Quote from: tenbones;904250Whatever. It seems most people in these parts hate Feats anyhow, and mostly as a reaction to 3.x/PF (justifiably), rather than being a potential good mechanic to solve problems of scale and taste.

I'd turn a lot of the PHB feats into class feature options in that case, like other fighter fighting-styles, or alternatives to skill expertise, or archetype fodder.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;904272I'd turn a lot of the PHB feats into class feature options in that case, like other fighter fighting-styles, or alternatives to skill expertise, or archetype fodder.

That's not a bad idea. My only problem with it is that the structure of classes are pretty set in terms of ability acquisition for the class. Doing that with Fighters would likewise require a lot of restructuring for all the classes in various degrees.

I'm just thinking off the top of my head here. Technically speaking *all* Feats are class-options, they're just acquired at a specified rate that is too slow imo. My big issue is the segregation of maneuvers into the Battlemaster (among other things). You could easily just ramp up Feat acquisition to your taste and add an additional Pre-Req if you so choose for certain Feats to be gained by specific classes in this particular manner.

I still maintain Feats need more scalability in 5e. This is an aside from Opaopa's ideas of Tool and Weapon qualities that I think are salient points. I think people resistant to those ideas are scared of bloat, but I think it's all in the details, since this mechanic already exists. One could argue this concept has existed since 1e when polearms could be set to receive a charge (but that might be too nitpicky for some).

Quote from: Christopher Brady;904186Flarkin' 'ell, I really need to sit down and reread all the books, how could I miss that?  Can I get page citations for the feats thing?

DMG pg 227  Other Rewards: > Marks of Prestige sub-section pg 228: > Training: sub-section pg 231 - examples of training rewards were. Inspiration. A skill. Or... A feat. Had to find the trainer and spend the downtime.

Quote from: Omega;904292DMG pg 227  Other Rewards: > Marks of Prestige sub-section pg 228: > Training: sub-section pg 231 - examples of training rewards were. Inspiration. A skill. Or... A feat. Had to find the trainer and spend the downtime.

Thank you very much.

Quote from: tenbones;904251Tie to Faction-rewards. Also in the DMG. Then you have nearly endless RP potential to give players stuff to *actively* pursue.

This is a great idea. I'll probably leave the Feats in the PHB alone - the players consider those "fair game" when they level up and it's never a good idea to take stuff away from them or give them extra hoops to jump through. But the "Faction Rewards" idea sounds like a perfect way to introduce new Feats (or perhaps "Boons") into the campaign without getting carried away with them.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;904333This is a great idea. I'll probably leave the Feats in the PHB alone - the players consider those "fair game" when they level up and it's never a good idea to take stuff away from them or give them extra hoops to jump through. But the "Faction Rewards" idea sounds like a perfect way to introduce new Feats (or perhaps "Boons") into the campaign without getting carried away with them.

Yeah! Make them work for it. And it'll give you PLENTY to develop on your end - NPC, motivations for the faction itself, faction enemies, allies etc. Seriously it's a powerful incentive for the right kinds of players.

A universe of synchronicity got in the way of everything I've been doing the past 3 weeks, so indulge me for returning to respond...

Quote from: Christopher Brady;903407No, it's not.  I'm not exactly sure what you want that won't end up being too focused and fiddly.  Like the old 3.x Feats were.

And every time they do, players complain about complexity.  This isn't the only board that does it, and it's not just the grognards who do.  The more they add, the harder it becomes to not make something overpowered.  Combat and Tactic and that 2e Races book are a perfect example of trying to expand a game and suddenly losing control of the rules they laid out.

I hate 2e Combat and Tactics and would never use that example. But!, there are countless examples within that same edition where discussions of strat & tactics, often with specialized equipment, come in as a spitballed discussion to emulate setting-referential desires.

Just go pick up Complete Handbook Fighter and read just about any of the other chapters outside of Group WPs and Style Specializations. The majority involved variations on the Called Shots (an obvious corollary to Improvised Action), but were also seeded with battle proceedure, tactical formations value discussions, and guidance on handling special circumstance. It was not just a widget factory, it was a dialog with the reader to consider context before the solution. It talked about (honest-to-god) roleplaying challenges, such as kit integration within coherent setting and campaign demands, or the formation of formalized dueling and jousting. And that's just one book...

