F#ck Your Feat Wall

Please Note: Some of this series ("F#ck Your X," where X=a topic) will use strong language.  I come from a background where people can say their "f#ck yous", have a bite to eat, and laugh about it all.  Harsh language is there for spice & for laughs.  Arguments were between intellectual equals who wanted to hash out their differences.  They will make ideas and concepts stronger. 

I think it's vitally important to challenge each others' ideas.  Nobody is sacred.  No idea is unassailable, given the capacity for folks to engage in an actual discussion about the topic.  The same cannot be said for someone who refuses to engage, stands aloof, or slips straight into frothing rages.  Those aren't really arguments, or discussions.  I want discussion.

Feats

When AD&D 2nd Edition gave way to what would become 3rd Edition, I was truly excited.  When I picked up my copy of Dragon Magazine #264, I the article on page 28: Countdown to Third Edition.  No author was given but it was credited as, "courtesy of Vice President Ryan Dancey."

Once we got our 3rd Edition books & started gaming again, we had a lot of fun.  The concepts breathed life into our group.  The new mechanics were exciting & we wanted to explore these new idea spaces.  Months later, some of us realized there were some problems.

I think my biggest disappointment will be in what 3rd Ed. calls feats.  They seem like a character should be doing something extraordinary.  Google the definition of "feat" and Google itself will return the following: "an achievement that requires great courage, skill, or strength".  (link)  Dictionary.com shows the following definition: "a noteworthy or extraordinary act or achievement, usually displaying boldness, skill, etc."  (link) There is even a description built right into 3rd Ed. for extraordinary abilities, differentiating them from supernatural or spell-like abilities.  

"Extraordinary abilities are nonmagical, though they may break the laws of physics. They are not something that just anyone can do or even learn to do without extensive training." (link)  

Instead, what we got were lackluster things which added +2 to something, or locked mechanics behind feat walls until you could invest your limited number of feats & unlock them at higher levels.  There are several problems that arise from this.  

Builds vs. Class

The existence of feats creates an almost points based mini-game where feats, by their limited nature, become a kind of currency.  This isn't bad in and of itself, but it needs to be fully planned and explored.  But, the very existence of this concept vitiates the nature of a class.  (Now, I kind of don't like classes, so that isn't so bad.  More on this later.)  Your build takes priority over the class.  What you're playing isn't nearly as important as the build you use to do it.  This paved the way to character optimization which broke the game engine wide open like a bucket of buffalo wings on game night. 

Captive Mechanics

The next problem is the temptation of designers during the 3.x era to lock mechanics behind a feat.  Originally, there were examples of what could normally be done, and how the feat worked differently.  (More on this below.)  But, as time went on, the standards became fuzzy, leading to more and more mechanics being locked behind a Feat Wall.  Think: like a Pay Wall in a video game.  And much like the more problematic micro-transactions concept in video games, each new book would introduce more and more feats, sometimes slightly more powerful ones.  But, someone would have to buy those books to get at the new thing.  

Feat Chains made this problem even worse by making you go through multiple Feat Walls to get at what you want.  

They Kinda Sucked

With very rare exceptions (such as certain Metamagic Feats), the feats available to characters were utter disappointments. They were long on promise and short on delivery.  Look at Power Attack.  On page 84 of the 3rd Edition Players Handbook, it states the following: 

"On your action, before making attack rolls for a round, you may choose to subtract a number from all melee attack rolls and add the same number to all melee damage rolls. This number may not exceed your base attack bonus. The penalty on attacks and bonus on damage apply until your next turn"  (link) 

Note: The 3.5 SRD adds some special text doubling the damage bonus for two-handed weapons, and specifying the damage for other weapons.  But, these things weren't in the 3.0 version as published.  

 This actually makes it harder to hit when, for a melee type - it's your main shtick.  This made two already existing problems much much worse: 1) monsters had numbers of hit points that were very inflated over prior editions, and 2) characters already had a multiple attack penalty of -5 to each additional attack taken - despite being someone of higher level and supposed competence.  

So ... given the nature of the d20 to have an equal chance to return any number between 1 to 20, it is entirely possible for a player to not hit the broad side of a barn the entire night.  I've seen entire parties just uselessly flailing like complete morons until the DM just mercifully TPK'd the lot of us.  

Also, keep in mind that feats like Power Attack were the prerequisite for Cleave, Great Cleave,
Improved Bull Rush, Improved Sunder and any number of other feats chains.  

In general, the tiny one time bonuses provided by feats did not scale well, and the bonuses they provided were somewhat insulting for how few feats players had to spend.  A meaningless choice is no choice at all.  (See Hobson's Choice.  link) 

Adding insult to injury, metamagic feats seemed similar, but were inherently better than almost all other feats.  Why was this?  Because unlike melee, magic nearly always worked & spellcasters increased in power with each spell they could cast, making a metamagic feat always useful.  I don't want to get into the whole LFQW problem here, but I am acknowledging that it exists.  

Conclusion

Feats were a kind of bait and switch. They promised that you'd be some kind of awesome, but ... instead you kind of sucked.  You had to invest heavily into feat chains, narrowing yourself into a one trick pony, and then ... you were either entirely the slave of dice probability or had to engage in Mother May I with the DM to hand you situations where your one trick would work.  

This sucked.  Either make each individual feat kind of awesome as a discrete entity (leaning very awesome if they're so limited), or make the hard choice & provide an actual system of "alternative advancement" not tied to class & level, like Everquest's Alternative Advancement system.  ("The alternative advancement system is a non-level-based advancement options for those level 51 and above. It was originally one of the features of EverQuest: Shadows of Luclin.") (link)  Yes, this means adding a build point system into D&D.  But, it also means acknowledging that vertical advancement (levels, or class levels) are different than horizontal advancement (expanding options within a level by accumulating a wider horizontal base of competency).