exploring because we felt that, first off, feats are a very useful place for us to explore what are essentially class features not tied to a class. We as designers, that's basically what we think of a feat as - it's a a classless class feature. We wanted to be able to provide this feature option to strixhaven characters that was going to have a bit more a bit more 'oomph', a bit more power than a typical feat. And so for us the natural way to do that was, well, put a level prerequisite on it; and because we wanted to tie together sort of a narrative connection between them, also require you to have the previous feat. This is really useful, because it creates a way for us to give you options that have different levels of power - you know, we can give you lower-level power, higher-level power - and give you also the sense of going up a little sort of narrative ladder. It's optional - if you get the background and you get the free feat, you don't have to take the second one - but if you decide to invest in it, that's a fun little character development path that we're inviting you to go down. One of the pieces of feedback that we have gotten about the game since its release in 2014 is that especially our heavily invested players and people who've played a lot of different characters who are always looking for something new would like a few more ways to sort of 'turn the dials' on their characters, and these feats that build on each other, that's one way to do it.

This is also a space that we're continuing to explore because again we also introduced some feats like this in our {Heroes of Krynn} Unearthed Arcana because we also view this as very fertile design ground. Now in 3rd and 4th edition we did this as well, where you had feats that would go in a chain. Now, we also got very clear feedback back then that people grew weary if the chains grew too long - or or to use the stacking metaphor, if the stack got too high - so we're keeping that in mind as we explore this space, that it's unlikely that any of these chains will ever get - you know, you're not going to have like 10 feets in a chain (laughter) - but there is a space for us to explore, just like you have class features where you get a lower level one and then a higher level one, exploring having these essentially class-agnostic features that also can have levels, and that again opens the opportunity for us to create ones that would be more powerful than we would ever want a generic feat to be."

Kenreck: "This isn't getting back to, uh, mapping out your entire career ahead of time before you're at first level? 'I have to take all these feats in this order' kind of thing, back in that day...?"

Crawford: "Right now what we've shown is it's basically 'you get you get the starter one, and then there's another one you can pick, or there are three you can pick from.' We're going to keep exploring; this is what things like Unearthed Arcana are for. We are just about to release the survey for {Heroes of Krynn} so we're going to get more feedback on this; we know people really enjoyed that little feat chain {which} was two whole feats in Strixhaven, and so we're gonna keep exploring and keep getting feedback and seeing how these play out in people's campaigns."

Clearly the Heroes of Krynn ones scored well, because as I noted upthread, they revisited this exact same design in Bigby's and Planescape, so the reaction to it must have been positive. What's most interesting is that they didn't rule out chains becoming longer than two feats long in 5e either. They don't want them to get as long as they did in 3e and 4e, but that still leaves them room to come up with "chains" that are more than two feats long, at least one day in the future.

[Mindflayer_Inc]

3e feat chains were fun, but crazy. Not a good way of doing it because they didn't really have any QC/QA on stuff it feels.

4e Feats works better but still could have some traps.

5e feat chains can work but you would need to redesign not only feats but actually use features in 5e that WotC doesn't like to talk about.

Having feats five inspiration during specific events would be a great way to make intro feats.

Feat chains would need to be things that blend the three pillars, but not into separate feats but blend them together.

Say, all feats are now set into chains. Each chain gets three feats to make a set.

===

First Feat: Exploration/Social and Combat

Second Feat: Exploration or Social (opposite of first feat) + Combat

Third: Bonus to Exploration, Social, Combat

===

D&D is primarily a combat game and ppl will choose combat options a lot so make all feats have benefit in combat.

I think micro feats are a better system than macro feats and would love to see it actually focused on and refined.

[Ignimortis]

Not really, because you get very few of them. Also, because 3e feat chains are terrible for three reasons.