Quote from: Christopher Brady;903407OK, I've not seen anything of this sort, where'd you get that information, so I can read it for myself and see how ridiculous it is.

Go check the progression of Adventure League magical item rewards, and their allotment, over the seasons (years).

Quote from: Christopher Brady;903407Which are all highly specialized pieces of gear that often weren't used outside of a mass combat, or hunting for specific prey on a highly specific piece of terrain, like an ocean.  A lot of the bigger monsters in D&D require siege level gear to take down.  And are often not exactly what PC wills be usually doing, as they don't gather up in teams of 20+.

And how do you know that? Hirelings were "reintroduced" in 5e (they never really left, just sidelined due to eye-rolling comicbook team antics). And specialized gear deserve a place because they often were reintroduced as "weaponry of the moment." You are operating with 3e/4e-isms clearly in the forefront of play expectations and expecting everyone else to blithely play along.

Stop that. Other people who liked other editions are trying to twist 5e into NOT doing that all over again. I wholly reject your premise here outright, and I have decades of previous editions to back up my playstyle point as being viable.

If we stay with the presumed paradigm of the past two editions that you'll always have your optimal gear/spells/weaponry when needed then you're getting right back into the same quagmire. But 5e is trying to bridge that playstyle divide by theoretically attempting to offer an openneess to different things to mutually exclusive parties. Yet in the new material we keep receiving only the same disagreeable direction that made us leave in the first place -- which is inexcusable considering how solid and open 5e's chassis is, and how it goes against their stated community goals.

For example, 5e encourages adjudicating for variant weaponry analogs when faced with ad hoc weaponry, instead of defaulting into the Improvised Weaponry rule solely, so this lack of variation of known ad hoc setting-experiences is inexcusable. Farm equipment were notoriously pressed into weaponry use, so therefore too harpoons and gaffs are obviously a logical setting-contextual extention of the same principle. And yet we still have no designer-to-audience dialog on how to represent such variation, (with any subsequent advantages or penalties,) within the current edition's paradigm. Basically, if it ain't a character-based special exclusionary rule (race/class/feature/feat), it apparently ain't worth the designers' time and space -- and that solution is garbage on its face to gamers who don't share that old WotC song and dance.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;903407No, YOU think there's a design gap, and seemingly want to make the game more complex and system heavy as 3.x was.  Which frankly, is unnecessary, as Pathfinder can easily scratch that itch.  But if you don't want to play PF, then steal what you want from it and fit it to work in 5e, which isn't as hard as you're implying.

Pathfinder is 3e-isms on crack. There is nothing I like about 3e, and even less in PF. And that still has nothing to do with the design gap in responding to setting-referential guideline discussions. You are arguing phantoms from your mind about me, and it just looks foolish.

You are presuming past editions wrote things like stereo instructions and everyone used them either verbatim, or threw caution and restraint to the wind. That sort of thinking leaves a massive gap where reality lies. Older editions talked to us players like adults, expecting us to naturally solve our own problems to our liking, but also asking us to give meaningful thought to setting and the needs of playability -- hence their solution examples.

There is little of that here in 5e nowadays with respect to tactics and gear. I am left with caltrops, ball bearings, and oil flasks to suss out all my design challenges. Oh, sorry, and Improvised Action and Improvised Weaponry. Think about that... This is laughably barren, with little talk on how they came to such rationales, mechanics, and difficulties. And at this point, it's really unacceptable if they are promoting this as some sort of "big tent edition."

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;904106Don't feel ashamed, these rulesets are so complex everyone's bound to miss a few things.

It's more an organizational issue with 5e. A lot of material bounces around embedded within other sections. I've seen much worse, but with a little more editing could have been far easier.

