D&D 5th Editon Discussion: 6th thread and counting

[Grundy]

Silly Knaight, that's not how D&D ethics works! It only counts if you do it to a PC race. Drow, Orcs, Goblins, Elementals, you can do anything you want to them with no consequences to your alignment.

You know, it does raise some really basic problems with a whole host of binding effects from previous editions- why wouldn't the bound entitie's friends, family, or at least allies come along and either persuade the caster to stop, or curbstomp the offending caster for their temerity- depending on the entities' disposition.

[Knaight]

You know, it does raise some really basic problems with a whole host of binding effects from previous editions- why wouldn't the bound entitie's friends, family, or at least allies come along and either persuade the caster to stop, or curbstomp the offending caster for their temerity- depending on the entities' disposition.

What is described happening to elementals is particularly egregious. Even summoning is pretty bad - calling someone up from wherever they were to the middle of horrific violence isn't exactly morally good; even if they can't die they can probably still feel pain and still have to deal with the trauma of being involved in all that violence. However, at the end of the day, it's one minute. The planar ally spells aren't as bad bad, as it's a particularly intrusive job offer. Then there are the elementals - bound to golems and enslaved for life, bound to airships and enslaved for life, so on and so forth. And yet the creation of a golem is seen as neutral in D&D, while the creation of a skeleton (which destroys a corpse and doesn't actually affect the person) is somehow evil.

Added to that, the creation of a few skeletons and their use is supposed to bring adventurers to your doorstep. It's a dangerous risk, because of what the reaction to evil is in D&D. Kidnapping and enslaving an elemental under horrible conditions should get the exact same response from adventurers of some sort, on top off the way other elementals react.

[Craft (Cheese)]

It'd be more acceptable of elementals were fluffed as being mindless. Actually, why aren't they? There's plenty of sapients who live in the inner planes.

[TopCheese]

My general guidelines for item creation are:

a) Item creation should be possible for PCs. If the PCs have the power to kill demons and gods, it should be within their capabilities to make stuff. Item creation should also be practical – it shouldn't require jumping through a ludicrous number of hoops.

b) Item creation should be cheaper than buying the same item from someone else. This is economics 101. If making an item costs the same as buying it from a shop, no-one will make items.

c) To balance out a) and b), item creation should require some amount of character creation resources. If everyone can make magic items, there's no scarcity. You should need to spend feats (or skill points, or build points, or whatever) to do it.

At the moment I quite like the Pathfinder model for doing it: PCs can create items for 50% of their value, assuming they have the time, item prerequisites, and feats to do so. Effectively, an item creation feat is trading a feat slot for gold (and for the ability to make your own stuff instead of relying on other people to do it). The 50% mark is a logical one because that's also the basic sell value for items.

Not everyone likes item crafting, but some people do, and it would be pretty silly to refuse to include a system for item crafting just because not all the players will use it.

These are good guidlines, my groups tend to follow the same thought process.

However and this is where D&D failed... I understand a mage has the magical ability to make an item but why do they have the physical? A magic sword needs to be forged something a wizard of low str/con wouldn't be able to handle. Heck even a necklace would need to be HIGH quality not to break in normal activities

I like the idea of item creation being 2 feats.

Item Creation (magic): Prerequesites based on spell casting abilities

Item Creation (craft): Prerequsites based on physical stats and or skill that are trained in.

Since the magic and the item must be used/created at the same time...

You need both to make a cheap magic item (1/2 market price) or you pay someone to help make it at (3/4 market price). The reason it cost more is cause 1/4 the market price goes to the help that has the other item creation feat.

Now a guild of mundane ppl can stop wizards and clerics from creating christmas throughout the land.

[Anderlith]

Or what if the other elementals weren't happy with their kind being bound into slavery for humans and demihumans? Or say that at least some humans and demihumans have the basic ethical sense to see that binding someone to a piece of technology for the rest of their life simply because it is convenient to you is wrong, and choose to oppose it.

I'm not opposed to the inclusion of elemental binding at all, but it certainly shouldn't be treated as anything other than a vile, despicable, selfish act. There is absolutely no way that it should be treated as acceptable if minor necromancy is portrayed as horrible, given that enslaving a person is somewhat worse than desecrating a corpse.

This would be especially interesting if binding wasn't a risk-free proposition. What if the element was imperfectly bound and either had some agency, or could work itself free?