Each individual feat does way too little. And I'm not just saying this in comparison to 5e feats, but even inside the 3e paradigm, a single feat is likely doing next to nothing aside from some good outliers. Two-Weapon Fighting is a good feat (though it could auto-scale and that wouldn't be crazy still). 3e Dodge is a bad feat. 3e Toughness is a terrible feat (yes, even in the "intended" situation of a level 1 Wizard who really wants to live to level 2). A single combat feat every 2 levels is what Fighter gets, in the same book that has Cleric and Druid getting similar baseline numbers but also full 9-level spellcasting. A single fighter bonus feat, therefore, should have been at least somewhat comparable to what a Druid got in the same two levels. And even 5e feats are far from being anywhere similar to that.
Prerequisites are all over the place. Whirlwind Attack was already cited, but it's hardly the only feat that requires two or three feats that don't have anything to do with what the final feat does.
Some 3e feats are directly counter-intuitive. Point-Blank Shot is a feat that encourages archers to NOT utilize their range advantage and instead stick in move+attack or even Pounce distance from basically everything in the game. It's also a prerequisite for everything to do with Archery, so there's no avoiding it.

In short, I like how 3e does things a lot more than how 5e does things. But feat chains were terrible in 3e and 5e is better for having gotten rid of them.

[Amechra]

Some 3e feats are directly counter-intuitive. Point-Blank Shot is a feat that encourages archers to NOT utilize their range advantage [...]

This one makes more sense when you realize that the specialization bonus for bows in 2e included giving you a "Point Blank" range... though it was way stronger than +1 to hit (Specialization for bows was +2 to hit at close range, +1 to hit at all ranges, and an extra half-attack).

As a side note, it's actually really funny how much stronger the Weapon Specialization rules are in 2e than the equivalents in 3e. A 2e Fighter could potentially start off specialized in two to three weapons at first level depending on how broad you wanted your proficiencies to be, which would be equivalent to something like six to nine feats in 3e. Not only did they hand out the Fighter's unique stuff to literally everyone, they nerfed it too!

[LudicSavant]

Feat chains were terrible in 3e and are even worse in 5e, where feats are less abundant.

Can you restore them? Sure, they already have been in that phoned in Bigby's supplement.

Should you? Absolutely not. Locking people into semi-fixed progressions for several levels is counterproductive. It needlessly reduces the number of opportunities for players to make meaningful, distinctive choices about their progression. It further encourages people to plan out their builds ahead of time rather than progress organically. It also limits character distinctiveness, since it hogs a disproportionate amount of ASI space for the same progression every time.

[Luccan]

This one makes more sense when you realize that the specialization bonus for bows in 2e included giving you a "Point Blank" range... though it was way stronger than +1 to hit (Specialization for bows was +2 to hit at close range, +1 to hit at all ranges, and an extra half-attack).

As a side note, it's actually really funny how much stronger the Weapon Specialization rules are in 2e than the equivalents in 3e. A 2e Fighter could potentially start off specialized in two to three weapons at first level depending on how broad you wanted your proficiencies to be, which would be equivalent to something like six to nine feats in 3e. Not only did they hand out the Fighter's unique stuff to literally everyone, they nerfed it too!

When I started diving back into older editions, this is what immediately stuck out to me. The only reasons feats exist as they do in 3e is because they took all the class abilities Fighters had away, made them feats, and then made them worse

[Segev]

When I started diving back into older editions, this is what immediately stuck out to me. The only reasons feats exist as they do in 3e is because they took all the class abilities Fighters had away, made them feats, and then made them worse

Not entirely. Feats were the 3e take on weapon proficiencies, which sometimes had really wonky exotic rules to enhance particular weapons. They then expanded it to broader things, like metamagic and skill boosts and the like.

You're not wrong, per se, but that wasn't what they set out to do. It just turned out that way.



I think that things which you would build as feat chains would be better suited as charms, boons, or other narrative-progression rewards. You want a feat chain for a cool martial tradition taught by the Knights of Formal Regalia? Have those who want to learn those techniques seek out the Knights and join their ranks as a squire to learn the first one. Impress them by achieving great things in their name or on their behalf to have a teacher teach the next one to you. The third one comes when you go on a quest that they set for you which unlocks the connection between sartorial and martial prowess, and you gain the understanding necessary to master their secret art.

Such things are much like magic items in terms of their place in the reward structure of 5e.

[Witty Username]

Feat chains were terrible in 3e and are even worse in 5e, where feats are less abundant.

Can you restore them? Sure, they already have been in that phoned in Bigby's supplement.

