My paladin is now level 4 and has 19 strength and 15 charisma. I know it is probably better to take the ability score increase and get another +1 on the majority of rolls I’ll be making but that’s just so boring!
I’m taking Shield Master instead.
Does anyone else have this conflict?
Most people seem to be misunderstanding. I don’t mind having to make “tough choices” in general, only when the obviously correct choice is boring and the suboptimal one is the cool fun one.
i’ve personally (as DM) let players have both a feat and an ASI at the appropriate levels. Honestly doesn’t hurt balance that much overall, just makes for slightly more powerful PCs.
I feel it provides a decent balance, making you choose between raw ability and specialization
That’s the point. If you want everything right away just start with max level characters. Congratulations, no more leveling up means no more agonizing choices.
And no, having a more powerful character at level X doesn’t change this. It just means that either your DM starts throwing comparably more powerful enemies at you or everything gets easier. In the first case you’re accomplishing nothing because everybody involved is just adding some extra numbers to their rolls. And if you want everything to be easier you might as well just assume you always succeed on every check and get max damage on every attack. For that matter don’t bother even pretending to be interested in dice, begin every combat by just describing how you massacre your foes. Then type up a description of it and you’re writing a book instead of actually playing a game.
I’m not a fan. But I need to stop playing D&D because, among other reasons, I find class+level too coarsely grained. I’d rather be able to spend xp directly on stuff like in cofd, fate, many other games I know less well.
5e is weirdly stingy with ASIs and feats. It is kinda weird