Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Characters need more feats

I'm not looking for feats to break the game, but it'd be nice if there were an opportunity to pick some of the flavor oriented feats. instead, I constantly feel pushed into getting the more effective ones, thereby leaving behind the chance to have fun with things like Performer.

A lot of these feats aren't going to break the game if the characters get them. It will just make the experience better and allow players to get closer to building the character they envision.

The magical adept feats, for instance. It's just not overpowered if someone gets one of those. Or the skilled feat for some extra skill proficiencies that make sense to the player. Or maybe some extra weapon proficiencies.

*

I suggest that the characters be allowed to start with a flavor feat at level one, which would be limited to a handful of choices, and maybe get a chance to pick another one at level six. That's all. The list to choose from wouldn't include things like ability increases or gwm or alert.

*

Or attach a flavor feat to the background choices. The Acolyte, for instance, might get the magical adept cleric feat for free.

*

Something, anything to open this system up so more interesting characters can be built.

+1

That's absolutely true, in general, but that's a problem of the system rather than the game (with the exception of the Variant Human, not implemented here).

More specifically, the idea of having "flavorful feats" and "ASI" compete with each other has always been a weak point of the 5th edition's progression system, as the system implicitly punishes the player for trying to make a character unique rather than just optimizing.

In WotR I was overwhelmed by the incomprehensible wall of Feats the game was throwing constantly at the player.

With BG3/DND I was underwhelmed. Didn't like that I have to chose between ASI and Feats, it feels very restrictive. With the the limited amount of available subclasses and the lack of "prestige classes" in the game the builds can become a bit schematic. Many will try to bring "flavor" into their builds with multiclassing, but it's harder for beginners and you may easily lose a Feat on the way.

Bottom line: Gimme more subclasses please (and stop forcing Thief dips onto dual wielders). Variant Human sounds good too. Changes to the DND system? Not unless the DND veterans here signed off on it (not even kidding...)

I second this, I specifically remember in the old D&D games such as Neverwinter Nights starting you with a free feat, hell even old Icewind Dale, not to mention you would be able to get things like snake blood. The game looks like it's missing a ton of feats and aren't many for spellcasters. For example subvocal casting, allowing you to cast spells while silenced or deafened. There was also blind fighting, that's self explanatory and I'm pretty sure I could list more if I went digging.

I like the idea of a flavor feat and a system I saw once, not sure if it is in 5E, is to take disadvantages as well. In game for example Shadowheart freezes up around wolves.

It just now acured to me, weapon focus was also a thing, in just about every DnD game I can think of. In NWN and IWD You would basically focus on a certain weapon like a scimitar for example and you would get a +1 to attacks with that weapon and I think you could do it 3 times to the same weapon, 3rd being mastery. Old BG was up to 5 if you were a fighter but honestly 3 would be enough.

But when you really think about it, if they added all the missing feats, you would need a feat for every two levels for it to be worth while and just keep the powerful ones at certain levels as they are now, things like ability +2 or even +1, just to keep you from being overpowered but would also require enemies to be updated with feats as well.

This more like a DnD 5th edition issue more than a game issue.

And also not sure how it would riled up DnD fans because game added non-PHB/supplementary books rules.

I think our best bet is for mods.

The upcoming 2024 redo of 5E looks to be having characters start with a level 1 background feat. (Uber feats like great weapon mastery have a higher minimum level.)

All a bit too late for BG3 though.

Yeah, I like this idea. The feats we have are so poorly balanced, and the number of feats you can pick up so slim, that you're handicapping your characters by not giving them the same handful of meta options again and again. Separating them into a new category would be a fun way of handling this and adding some flavor customisation without nerfing the likes of Alert, Great Weapon Master/Sharpshooter, Savage Attacker, Tavern Brawler, War Caster, Ability Improvement, etc. (I also like the idea of picking up unique disadvantages a la Shadowheart's fear of wolves, if balance is an issue!)

I think that could be doable, like blind fighting for example. You could be more likely to hit while blinded but take a negative in attack rolls to a reasonable amount.

Let me just put it this way, we need more feats in general, especially ones that could be useful to specific classes, as I said earlier subvocal casting would be great but would also need "silence" a rework as a turn condition opposed to an avoidable bubble, a spell I never have on my list because it just about useless and we need dispel which is in all D&D games. Don't any of you give me that 5e excuse please. It's simply incomplete.

Before getting more feats available for choosing, I'd prefer to have characters who could choose more of the ones we already have. Instead of getting three over the course of 12 levels, maybe let the characters get five or six on average.

6 feats was the general idea. A feat every two levels with some exceptions, like "ability +" only available for every 4 levels or perhaps a cap to how many times it can be had.

I elsewhere recommend being able to trade xp in for feats at level 12

I also think this is a pretty good option!

One of my concerns pre-launch was how experience/leveling would be handled, seeing that I was able to consistently reach lvl 5 (max in EA) well before even approaching the Underdark. Now that the game has launched I find myself reaching lvl 12 less than 50% through Act 3 (closer to 25% if you are being thorough). This could easily amount to 10+ hours of the game with no real character advancement and adding 1 or 2 feats in place of additional levels would be cool.

That's actually a homebrew rule I've seen in tabletop games that are trying to keep player power somewhat under control- cap max level at 6 or 12, but give the players a new feat when they would normally level up. Works very well, IMO.

A D&D problem, but yes.

I think it's a bad design in 5e to force a choice between ability score increase or a feat. Who cares if the characters become a little bit more powerful getting both. Feats help make fun unique characters, but often it's better to just take +2 in your main stat. Having played 3e where ASIs and feats were separate, it's even more obvious that starving PC's of feats was not a good or fun design choice.

A simple solution might be that getting tadpole'd or having a prism guardian grants our characters some additional feats from the standard list. Or maybe the Tadpole boon is just to get a free ASI somewhere, so it's not tipping the scales so hard. If the standard feats were based on our XP this would also allow them to keep it going past the current lvl cap, and provide a campaign specific conceit for spiking the brew that way.

The benefit there might extend to Multi-classing too which already takes a hit due to the ASI nerf, unless you take a second class at the natural breakpoints for that (every 4 lvls), which is pretty limiting here since they capped it at 12. Means most wouldn't even consider flavor feats probably, or take them late which isn't as fun.