Should you? Absolutely not. Locking people into semi-fixed progressions for several levels is counterproductive. It needlessly reduces the number of opportunities for players to make meaningful, distinctive choices about their progression. It further encourages people to plan out their builds ahead of time rather than progress organically. It also limits character distinctiveness, since it hogs a disproportionate amount of ASI space for the same progression every time.

I second more or less all of this. I think some things, can be done well as feat chains in other systems, but the overwhelming majority will be this.

[Dr.Samurai]

I don't necessarily agree with any of that. It seems to me that "planning builds" is a longtime staple and pastime for many people in the hobby; there's like countless threads and youtube videos dedicated to exactly that. Ludic's long running thread is exactly that. So that seems a complete non-issue.

And it only limits "distinctiveness" to the degree that everyone wants to play with the feat chains. Given that I haven't heard much of a hubbub about ANY of the current feat chains (Dragonlance, Planescape, Bigby's) I don't see this as a thing.

And again... I'm not sure how concerned we are about distinctiveness since the game is already plagued with cookie-cutter "optimized" builds.

The big issue with feat chains for 3rd edition is that they were expensive for little gain. The issue for 5E is that you get too few of them and they compete with ASIs.

[Jason]

Feat chains are already in 5E. They just call them "subclass variants" instead.
Stuff that would have been in feat chains in 3.5 is largely decided by what subclass you pick at 3rd level instead.

[Luccan]

Feat chains are already in 5E. They just call them "subclass variants" instead.
Stuff that would have been in feat chains in 3.5 is largely decided by what subclass you pick at 3rd level instead.

I don't think a single feat chain in 3e does for you what subclasses do for any class in 5e. Unless you consider every feature a class has beyond spells and proficiencies basically a feat

[stoutstien]

I don't necessarily agree with any of that. It seems to me that "planning builds" is a longtime staple and pastime for many people in the hobby; there's like countless threads and youtube videos dedicated to exactly that. Ludic's long running thread is exactly that. So that seems a complete non-issue.

And it only limits "distinctiveness" to the degree that everyone wants to play with the feat chains. Given that I haven't heard much of a hubbub about ANY of the current feat chains (Dragonlance, Planescape, Bigby's) I don't see this as a thing.

And again... I'm not sure how concerned we are about distinctiveness since the game is already plagued with cookie-cutter "optimized" builds.

The big issue with feat chains for 3rd edition is that they were expensive for little gain. The issue for 5E is that you get too few of them and they compete with ASIs.

There is a world of difference between being able to plan a PC top down if you want
and making it mandatory to be relevant.

You can make fear chains work but you would need to make sure that taking 2 non linked feats are just as valid....which largely defeats the purpose of the chain.

The without number games do a decent job having feat (foci) chains without them being full of crappy prerequisites or traps. SoDL is basically all chains and does it well.

DND hasn't shown that they care nor has the design space to make them work without going back to 3.X ivory tower BS

[Dr.Samurai]

None of the current 5e feat chains are considered "mandatory", but many 5e feats/spells/subclasses ARE considered "mandatory".

Feat chains are no different from any other asset in the game that gives you powers/abilities. If they wind up in optimization builds (which none have to date, to my knowledge) then they will be no different from any other optimization build that requires certain levels in classes/subclasses, certain feats, certain spells, etc.

[stoutstien]

None of the current 5e feat chains are considered "mandatory", but many 5e feats/spells/subclasses ARE considered "mandatory".

Feat chains are no different from any other asset in the game that gives you powers/abilities. If they wind up in optimization builds (which none have to date, to my knowledge) then they will be no different from any other optimization build that requires certain levels in classes/subclasses, certain feats, certain spells, etc.

The fact there are perceived mandatory options is all the proof I need they don't have the basic principles in place to include chains without making a mess of it.

[Dr.Samurai]

The fact there are perceived mandatory options is all the proof I need they don't have the basic principles in place to include chains without making a mess of it.
That’s fair 😎

[Amechra]

Not entirely. Feats were the 3e take on weapon proficiencies, which sometimes had really wonky exotic rules to enhance particular weapons. They then expanded it to broader things, like metamagic and skill boosts and the like.

