Forgotten Core Feats (PFRPG) PDF

This pdf clocks in at 10 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1.5 page SRD, leaving us with 6.5 pages of content, so let's take a look!

Without an introduction, but thankfully with a table that lists the feats herein, we delve right into the meat of this book, so what do we get? Feats. A lot of them.

-Boon Pack: Animal companions and familiars are treated as druid level +2, up to a max of character level. Stacks with boon companion. Essentially a second feat for a total of up to +6 levels animal companion/familiar progression. Nice for multiclass-chars.

-Cunning: For every HD beyond 3rd, you gain +1 skill rank. If you gain a level beyond 3rd, you gain +1 skill rank. Toughness for skills. Simple, elegant, like it.

-Improved Cunning: Gain HD skill ranks. Get +1 skill rank per HD. Same as above - neat.

-Curious: +3 class skills. Rogue can take it as rogue talent. Okay for skill-starved classes.

-Defensive: +2 to CMD and +2 dodge bonus to AC. Bonus is lost when losing Dex-bonus to AC.

-Efficient Crafter: Reduce magic item creation cost by 10%, craft magic items in half the time. This is much more powerful than you'd think. Crafting is already something you can do pretty quickly and reducing the gold it costs can be nasty if your players are like mine and craft a lot. In such contexts, this may be problematic. In others, it may be very useful.

-Exotic Hunter's Bond: Choose from druid companion list in addition to the ranger's list.

-Exotic Weapon Group Proficiency: Requires one exotic weapon proficiency (which many races get via racial weapons): Adds +2 exotic weapon proficiencies. I get the intent of this feat, but parts of its prereqs, which are used to balance the feat, are invalidated by racial weapon proficiencies, thus rewarding all races but humans. Not a fan and pretty sure this does not work as intended.

-Expanded Bloodrager Spell List: +1 sorc spell per spell level to bloodrager spell list. Can be taken multiple times. Oh boy. For one, massive scavenging in one of the most powerful spell-lists. Secondly, does this make the spell known for the bloodrager or not? I assume the latter (the feat already being OP), but slightly more precision would be nice. Also: Can the class learn a spell that is both on bloodrager and sorceror lists at different levels, preparing the spell at two different levels? Not gonna get anywhere near my table.

-Expanded Paladin Spell list: Same deal as with bloodrager, only allows for cleric-spell-scavenging. Less powerful in comparison, but still problematic.

-Expanded Ranger Spell List: Same as the above, only for rangers receiving druid spells. Same criticisms as for palas apply, with the note that rangers getting druid crowd control being pretty nasty, nastier than the pala-feat (since palas already have pretty elite buffs...).

-Expert Tumbler: Lacks a verb. Lets the character ignore Str-mod and size modifiers regarding Acrobatics DCs to move through threatened areas. This is situational, but when it comes into play, extremely powerful -most dragons and giants won't be able to hit a character using this feat reliably. I like the visuals...however, I think one of the two modifiers would have been more appropriate for one feat. Either you love this one, or you'll hate the bouncy agile character further mitigating the threat of big Str-based threats.

-Extended Wildshape: Double wildshape duration. Yeah, you read right. For one feat. BROKEN in some contexts, useless in others. Next.

-Firearm Mastery: Reload a firearm as a free action. Requires Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot and Rapid Reload. Broken as F***. This horrid piece of crunch eliminates the balancing mechanism of firearms and surpasses quite a few class abilities in power. One of the most broken feats I've seen in a while.

-Goliath Grip: Wield a weapon one size larger at -2 to atk and "the amount of effort it takes to use the weapon increases" - it's clear due to the example what's meant: 1-handed weapons become two-handed. I applaud what this tries to do regarding weapon-class etc....but what about finesse weapons? Can they still be finesse'd? Do one-handed light weapons become 1-handed regular weapons or 2-handed weapons? A precise sequence is required to make this feat work properly.

-Improved Combat Reflexes: +2 AoOs per round. Nice.

-Greater Combat Reflexes: +2 AoOs per round, +2 to atk with AoOs. No complaints here.

-Greater Unarmed Strike: Damage of unarmed strikes as monk of 1/2 character's level; monks or brawlers instead add +1.5 Str-mod to unarmed strike damage rolls. Nice one!

-Half-Blood: Gain an alternate racial trait of your race or a standard racial trait of another race. This comes with a GM-approval disclaimer...the only reason I'm not frothing right now. Still, not all racial traits have the same value and the hand-waving of this feat is just sloppy, highly problematic design.

