Session Not Quite Zero

How did I manage to miss that halfling language thing. duh, apparently I can't read! Also that sounds fine Drew!

Make sure to see my edit. How do folks feel about narrative collaboration? I'm very open to player involvement, especially for small details that enable cool actions , like the seemingly canonical chandelier example. Given the idea that Nod is composed of "dreams", even for some/many larger details I think this will be fine, provided they don't clash with the established fiction. ...I doubt I'll get much pushback against that idea, but it's worth asking the question.

Rowan N. said: How did I manage to miss that halfling language thing. duh, apparently I can't read! Also that sounds fine Drew! It'll give you and me a way to communicate that most NPCs probably won't understand. Plus it's a good bond. Maybe my accent sucks though and you try to help me with it.

Drew K said: Make sure to see my edit. How do folks feel about narrative collaboration? I'm very open to player involvement, especially for small details that enable cool actions , like the seemingly canonical chandelier example. Given the idea that Nod is composed of "dreams", even for some/many larger details I think this will be fine, provided they don't clash with the established fiction. ...I doubt I'll get much pushback against that idea, but it's worth asking the question. I'm all for it and was going to suggest that the players with sailors or otherwise more well-traveled characters could contribute to the world by giving some evocative details of those spots (brief, interesting, something that can be expanded upon later). As for the setting, I'm getting a Conan kind of feel from it. Is that accurate?

"As for the setting, I'm getting a Conan kind of feel from it. Is that accurate?" Sounds pretty close as far as the immediate region goes. Mostly independent fiefs that don't trust each other, but there's some specialization and trade between settlements. Ophir is by far the biggest player around, with several small dependent villages in its immediate vicinity. It's possible a strong military mind could conquer and unify some of the land, but whether it would last past his/her lifetime is much less clear. It seems likely that this has been attempted in the past, and perhaps will be again in the near future. There's other places on the world map that will deviate from that feeling, should we get to a point where they are relevant. Some other locations: * a decaying but still held-together ancient empire * a land of 4 kingdoms locked together in seemingly perpetual war * an island nation that unifies a strong central government and religious establishment * a lush frontier with swelling immigrant masses and fractured tribal locals * untapped wilderness with little hint of any civilization

I can help with narrative collaboration. How would you like to go about it? in these forums, email, Google doc, etc? Also ... For a start I am happy to clean up the chat logs into a journal In the forum. As for game play... in line rolls. Whilst most rolls are covered in the character sheet, when rolling instead using the "/roll 1d6+2 " type let's try to type [[1d6+2]] style to prevent a mess in the chat screen. Can we define ooc into ((brackets)) also when in game?

If you have a character sheet, you can set "As" (below Chat) to that character (e.g. Chuck Dagger). Everything you type will be "in-character." If you want to type "out-of-character," you can start with /ooc and it will list the chat as from your Display Name (e.g. Ryan (Chuck)).

On the fly collaboration works especially for the little details. Bigger stuff it may make sense to do out of game, yeah, since there may need to be give-and-take. Roll20's forums are a bit limited, so some kind of other resource may be a good idea, especially for non-ephemera. I'm using a Google Group / Google Site in another campaign and am happy to set one up, but I'm open to other suggestions. I looked at a tiddlywiki, but it didn't seem well-adapted to multiple users. I didn't know about inline rolling, but it sounds like a nice way to clean up macros--will check out the features. I've used the "post as" feature before to help with IC posting, but also didn't know /ooc would default things back to your display name, which is very handy to know, thanks!

I might post the macros that I use for my game in another thread. I prefer them to making rolls off the character sheet. I do an emote followed by an /ooc statement of mechanics, all in-line. I've also got some ideas on how you can set up a rolltable with synonyms for "attacks" (the verb), then players can reference the roll table inline as like "/em [1t[attacks]]] with his sword!" That would put in a random synonym from a list, making things varied in description. :)

hey Robert, Which patron does your warlock have?