You're not wrong, per se, but that wasn't what they set out to do. It just turned out that way.

Feats grew out of the rules for 2e's Weapon Proficiencies (which really only became exotic and wacky when you got to the PO books at the end of the line — before that, it was mostly just "hey, pick what weapons you're proficient in, and Fighters can double-invest for Better Numbers") and Non-Weapon Proficiencies (which were effectively 2e's skill system... and yes, that's what they were called. TSR D&D wasn't exactly known for giving things names that rolled off the tongue).

Crucially, though, the way you got them was substantially changed between 2e and 3e. In 2e, your WP slots and NWP slots were entirely separate, with the number you got of each being determined by your class. Taking proficiency in Baking for flavor reasons even if you didn't expect it to come up mechanically didn't really matter, because most of the stuff you could spend NWP slots on were similarly background-y. 3e just kinda dumped them into a pile, went "people will figure out which feats are good", and called it a life.

...

It'd honestly be kinda interesting to see what a 5e that went back to the source for feats and skills looked like. Off the top of my head, there'd be a strict separation between Feats (read: combat-related feats) and Skills (read: non-combat-related skills), with Fighters getting extra Feats. Heck, if we go really far back, Bards and Rogues (as descendants of the Rogue) would have prepared skills — apparently there was a version of the Thief before it got published in the Strategic Review that prepared which skills it could use similarly to how the Magic User got to prepare spells, which is... interesting.

[DragonEyeSeeker]

Feat chains are a cool way to incrementally make your character more powerful but the concept falls flat when the game does not give players enough feats. :smallfrown:

I would even argue that getting 7 feats across 20 levels was too few in 3.x's case and that edition was the king of feat chains. I think PF1E and 4E, where you received a feat every other level was the ideal structure to make feat chains really work.

[Goobahfish]

Feats (and particularly feat chains) are generally... bad design.

It comes out a few different ways. If the chain is there to gatekeep power-level (i.e., don't take this until level 8), then it penalises a player by making them take feats they don't want (looking at you dodge and toughness) to get powers they do want. Why not just gatekeep at level 8?

The problem in design comes when you can either accelerate feats (i.e., bonus feats means I get the level 8 power at level 4) OR when you don't optimise you are playing sub-standardly (i.e. its a trap).

This punishes new players and rewards system masters. I.e., bad design.

Feats can be used to 'flesh out' a character as a kind of mini-multi-class (see PF2) but then.. you'd be better off with more useful multiclass rules to begin with. Even used this way, they fall into 'its a trap' OR 'its a hack' territory.

It basically goes against a lot of the D&D design philosophy in 5e...

[LumenPlacidum]

I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with feat chains. However, in order for something to be a prerequisite, it should actually be a prerequisite.

For example: let's say you really like the 5e feat "Heavy Armor Master", which lets you take less damage when struck by nonmagical weapons. I'm not sure that it's that great, but that's not what's important at the moment. You could create a subsequent feat with Heavy Armor Master as a prerequisite, and I'd be fine with it only if it actually augments the ability that you gained from the Heavy Armor Master feat! Maybe the second feat will increase it from reducing 6 damage per attack with a nonmagical weapon to reducing 5 damage per attack with any weapon and you get to apply the benefit to sources of fire, cold, and acid damage. Also, it's a half-feat.

The effect of the feat would be directly augmenting the ability that the first feat got you, and is simply stronger than the first feat in the chain. After all, it was harder to take than the first feat in the chain--it represents a greater opportunity cost.

Design like this has the significant problem that the subsequent ability needs to not bring a character out of line with the general level of balance of the game while also being stronger than a non-chained feat. As someone already said, I think that WotC's track record with feats suggests that this is too fine of a path for them to reliably walk it.

[Kane0]

I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with feat chains. However, in order for something to be a prerequisite, it should actually be a prerequisite.

The effect of the feat would be directly augmenting the ability that the first feat got you, and is simply stronger than the first feat in the chain. After all, it was harder to take than the first feat in the chain--it represents a greater opportunity cost.

