Hecate Thinks about 6e D&D

This post will not give a hard, mechanical breakdown of every feat that will be in my hypothetical 6e PHB. There's way too much balancing that will go on for that to be feasible. It will, instead, try to theory-craft what makes a good feat, how to build good feats and outline some ideas around that to give possible feats for 6e. When looking at feats, we have the whole of the 3e/3.5e ecosystem and the 5e ecosystem to look at. I skipped 2e completely but I understand that there were feats in 2e as well. We also have, although it's structured differently, Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2e. We have a few ideas to bear in mind here:  Core or Optional : 5e gave us feats as an optional rule, every other system has them as a core rule. Complexity : 5e made them simple. In essence they rely on a simple proficiency at most, although a few are tied to being a given race. Pathfinder 2e goes for Ancestry (race equivalent), general, class, level, tree-like prerequisites (you can only take this f...

I outlined in  this post  that I was leaning towards to a skill points system. Im brief, I outlined the idea that you'd get a fixed number of points + Int modifier for free spend, and then your Initiative modifier for a more restricted spend. Your free spend points can go on skills, tools, vehicles, languages, weapons or spells, your restricted spend ones generally must go on weapons or spells. Your skills, tools, vehicles, weapons and spells (and I guess for completeness it should apply to languages) would have five tiers of skill, giving you a +1 to +5 bonus. Expertise for a few classes (or via feats) would let you extend that, possibly at high as +10, certainly to +7.5 (which would round to +8). A couple of things need to be shaken down fully here. If we have the current 18 skills, and you can get 21 raises, and we say you get 3 points, + Int mod + another mod, that could be 63+30+24+120=237 points to spend on skills, but only 90 points worth. Of course a chunk will be rest...

In 5e, if you are proficient in a skill, tool, vehicle or instrument you add a level based proficiency bonus, and if you get expertise from somewhere (there are a few sources, but the best known is rogue), you double this. You get proficiencies from some races, all backgrounds, and a variable number from your class. You occasionally get some from your subclass. You can also get them from feats, such as Skilled  and UA skill feats as well. It's incredibly rare to get more after third level, except from feats. In 3e/3.5e, skills worked rather differently. At every level you had a number of skill points to spend, based on your character class and Int modifier, and if you bought class skills you got +1 per point you spent, non-class skills gave you +1 per 2 points you spent. So a bard would get +1 per point in Speak Other Language and Perform say, while a Monk might get it in Acrobatics, Tumble and Religion and a Wizard in Arcana and History. You could focus down and improve the s...