Quote Originally Posted by John Longarrow View Post
Just so I understand, you OBJECT to the player being able to choose what feats they take because you want versatility?
Nope. Nobody is objecting to that.

Let's talk hypotheticals.

You redesign Fighter and make it so a 10th level fighter with 14 feats in one combat style is balanced against level appropriate threats.

I want fighters to have more than one combat style so I naively triple their feats. Now I have a 10th level Fighter with 42 feats with me expecting a 14/14/14 split.

John Smith sees my Fighter and spends all 42 of their 10th level Fighter's feats in one combat style and becomes grossly overpowered for their level.

I return to the drawing board and try to find a way to increase the number of combat styles a Fighter has. The answer, I can give Fighters more than the bare minimum of feats to have 1 combat style by preventing the Fighter from spending more than a level appropriate amount (the 14 you originally gave them) in any one style.

This is the design challenge of all point based improvement systems (the fighter behaves like having feat points to spend towards various combat styles). How do you design the system so that players are not forced to choose between being one trick ponies and being underpowered?