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 heard one DM say that they let the players choose, either they get to pick a feat, or they pick an ASI and the DM chooses a feat for them. The reason being that it means that the player has the chance to pick one of the big power spike feats (GWM, PAM, Sentinel, War caster) or get an ASI and get something thats not quite as big an impact mechanically, but helps develop the flavor of their character ( think like actor, charger, heavily armored). I haven’t tried it, but I want to give it a shot some time.