I got into a chat with a fellow player and he was wondering how both our charecters had the same strength but my cleric was carring 140lbs as a light load with a 15 str. score.
I pointed out that I found a feat in the planular guide that lets you have double your carrying cap. It's called Heavy Weight, it doesnt help with attack or damage but for a heavy armor wearing class it's an indispensable feat to have.
When I play a wizard I can't do a proper build without collegiate mage from complete arcane.

The question is, As either players or DM in the 3.5 version what feats are considered "must have" for what type of charecters.

Versatile Strike, Improved Natural Attack, and Superior Unarmed Strike for ANY character that specializes in unarmed combat. Monks and Swordsages especially of course.

Versatile Spellcaster, if I'm playing a spontaneous spellcaster. The ability to trade in low-level spell slots for higher-level spell slots is awesome.

Darkstalker, Lords of Madness. You know how things like Scent and Blindsight normally read as, "You're spotted, no matter how awesome you are," when you're playing the sneaky sorts? Not anymore. You actually get your stealth checks again. No prereqs or anything.

Versatile Spellcaster, if I'm playing a spontaneous spellcaster. The ability to trade in low-level spell slots for higher-level spell slots is awesome.

hogarth wrote:

Versatile Spellcaster, if I'm playing a spontaneous spellcaster. The ability to trade in low-level spell slots for higher-level spell slots is awesome.

What resource? I remember seeing that, but I can't get it on the tip of my tongue where...

hogarth wrote:

Versatile Spellcaster, if I'm playing a spontaneous spellcaster. The ability to trade in low-level spell slots for higher-level spell slots is awesome.

What resource? I remember seeing that, but I can't get it on the tip of my tongue where...

Races of the Dragon.

Stand Still from the Expanded Psionic Handbook

I am really enjoying Stone Power from Tome of Battle as well... not sure if it is necessary, but it sure gives me a whole ton of survivability.

I got into a chat with a fellow player and he was wondering how both our charecters had the same strength but my cleric was carring 140lbs as a light load with a 15 str. score.
I pointed out that I found a feat in the planular guide that lets you have double your carrying cap. It's called Heavy Weight, it doesnt help with attack or damage but for a heavy armor wearing class it's an indispensable feat to have.

As an aside, being size small effectively gives you a +50% carrying capacity for items sized for you. Since things that are size small weigh 1/4 their normal weight but being size small only reduces your carrying capacity by 50%.

If you really find the increased carrying capacity a big deal you could combine the two and have the equivalent of 4x normal carrying capacity (while really only having the normal carrying capacity).

Sean Mahoney

Augment Healing from Complete Divine. Those extra 2hp/slvl pretty much doubles all the healing your conjurations provide.

Divine Metamagic, for crazy CHA clerics. *ahem*

Divine Metamagic, for crazy CHA clerics. *ahem*

*Piles on the Nightsticks.*

Archer Feat Tax #1 & #2: Point-Blank Shot & Precise Shot

"Must have"? More like "Mandatory", unless you really REALLY like spending your entire adventuring career fighting "-8 to hit" while your party actually fights the monsters.

Without them, throw your failed archer character sheet in the trash, go home and flog yourself with a scourge for even making such non-sense.

Kaile Stormfall of Heironeous wrote:

Divine Metamagic, for crazy CHA clerics. *ahem*

Crazy CHA? Pft. Try no-CHA.

*Piles on the Nightsticks.*

Druid: Natural Spell
Cleric: Selective Channeling

I feel silly even bothering to mention these, they're so obvious, but they define "must-have feats."

Druid: Natural Spell
Cleric: Selective Channeling

I feel silly even bothering to mention these, they're so obvious, but they define "must-have feats."

Selective Channeling? Not really. Other than undead, no one's around the party to exclude when you channel energy, because healing is not a combat action; it's too small to be significant, almost always less than a single attack would deal, and it's generally more efficient to just smack enemies in the head with your metal stick to make them die sooner or cast some spell to incapacitate 'em.

I'd add Quicken Spell for sorcerers, and I like it a lot for all other spellcasters too.

Well, when you're doing a positive energy burst to heal multiple party members at once, it's advantageous not to be healing your non-undead enemies at the same time. And at higher levels, it can be a lot of healing you're doling out.

Healing folks is something you do between fights in virtually all cases, except when casting the Heal spell, which is actually strong enough to outpace damage from dangerous foes.

I'd add Quicken Spell for sorcerers, and I like it a lot for all other spellcasters too.

"This feat can’t be applied to any spell cast spontaneously (including sorcerer spells, bard spells, and cleric or druid spells cast spontaneously), since applying a metamagic feat to a spontaneously cast spell automatically increases the casting time to a full-round action."

Rapid Metamagic (Complete Mage), on the other hand, is very nearly one of the must-have feats for spontaneous casters if you want to use metamagic in combat. Shame you can't get it until high levels.

Under 3.5 rules, Quicken is not an option to spontaneous casters by default. To quote...

"This feat can’t be applied to any spell cast spontaneously (including sorcerer spells, bard spells, and cleric or druid spells cast spontaneously), since applying a metamagic feat to a spontaneously cast spell automatically increases the casting time to a full-round action."

Rapid Metamagic (Complete Mage), on the other hand, is very nearly one of the must-have feats for spontaneous casters if you want to use metamagic in combat. Shame you can't get it until high levels.