For in character and out of character chat... Some gm's prefer brackets, to make things easier when going through chat log and an instant visual of the brackets help them and players know it's out of character . Some gms prefer everything in character to be used with /me or /em. Everything else is deemed as out of character. Used for same reason as above. Some prefer the players using screen and character name by using /ooc or just switching in the little box below the chat screen, just because the feature is there. Some gms prefer absolutely no out of character in chat in game but posted in the game forum instead. Whilst acceptable and in some cases understandable, its a dead set pain in the rump. Some prefer out of character discussions in voice/mic or in another chat screen such as skype/hangouts/fb group chat... This is usually for those GMs that want to write a journal/book/story with as little as editing as possible. less of a pain in the rump as the previous but still a pain. So the questions are..Which style of out of character chat is prefered? Is there want of a journal/chapters of each game, done by a player? Those macro sounds great. I'm usually hesitant in making macros I tend to miss something and rip myself off Or just mix things up. I like the idea of a changing action. Could have serious fun with that.

JohnTheAussie said: For in character and out of character chat... Some gms prefer absolutely no out of character in chat in game but posted in the game forum instead. Whilst acceptable and in some cases understandable, its a dead set pain in the rump. Some prefer out of character discussions in voice/mic or in another chat screen such as skype/hangouts/fb group chat... This is usually for those GMs that want to write a journal/book/story with as little as editing as possible. less of a pain in the rump as the previous but still a pain. Neither is me. For the other 3 options (brackets, emotes, or display names) I'm not particular as long as we're all on the same page. This strikes me as one of those issues where it doesn't really matter what the convention is, as long as everyone uses the same convention.

If no-one wants a Journal kept of the game I am good with the 3 remaining

My Patron is the Fiend, but I figure I'll have to work with Drew to choose which one. I'd like to think it's Imhotep, though. Also, as far as I know, Session Zero was last night. I didn't make it because I had to work late and then the police came to my house and all sorts of other bad stuff, so I just want to apologize and say that I'm really doing my best.

I have some ideas on possible fiends from the cosmology, 'course there's no guarantee you'll know who it is yourself, exactly. Imhotep (and the Egyptian pantheon generally) are more honest-to-goodness gods, worshipped in nearby Nabu though. Obviously wasn't very clear on the schedule for Session Zero. Wasn't last night, let's try for this upcoming Friday, however.

lee F. said: It seems we're doing characters, I had made a Warlock as well but am willing to reroll to make a character which better compliments the group (written as if being read from a 'Goods for Sale' section of a newspaper) Hollis, the Half Elf Warlock was arrested during a grave robbing attempt just outside Ophir. The Half Elf was caught trying to recover an amulet of Y'chak from the grave of a dead Elf Warlock buried a few miles north of Ophir. This bright young Half Elf will be available for purchase at the slave auction this week. Chuck Dagger doesn't know Hollis personally, but knows of him, having done some recovery work for Lyralei as well. Chuck always saw Lyralei as a shifty sort of person - hard to completely trust those who dabble in magic, after all - and turned down the job to find the scroll in the Nabu Desert originally. He isn't surprised to hear she sent someone else to find it and is thankful that it was that someone else who looked into madness rather than him.

Here's hoping our game doesn't go the way of that anime group with all the drama! Sheesh!

Here's hoping our game doesn't go the way of that anime group with all the drama! Sheesh! Damn, there goes half my prep! ;) In seriousness, monster prep is taking up most of my time so far just setting up roll20 sheet data, but having as much done ahead of time should mean I don't have to sweat that mechanical detail during play and can focus on environmental detail and paying attention to the cool stuff the players are doing. Something else bouncing around in my mind: Resting rules -- the campaign document discusses setting long rest = 7 days and short rest = 8 hours but if followed this will severely affect the pace of play, at least in universe. It also breaks with tradition heading all the way back to 0e, since this would mean magic users not regenerating spells until a week of inactivity passes! This would indeed be an interesting way to play, even though it hugely skews class choice towards those that don't rely on as few rests as possible, but it wasn't really what I had in mind--I was only considering the video-game like healing of 5e's defaults. I'd propose to adopt this variant only for healing and regenerating effects: 8 hours for "short rest" healing and 7 days for "long rest healing", thus leaving all other class resources regenerating on the normal 1 hour / 8 hour rests.

