I get it, trying to cut down on a thousand different names for things that do the same thing. But, in this case, it's clunky and confusing. When you see the same word that many times it becomes background noise, and that noise is disrupting.
Class/Skill/General feats already do different things, why not give each thing a unique name.
Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with any good suggestions, so there's that. I guess Class Abilities, but that doesn't quite have the tone of choice. Skill Talents, maybe.
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But they're all feats. They are all chosen in the same way and have the same form. The reason you struggle with different names is because they all function in the same way. It makes perfect sense to me. They do the same things but they have different categories (hence Class/Skill/General).
Avoiding feat traps for combat in PF1 was exciting. They went ahead and done the same thing with Ancestry and skills for everyone's enjoyment :)
If if it helps, just translate "feat" to "choice" in your head.
So on even levels you make a class choice and a skill choice, and on odd levels you make either an ancestry choice or a general choice and also get something you don't choose.
It's just that "Fighter Feat" sounds a lot better than "Fighter Choice" when you put it on the page.
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Avoiding feat traps for combat in PF1 was exciting. They went ahead and done the same thing with Ancestry and skills for everyone's enjoyment :)
Pretty much. From what I've seen, they've just doubled down on feat taxes by requiring you to spend feats in order to multiclass with "dedication" feats, just so you can then spend more feats to get that other class's stuff, which were things everybody could do without a feat in 1e.
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Here's what you do (semi-serious):
Talking to a 3.5/PF1e Player (that refused 4e):
"Hey look! This isn't 4e! There's no silly daily or encounter powers. It might look that way, but it's just a bunch of feats! No powers here! Remember you you told me that you love feats?"
Talking to a 4e Player (that's alienated by 5e):
"Didn't you feel alienated by 5e and how all those amazing Powers went away! Look here at the Fighter chapter. I've used my sharpie to write the word Power and Exploit over whatever was here before. Feels like home right?"
Talking to a 5e Player (who played 3e before 5e):
"Getting a little bored with 5e? Don't you miss all those cool feats you could pick every other level? Check this book out, you can get one every level!"
I am running into some serious character customization issues right now.
I started with an easy character to convert: Sword and board slayer.
This is a character that uses a bastard sword and shield, and whose MO is to sneak up on people wandering into their territory and taking them out with a sneak attack. They're also a sturdy combatant that can stand in between an enemy and their Witch master using their trusty shield.
Sneak attack doesn't work with bastard swords or longswords. I could go down to a rapier, I guess, but Multiclass sneak attack doesn't scale and provides a meager 1d6 bonus damage at level 4. Doesn't seem worth losing shield feats for.
So, either abandon sneak attack and find something else suitable for an ambush based sword and board character, or switch to a rapier and spend two feats to get a ~3.5 extra damage on a successful sneak attack at level 4.
I'm also not thrilled with signature skills and skill ranks I have available starting with fighter.
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But they're all feats. They are all chosen in the same way and have the same form. The reason you struggle with different names is because they all function in the same way. It makes perfect sense to me. They do the same things but they have different categories (hence Class/Skill/General).
It makes perfect sense to me, just as a writer (and reader) it hurts my brain to see the repetition. I seriously can't look at the class advancement table because I just see the word feat and everything else gets drowned out.
It's not the end of the world, and I fully understand why they did it. I just don't like it.
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Exactly. A feat is a choice. The alternative to not having a feat is not having a choice.
Nope. That's a false dichotomy. Another alternative is calling something else, like I suggested.
But they're all feats. They are all chosen in the same way and have the same form. The reason you struggle with different names is because they all function in the same way. It makes perfect sense to me. They do the same things but they have different categories (hence Class/Skill/General).It makes perfect sense to me, just as a writer (and reader) it hurts my brain to see the repetition. I seriously can't look at the class advancement table because I just see the word feat and everything else gets drowned out.
It's not the end of the world, and I fully understand why they did it. I just don't like it.
You used the words "I" and "the" a lot there. Is that not too much repetition?
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You used the words "I" and "the" a lot there. Is that not too much repetition?
This is a red herring.
I'm not sure what the value is in calling one kind of feat something different given that they are all chosen the same way and use all the same rules. In cases like these it feels like adjectives are sufficient.
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I'm not sure what the value is in calling one kind of feat something different given that they are all chosen the same way and use all the same rules. In cases like these it feels like adjectives are sufficient.
Flavour. Different names are sometimes more evocative and help immersion in the setting. Look at the current keywording choices in games like Magic: The Gathering to see why, sometimes, calling a feat a feat is more mechanical than it wants to be in a game with a fantasy setting.
These things were all always Feat(ure)s you just had relativley little choice about which class features you took unless you archetyped.Using the sub-Feat words now that you can doesn't change the act you're learning to perform, or really make it easier/harder to grok.
It might actually risk confusion in new players about which feats they can buy in which circumstance. Add in the ten's of keywords that are now attached to make everything 'easier?' and you might actually have made everything harder.
Go and read about elegance in game design.
If class feats became class talents, there would still be repetition in wizard talent, fighter talent, rogue talent, monk talent. The text is still going to repeat the word talent after the class name. Someone will come along and say, why don't we give a unique name for each class' talent so we don't have to repeat the word talent needlessly.
Except when you're looking at the Wizard, Monk, Rogue, and Fighter tables you don't see talents listed for the other three classes unless a huge typo made it through editing. Plus codifying everything as a "talent" makes it simple to print a General feat called "extra talent" which nets you a new class feature, unlike before where we had extra Discovery/Talent/Exploit/Hex/whatever.
I also don't see how your argument of "everything is better when three different things use the same word across all the classes" is a better situation than "two things (which are the same thing effectively) use the same word across all the classes and the other thing uses a different word across all the classes".