Yes this is a tricky subject with lots of contrasting moral greys. I know that in my Eberron games, druids are really angry about airships. One even brought down the airship my players were traveling on. Lots of fun that session.

I agree with Craft (Cheese) elemental should be mostly mindless, gaining in sentience & intellect as they get more powerful.

[Beleriphon]

Honestly, I think if they want to keep +x magic items, they should go back to +x vs y magic items. They can keep the generic +1 items if they want, but anything better than that should be vs some creature, attack or other thing, and it should be very specific. +3 vs goblins, +2 against fire so on and so forth. Sure on the one hand, this is adding more book keeping that players have to do, but I think the little book keeping it adds is a valid trade off to reducing stat inflation while still making basic magical items easy to create without also making them "Wonderous" items. And it's not like it's withou precedent. Plenty of mythological items were useful against just one or two foes. Even in LOTR, look at Sting, a magical sword that was only useful around Orcs, and was otherwise just a pretty sword.

So basically you'd want something like all magic weapons are +1 to hit and damage by default, but some of them are are also +X to hit and damage vs Y? That seems petty reasonable.

[Surrealistik]

Put together a Monk class sketch for the playtest:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...7#post13826027

[navar100]

This actually seems like an area where you could use the 4e multiple weapon dice fairly well. If you get +1 die per +1, but no attack it might be more reasonable (+5d12 is the maximum, for an average of +32.5 damage, but there is really no need to have +1 through +5). That places the +x line as worth using, but leaves other effects as viable.

I liked that approach as well. It's fun to roll dice , and expecting something different for a new edition it was a nice something different. However, what I didn't like was that a flaming sword just did regular damage as any other sword but its "color" was changed to fire. It effectively made no difference except for combats against specific creatures that had fire vulnerability. Against every other foe it was just a sword, so there was nothing special about it.

I'm not going to mind magic weapons providing effects, but I want those affects to mean something for every/most combats. I accept a bane weapon only doing extra stuff against specific creatures. They've existed before 4E. However, for more generic magical effects, I want it to be something in addition to the basic weapon damage, not instead of as in 4E.

[Dublock]

I'm not going to mind magic weapons providing effects, but I want those affects to mean something for every/most combats. I accept a bane weapon only doing extra stuff against specific creatures. They've existed before 4E. However, for more generic magical effects, I want it to be something in addition to the basic weapon damage, not instead of as in 4E.

Personally I would like it if magic items are rare but the most common are the damage type, and then rarer is the type that helps in most combats.

That gives you something you can give out for players sometimes but when the group gets an item that is useful most times, their face goes from to .

For the high magic, then yea I can see more of the useful for most situations, but I would like to keep those rare if I want to :)

[DrBurr]

So for those wondering when the next Packet may arrive according to their D&D Next Panel today at PAX we'll likely see it in October and I believe the planned features were Magic Items and Levels 6-10. Of course lots can happen in a month

[ImperiousLeader]

The Grid combat module would be nice. If only to see how they plan to implement larger modules, we haven't seen much of this feature of 5e yet and they've mentioned it was on the list until they decided to do a revamp of the fighter.

That and I'm interested in the other core classes, Druids, Rangers and Paladins, etc. Druid is my favourite class, I hope it retains its Primal power from 4e, I like them as neither Arcane nor Divine spellcasters.

[Nu]

They confirmed that you will be able to choose your own skills and feats if you don't want an existing specialty or background, and fighters will be able to cherry pick abilities if they want(rogues will likely not, as their abilities build on eachother). They also emphasized trying to make each class unique(and if it's not unique it'll be an option on another class, like archery fighter). So Paladin and Ranger will use different systems than fighter, cleric, or druid.

The first question that comes to my mind when I hear this is: then why have those things at all? In the time I've played DnD (which is relatively short admittedly, I started playing towards the tail end of 3.5), I have never seen a player pick a pre-packaged "official suggested" build when they had the option to instead choose their own features/abilities/whatever you want to call them. Because it sucks to not get new tricks when you level up (after what three adventure paths), and it sucks even more to have them all chosen for you by someone who likely has no idea how their own game works. And let's be realistic guys, WotC doesn't have a great track record for recognizing the best options for the classes they create.

On a different note, I watched the stream of the PA/PvP DnDNext live game. It consisted of a single encounter that lasted almost two hours, during which the monsters never posed a threat to the PCs, and the only reason they were ever in any danger was an acid pit trap and their own silliness. Now, that's not entirely fair and certainly not the norm, considering how much time was eaten up by them cracking jokes at each other, and they obviously had a good time, but I did find it kind of funny. I do think that type of combat though is not the kind of combat that I like to run or engage in, where monsters have almost no chance to threaten or even hit the PCs and the PCs kill five or more of them every round.