What really matters is the goal you're trying to achieve with this house rule and whether the house rule helps you realize that goal. I think a likely outcome is blowing through the cleric's healing spells, resting so he or she can get her spells back, then repeating until the party is at full before carrying on with adventure. That's going to create a "standard operating procedure" more than anything. With normal resting, players tend to burn through their character's hit dice during short rests and use magical healing only in a pinch (during combats or when resting isn't viable such as in a dangerous location). A character only regains half hit dice after a long rest, so it kind of has a built-in concern over burning the candle at both ends, if that's what you want. Of course, with no time pressure (time-sensitive plot or wandering monster checks), all bets are off as far as resting goes since the party can afford to just nap whenever they feel like it (to the limit of one long rest per 24-hour period). As above, it really all depends on what you're hoping to accomplish.

i played a 3.5e campaign where the GM also took issue with the "video game" healing rules and what we ended up doing was employing "realistic" healing times. Which means a broken arm would take 6 weeks to heal. But that was also terribly slow. Something in the middle like what you're proposing or what Textual Healing described is far more appealing to me as a player.

"Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck" anyway (Basic Rules, page 75), meaning they aren't all "meat" and actually aren't anything in particular at all unless the DM narrates it that way. The perspective of "video game" healing comes from narrating mortal injury (a narrative choice the DM doesn't have to make!) when a monster hits a character and the resulting disconnect when said mortal injury is fine after what amounts to a good nap. So the problem is really with the narration that creates the disconnect rather than the game itself. I can't really tell what the goal of the resting rule is exactly, but if it's to avoid that disconnect, there might be an easier approach to that.

I'm not against lengthening the resting rules, but I employed something like this in one of my games. One of my more tolerant players lost an arm back in October and has been dealing with the consequences thereof pretty much ever since. It was four whole months out of game, with no hope of prosthesis and regrowing it until our last session. As I said before, he is the most tolerant player in my group, and his passive long-term disappointment was almost too much for me to stomach as a GM. I guess what I'm trying to say it do what you think is best, but make sure the players are still having fun.

Whatever is decided with rest, I'll need to know a couple of days before game time, being the healy magic guy. I can adjust to to most genre's well.

Good stuff all around. The main objective I'm aiming at is to create some tension and sense of resource management beyond, "Can we make it through an 8 hour rest?" Partly that'll be dealt with through wandering/random monster tables, but in the 5E default rules, a group that makes it through an 8 hour rest is as perfectly ready to stomp monsters as they were when leaving town. Some sense of "burning the candle at both ends" will aid the sense that the world is dangerous, that you can keep on trucking but that your innate ability to shrug off the weariness of the day will eventually run out without some extended rest. It also somewhat answers a question that was asked in the recruitment thread: "how can the party ever be forced to leave the dungeon, in order to hole up somewhere safe for a while?" The fact that HP don't necessarily represent "meat" or long term damage is a good reminder too, but as with the above, even the will to press on or mental durability will start degrading your effectiveness without something more than hitting the sack for the night. So let's run with what I mentioned earlier, specifically: short rest (1 hour): all relevant class abilities recharge normally, no healing an hour doesn't seem like enough time to do much recovering from the physical/emotional/mental trauma D&D characters face on a daily basis long rest (8 hours): all relevant class abilities recharge normally, characters can spend/roll HD to regain health, as specified in the short rest rules in other words, beyond just "sleeping", you take the time to daydream about your future riches, massage that sore leg, or rebandage the wound in your side extended rest (7 days): all spent HD recharge sometimes the daily grind is just too much, and you need to get away from it all

Additionally, the Lingering Injuries/Massive Damage rules found on pages 272-273 of the DMG. I'd like to use these to represent the potential for damage you **can't** just press through with a little sleep. This also strongly implies that all other damage is mundane, avoiding the mentioned disconnect between mortal wounds disappearing overnight. Anytime a character drops to 0, they will roll on the Lingering Injuries chart to see what long term consequences there may be. This does have the potential for really nasty things like "lose an arm" that cannot be overcome short of a 7th level spell, but most of the results are more easily dealt with. Likewise when receiving a massive blow that deals half your HP or more in damage, a character must make a DC 15 CON save. Failure means rolling on the System Shock table, which is mostly losing your reaction for a turn but can drop you straight to 0. With this set of rules, getting dropped to 0 (and by extension receiving massive damage from any source) is something to avoid even more than before. Losing an arm or a leg obviously sucks badly, but beyond the immediate tactical situation can easily create more opportunities for story and roleplay. Making a difficult journey to a powerful healer, the wounded warrior forced to relearn the ways of combat, and the veteran deciding to cash it in and retire after a bad injury are all genre staples.

