The first two I listed are feats that are provided freely as class abilities.  There's certainly a blurring of the lines.

The thing that feats do is they make it clear to the players what the rules are if they want to do something.  

I agree that feats can close off too much of the play space, but I think that comes from poorly defining what happens if you don't have a feat.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1098671The thing that feats do is they make it clear to the players what the rules are if they want to do something.

I don't think feats are the best way of doing that, but I certainly agree that gaming is better if players are on the same page as the GM about whether swinging on a chandelier and crashing through the window, before swinging their sword at someone makes it overall more or less likely that the character will hit with their sword. And is it more or less likely that instead of getting to attack the character instead will (a) fall flat on his back leaving him open to a counter attack or (b) take damage from deadly shards of glass.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;1098671I agree that feats can close off too much of the play space, but I think that comes from poorly defining what happens if you don't have a feat.

The best feats are those that specifically grant an exception to a clearly defined default rule. Feats that grant "exceptions" that make you have to go back and piece together what the default rule is supposed to be suck.

Attacking with two weapons in 5e is not attached to feats or classes. It is a function within the Combat chapter, limited by the keywords of said weapons. Anyway, this may not be the most fruitful expansion of whatever argument you guys are going on about.

If feats' justification can stand on its own, that would be more convincing that it is not a kludge.

I've never been a fan of feats, for the big reason laid out previously (the implication that without the feat, you can't even attempt the action).

It's for this reason that I enjoy GURPS' approach, where anyone can at least attempt pretty much anything a regular person could (for example, attack more than once in a turn; kip up from a prone position; trip/disarm; climb a sheer wall; duck-roll to reduce fall damage; do a backflip; etc.), but where extra-normal traits or abilities must be purchased (the ability to slice bullets out of the air with your katana; running and gunning with double pistols with a bonus instead of a massive penalty + skill cap; running up the side of a building; etc.) or learned/trained.

If strictly talking D&D approaches, I vastly prefer the stripped-down OSR variants to 'modern' D&D/PF feats (although I don't mind Proficiencies).