-Impressive Strike: When hitting critically, you deal + sneak attack damage. Not a fan, since crit-fishing agile builds can be pretty nasty. Still, the rogue can use it.

-Improved Combat Expertise: Decrease penalty of Combat Expertise by 2. Solid.

-Improved Favored Class: Gain two favored class bonuses each time you take a level. Benefits are retroactive. This feat is okay when restricted to hp and skills...but it's not. It can be used to get much quicker access to fraction-based favored class options, halving e.g. the levels it takes to gain +1/6-based FCOs. Broken, not gonna get near my group.

-Improved Flank: +1 damage versus foes you flank, increasing by +1 at 4th level, +1 every 4 levels thereafter.

-Improved Furious Focus: When wielding a two-handed weapon or a one-handed weapon in two hands while using Power Attack, you do not suffer Power Attack's penalty (but still do so for your AoOs). Power Attack is already one of the strongest feats in the CORE-rules. It does not need this feat, which also eliminates its tactical component - with it, you simply ALWAYS Power Attack. No decision, no tactics, gets nowhere near my table. Undermines the base-feat's intention, which is bad game design in my book.

-Improved Toughness: Gain 1 Hp per HD. gain +1 HP whenever you gain a HD. Okay.

-Improved Turning: Deal channel energy damage to undead you turn. Has a good idea - but mitigates the save usually allocated to channel energy, so no negating on a successful Will-save RAW. Can be easily salvaged, but broken as presented.

-Improvised Weapon Proficiency: You're proficient with improvised weapons and get +1 to atk with them. Also doubles as Weapon Focus for prereq-purposes. Unfortunate overlap with Improvised Weapon mastery, which increases the base damage. On the plus-side, the Weapon Focus-caveat is something Paizo's feat should have had. Still, pretty useless.

-Intuitive Spellcaster: Gain +4 caster levels, up to a maximum of your HD. Can be taken multiple times to apply to different spellcasting classes. EDIT: I wholeheartedly believe in standing up to my own failings - so there you go: I colossally, terribly and unforgivably misread this feat in a titanic brain-fart of epic proportions. I hereby apologize profusely for this horrid blunder and would like to thank Sayt for pointing it out.

-Iron Palm Technique: Use Con-mod instead of Str-mod for unarmed strike damage. Not a fan per se, but okay.

-Magnified Spell: Increases maximum number of damage dice by 10 levels at the cost of 2 spell levels. This would e.g. allow a 20th level caster to cast 20d6 fireballs as 5th level spells. Does not work. Name 3 5th level spells, even among all 3pp books, that can deal AoE 20d6 at 5th level. Yeah, thought so. Delayed Blast Fireball is 7th level... Damage-output is off, broken.

-Martial Weapon Group Proficiency: Gain proficiency in all martial weapons. Can be taken as a rogue talent. Completely invalidates Martial Weapon Proficiency -textbook power-creep. Broken.

-Quick Sheath: Put a weapon away as a free action instead of as a move action. Dreamscarred Press' version of the feat, Lightning Swap (Path of War, pg 23.), is more precise and better balanced, in spite of having an additional benefit. Ignore this iteration.

-Reflect Arrows: Return arrows to sender at -4 to atk and using Str-mod. This uses up an AoO. This feat isn't bad (though wording is a bit non-standard), but its image is pretty ridiculous when used against BULLETS, arrows or bolts. Oh, and RAW, it can return rays and the like to sender as well. Broken.

-Second Skin: Wonky wording; reduces armor check penalty by 2, to a minimum of 0.

-Simple Weapon Group Proficiency: Become proficient with simple weapons. Only useful when playing commoners etc. Also: Redundant.

-Trader: +2 to Appraise and Linguistics, scaling to +4 at 10th level. Boring +2/+2 skill-feat. Filler.

-Underhanded Blow: When using Weapon Finesse, use Int-mod for damage instead of Str-mod. This is not increased by two-handed weapons, but oddly, it does not decrease for off-hand weapons, which makes this way of wielding them very complicated.

-Vicious Cleave: Use Vital Strike's feat tree WHENEVER YOU CLEAVE. Since this does not require Vital Strike to trigger the cleave, you can abuse the hell out of this feat. Broken.

-Vicious Opportunity: Always Vital Strike when AoO-ing. Urgh. At least not as bad as the former.

-Vicious Spring Attack: This one works - lets you combine Spring Attack and Vital Strike. Nice!

