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I find that looking up a guide for the class I'm playing helps massively. They usually give pretty concise lists of good feats to pick from and why.
If you're learning system mastery: I wouldn't overthink it. There's nothing wrong with spending 30 minutes talking party options over a beer or two, I even enjoy it, as you can come up with synergy stuff that you might not otherwise think of.
Sometimes that kind of thing can put players into more of a team-oriented mindset than they'd usually be in as well.
It also can provide the GM with a bit of forewarning before you try to do some weird wacky strategy in game, which is helpful.
Hero lab has search fields in the feat selector, and The Comprehensive Pathfinder Guides Guide is a good reference for giving ideas in between sessions.
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It may look like there's a bajillion feats worth choosing but, once they become more familiar with the game, your group will likely find that there are really a rather small handful. Most people end up using a lot of the same feats over and over because some of them are just more useful or at least less situational than the rest of the dross.I think that this sort of highlights what the problem is. There are a vast array of feats, and only a small percentage of them are good. Unless you already know what the good ones are, all those other feats are things you have to read though and consider before rejecting and moving on to the next one.
For less experienced players, a curated list of feats is probably a good idea. If the GM can just disseminate a couple of lists like "feats I can guarantee to you are useful" and "feats you should avoid, even if they sound good" that's going to save people a lot of headache.
I agree wholeheartedly on being lenient with retraining if people are struggling with analysis paralysis when it comes time to pick a state. (I mean, I have to build a level 5 martial for next week, and I've been thinking about feats for four days now, and I haven't even gotten to buying equipment yet, and I'm not new to this; there's just a lot to consider.)
I agree, this is precisely the problem.
In fact, for all the well-versed expert players who wonder why anyone complains about bloat in Pathfinder, this is why. When more books are added, it just adds to the backlog that needs to be sifted through for the new player. Yes, this is not a problem for players that have learned how to glean through a list of feats quickly. This is not a problem for people who know how to plan out a character from 1-20.
Not everyone is like that. These people need to be able to play the game, too.
I like the solution of GM-vetted feat (and spell and equipment) lists. Another solution that I've used successfully with new players is start by asking them, "How do you want your character to improve over time? What do you want to do?" Then, as they give you their qualitative answers, share a build or two with them that gets them there. As the players gain more system mastery, you can start taking them off that system and let them build themselves up further.
It may look like there's a bajillion feats worth choosing but, once they become more familiar with the game, your group will likely find that there are really a rather small handful. Most people end up using a lot of the same feats over and over because some of them are just more useful or at least less situational than the rest of the dross.I think that this sort of highlights what the problem is. There are a vast array of feats, and only a small percentage of them are good. Unless you already know what the good ones are, all those other feats are things you have to read though and consider before rejecting and moving on to the next one.
For less experienced players, a curated list of feats is probably a good idea. If the GM can just disseminate a couple of lists like "feats I can guarantee to you are useful" and "feats you should avoid, even if they sound good" that's going to save people a lot of headache.
I agree wholeheartedly on being lenient with retraining if people are struggling with analysis paralysis when it comes time to pick a state. (I mean, I have to build a level 5 martial for next week, and I've been thinking about feats for four days now, and I haven't even gotten to buying equipment yet, and I'm not new to this; there's just a lot to consider.)
I agree, this is precisely the problem.
In fact, for all the well-versed expert players who wonder why anyone complains about bloat in Pathfinder, this is why. When more books are added, it just adds to the backlog that needs to be sifted through for the new player. Yes, this is not a problem for players that have learned how to glean through a list of feats quickly. This is not a problem for people who know how to plan out a character from 1-20.
Not everyone is like that. These people need to be able to play the game, too.
I like the solution of GM-vetted feat (and spell and equipment) lists. Another solution that I've used successfully with new players is...
+1
HeroLab helps to see most of the Feats, but you need to be really clear which books, APs, etc., you're using. And some of the really cool ones will be in some fringe splatbook, so you might miss out on a few that are really good without being OP.
Many Feats are too situational to be useful for most campaigns, but might be quite good for certain types/settings.
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It may look like there's a bajillion feats worth choosing but, once they become more familiar with the game, your group will likely find that there are really a rather small handful. Most people end up using a lot of the same feats over and over because some of them are just more useful or at least less situational than the rest of the dross.I think that this sort of highlights what the problem is. There are a vast array of feats, and only a small percentage of them are good. Unless you already know what the good ones are, all those other feats are things you have to read though and consider before rejecting and moving on to the next one.
I disagree that it's a small %. While probably 1/3 are so of the feats are junk - at least 1/2 are solid, at least in niche builds.