[Yora]

I often play with new players and I think for almost all of them picking background and specialization would have been perfectly fine.

[Anderlith]

I have one guy (maybe two) in my gaming group that hates character generation & would rather me make his character than make it himself, I feel like he would snatch on to to new prepackaged stuff very fast.

[Nu]

I often play with new players and I think for almost all of them picking background and specialization would have been perfectly fine.

That sounds good in theory, but in practice I have never seen a new player that actually wants to have their options chosen for them.

Maybe that's just the crowd I hang out with, but then again, that's mostly new players as well, and they still want to choose their own stuff.

[Craft (Cheese)]

That sounds good in theory, but in practice I have never seen a new player that actually wants to have their options chosen for them.

Maybe that's just the crowd I hang out with, but then again, that's mostly new players as well, and they still want to choose their own stuff.

I have: Last year during a power outage my younger sister got bored enough that she agreed to letting me run a solo session for her, with her as player and me as DM. She got really confused when I tried to explain what attribute scores were, so I just said "**** it" and made her character for her, just letting her roll dice whenever she needed to.


My experience with this revealed three problems with WotC's mindset here.

1. My sis is not stupid. She's capable of grasping things much more complicated than D&D when she wants to. But that's precisely the problem, she was only playing because she was bored and wasn't invested at all in learning the system, so rather than try to puzzle it out she just filtered the mechanics talk like it was just noise. Pre-gen options are useful for people like that but is this really the demographic WotC wants to try to appeal to? I guess the idea is after letting them play a few sessions like this they'll get interested in how the game actually works, but even though she seemed to have fun with it she's never asked me to play with her again.

2. For people who find the char-gen process too complicated, even the act of picking pre-generated packages is still too complicated.

3. Our session was practically freeform: After the char-gen choices are gone, the complexity of the system in use no longer has anything that remotely resembles a justification. It would have been much better for both of us if we played something like Wushu or Risus or even FATE instead. And yes, the much simpler core system 5E sports is still way too complicated for this type of game.

[DrBurr]

The first question that comes to my mind when I hear this is: then why have those things at all? In the time I've played DnD (which is relatively short admittedly, I started playing towards the tail end of 3.5), I have never seen a player pick a pre-packaged "official suggested" build when they had the option to instead choose their own features/abilities/whatever you want to call them. Because it sucks to not get new tricks when you level up (after what three adventure paths), and it sucks even more to have them all chosen for you by someone who likely has no idea how their own game works. And let's be realistic guys, WotC doesn't have a great track record for recognizing the best options for the classes they create.

On a different note, I watched the stream of the PA/PvP DnDNext live game. It consisted of a single encounter that lasted almost two hours, during which the monsters never posed a threat to the PCs, and the only reason they were ever in any danger was an acid pit trap and their own silliness. Now, that's not entirely fair and certainly not the norm, considering how much time was eaten up by them cracking jokes at each other, and they obviously had a good time, but I did find it kind of funny. I do think that type of combat though is not the kind of combat that I like to run or engage in, where monsters have almost no chance to threaten or even hit the PCs and the PCs kill five or more of them every round.

Keep in Mind that the Penny Arcade group are Level 10 which still doesn't have any monsters designed for it to give them an appropriate challenge, and take note they killed almost all of the Lizardmen in like 15 to 20 minutes and then continued to crawl up a demon and throw each other in Acid while Binwin did clean up.

I think its safe to say the Penny Arcade game is very atypical and likely doesn't refelct on how many groups would play the game but in the end I laughed and they had fun so they succeeded.

[1337 b4k4]

That sounds good in theory, but in practice I have never seen a new player that actually wants to have their options chosen for them.

For plenty of players, the game is a social event, not an exercise in character optimization. In the groups I've played with in the past, about half the players had no interest in the actual mechanics and how all the pieces fit together, tey were concerned with playing and having a good time. For them, pre-gen packages designed around a particular theme is exactly what they need.

Also, let's be honest here, plenty of the most hard core mechanics people tend to use pre made builds too, they're just third party builds.

Pre-gen options are useful for people like that but is this really the demographic WotC wants to try to appeal to?

