Featless?

I once touched on this on my EN World blog. In my quest to find simpler ways to run and play D&D 3.5 (particularly at high levels), I have done a lot of thought experiments and house rule experiments in my campaigns. One of the simplest ideas I think I ever came up with was to completely take feats out of the game. The idea might sound crazy, nigh irrational. After all, aren't feats one of the things that really makes 3.5 unique and customizable? But one thing I have noticed after over a decade of DMing is that feats are things players tend to agonize over. And they are entirely unnecessary. That's right, entirely unnecessary. I think the game works just fine if you get rid of feats.

So what exactly do I mean when I say get rid of feats? Well, I don't mean all feats. After all, the fighter has nothing if he doesn't have feats. There are basically two ways of approaching this. The simplest is to say that characters do not receive level-based feats. So the feats you get at 1st, 3rd, 6th and so on are entirely cut out. Class-based feats remain. Do this for monsters too and everyone is basically on a level playing field. The feats that add bonuses to monster stats are a little harder to extricate, but in my experience, they matter so little that the work to remove things like +2 from Iron Will is unnecessary, but you can do it on the fly with a bit of simple arithmetic. So characters would still get to pick bonus feats based on class such as fighter bonus feats. It is only the level-based feats that would be affected.

The second way to do this is to codify the exact feats that classes like the fighter and the wizard receive, such that they have no choice in the matter. "No choice in the matter? So my character is a cookie-cutter character?" Not exactly. There are still ways to customize your character. You can still multiclass and arrange your stats the way you want them. And classes like the fighter would probably have at least three paths to choose from. For example, one path would be for archery, one for two-handed weapon fighting, and one for sword-and-shield fighting (two-weapon fighting would remain the demesne of the ranger).

Bear in mind all of this is in the interest of simplifying character creation and encouraging players to try new things. With simpler rules for character creation it would be easier for a player to pick up two or three different characters (at a time) and give them a try without having to worry about planning the character out too much. I haven't tested this to its fullest extent, but I think it is worth considering, and I am leaning towards giving this a try for the new campaign I run.

One of the primary barriers I see to this is the fact that I tend to run my games in Eberron and it gives characters no technical means to acquire dragonmarks. Perhaps I could make dragonmarks character traits a la Unearthed Arcana. I also understand that 4e had a different mechanism for dealing with this which might warrant a look. Another means is to simply require some type of trade-off. A fighter could trade a bonus feat, or a cleric might trade a spell slot. But this will take a little bit of thought. Your comments are welcome!

-Marionnen