Design like this has the significant problem that the subsequent ability needs to not bring a character out of line with the general level of balance of the game while also being stronger than a non-chained feat. As someone already said, I think that WotC's track record with feats suggests that this is too fine of a path for them to reliably walk it.

Heavy Armor Master Master
+1 Str or Con
The damage reduction from your heavy armor applies to damage from magical weapons as well as acid, fire, cold, thunder, lightning and force damage

Medium Armor Master Master
+1 Str, Dex or Con
You can apply your entire Dex bonus to your AC in medium armor

Polearm Master Master
+1 Str
The damage of the Bonus Action attack becomes the same die size as the weapon

Great Weapon Master Master
+1 Str
When taking -5 to hit, you instead gain +15 to damage

Shield Master Master
+1 Str or Con
You can add your Shield's AC bonus to any Dex save you make
When you use your reaction you take half damage if you fail the save

Crossbow Master
+1 Dex
The bonus action attack can be with any crossbow you are holding

Master Charger
+1 Str or Dex
When you use your action to dash you can make both an attack and a shove with the bonus action granted by Charger, making either the attack or shove at advantage (your choice which).

Master Dual Wielder
You gain another +1 AC when using a weapon in each hand
When you make an opportunity attack you can make an attack with both weapons
The extra attack you make when using TWF is made as part of the attack action instead of as a bonus action

Elemental Master
+1 Int, Wis or Cha
The damage type chosen by Elemental Adept also treats immunity as resistance, and once per turn when rolling damage of that type you can roll one extra die

Master Poisoner
+1 Dex or Int
When you make a damage roll, you treat immunity to Poison damage as resistance
When you cause a creature to make a saving throw against Poison, they do so at disadvantage

[Ignimortis]

*Snip Quote Master*

GWMx2 and PAMx2 do not need to exist. XBEx2 is...iffy, simply because bows don't get Rapid Shot anymore and that would actually make XBE the superior archery build for anyone who actually cares to invest. Most of these are good, though...but not as double downs on feat costs, but rather as fixes to the original feats.

Like, I would actually consider picking up HAM if it wasn't just "oh, well, against non-magical weapons..." and scaled a bit (prof bonus reduction rather than a flat 3). Considering Barbs don't get to wear Heavy Armor and Rage, there's unlikely to be a gamebreaking stacking situation. Same for Medium Armor Master - medium armor is already in that limbo where nobody wants to use it unless they have exactly 14 DEX and don't care for it otherwise. Letting MAM add the whole DEX bonus is a bit too much, but the current feat is also not worth it (bringing half-plate to the level of plate, but at the difference of 3 ASIs (16 DEX and MAM vs 10 DEX and HAP) for..."doesn't impose disadv on stealth" - it does need something more to make it worthwhile.

Etc, etc. Dual-wielding eventually scaling like a half-decent shield could be a good niche for it (half proficiency bonus to AC, rounded down?), and the "dual-wielding attack is part of the Attack Action" should be core.

Actually, your suggestions (potentially ironic?) work out pretty much the same as 3.5 feat chains - some bonuses stack with already good feats (GWMx2 in particular being basically "Improved Power Attack"), while other things add functionality that honestly could've been part of the first feat (HAMx2 being something along the lines of Dodge (PF1 version)+Mobility+Spring Attack in one feat, which might actually make it worth taking) without being OP in the slightest.

[Kane0]

Most of these are good, though...but not as double downs on feat costs, but rather as fixes to the original feats.


Well i did cheat a bit, having already homebrewed a bunch of feat fixes. I just recycled that.

[Pex]

For a feat chain to work in 5E it needs two things. 1) Each feat must have +1 to an ability score relevant to the effect of the feat or player choice if the effect doesn't rely on ability scores. 2) The prerequisite feat must be of value worthy to take on its own players would like to have even if they don't take the next feat in the chain.

[Mitchellnotes]

Honestly, good riddance to feat chains. As others have mentioned, it required a lot of pre-planning to make them work. While this was fun from a "lets see what i can do" peespective, it was annoying to actually play. Balancing feats to use, with what was needed for prestige classes, etc ended up making feats feel more like a tax then a choice.