sounds good to me

I think, practically speaking, the house rule as written above will result in the cleric and/or other spellcasters spending most if not all of their spell slots on healing and the party remaining sedentary for a cast-rest-cast-rest cycle until healed up (with no hit dice). Your goal appears to be to create a decision point to go back to town or not. So how about something like this: Safe Haven You can only regain spent hit dice by taking a long rest in a settlement or other location designated a "safe haven" by the DM. Lingering Injuries If you have zero hit dice, roll on the Lingering Injuries table whenever you take a critical hit, drop to 0 hit points or less but are not killed outright, or fail a death saving throw by 5 or more. The end result here (I think) is that we must go back to town from time to time or else we risk some pretty grave injuries. Our healers can keep us in the fight in the short term (and 45% of the time, a lingering injury is healed by any healing magic), but in the long term we're in a bad spot at zero hit dice. The most amount of time we'd spend in town to regain hit dice to maximum would be two days (half hit dice recovered per long rest). That's one day short of the Recuperating downtime activity (PHB, page 187) which also helps with poison, disease, and other effects. I think this dovetails nicely. Some lingering injuries, like internal injury, would require more time than that. Finding a safe haven can be a good goal for characters and a very nice reward for engaging with the exploration pillar of the game. As well, a settlement founded by the PCs might be considered a safe haven after certain benchmarks are met, so this encourages players to spend resources on bringing civilization to the wilderness. Thoughts?

Safe Haven is a good compromise, and makes sense thematically in any case. Practically speaking, yeah, "Safe Haven resting" will often be for longer periods of time, anyway. Finding a safe haven can be a good goal for characters and a very nice reward for engaging with the exploration pillar of the game. As well, a settlement founded by the PCs might be considered a safe haven after certain benchmarks are met, so this encourages players to spend resources on bringing civilization to the wilderness. The above is all kinds of goodness, too. Lingering Injuries, as written, seems like it will just force the group to always keep a HD in reserve, however. I'd actually dispense with injuries on crits or failed death saving throws anyway--it's much harder to control if you are crit against than it is to control whether you drop to 0, and failing a death saving throw feels like adding insult to injury. I think I'd prefer to roll Injuries *only* after a character drops to 0, but regardless of how many HD are unspent. If HD represent "the will to go on" it's not clear how they would prevent injury anyway. Perhaps a similar tension could be achieved by allowing a player to spend a HD to reroll the injury? That should keep the table in play, while keeping the spirit of "we must go back to town from time to time or else we risk some pretty grave injuries" I'm also interested in the possibility mentioned in those rules to allow individual PCs to optionally choose the mechanical effect of those injuries.

Lingering Injuries, as written, seems like it will just force the group to always keep a HD in reserve, however. Hmm, that may be so. I didn't think about that. Practically speaking, what this could mean is that healers have the option to cast spells other than healing until the hit dice fall to low levels at which point they end up casting more healing spells than other spells. That kinda makes sense actually... the lower the PCs are in reserves, the more they have to lean on the cleric. Unfortunately, this puts the burden on the cleric to have less versatility as the adventure wears on. On the other hand, that's true of any spellcaster as they burn through spells anyway. Tough call. I often look to hit dice as a resource that the PCs can lose if they fail a skill challenge type scenario e.g. screw up navigating the raging rapids and everyone loses a hit die. So in a game like mine, you could probably try to keep that 1 hit die in reserve, but there's always the risk you lose it when you fail a skill challenge. That might be an option for you. I'd actually dispense with injuries on crits or failed death saving throws anyway--it's much harder to control if you are crit against than it is to control whether you drop to 0, and failing a death saving throw feels like adding insult to injury. The best way to avoid criticals is to hinder the enemy in some way that gives them disadvantage on attacks. That might be a fun tactic in some cases. I agree on the "insult to injury." I was just listing what was in the DMG for conditions at which lingering injuries set in. I think I'd prefer to roll Injuries *only* after a character drops to 0, but regardless of how many HD are unspent. If HD represent "the will to go on" it's not clear how they would prevent injury anyway. Perhaps a similar tension could be achieved by allowing a player to spend a HD to reroll the injury? That should keep the table in play, while keeping the spirit of "we must go back to town from time to time or else we risk some pretty grave injuries" I think that could work. Good idea. I'm also interested in the possibility mentioned in those rules to allow individual PCs to optionally choose the mechanical effect of those injuries. So in my games, the rule for Inspiration is that in order to earn Inspiration, the player must choose to take disadvantage on a check or otherwise make a decision that incurs them a real setback or cost, justified by a trait, ideal, bond, or flaw. I do this so that I don't have to monitor their interactions and award it. In practice, this doesn't come up that much. Most players just forget about Inspiration as much as I do. I'd expect the same to occur with regard to the injuries-as-flaw option.