Quote from: Omega;904292DMG pg 227  Other Rewards: > Marks of Prestige sub-section pg 228: > Training: sub-section pg 231 - examples of training rewards were. Inspiration. A skill. Or... A feat. Had to find the trainer and spend the downtime.

This alone turns feats from a fixed "linear" resource, á la spell slots per level, to a "quadratic" (shoot me now, please...) resource, á la new spells to learn.

The challenge is re-weighing the mechanics in light of their differing availability shift. Especially so, this is, whether any of their potentially "always on" quality then eclipses spells themselves. But this is potentially one of the better solutions with regards to making feats more than a half-hearted garbage kludge.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904405I hate 2e Combat and Tactics and would never use that example. But!, there are countless examples within that same edition where discussions of strat & tactics, often with specialized equipment, come in as a spitballed discussion to emulate setting-referential desires.

Just go pick up Complete Handbook Fighter and read just about any of the other chapters outside of Group WPs and Style Specializations. The majority involved variations on the Called Shots (an obvious corollary to Improvised Action), but were also seeded with battle proceedure, tactical formations value discussions, and guidance on handling special circumstance. It was not just a widget factory, it was a dialog with the reader to consider context before the solution. It talked about (honest-to-god) roleplaying challenges, such as kit integration within coherent setting and campaign demands, or the formation of formalized dueling and jousting. And that's just one book...

Most of which, at least in my gaming area, were never used because they were considered too fiddly (and frankly, worried the Magic User Players that it would some how diminish their favourite class.  Yeap, I got that argument as far back as 1989.)

Quote from: Opaopajr;904405Go check the progression of Adventure League magical item rewards, and their allotment, over the seasons (years).

Will do, thanks.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904405And how do you know that? Hirelings were "reintroduced" in 5e (they never really left, just sidelined due to eye-rolling comicbook team antics). And specialized gear deserve a place because they often were reintroduced as "weaponry of the moment." You are operating with 3e/4e-isms clearly in the forefront of play expectations and expecting everyone else to blithely play along.

And those hirelings are rarely used so far in my experience.  Personally, I dread using them, because I forget they're around most of the time.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904405Stop that. Other people who liked other editions are trying to twist 5e into NOT doing that all over again. I wholly reject your premise here outright, and I have decades of previous editions to back up my playstyle point as being viable.

Which is just that.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904405If we stay with the presumed paradigm of the past two editions that you'll always have your optimal gear/spells/weaponry when needed then you're getting right back into the same quagmire. But 5e is trying to bridge that playstyle divide by theoretically attempting to offer an openneess to different things to mutually exclusive parties. Yet in the new material we keep receiving only the same disagreeable direction that made us leave in the first place -- which is inexcusable considering how solid and open 5e's chassis is, and how it goes against their stated community goals.

It's been more than two editions in my experience.  People don't change their playstyles that quickly.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904405For example, 5e encourages adjudicating for variant weaponry analogs when faced with ad hoc weaponry, instead of defaulting into the Improvised Weaponry rule solely, so this lack of variation of known ad hoc setting-experiences is inexcusable. Farm equipment were notoriously pressed into weaponry use, so therefore too harpoons and gaffs are obviously a logical setting-contextual extention of the same principle. And yet we still have no designer-to-audience dialog on how to represent such variation, (with any subsequent advantages or penalties,) within the current edition's paradigm. Basically, if it ain't a character-based special exclusionary rule (race/class/feature/feat), it apparently ain't worth the designers' time and space -- and that solution is garbage on its face to gamers who don't share that old WotC song and dance.

I'm sincerely confused.  On one hand you're wanting more rules about edge cases and yet you're saying that older editions didn't need them.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904405Pathfinder is 3e-isms on crack. There is nothing I like about 3e, and even less in PF. And that still has nothing to do with the design gap in responding to setting-referential guideline discussions. You are arguing phantoms from your mind about me, and it just looks foolish.

I don't care much for 3e anymore either, but what you're asking for sounds like a lot of what they were trying to do.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904405You are presuming past editions wrote things like stereo instructions and everyone used them either verbatim, or threw caution and restraint to the wind. That sort of thinking leaves a massive gap where reality lies. Older editions talked to us players like adults, expecting us to naturally solve our own problems to our liking, but also asking us to give meaningful thought to setting and the needs of playability -- hence their solution examples.