To a degree yes. By definition, to grow the hobby, you have to attract people outside the hobby. A non-trivial chunk of those people are turned off by the amount of material necessary to know just to start playing the game.

For people who find the char-gen process too complicated, even the act of picking pre-generated packages is still too complicated.

Which is hopefully why they'll stick with the pre-gen packs being designed around themes. Basic character types are easy enough for most people, and should be a good way to get a new player to start, the question becomes less "what class do you want, what powers do you want" which is answered with "I want a rouge, who has backstab and sly flourish etc etc" it's more of a "What sort of person do you want to play?" which is answered with "I want a sneaky ninja assassin dude."

[Knaight]

For plenty of players, the game is a social event, not an exercise in character optimization. In the groups I've played with in the past, about half the players had no interest in the actual mechanics and how all the pieces fit together, tey were concerned with playing and having a good time. For them, pre-gen packages designed around a particular theme is exactly what they need.

Being concerned with playing and having a good time is enough to not necessarily want pre-gens. Even if you have no interest in the mechanics, you likely care about the character stylistically, and will want to make something that fits the style. Unless there are a lot of options, or you are going for a well supported archetype with little variation, that probably means building the character.

[Dublock]

Being concerned with playing and having a good time is enough to not necessarily want pre-gens. Even if you have no interest in the mechanics, you likely care about the character stylistically, and will want to make something that fits the style. Unless there are a lot of options, or you are going for a well supported archetype with little variation, that probably means building the character.

A lot of people whom fits that type wants a generic archetype, Aragorn, Legolas, Healer bot Cleric, blaster wizard, Gimli, etc. The people who just want to play without wanting or being bothered are (usually) the ones that do just want an archetype that they know from the movies, stories, etc.

Its something for them and they are using it as a way to develop the game I say thats a win-win.

[Knaight]

A lot of people whom fits that type wants a generic archetype, Aragorn, Legolas, Healer bot Cleric, blaster wizard, Gimli, etc. The people who just want to play without wanting or being bothered are (usually) the ones that do just want an archetype that they know from the movies, stories, etc.

Its something for them and they are using it as a way to develop the game I say thats a win-win.

However, the list of common generic archetypes is inevitably larger than the list of pre-gens. Say someone wants a heavily armored horse archer - that's not much, but I'd be willing to bet that D&D 5e isn't going to be cooperative, and you'll be building it from the ground up.

[AgentPaper]

However, the list of common generic archetypes is inevitably larger than the list of pre-gens. Say someone wants a heavily armored horse archer - that's not much, but I'd be willing to bet that D&D 5e isn't going to be cooperative, and you'll be building it from the ground up.

Actually, you just choose to be a fighter with the archer fighting style. You can already wear heavy armor as a fighter, and if you want to get on a horse, then you get on a horse. You probably won't be spending all that much time actually on a horse, though, unless your setting is set up for it. Horses don't do very well in dungeons after all.

Also, the way the themes are set up, it's very easy to slowly move players from just going with what they get to choosing everything on their own. For the fighter especially, you can choose one of the fighting styles, then if you get to a level and you don't like the ability it has set out for you, then you simply choose a different one instead.

Eventually, a player who started out as just choosing one of the pre-gen packages will get a better feel for what abilities they want, and they'll likely start making characters completely from scratch instead. Or maybe they'll decide that they're fine with just getting whatever abilities, and are more worried about the storytelling or tactical side of the game, rather than the character optimization portion.

[Nu]

Keep in Mind that the Penny Arcade group are Level 10 which still doesn't have any monsters designed for it to give them an appropriate challenge, and take note they killed almost all of the Lizardmen in like 15 to 20 minutes and then continued to crawl up a demon and throw each other in Acid while Binwin did clean up.

I think its safe to say the Penny Arcade game is very atypical and likely doesn't refelct on how many groups would play the game but in the end I laughed and they had fun so they succeeded.

I'm pretty sure they were actually level 5 in this encounter. The "sheets" included in the link for Podcast #4 are those of level 5 characters, anyway. Also, Jim's max HP was 21, which I think is rather low at level 10, even for a wizard (and 21 HP matches the value listed on the level 5 sheet I have for Jim Darkmagic).

[TheOOB]

The first question that comes to my mind when I hear this is: then why have those things at all? In the time I've played DnD (which is relatively short admittedly, I started playing towards the tail end of 3.5), I have never seen a player pick a pre-packaged "official suggested" build when they had the option to instead choose their own features/abilities/whatever you want to call them. Because it sucks to not get new tricks when you level up (after what three adventure paths), and it sucks even more to have them all chosen for you by someone who likely has no idea how their own game works. And let's be realistic guys, WotC doesn't have a great track record for recognizing the best options for the classes they create.

