Feats vs Stat Increases
Congratulations! You've made it to level 4 and now you have an important decision to make, do you take a feat or do you increase one or two of your stats? This can be a very difficult decision to make, especially if you've never had to make it before. Never fear The OCDM is here to help!
If you have gone up to level four then you will have some experience with how the character works, there are a few questions you need to ask yourself:
What has happened to my character so far?
What are my character's goals?
What role is the character fulfilling in and out of combat?
How close are my base stats to the next modifier threshold?
Which Feats are applicable to my character?
What makes sense for my character?
If you turn to page 165 of the Players Handbook or page 73 of Xanathar's Guide to Everything you will find all of the feats that you can pick for your character. You'll notice that some are only available to certain races or there will be a caveat to choosing it so this will reduce the amount of choice you have significantly. Read what is left and make a shortlist of what would benefit and make sense for your character.
Role play informs a lot of my levelling up decisions, so I would weigh up my character's goals and ideals from their backstory that would lead to them achieving their ultimate goal. For me levels are measured in experience and as such you should take a look at everything that has happened to the character. If they have experienced a failure then maybe they have been working on ways for that failure to not happen again. My Evocation Wizard deals out a lot of elemental damage but was next to useless against creatures with fire resistance, at level four he could take the Elemental Adept Feat to get around that problem.
Statistics increases to me show a concerted effort to improve in a certain area, I tend to play characters that have a lower Wisdom score than their prime statistic. Their naivety gets worked on over the campaign and my Intelligent Wizard becomes a Wise one too. This isn't to say that you shouldn't work on your prime stat, if you aren't being effective in your specialised field then then you may need to beef up a base stat.
At this point I can get a little removed from the character as I'll take a look at the actual maths in the statistics and combine the thoughts I have from my previous two points. Here I take a look at the statistic scores and see which ones are just one away from improving the overall modifier (page 13 of the Player's Handbook). These could be improved by one by taking a feat, gaining a new skill and improving my character's overall effectiveness in their chosen wheelhouse. This is a rare but incredibly satisfying moment in levelling up and I feel very smug when I manage to pull it off!
Another consideration to be made is that the progression from level four to level eight is a LOT longer than level one to four. Increasing something you'll use all the time will greatly improve your chances of reaching level eight intact! There are some Feats that are better taken later as they get exponentially better like Tough but if you don't pull the trigger on that at the right time the campaign could be over before you get a chance to take it.
There you go, there are some ways to narrow down your choices. Just don't be 'that guy' and pick Lucky...
May you roll well!
