D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting

[JoeMac307]

But why would anyone pick #3 when #2 is available? Your #3 is basically "#2, but you are penalized/shown the door if you change your mind after character creation."

If someone cares enough about the game to choose their own feats at level 1, then they probably still care enough later to choose their feats as they gain levels. It kinda defeats the purpose of the system, I think.

As a side note, I hope they get rid of dead levels for martial classes. I don't much care for levels where my only benefits are "some numbers get bigger, and I don't even get to choose which numbers."

I wasn't clear - Option #3 would have to replace Option #2... that's what I meant. (Otherwise, I'd be a moron, no?)

It strikes me that "specialties" exist not because of game balance, but to counteract choice paralysis for character generation. In 3E and 4E, your first-level character has to choose One Feat out of a list of literally hundreds, and that may well be daunting to a novice player.

I agree, specialties exist exactly for the purpose of avoiding choice paralysis (especially for new players / players who don't care about character creation minigames). But Nu brought up the idea that if you can pick and choose your feats, letting some players do that while others pick a prepackaged specialty could make the game unbalanced.

So I thought a solution to avoid balance issues would be to not let players just pick their feats as they level, but to create their own specialty at the point of character creations which would have to follow some rules and be subject to DM approval.