Feats Should Be Tied To Character Level

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Not class level.

Feats have little to do with class. I mean, sure, they're going to synergize with your class features, but no feat is made for any specific class.

Any class can take any feat. You could get GWM on a martial, or any caster, if you build right.

So the main reason to tie feats to character level instead of class level is for multiclassing. Sometimes I wanna go 11/3 (I'm assuming we'll reach level 14 here), or 3/4/7 (assuming they'll allow 2+ classes), and not miss out on feats merely due to quirky level distribution.

Honestly, this is how it should work in TT too. There's no good reason feats should be tied to class level and multiclassing punished even harder. You're already missing out on the highest levels of a class to do it at all, so I think missing feats/ASI's is just mean spirited.

Please tie feats to character level instead.

[Heu, Iterum Id Feci]

Originally posted by Tuco:

I'm more disappointed about Feats and ASI being mutually exclusive, frankly.

I know they are changing this in OneD&D (one of the very few good chances they announced so far, incidentally) but still, this is a 5th edition game and that's what we are stuck with.

The system is already so poor of chances to make your character unique, forcing the players to drop an objective and universal improvement (ASI) if they want to add some flavor was always misguided design.

It's also one of the reasons, why some gms (me including) allow players to start with increased starting ability scores, usually through rather lenient roll for stats rules. As a GM I can deal with the players being more powerful by increasing encounter difficulty, but it allows players to experiment more with feats, rather then everybody taking ASI for level 4 and usually 8.
Though they mentioned in an interview a while ago, they ant to add multiple ways to generate your ability scores, so rolling for stats will probably be in the release version.

[Indure]

Personally I would rather have feat/asi decoupled from class progression and tied to level progression. There are already pros/cons to multiclassing and having a big universal boon that all players experience staggered across potentially 1-5 levels (or potentially more) seems more problematic than it is worth.

Although I also agree with Tuco that the worst problem is that ASI and feat progression were made mutually exclusive in the first place. Feats are often far more interesting in terms of creating diversity between characters, while ASI increases are a boring +1, but mathematically more impactful more often than not.

[Aldain]

Originally posted by Indure:

Personally I would rather have feat/asi decoupled from class progression and tied to level progression. There are already pros/cons to multiclassing and having a big universal boon that all players experience staggered across potentially 1-5 levels (or potentially more) seems more problematic than it is worth.

Although I also agree with Tuco that the worst problem is that ASI and feat progression were made mutually exclusive in the first place. Feats are often far more interesting in terms of creating diversity between characters, while ASI increases are a boring +1, but mathematically more impactful more often than not.

Yeah, if there's one thing that 5e has a problem with it's that whole ASI vs Feat thing.

Of course the other problem is just the sheer wild variance in usefulness feats have, not quite to the 3.5e "trap" feat degree, but something like Sentinel or Polearm Expert is vastly more impactful than something like a Magic Initiate feat (which at best has something like a scaling Cantrip) or "Pick 4 weapons and become proficient in them".

[Indure]

Originally posted by Aldain:

Originally posted by Indure:

Personally I would rather have feat/asi decoupled from class progression and tied to level progression. There are already pros/cons to multiclassing and having a big universal boon that all players experience staggered across potentially 1-5 levels (or potentially more) seems more problematic than it is worth.

Although I also agree with Tuco that the worst problem is that ASI and feat progression were made mutually exclusive in the first place. Feats are often far more interesting in terms of creating diversity between characters, while ASI increases are a boring +1, but mathematically more impactful more often than not.

Yeah, if there's one thing that 5e has a problem with it's that whole ASI vs Feat thing.

Of course the other problem is just the sheer wild variance in usefulness feats have, not quite to the 3.5e "trap" feat degree, but something like Sentinel or Polearm Expert is vastly more impactful than something like a Magic Initiate feat (which at best has something like a scaling Cantrip) or "Pick 4 weapons and become proficient in them".

I agree with you, but who thinks Magic Initiate is a weaker feat? That is one of the stronger feats in the game and has gotten better as additional spells have been placed in the game.

You're right about Weapon Master, although that is a half feat so it should be weaker.

[Aldain]

Originally posted by Indure:

I agree with you, but who thinks Magic Initiate is a weaker feat? That is one of the stronger feats in the game and has gotten better as additional spells have been placed in the game.

You're right about Weapon Master, although that is a half feat so it should be weaker.

Magic Initiate only gives you a first level spell that can be cast once per long rest and 2 cantrips to work with, while the cantrips will scale (at least in BG3) the first level spell will forever be a mediocre one-shot, not terrible (hell I enjoy the feat as a Paladin for Cantrip access), but the inability to upcast it makes it fall off pretty hard.

But really the issue with most of those proficiency based half feats (armor and/or weapon ones) is that a one level dip in Fighter probably is preferable to a single boost to a likely tertiary at best stat.

Honestly the thing I'd do is spread things out at lower levels, an ASI at level 2 or 3 a feat at 4 or 5 and then have the current either/or at later levels, that could give half feats a place if you plan to use the first ASI in a specific way.

[dolby]

They could split up the feats/ASI and leave feats as class fetures and slap ASI to character level seeing as a lot of people in this thread want both at the same time?... :)

anyway looks like we gonna get extra stats from items an quests, so i don't mind it that much myself if they keep that up.