The only feat chains i liked in 3.x were the few lineage feats. If i remember, there were a group of feats that required a lvl 1 feat, but you didnt have to take a chain. I feel like the more you got, the more powerful they were too which incentivized picking more up but didnt require a series.

All told, 5e does a much better job at making playing characters more fun and less complex in a good way. There are "feat chains" embedded in other features like invocations which just feels like a better way of doing it all around

[Monster Manuel]

I think that things which you would build as feat chains would be better suited as charms, boons, or other narrative-progression rewards. You want a feat chain for a cool martial tradition taught by the Knights of Formal Regalia? Have those who want to learn those techniques seek out the Knights and join their ranks as a squire to learn the first one. Impress them by achieving great things in their name or on their behalf to have a teacher teach the next one to you. The third one comes when you go on a quest that they set for you which unlocks the connection between sartorial and martial prowess, and you gain the understanding necessary to master their secret art.

Such things are much like magic items in terms of their place in the reward structure of 5e.

I really like the way they handled this in the Mythic Odysseys of Theros book with the Piety mechanic; you are the champion of one of the Theros gods, and this grants you a minor boon, but as you take specific actions that please the god you get piety points, and these points unlock better and better boons as you progress. Not all of the Piety chains were as good as others, and some of the "major" boons were a little lackluster, but I thought the basic premise would be a good way to mimic this kind of narrative-progression "feat chain". You take a single feat instead of a multi-feat chain but, like in the Theros Piety mechanic, the effect grows as you progress with Achievements/Levels/Favor/whatever.

Something like this scratches the itch for a progression like you see with a 3e-style feat chain, but doesn't require that you re-write the whole Feat/ASI economy in 5E to do so.

[Psyren]

I really like the way they handled this in the Mythic Odysseys of Theros book with the Piety mechanic; you are the champion of one of the Theros gods, and this grants you a minor boon, but as you take specific actions that please the god you get piety points, and these points unlock better and better boons as you progress. Not all of the Piety chains were as good as others, and some of the "major" boons were a little lackluster, but I thought the basic premise would be a good way to mimic this kind of narrative-progression "feat chain". You take a single feat instead of a multi-feat chain but, like in the Theros Piety mechanic, the effect grows as you progress with Achievements/Levels/Favor/whatever.

Something like this scratches the itch for a progression like you see with a 3e-style feat chain, but doesn't require that you re-write the whole Feat/ASI economy in 5E to do so.

This sounds cool on paper - but per Crawford, they ran into issues with this approach. Designing unique reward systems like Dark Gifts or Guild Ranks or a Piety track takes a comparable level of effort as designing a bunch of feats, but gets a fraction of the return/usage by playgroups because they're so campaign-setting-specific. This was explicitly the reason they opted to move back to feats for Strixhaven, Dragonlance and Planescape, and in the case of Dragonlance they just gave players more of them, using "the world is at war" as justification for characters being more powerful. This got them a lot more bang for their design dollar, and much more feedback on the subsystems to improve their design process. So I can easily see that being the preferred approach going forward.

[GloatingSwine]

I think feat chains mostly double down on the "progress via overspecialisation" that martial characters already have.

[Segev]

This sounds cool on paper - but per Crawford, they ran into issues with this approach. Designing unique reward systems like Dark Gifts or Guild Ranks or a Piety track takes a comparable level of effort as designing a bunch of feats, but gets a fraction of the return/usage by playgroups because they're so campaign-setting-specific. This was explicitly the reason they opted to move back to feats for Strixhaven, Dragonlance and Planescape, and in the case of Dragonlance they just gave players more of them, using "the world is at war" as justification for characters being more powerful. This got them a lot more bang for their design dollar, and much more feedback on the subsystems to improve their design process. So I can easily see that being the preferred approach going forward.

This is one reason I think formulating them as boons or charms would work. They essentially become magic item style rewards, and you can get as specific or a general as you want.

It is weird that piety and dark gifts were seen as too setting-specific while feats that are blatantly setting-specific are not seen as too specific for general interest and use, though.

[Psyren]

This is one reason I think formulating them as boons or charms would work. They essentially become magic item style rewards, and you can get as specific or a general as you want.

