The Ribbon System

The goal of the ribbon system is to allow players a more dynamic use of the feat system within 5e through a controlled manner, so that characters do not counterbalance the game too quickly, while still giving them the freedom to further develop their characters mechanically beyond class and subclass, without feeling held back by the standard ASI-Feat trade.

What is a Ribbon?

A Ribbon is a standard feat from 5e that has been separated into its distinct parts.

Usually a 5e feat consists of multiple parts, usually something along the lines of a small ability score increase and then a new skill or advantage on particular skills. With Ribbons these feats are separated into those specific skills or advantage gains, and a player is able to gain one of these distinct parts into their character.

How does one gain a Ribbon?

Gaining a Ribbon is dependent upon the specifics of the Ribbon, but it will largely occur through training. As a character develops an interest in a certain skill, they will have to spend time training with the skill in order to gain a noticeable ability in it. This will translate mechanically to the player needing to be sure to dedicate a sufficient amount of time to the character actively pursuing the skill, until they’ve met a required time (average 1600 - 2000 hours) as set by the DM.

The other way to gain a Ribbon would be through circumstance. Certain skills can’t really be trained for, or are befitted upon a character through a more induced process. Gaining a Ribbon this way will require a player to coordinate with the DM to ensure certain events occur upon a character, or the DM will personally create a course of action that may see a Ribbon given to a character.

How many Ribbons can a character have?

Technically, as many as they want. Realistically, a character is likely to end up with two Ribbons if they seek them out. There isn’t a hard limit, just more so the nature of feats in 5e aren’t likely to have many that crossover with a character’s design that they’d gather a large amount. If someone places a character who’s just constantly studying and training in down time, then maybe they do just learn all over. There is also the DM’s discretion to just limit a character on Ribbons if it proves too much of a mechanical challenge to balance for them now.

Example One

The Piercer feat for 5e gives a character the following:

• Increase in Strength or Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• Once per turn, when hitting a creature with an attack that deals piercing damage, they can re-roll one of the attack’s damage dice, and must use the new roll.
• When they score a critical hit that deals piercing damage to a creature, they can roll one additional damage die when determining the extra piercing damage the target takes.

The Ribbon for this feat would remove the stat increase. From there the player decides that their character will be training with a piercing weapon in order to become better at delivering effective blows with it. Because the two remaining facets of this feat tie in well with one another, they are kept together, but will require a longer time frame of training to achieve.

Once the time requirement has been met, the player may append this Ribbon to their character sheet and utilize it from then on.

Conversely, if a player decided their character was going to work towards this skill by altering their weapon, they would be able to gain the skill faster, but the skill itself would be attached to the weapon instead; this would make it possible to be lost.

Example Two

The Weapon Master feat for 5e gives a character the following:

• Increase in Strength or Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• Gain proficiency with four weapons of their choice. Each one must be a simple or martial weapon.

The Ribbon for this feat would remove the stat increase. From there the player would decide how many weapons they wished their character to gain proficiency in, increasing the amount of time needed for each weapon. A player could elect for their character to train in a single weapon at a time, gaining proficiency after each time frame, or train with all chosen weapons in equal time, gaining all proficiencies at once at the end of the total time frame.

Example Three

The Athlete feat for 5e gives a character the following:

• Increase in Strength or Dexterity by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• When they are prone, standing up uses only 5 feet of movement.
• Climbing doesn’t cost extra movement.
• They can make a running long jump or a running high jump after moving only 5 feet, rather than standard 10.

The Ribbon for this feat would remove the stat increase. From there the player would decide which part of the feat they would like their character to pursue. As each aspect is distinct from one another, a character can only train towards one aspect at a time. Because these are separated, the time requirement to gain one of the skills would be average. A character could train to gain all three skills, but they would have to be separate trainings.

Available Feats for Ribbons

• Actor
• Artificer Initiate
• Athlete
• Charger
• Chef
• Crusher
• Defensive Duelist
• Dual Wielder
• Dungeon Delver
• Durable
• Eldritch Adept
• Elemental Adept
• Fey Touched
• Fighting Initiate
• Grappler
• Great Weapon Master
• Healer
• Heavily Armored
• Heavy Armor Master
• Inspiring Leader
• Keen Mind
• Lightly Armored
• Linguist
• Mage Slayer
• Magic Initiate
• Skilled
• Skulker
• Slasher
• Tavern Brawler
• Telekinetic
• Telepath
• Tough
• War Caster
• Weapon Master