Re Selective Channeling, I still disagree. Every cleric in our group takes it as a matter of course, and they certainly do use positive energy bursts during combat, both at low, medium, and high levels.

Divine Metamagic, for crazy CHA clerics. *ahem*

He's back!

Viletta Vadim wrote:

Kaile Stormfall of Heironeous wrote:

Divine Metamagic, for crazy CHA clerics. *ahem*

Crazy CHA? Pft. Try no-CHA.

*Piles on the Nightsticks.*

Of course, if you do that your DM will probably punch you in the face, since that's been known to be broken since, well, since about when someone first thought to do that.

Mine stopped at one. One nightstick was too many. At some point every 'personal only' spell gets persisted, every other spell is quickened, or extended, or whatever.

No.

Viletta Vadim wrote:

Kaile Stormfall of Heironeous wrote:

Divine Metamagic, for crazy CHA clerics. *ahem*

Crazy CHA? Pft. Try no-CHA.

*Piles on the Nightsticks.*

Of course, if you do that your DM will probably punch you in the face, since that's been known to be broken since, well, since about when someone first thought to do that.

Of course, if you do that your DM will probably punch you in the face, since that's been known to be broken since, well, since about when someone first thought to do that.

What about Neon Nightstick Nightmares? With "neon" referring to their magical Christmas tree habits, of course.

Healing folks is something you do between fights in virtually all cases

Viletta Vadim wrote:

Healing folks is something you do between fights in virtually all cases

Wooooooooow. My groups are REALLY the exception to the norm then.

Until you get the Heal spell, in-combat healing's pretty much guaranteed to be dramatically outpaced by the damage-dealing abilities of anything that's actually dangerous, to the point where it's far more efficient to kill first, then heal.

After all, D&D isn't like Dragon Quest, where you may have two hundred MP and can restore an ally to full health with 7MP; a single high-level healing spell is a meaningful investment of daily resources.

The reason in-combat healing generally happens is that tradition has everyone gathering behind the warrior, backing him up with buffs, healing, and cover fire/flanking, rather than a serious analysis of what is and isn't tactically sound. Some of it's holdover from older editions where oftentimes it was actually a good strategy. However, it's the structure used in virtually every fantasy model ever, so it's the square tactical peg that gets hammered into the situation's round strategic demands.

Orthos wrote:

Viletta Vadim wrote:

Healing folks is something you do between fights in virtually all cases

Wooooooooow. My groups are REALLY the exception to the norm then.

What is wise and what people actually do are two completely different things.

Until you get the Heal spell, in-combat healing's pretty much guaranteed to be dramatically outpaced by the damage-dealing abilities of anything that's actually dangerous, to the point where it's far more efficient to kill first, then heal.

After all, D&D isn't like Dragon Quest, where you may have two hundred MP and can restore an ally to full health with 7MP; a single high-level healing spell is a meaningful investment of daily resources.

The reason in-combat healing generally happens is that tradition has everyone gathering behind the warrior, backing him up with buffs, healing, and cover fire/flanking, rather than a serious analysis of what is and isn't tactically sound. Some of it's holdover from older editions where oftentimes it was actually a good strategy. However, it's the structure used in virtually every fantasy model ever, so it's the square tactical peg that gets hammered into the situation's round strategic demands.

Not going to have this discussion all over again with ya VV. Just going to suffice to say that that's typically the tactics employed by my groups and there have been several situations I can think of where if they hadn't they'd have been squashed pretty flat.

Then again, my groups usually have a dedicated healer (sometimes healer/buffer) which most "tactically" focused groups seem to consider unnecessary, and don't use the "fight's technically over, everyone else cleanup on aisle six" strategy that seems to be the recommended way.

I have heard the "not healing until the fight is over" statement before, and I am assuming that the cleric does not heal in any party unless someone is in real trouble.

I think some people take the statement as meaning, don't heal in combat no matter what the hit points are, and the "do not heal" camp is thinking the other groups heals when the fighter gets a pin prick.

To make a long story short both groups are in the same camp, but just look at the statement differently.

Since I am late to the party I will name some other feats I have commonly used:

Shield Parry from Lords of Madness(IIRC), lets you add your shield bonus to your touch AC. There is another one in PHB2 that does a more, but its harder to qualify for.

Short Haft is nice if I don't want spiked armor.

There are more, but for some reason I can't seem to recall them.

Darkstalker, Lords of Madness. You know how things like Scent and Blindsight normally read as, "You're spotted, no matter how awesome you are," when you're playing the sneaky sorts? Not anymore. You actually get your stealth checks again. No prereqs or anything.

WDM4f

Under 3.5 rules, Quicken is not an option to spontaneous casters by default. To quote...

"This feat can’t be applied to any spell cast spontaneously (including sorcerer spells, bard spells, and cleric or druid spells cast spontaneously), since applying a metamagic feat to a spontaneously cast spell automatically increases the casting time to a full-round action."

Rapid Metamagic (Complete Mage), on the other hand, is very nearly one of the must-have feats for spontaneous casters if you want to use metamagic in combat. Shame you can't get it until high levels.

I wouldn't play a sorcerer without it.

XPH - Expanded Knowlege.

Augment Summoning if you're playing any kind of Poke-mage.