Why so few feats for for most of the classes?

Tegman

Mongoose
Hi,
I have played Star Wars d20 a little and I have some experience with the D&D d20 (have read some books etc) and I have a question.

Why does so many classes in B5 have so few feats, take the worst class, Workers, they get almost no feats at all? While Telepaths get a whole bunch of them.

Feats, as I have come to understand it, is very inportant in the d20 system, since it allows a player to customize their character.

Another example is the Soldier, in other games they get a lot of bonus feats so they can be specialized, but in B5 they don't get so many feats at all.

Can someone explain this to me?

Me and my players have made characters and I gave them all one extra feat for free, just so they would get some feats.

And yes, I know that characters get one generic feat at lvl 1, 3, 6 etc and that humans get one extra free feat, just like in every other d20 game.
 
First, I'm just a collector and by no mean a designer.
From my perspective, I think the designers choosed to tone down most of the classes compared to StarWars, because the former setting is much more "realistic" compared to SW which is the definition of cinematic.

While I agree with the general idea, it gets in conflict with the d20 system where most of the fun is expecting the next level to get the cool set of abilities and feats. That's why I always felt that B5 would work better in a point-buy system like GURPS or Tri-Stat. I found they work better with realistic settings.

If I ever get to GM B5 in it's current form, I'll let the players choose an extra feat at every level where there's no ability listed.

BTW, I found many feats to be underpowered, even for a realistic setting. Some of them require conditions so specific and give such a small bonus that one wonders why to bother taking them at all. I will boost them a little to make them more attractive. Sorry I don't have examples as I'm away from my books right now...
 
I normally have my players build their characters and I give them 1 free beginning feat that matches their background in my chronicle. Then, if things happen in game to show other social or political feats (Contacts, for instance) I might bestow them for free.

I just don't let them choose these freebies, otherwise you end up with eveyr crunch-monkey on the block being able to take on security head-on without fear and what not.

Thats my 2 creds worth...

Bry
 
B_Steele said:
I just don't let them choose these freebies, otherwise you end up with eveyr crunch-monkey on the block being able to take on security head-on without fear and what not.
Of course I always require the players to clear it with me first. They would have to justify how they'd get the feat in the context of the game, i.e. did they meet someone who could train them, or something in that vein. I'm lucky as my players are very collaborative and far from munchkins.
 
I'm pretty generous with giving out the odd feat here or there as a reward for role playing or a situational sort of thing. Makes for a cool little kudo for the player.
 
Glad I'm not the only one :) Yes I have also noticed that some of the feats are underpowered and I have also been thinking that noone will take them.

One feat, under the Xenoarcheologist, that the player receives automatically, gives one skillrank to a Knowledge skill that the character do not currently have, I think I'll change that one to something higher, seems a little too low. Ok, it's free, but it doesn't give much.

The idea of giving a bonus feat for every level that doesn't give the character one, is a good idea, I think I'll go with that too. Many feats need some very hefty prereqs and characters will get those around lvl 15, it seems like, if you use the current system.

However, in the end it's up to the GM how he likes to run his campaign, but I for one will give out extra feats.

Thanks for the replies guys.
 
The main reason for the soldier class being tamed down so much is that THERE IS NO ARMOUR PROFICIENCIES! you dont have to throw 3 feats to be able to wear a space suit... it reflects the fact that everyone in theory basically already /has/ those feats regardless.. soldier as a class name is always a bad one for most campaigns.. take star wars.. you take soldier to become a martial artist, if you do or dont have the rest of the junk that goes with it... the classes in this system are alot more ballanced in so many ways.. its just down to the GM being good enough to be able to make the players realis this.. afterall, a p13 minbari would be useless designing a space craft unless they multiclass.. so you have to now think outside the box more to get yourself to where you envision it being..
 
First off yeah people I was in games with would give you feats that made sense if you were going towards them so it's good to hear others having the same idea.

As for the class names it basically boils down to something that gives you an easy reference, no matter how far off it may actually be. In one B5 game I played a scientist, which of course meant I was the mechanic. Makes little sense I know but B5 can't have a tech specialist espeically since that name has been taken by Star Wars. For the Soldier class in most sci-fi games it boils down too the combat type, and since combat type sounds stupid for a class name in addition to Fighter being taken by fantasy, they have to have something that denotes a chance to be part of a larger army. Now if the army has a dojo as opposed to a barracks, oh well. I honestly don't see as much of a problem with some of the class names out there.
 
For me the key to any class should be flexibility allowing the classes to represent the broadest range of types. For example we almost never see minbari / rangers using ranged weaponry, much prefering close quarter combat (indeed this was true for the majority of the series, when ranged combat was used it often led to the death of one of the parties involved). I think it would have been much better for the rules to reflect this by having a lot of hand to hand / melee combat feats to encourage close quarter fighting. Every soldier for example gets covering fire and a proficiency in a vehicle or heavy weapon, it would be nice instead to have the option for an exotic weapon such as the den bok for minbari (they aren't just used by rangers and lots of other races have them exotic weapons not den bok).
I think this was true of a lot of the classes that seemed to take a human-centric view of the class rather then allowing for the different type of training that would be provided for with different species (a Gaim soldier with covering fire???).
Also for a game where combat is meant to be discouraged a lot more social class abilities / feats would be nice ( I always felt star wars had a nice range of social options available as have other d20 products including a game of thrones ). I think having the agent be more socially orientated would been much better particularly as it was meant to represent two of the most social animals in the universe ( morden and refa ).
 
Actually it makes sense that most militaries would give their soldiers similar training (even the Gaim would know how to use their weapons to cause other troops to dive for cover). However as far as the feats in general are set up right now it would make sense to have more social feats and to have other feats be a bit more useful. There are some that either need a bigger benefit or fewer steps to get to. I dunno I'd have to look back through to see which ones could use the biggest tweaks.
 
Well i was thinking of the gaim that protect the queen that are multlimbed and equiped with claws. I can't recall if they have moveable appendages, but from the descriptions i don't think gun training was high on the list of priorities. But it's not just the gaim in theory other more primitive species wouldn't have much use for it and even though the soldier doesn't have to work for every conceivable species i much prefer classes that give players the option to choose from a variety of abilities. It was something that bugged me more in star wars where there really were species that wouldn't have used half the bonus feats of the soldier class but still needed to spend a bonus feat slot to pick up there exotic weapon.
 
Exeter said:
It was something that bugged me more in star wars where there really were species that wouldn't have used half the bonus feats of the soldier class but still needed to spend a bonus feat slot to pick up there exotic weapon.

Me, I'd apply common sense...
 
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