D&D 3e was a very complex system(more complex than it strictly needed to be), so it didn't appeal to casual players. The game was also very mechanically dense, so it didn't appeal to more freeform-y story drive folks.

They are now trying to make the game more accessible, which means providing options to new players(many casual players don't like making decisions). Also it always someone to craft their story, and get mechanics to go with it.

Remember that themes and what not were actually fairly popular in 4e.

Another tid bit from PAX. This was mentioned in passing, and they mentioned it's still in the hypothetical stages, but they said they don't want specialist wizards to just get extra spell slots. They suggested specialist wizards may get abilities they can cast at will or encounter based, or maybe be able to recharge their specialty school spells. The idea being an illusionist, for example, can cast illusions all the time. They cast other spell just fine, but they can't do so as often.

[Nu]

D&D 3e was a very complex system(more complex than it strictly needed to be), so it didn't appeal to casual players. The game was also very mechanically dense, so it didn't appeal to more freeform-y story drive folks.

They are now trying to make the game more accessible, which means providing options to new players(many casual players don't like making decisions). Also it always someone to craft their story, and get mechanics to go with it.

Remember that themes and what not were actually fairly popular in 4e.

I like themes in theory, really, because they only add to a character, they do not take away options. That's the main problem I have with specialties, they take away the ability to choose your own feats. Also I personally have sort of a love/hate relationship with themes, as a player I like them, as a DM I thought they represented power creep. With that said, I have allowed them in my games, because I feel that it's not so severe a power creep that it's worth limiting player options.

I do not actually have a problem with specialties existing (though I do question if they're really worth the design space, again, never saw anyone take a prepacked character because it sucks*), though I do find it odd that up until this point in the playtest they have presented specialties as the ONLY way to get feats, if that is in fact not the case. It seems to me it would've been better to present the feats first and specialties later, so players could fiddle around with selecting their own feats and testing out various combinations.

*And to clear up a misconception I saw pop up earlier, I don't think that most of us who are interested in the mechanical side of a character just copy other people's builds (though if we did it would be irrelevant to the point). When I look at an optimization guide, I'm not looking for a build, I'm looking to be warned what options are "traps," I.E. strictly worse than other existing options, and generally looking to be reminded of good options that I may forget when a game has 100+ choices for a particular option. It's easier on me when I'm browsing a list of "20 blue and light blue feats" than "300 feats that I qualify for."

[TheOOB]

I like themes in theory, really, because they only add to a character, they do not take away options. That's the main problem I have with specialties, they take away the ability to choose your own feats. Also I personally have sort of a love/hate relationship with themes, as a player I like them, as a DM I thought they represented power creep. With that said, I have allowed them in my games, because I feel that it's not so severe a power creep that it's worth limiting player options.

I do not actually have a problem with specialties existing (though I do question if they're really worth the design space, again, never saw anyone take a prepacked character because it sucks*), though I do find it odd that up until this point in the playtest they have presented specialties as the ONLY way to get feats, if that is in fact not the case. It seems to me it would've been better to present the feats first and specialties later, so players could fiddle around with selecting their own feats and testing out various combinations.

*And to clear up a misconception I saw pop up earlier, I don't think that most of us who are interested in the mechanical side of a character just copy other people's builds (though if we did it would be irrelevant to the point). When I look at an optimization guide, I'm not looking for a build, I'm looking to be warned what options are "traps," I.E. strictly worse than other existing options, and generally looking to be reminded of good options that I may forget when a game has 100+ choices for a particular option. It's easier on me when I'm browsing a list of "20 blue and light blue feats" than "300 feats that I qualify for."

I think specialties are worth it. They help bring casual players and more role play focused players in, which alone is worth it. They also do something else though. A specialty helps to ensure that they have created a good level 1-20 progression of feats for a given type of character. That is, if you want to use your feats to make a defender type character, there will be feats for all 20 levels for that, instead of being a single feat line that runs after a few levels, and hopefully, all combined they will make a viable character.