Drew, where do you stand on the Role of the Dice? See DMG pages 236-237 for what I mean. I'm a fan of the Middle Path - sometimes you just succeed, sometimes you just fail, sometimes you roll the dice, based on how the DM judges things. I don't prefer to roll for everything because the drawback the DMG describes for that approach: "Roleplaying can diminish if players feel that their die rolls, rather than their decisions and characterizations, always determine success." To that end, I will never ask to make a check of any kind. I'll simply state my goal and approach to dealing with something and wait for adjudication. Asking to roll dice ("Can I make a Perception check?") is just asking for a chance to fail. I'm going to shoot for straight success wherever possible and fall back on my character stats when my goal and approach as stated fall short.

I have my sheet set up and I'm going to start working on macros soon. I'm a little late for it, but here you go anyway: I'm Alexandria and I live in Maine. I've played some Pathfinder, no D&D, and Pokemon Tabletop for the last 2 years (Robert is the GM for the game I play). I've been on Roll20 for a year now, and I feel very confident with it. I'm 24. My job is my life, so I don't have much time to get on here outside of my available times (which you guys have probably noticed by now). I'm a therapeutic foster parents for 2 children with developmental disabilities and autism.

Textual Healing said: Drew, where do you stand on the Role of the Dice? See DMG pages 236-237 for what I mean. I'm a fan of the Middle Path - sometimes you just succeed, sometimes you just fail, sometimes you roll the dice, based on how the DM judges things. I don't prefer to roll for everything because the drawback the DMG describes for that approach: "Roleplaying can diminish if players feel that their die rolls, rather than their decisions and characterizations, always determine success." Definitely the Middle Path. In all things balance after all. /em *adopts a zen pose* In my local group I've tried to press this perspective, to mixed success. My players there tend a bit too much towards relying on the dice for everything, so I do my best to nudge them towards narration of what they are doing rather than grabbing some dice. Some things should just obviously work, like poking the floor in front of you with a 10ft pole to see if it will collapse. Some things should obviously fail, like jumping across a 100ft chasm. And some ideas or actions on the part of the PCs are too amazing to not have succeed in spirit, even if we might use dice to see if there are any side-effects. For everything else, when there's an unknown or nebulous chance of success, we have dice. Thanks for introducing yourself Alex. :) Obviously folks are busy so it's no big deal. A lot of macros and the 5E sheet literally just changed, but I think most existing macros should still work. I'm undecided on how much I like the new available style, it's probably better suited in general to a voice driven game rather than a text driven game where emotes and dialogue will be prevalent.

In my local group I've tried to press this perspective, to mixed success. My players there tend a bit too much towards relying on the dice for everything, so I do my best to nudge them towards narration of what they are doing rather than grabbing some dice. Some things should just obviously work, like poking the floor in front of you with a 10ft pole to see if it will collapse. Some things should obviously fail, like jumping across a 100ft chasm. And some ideas or actions on the part of the PCs are too amazing to not have succeed in spirit, even if we might use dice to see if there are any side-effects. For everything else, when there's an unknown or nebulous chance of success, we have dice. Okay, cool. It's really not very smart play to ask to make checks under this sort of paradigm - so don't ask to make rolls, guys and gals! :) Going back to the healing thing, I had another idea that might cut down on re-rolling and handling time during play. What if every time you get dropped to 0 hit points, you lose a hit die. If you ever get dropped to 0 hit points and also have no hit dice, then you roll on the lingering injury table. This would encourage good resource management and cut out the rolling-spending-rerolling-spending chain that might happen if we adopted the above as-is. Do you see any downsides?

You're both making me regret chosing a cleric. Hahaha

If someone else creates a variant human, takes the Healer feat (PHB pg. 167), and has a healer's kit, then that'll add a great deal of healing options to the party which frees up the cleric for more versatility.

I could switch. Or change a few things around.... let me mull over it tonight first to see what kind of character I want to mold.