Yeah, I'm totally fine with having this sort of thing intersect with the boons system. In fact, one of the boon options is itself a free feat, and you can get even more via the Training Reward from the DMG.


It is weird that piety and dark gifts were seen as too setting-specific while feats that are blatantly setting-specific are not seen as too specific for general interest and use, though.

Crawford was a touch oblique in his reasoning but it does make sense to me overall. Right before he talked about the move towards feats as rewards, he was discussing one of their core design principles being a budget of "complexity in to power out" and how they want to be very careful about every new additional thing they make DMs learn, rather than using existing frameworks. Feats definitely qualify for that as an existing thing rather than DMs having to learn a whole new subsystem for Piety or Guild Rank.

Another consideration that comes to mind for me - players are probably more likely to even just read or be exposed to feats in the first place. Consider that any book with new feats in it gets a lot of coverage online from content creators, threads, social media posts etc. Now compare that to people going in-depth on the Dark Gifts or Piety subsystems, it's night and day. Not only are players and DMs more likely to be exposed to new feats to think about using them in the first place, they're also probably more comfortable filing the serial numbers off a setting-specific feat and repurposing it for their own settings, because the power level of a feat is easy to judge.

For example, even if your setting doesn't have the Knights of Solamnia, you could take Squire of Solamnia -> Knight of the Crown and repurpose them as a special knightly training reward in your own campaign, renaming them both to something like Cavalier Initiate -> Heraldic Rally.

[KorvinStarmast]

I think the barriers to it in the base game are threefold, though I'm sure there are more to consider (like design space, dev intent, etc.).


Feats are too scarce
Feats have an opportunity cost
I don't agree that feats are too strong, but some of them are stronger than others.


Feats are scarce because ASIs are scarce, and they're strong because you need to give up an ASI to take one, or give up stats to take one (bringing us back towards that opportunity cost).
Nicely said, and it's the opportunity cost bit that I think is valuable. Player needs to make a choice that has a costs to it.

I'm glad we don't really have feat chains. {snip} I much prefer the option of having extended feats that automatically have a built-in improvement at a certain level threshold. I concur with your concept.

In 5E, a feat is supposed to enable a different playstyle or specifically augment an aspect of your character, and is considered as an alternative to just taking your regular stat bump. It's conceivable that you could have a character with no feats at all. You'd have to completely rework 5E feats to do something like this. "Like this" being feat chains and I agree with you. Not worth trying to rework 5e and balance for this reason.

For one dnd moving forward I could see level 1 background feats being pre requisite for leveled feats. (Exactly as dragon lance does it)

Or almost basically how racial feats work.
Given that I dislike both of these with almost equal vigor (I detest racially gated feats for a variety of reasons) I'd suggest that not using these as a template is the better idea.

Not really, because you get very few of them. Also, because 3e feat chains are terrible for three reasons. {snip} But feat chains were terrible in 3e and 5e is better for having gotten rid of them. +1

Feat chains were terrible in 3e and are even worse in 5e, where feats are less abundant.

Can you restore them? Sure, they already have been in that phoned in Bigby's supplement.

Should you? Absolutely not. Locking people into semi-fixed progressions for several levels is counterproductive. It needlessly reduces the number of opportunities for players to make meaningful, distinctive choices about their progression. He shoots, he scores!

DND hasn't shown that they care nor has the design space to make them work without going back to 3.X ivory tower BS Also a good point.

The fact there are perceived mandatory options is all the proof I need they don't have the basic principles in place to include chains without making a mess of it. +1

if we go really far back, Bards and Rogues (as descendants of the Rogue)
Descendant of the Thief.

would have prepared skills — apparently there was a version of the Thief before it got published in the Strategic Review that prepared which skills it could use similarly to how the Magic User got to prepare spells, which is... interesting. Thief was never in Stat Review. It was in Greyhawk. I think I saw some notes way back of the pre Greyhawk Thief on note paper (Arnesons?) but I can't find it now.

Honestly, good riddance to feat chains. Yes, the tax is bad.

All told, 5e does a much better job at making playing characters more fun and less complex in a good way. There are "feat chains" embedded in other features like invocations which just feels like a better way of doing it all around Yes, and you can add and / or drop invocations as you level up.