I did a thread a while back where I went through all of the feats which started with "A" - and I listed the ones which had potential and the ones which were junk - I think it was 57% or so which were potentially solid choices.
No one argued that the 57% were all at least solid in niche builds, but several complained that I'd put solid feats in the junk bin.
So - while I agree that there are a decent chunk of junk feats, and far more which are niche feats which new players may not recognize as such, but I'd guess that somewhere between 1/2 to 2/3 of the total feats are potentially good choices.
(I could definitely see potential for a list of 'Most Commonly Useful Feats'.)
A potentially fairly easy list for a GM to curate is a "these feats are pretty much intended only for NPCs, they're really too specialized or corner case to be useful to you" list.
Like the various "You explode when you die" or "you're really good at siege warfare" are great feats for campaign antagonists, but not good for players. "Master of the Ledger" is a fine feat for an NPC, but a PC needs to be level 6 (with 12 ranks in fairly narrow skills) to buy a small bonus to making money.
Come to think of it you could probably (fairly efficiently) separate all the feats into one of five bins: powerful (i.e. "these are feats you take other things to qualify for"), consistently useful, narrow/thematic, weak, NPC-only. Combine this with some advice about how much your players should distribute distribute their resources for non-combat situations versus combat situations (e.g. "you'll want at least 2/3 of your feats to be applicable in combat") and you could help players out a lot.
How about allowing the characters to develop organically and based 'solely' on what the character's are doing, or tried to do and failed to do, or wished they could do but couldn't. The more the players get into the mentality of the character the better they should be able to express what they'd like to do (and then it's up to you and them to pick from what should be a drastically narrowed down list.)
This is the way I play my characters and I love it! I level / Feat up in whatever is most appropriate to what the character has experienced in the story. Obviously, you need a certain campaign / similar play style / forgiving GM to do this, but it results in an endless array of interesting characters.
I still think about power a bit, but tend to err on what makes sense from the perspective of the character's arc in the story.
Happy to hear someone else considers this as well.
Another option: incorporate the books slowly. Start with Core only, then for the next campaign add the Advanced Player's Guide, etc. Don't throw them into the whole mess all at once.
There are a lot of ways to deal with feat hunting but unless you're building something weird a good chunk of what you need is going to be in the Core Rulebook and often the same range of feats. You can also go online to see feats in a more organized fashion, and you can look at guides that give you a list of good feats to take for your class.
But there is one way to just get rid of feats almost entirely. Rogue Genius Games has a book on Alternate Multiclassing rules from Pathfinder Unchained. In this there are multiclass packages that replaces all but the first feats. So after you pick up the obvious feat choice for first level you can just not deal with feats at all. Now this is suboptimal but if all the players are doing it things get way simpler and you can still function as an actual party.
Another option: incorporate the books slowly. Start with Core only, then for the next campaign add the Advanced Player's Guide, etc. Don't throw them into the whole mess all at once.
The problem though that as soon as you get to the point where you're using more than one book that has feats in it, it becomes simpler to look at all the feats in one place (on the SRD say) than have to refer back and forth between multiple books. Once you've gotten to the "looking at the big list of feats" restricting to only a few books adds the added complication of considering "is that legal for this campaign?"
So the first step, where you just use Core stuff works fine, but when you add in the APG then you'll have players looking at feats lists thinking "Is that APG, ARG, or ACG?"
I was thinking more along the lines ofIF YOU HAVE: Power Attack
> Cleave
> Improved Bull Rush
> Improved Drag
> Improved Overrun
> Improved Sunder
PFSDB has something like this. Like most DB sites, it shows the prerequisites for a feat - but I do believe it is the only site that shows what a feat is a prerequisite *for*.
Power Attack as a lot of feats that depend on it, and PFSDB lists them for you, so you can click and read each one and see if it is something you might want.
Further, the feat table of pfsdb is entirely queryable. You can filter out feats by source, type, or race, and you can also do text based searches - and they are linkable, even (as you'll see below).
For example, here are all feats that include the phrase 'bonus to ac': http://www.pfsdb.com/feats?search=bonus%20to%20ac
OP mentioned having a rogue that was interested in skill based feats - you can just search for the skill name. For example, here are all feats that involve acrobatics: http://www.pfsdb.com/feats?search=acrobatics.
Here are all feats that involve Stealth: http://www.pfsdb.com/feats?search=stealth
Here are all feats that involve the phrase 'sneak attack': http://www.pfsdb.com/feats?search=sneak%20attack
I hope this helps.