You're both making me regret chosing a cleric. Hahaha Well even with these rules, individual players have much more ability to attend to their own healing with the HD system. I'm not trying to ruin the cleric's day for sure. Going back to the healing thing, I had another idea that might cut down on re-rolling and handling time during play. What if every time you get dropped to 0 hit points, you lose a hit die. If you ever get dropped to 0 hit points and also have no hit dice, then you roll on the lingering injury table. This would encourage good resource management and cut out the rolling-spending-rerolling-spending chain that might happen if we adopted the above as-is. Do you see any downsides? Mainly player choice. But that's easily fixed by adjusting this to: if you drop to 0, you choose to either lose a HD or roll an injury. I may have to tweak the System Shock table too, to adjust for some of this.

It occurs to me as well that another incentive for going back to town periodically is supply runs. At some point, we're going to run out of torches, arrows, and iron rations. So it seems like a rather rigorous accounting of these things needs to be part of play with players warning when they're getting low on supplies so the party can decide what to do about that. What are everyone's thoughts about that? I may post later with any additional thoughts I have related to Session Zero as I will not be present for tomorrow's discussion (and not on the forums either, likely).

Mainly player choice. But that's easily fixed by adjusting this to: if you drop to 0, you choose to either lose a HD or roll an injury. I may have to tweak the System Shock table too, to adjust for some of this. I like that, it seems balanced, plus it lets the players decide if they want to risk rolling a injury.

The question is: When would someone ever choose to risk an injury that 55% of the time can't be healed with low-level magic when they can just lose a hit die instead? I might expect to see someone make that as a choice that might lead to a more exciting, memorable story. From the perspective of the game, however, it's not really a choice at all - you just always choose to lose the HD. Unless I'm missing some angle.

so in all honesty I have no idea what this HD system is. would someone mind pointing me int he direction of some reading or maybe I did some bad reading comprehension in this thread. Either way, plz halp

Make sure you have a copy of the Basic Rules. They're free. Give 'em a read. (I don't know who has read or played this game.) I've included a link to the rules plus some other stuff in the Game Resources thread for your convenience. Hit Dice are reserves of potential hit points that our characters have. You get one hit die per level and the die varies by class - a rogue gets 1d8, a fighter gets 1d10, a barbarian gets 1d12, and so on. When you take a rest, you can roll any number of hit dice you like and the result is the number of hit points you regain as a result of resting. Hit dice spent in this fashion are not regained until after a long rest at the rate of half hit dice per long rest. (You can't gain the benefits of a long rest more than once in a 24-hour period.) So if Chuck Dagger, a rogue with 1d8 hit dice takes a short rest when he's down to 4 hit points and rolls a 3, then he has 7 hit points at the end of the rest. At this point, however, he no longer has any hit dice. In order to regain them, he normally would have to take a long rest at the end of which he regains half of his hit die total (minimum 1). In this campaign, however, the house rule is that you have to go to a safe haven in order to regain spent hit dice - you can't camp just anywhere. Until he does that, he's rolling for lingering injuries whenever he's reduced to 0 hit points. I hope that explanation helps.

gotchya

I understand how the HD system works. As a suggestion though, can we get one summary of what was decided for long vs short vs time vs area and all the Jargon in one separate post? Maybe in a "Home Rules" thread? any discussion about these rules and other rules can stay here or a new OOC thread. A comment for each rule that is decided, or altered?

Will definitely nail down every deviation from the default rules in a forum post or journal handout. The question is: When would someone ever choose to risk an injury that 55% of the time can't be healed with low-level magic when they can just lose a hit die instead? I might expect to see someone make that as a choice that might lead to a more exciting, memorable story. From the perspective of the game, however, it's not really a choice at all - you just always choose to lose the HD. Unless I'm missing some angle. To combine two ideas, what about rolling on the table, then optionally the loss of a HD to "shrug off" a result rather than rerolling it. That way you get something concrete for your expenditure, and the lesser results are more likely to come into play, *and* adventuring when low on HD becomes more dangerous?

I have to say TH those articles are great.

Are we using the optional feat rule? PHB: Pg 165 A feat represents a talent or an area of expertise that gives a character special capabilities. It embodies training, experience, and abilities beyond what a class provides. At certain levels, your class gives you the Ability Score Improvement feature. Using the optional feats rule, you can forgo taking that feature to take a feat of your choice instead. You can take each feat only once, unless the feat’s description says otherwise.

Yes on feats.