For the next several weeks, I’m going to be migrating several of my old posts from the original version of Loot the Body to this new version. I’ll be going in chronological order, and they will be posted every Wednesday. They will be minimally edited (there are a few wherein I promised future posts that will likely never be completed). Also, they will be posted without any of the pretty pictures I had, nor my witty captions. And that’s mostly because those pictures are gone off my hard drive and it would be far too difficult to retrieve them.

To start us off, I present my very first post written about 5e, on the narrative of feats.

This post was originally published on January 5, 2015.

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It took me a while to like feats in 5e. My first impression was actually quite negative. But, as in life, first impressions of RPGs are bullshit. And as I examined the feat system and its narrative potential, I grew to adore it.

See, my first real edition, wherein I understood what was happening behind the screen of the game, was D&D 3.5, and feats functioned very differently back then than they do now. Back then, feats were special abilities or bonuses that you gained as you increased in level, representing a constant march forward into superhero-levels of power. And that works great for that system. There are literally THOUSANDS of feats in 3-3.5e (not to mention Pathfinder), so having a suite of automatic feats that you gain as you increase in level seems appropriate. And, for a while, it seemed that such a style was the status quo. Pretty much every OGL-compatible game out there uses feats the same way, from Mutants and Masterminds to Iron Heroes (though IH does have some neat ideas in creating a more dynamic feat-character relationship). Hell, feats were one of the things that basically remained unchanged as 4e launched, and the folks over at Paizo essentially maintained the status quo with the launch of Pathfinder. Feats have essentially remained exactly as they have always been for close to 15 years.

Then 5e had to come around and fuck it all up. And in the process of flipping the table and shaking up the feat system, they created a concept and a system which is entirely genius.

Before I dive in, let me first define the 5e feat system, as well as how it differs from the systems of old. In 5e, a character gains Ability Score Increases as class abilities as they increase in level in their class. Certain classes gain more increases than others (fighters and rogues, in particular), but the minimum seems to be 5. A character may, at their discretion, instead choose a feat rather than an ability score increase.

This differs from previous systems because, as I mentioned before, feats used to be automatic. The same goes for Ability Score Increases. They were separate entities gained within the level-up progression, measured differently within the balance of the system. They were also NOT tied to class. This is integral to the narrative of feats in 5e. It was assumed that all characters would gain the same number of feats and the same number of ability score increases as they progressed.

From Character Level to Class Level

As I mentioned, the tie between Class Level and Ability Score Increases/Feats (I’m going to call them ASIs from here on out, as I predict it’s going to come up a lot.), rather than Character level, is extremely important to how feats function within 5e. In part, this is intended to balance multiclassing in 5e. It is excessively easy to multiclass in this edition, and there doesn’t seem to be much of a penalty for doing so. However, by tying ASIs to class level, you ensure that multiclass characters do not gain excessive power as they increase in level. That Fighter 3/Wizard 3/Bard 3 might be able to do a lot of cool things, and might have access to heavy armor and some pretty cool spells, but they are also a level 9 character who has gained no increases to their ability scores, nor feats. While their single-class compatriots are all benefiting from at least 2. This puts them 4 ability points ahead of the multiclass character, or up to 2 feats. And feats in 5e are friggin’ badass, so that can be a big damn deal.

However, while the balance note is important, I find another aspect to this link between class level and ASI/Feat progression much more interesting. It changes what feats MEAN, within the context of the game world and the characters who gain them. Back in the old days, feats were treated as tricks you picked up along the way. Things you learned through combat, experimentation, or research. ASIs were the same way, representing your character’s natural inclination toward getting naturally stronger.

In 5e, that all changed. ASIs and feats are no longer things that just happen to your character. They’re representative of where your character’s focus lies, and how much attention they must pay to their studies as a fighter/wizard/rogue/etc. Why, do you think, a fighter gains more ASIs than a Wizard? The mechanical/traditionalist answer is that fighters have always been feat-masters, gaining a bunch of feats as they go. Therefore the best response to that would be to grant them more ASIs and, therefore, more potential feats. And while that’s likely true, I prefer the answer that draws a connection between the mechanics of the system and the narrative it is trying to tell.