Also, at PAX they said to expect the next playtest document around October, and to expect levels 1-10.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The idea of themes and/or specialties being a preset list of abilities isn't a bad one in and of itself. Kits, PrCs, and Paths/Destinies are all short lists of preset, prepackaged abilities with a cool name that you choose to customize your character, and the devs mentioned a connection between themes and PrCs when mentioning that there might be "advanced themes" only accessible at higher levels. The problem is that in prior editions we've had those prepackaged advancement plus selectable advancement in the form of feats, and so far specialties and combat styles (schemes look pretty good so far) combine the locked-in advancement of PrCs/Paths with the lameness of many 3e/4e feats without providing the benefits of either (being a major defining feature and being modular, respectively). If specialties and combat styles had all the punch and pizazz of the stronger and more flavorful PrCs/Paths I doubt there would be as much resistance to their current inflexible form.

Having a preset progression for abilities can be good for newer or more casual players, which is why classes like the 3e barbarian and full-list casters classes are good to have: they provide all of their class features in one package, no pre-selection required, and allow for players to fiddle around with things in play without needing to build anything. The 3e fighter and sorcerer may have been intended as "beginner" classes (make anything you can imagine, just pick some feats or spells and go), but I'm sure we've all seen what can happen when new players make bad choices and get stuck with them, so obviously limiting options for newbies is a good idea...but we can also see, with the monk, swashbuckler, knight, and others, what happens when the devs try to provide entirely preset classes without having any idea what they're doing.

So, having said that, it seems to me that WotC screwed up when they decided to prepackage feats with the option of selecting them instead--they probably should have had some prepackaged and some selectable options to satisfy both camps. (They also shouldn't have yet again fallen into the traps of 3e's "you need the Improved Shoe Tying feat to double-knot your shoelaces" problem and 4e's "whee, another damage + status effect power" problem, but that's another issue entirely.) Given the weakness and lameness of current abilities, I'd be tempted to playtest treating combat styles and the weaker specialties as feats--that is, a fighter can take the Slayer "feat" or a character can take the Survivor "feat" and gain all benefits of the combat style/specialty in one level. That gives you the benefits of being able to say "I wanna be an archer fighter!" and have that mean something while also letting you have the fun of picking new abilities every time you gain a feat, and is reminiscent of the usual 3e houserule solution of collapsing weak feat trees into 1-2 feats to make them useful.

[Anderlith]

The devs have said that feats will be freeform, you don't need to take a preselected path. They just haven't done it yet because this is a game with two more years of development ahead of it. Give it time to simmer

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The devs have said that feats will be freeform, you don't need to take a preselected path. They just haven't done it yet because this is a game with two more years of development ahead of it. Give it time to simmer

They've said that, yes, but they've also said some other things that have been changed or not at all apparent in the materials we've seen so far. And even if that's still the case, having specialties just be the same old feats you can normally take but in prepackaged form doesn't really have an advantage once you get a good handle on the system and have time to fiddle around with character creation...unless there's some other benefit to taking a specialty like being able to ignore prerequisites or having some feats be specialty-only, in which case they're not actually freely selectable.

If they're going to include prepackaged abilities around a certain theme, they should just do that and have feats be something else, as I said above, instead of trying to achieve both with the same mechanic. Heck, with the "three pillars" approach they're trying, they could always stick the more powerful/worthwhile abilities into specialties and the more flavorful stuff into feats--not as in specialties are combat-focused and feats are utility-focused, but as in specialties give you strong and flashy abilities like Arcane Strike, Dragonfire Inspiration, Robilar's Gambit, and so forth while feats give you flavorful and cool-but-not-as-consistently-useful abilities like Spell Thematics, Mercantile Background, Blind-Fight, and so forth--so it's clear that a specialty is your main schtick and feats are more for customization.

[1337 b4k4]

And even if that's still the case, having specialties just be the same old feats you can normally take but in prepackaged form doesn't really have an advantage once you get a good handle on the system and have time to fiddle around with character creation...

You are completely missing the point of the pre packaged builds which is that there is a non insignificant number of players and potential players out there who will never "fiddle around" with character creation. The whole point is to bundle the existing choices into simple thematic packages for those players so that they can pick one and go. And they are absolutely going about it the right way. There should be no difference between choosing a pre-pack and choosing your own feats so that it's easy to switch and so that there is never a feeling like the pre-packs are either letting you getaway with something, or that you're losing something by taking a pre-pack.

Look at it this way, by making pre-packs no different from selecting the same feats yourself, that leaves a new player the option to take a pre-pack at the start, and then as they level, if they find themselves wanting a different path, they can take those feats without any re-juggling or other penalty or time sink.