Actually, and this may be just a local thing, but I've noticed that unless it's written down as a 'yes you can!' a lot of people will assume that it cannot be done.

Quote from: Opaopajr;904405There is little of that here in 5e nowadays with respect to tactics and gear. I am left with caltrops, ball bearings, and oil flasks to suss out all my design challenges. Oh, sorry, and Improvised Action and Improvised Weaponry. Think about that... This is laughably barren, with little talk on how they came to such rationales, mechanics, and difficulties. And at this point, it's really unacceptable if they are promoting this as some sort of "big tent edition."

Again, it's being left up to the DM to handle the edge cases and specialized equipment.

I think Opaopajr's idea about gear is a good idea.

You see it in a lot of "modern" games and I certainly think it's a valid component towards closing the gap on "caster vs. non-caster" scale. I mean, honestly, how much more overhead is it that Wizards get spells that absorb fairly large chunks of pagespace in a books in terms of how these spells impact the mechanics of the game as well as perpetuating certain assumptions and conceits of the game narrative - PLUS they scale mechanically, over options that could be limited to weapon and tool use that could offer certain classes/sub-classes - more options (preferably that scale). In terms of complexity? I think it's apples to apples. It can't be more, since spells vastly outnumber the taxonomy of weapon-types/groups in your bog-standard D&D game.

Edit: I think there's this knee-jerk reaction to the very idea - when it's sitting right there in the book, and has been there since Basic. Spells *are* the standard for increased complexity. I don't think what Opaopajr. is suggesting even comes remotely close to that fact. Does it increase it? Sure. But only for those that will directly benefit from it - non-casters mostly. And having said that - if one can play the "power-bloat card" on that, I'd love to hear how all the calls for more spells and more magic-systems and more spell-casting classes don't get that same reaction? (btw - I'm *not* trying to single you out Chris, I'm just talking in general).

Christopher, it sounds like we have such divergent experiences as to truly hamper mutual conversation about this. I could continue using the same Fantasy RPG vein, but if you never used it, there'll be no correlation and we'll just continue in circles. Let me see if I can carry on with tenbones' summation by using another RPG genre, the nature of "generally available" technology in modern/sci-fi games to bridge the power gap of exclusionary-design.

In a lot of modern/sci-fi RPGs "generally available" technology eventually equals, or even often supercedes, most other sources to power, including "quadratic sources" (/spits) such as psionics/magic/'disciplines'/'decking programs' and the like. The limiter then on such widely available technology then shifts into Wealth, Availability, and Specialization. Thus if the GM wants to kit out his "martial-only" players to the nines in their campaign they can readily do so as long as the GM adjusts access to Wealth, Availability, and Mission Relevance.

So, as in the laughable "power balance discussions" in Fantasy RPG genre between Knock spell and Lockpicking, any table can ramp up, or focus shift, their power dynamics by the mere adjustment of these 'Equipment Dials'. Basically it asks players: can you afford it, can you use it legally, and how generally applicable can it be used.

e.g. Want that crack special forces combat for a session arc? Increase the availability of military-grade weaponry, limit its 'legalized' field presence to that specific mission sphere, make it bad for stealth runs, and restrict back materiel when mission is done.

What this does is put setting rationales forefront. Furthermore it is more quickly interchangeable and its power more easily managed by GM setting adjustments. And this very same has been done before in the Fantasy RPG genre, the problem is it has been forgotten -- just like hirelings, encounter first impression reactions, et cetera.

We're only going to get power inflation faster from ignoring this very old design lesson. Reason is because that limits the discussion to only player-sided, character-specialized designs. And unless we re-introduce "spell/spell slot stripping" or "spellcasting muting/interruption," (another very old lesson from ages past,) to viably limit that "quadratic availability" (/spits three times) then we are getting into GMs receiving more resources to add to their game that they can never truly manage by taking away.