Necromancy of Thay could give you a wisdom or maybe int point later down the line if you make the extra checks. Talk to dead is fine and all but kinda just lore fluff and meh when we have that necklaces that does the same thing.

Hell, it could even take one point off if you fail the needed checks.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by dolby:

They could split up the feats/ASI and leave feats as class fetures and slap ASI to character level seeing as a lot of people in this thread want both at the same time?... :)

All they need to do is move the /4 levels ASI/feat to character level rather than class level snd continue letting people choose between an ASI or feat.

The only difference is that you'd choose for every four levels overall rather than when gsining four levels in a specific class, which just makes multiclassing better.

[dolby]

Originally posted by Pan Darius Kairos:

Originally posted by dolby:

They could split up the feats/ASI and leave feats as class fetures and slap ASI to character level seeing as a lot of people in this thread want both at the same time?... :)

All they need to do is move the /4 levels ASI/feat to character level rather than class level snd continue letting people choose between an ASI or feat.

The only difference is that you'd choose for every four levels overall rather than when gsining four levels in a specific class, which just makes multiclassing better.

well people said that they mind the choice more, that they have to do... So i posted a suggestion that would help with that choice. it can be the other way around and feats are on character level and ASI is on class level IF it's more to your liking and it feels better.:)

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by dolby:

Originally posted by Pan Darius Kairos:

All they need to do is move the /4 levels ASI/feat to character level rather than class level snd continue letting people choose between an ASI or feat.

The only difference is that you'd choose for every four levels overall rather than when gsining four levels in a specific class, which just makes multiclassing better.

well people said that they mind the choice more, that they have to do... So i posted a suggestion that would help with that choice. it can be the other way around and feats are on character level and ASI is on class level IF it's more to your liking and it feels better.:)

I guess what I'm getting at is that there's no reason to further complicate it. Keep it simple.

This change is meant to do one thing: protect multiclassing from getting robbed of feats when levels are split before the four level cutoff.

For example, if BG3 ends up having a level cap of 14, and I split my character 3/11, that character will oy get TWO ASI/feats instead of three, because it loses one both from not reaching 4th in the lower level class and not reaching 12th in the higher level class. This encourages either going 4/10 or 2/12 just to get that ASI/feat when I may not have wanted to split that way in the first place.

By attaching the 'every four levels' ASI/feat to character level instead (and leaving extra Fighter feats exactly where they are), then characters with any sort of level split would all get the same number of ASI/feats. Wouldn't matter if I split 2/12, 3/11, 4/10, 5/9, 6/8 or 7/7 - all of these would get three feats (at character level 12).

This simple adjustment merely makes multiclassing less painful without touching anything else or upsetting any other balance, which is why it's a good change.

[larhtas]

The feats/ASI aren't linked to a character progressions, it's linked to a class progression.
There is some stuffs linked to character progressions:
- Proficiencies
- Spell slots
And that's it normally but i might miss some.
I don't like (personal opinion here) the idea that feats/ASI will now be character progression.
Multiclass is already broken a lot of dudes are creating a lot of broken builds on tabletop and most of them are multiclass based. As they are already the most powerfull i dislike the idea to make them even more powerful.
I like the feats/ASI as a class progression, a reward to have been faithful to one class.

[zeeb]

As long as it's true to 5e, I have no problem with any change.
But it kinda defeats the purpose of using 5e as the base if they start homebrewing a lot of stuff, it just leads to the question where the line is drawn.

DOS2 is moddable, so if that's a possibility, I rather have it moddable if it's not core 5e.

[Pan Darius Cassandra]

Originally posted by zeeb:

As long as it's true to 5e, I have no problem with any change.
But it kinda defeats the purpose of using 5e as the base if they start homebrewing a lot of stuff, it just leads to the question where the line is drawn.

DOS2 is moddable, so if that's a possibility, I rather have it moddable if it's not core 5e.

It's a small change that makes multickassing more palatable, nothing more.

[Henry Kuren]

Gonna res a dead post here to make a comment.

5e does this. The system itself does this to make multiclassing not as broken as it already is. Because hands down 5e makes it very easy to multiclass, and in some cases wants you to multiclass.

Pathfinder, on the other hand, ties Feats to character level, and you get 1 every odd level, on top of the ability score increases every fourth. Mind you pathfinder feats are... there are a lot of them... but, this allows you to multiclass and not have to worry about loosing feats. You might be thinking 'That sounds kinda broken' But remember this, every class in Pathfinder is incredibly unique, and has a lot of fun abilities throught the levels. Culminating into a capstone that you only get at level 20. For example a fighter capstone automatically confirms every crit, its crit is done a +1 multiplier, and they cannot be disarmed with their chosen weapon. There are ways to get the crit threat range down to around... 11 as a fighter. The lowest it can go is 7. Now, take a weapon that crits on a *4 damage, and it now does *5 damage, you cannot be disarmed, and you auto confirm.

Pathfinder and 5e differ significantly. Your build in 5e is your class. In Pathfinder your build is Class, Items, Feats. 5e puts all the power that other editions of the game used to throw into feats and items right into the class itself, so being able to take the feats and abilities scores outside of a class would be even more busted, and encourage people to multiclass.

[Solid Snake]

That did seem odd to me too. It really should have been tied to character level.

[hannibal_pjv]

It would make multiclassing even more OP...
The current system is better for balance... And even with current system multiclassing is OP...