-Wild Shape Shift: 1/wild shape, return to you humanoid form for druid level rounds. Shifting is a free action. Changing shape usually is a standard action. Very odd, pretty useless feat.

-Zealous Faith: Treat Warpriest blessing, priest dogma, cleric domain or inquisitor inquisition as +1 for corresponding powers. Comes with a no-early-access caveat. Solid.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are still good on a formal level. On a rules-level, there are quite a few non-standard wordings in here that are detrimental to the reader's ability to properly understand the feats and some clear deviations that render RAW vs. RAI more nebulous than it should be. Layout adheres to a relatively elegant 2-column standard with a colored border and nice b/w-artworks. The pdf has no bookmarks, but doesn't need them at this length.

This was one of Flaming Crab Games' first offerings and the relative inexperience does show. Author Alex Abel has a decent grip on how general rules-wordings work - but the experience with the finer intricacies was obviously not (yet) there - there are a lot of feats in here that either are redundant, open issues in the rules-languages or ones that jam "fixes" (read: blatant power creeps) in. Which is unfortunate, for this pdf, on the other side, has some downright brilliant, cool ideas that render a few of the feats herein exceedingly fun indeed. That being said, the low asking price does also help to (somewhat) remedy this pdf. While still highly problematic in quite a few cases, an experienced GM can scavenge some small, but seriously cool gems from this crackerjack box. My final verdict will hence clock in at 2.5 stars, rounded down in spite of the low price and the newbie bonus - while there are gems in here, the majority of the feats herein has an issue or another.

Endzeitgeist out.

This pdf really lives up to its name - most of the feats within provide options that will make you wonder why they weren't in the game to begin with. For example, there's Exotic Hunter, which allows rangers access to the entire druid lost of animal companions. There are three feats offering new circumstances to use Vital Strike; Impressive Sneak Attack, which allows you to deal (non-multiplied) sneak attack damage on a critical hit; and Improved Combat Reflexes, which allows two additional attacks of opportunity per round (I know a few swashbucklers who'll appreciate that one!)

I don't want to spoil too much more, so I'll leave it short, but this product is well worth it. Be warned, though - some of the feats are almost too good not to take. Such as Improved Furious Focus (Power Attack carries a penalty for a reason!) That said, there's more than enough awesome here to work well right off the bat, and some that may require adjudication. Look into it if you want more options!

First, full disclosure, I was one of the recipients of a free copy of this PDF. I don’t think this affects my opinion of the product, but just in case, I want anyone reading this to be aware. I will also not be going over every single feat.

As for the product itself, not only is it just plain awesome, but more than a few of these feats really do “feel” like the Paizo design team just forgot to put these in the core rulebook.

For example, we have Trader, which offers a +2 bonus to appraise and linguistics checks (increasing to +4 at 10 ranks). Or Exotic Hunter’s Bond, which opens up a ranger’s animal companion choices to include everything available to druids.

There’s also many feats that fill in a lot of “gaps” that the fine folks on these messageboards insist need filling. You think there needs to be a “Toughness for skills”? We have that in Cunning. I personally have been aching for an “Improved Dodge” for years, and I finally get it with Defensive. Both Toughness and Cunning get “improved” versions, granting even more hp and skills. In fact, the word “improved” shows up a LOT in this PDF. This is a good thing.

There’s also at least a couple of feats that take the idea that “a trait is half a feat” literally. Such as Second Skin, which reduces armor check penalty by 2 (double the “armor expert” trait). Intuitive Spellcaster that adds 4 to a character’s caster level (double “magical knack”). And yes, this allows your paladins and rangers to become full level casters, with a level to spare even!

Other fun and useful feats include:
Curious, which gives you 3 new class skills.
Goliath Grip, which reduces the penalties for wielding larger weapons.
Improved Furious Focus, which gets rid of ALL of your Power Attack penalties.

Now sadly, this product isn’t perfect, but I’m 90% sure these are just nitpicks on my part. For starters, we have Simple Weapon Proficiency....which already exists. Not only is the name the same as an actual core rulebook feat, it does the exact same thing.

Then there’s Martial Weapon Group Proficiency, which grants access to ALL martial weapons. This one bugs me for two reasons. One, this seems like a “fix,” like the author didn’t like the core feat and decided to fix it. Not only does it seem unneeded, but it kind of ruins the “feel” of the product (more on that in a bit). Two, it strikes me as maybe, possibly unbalanced. Probably not game-breakingly unbalanced, but it just seems like a bit much.

We also have Exotic Weapon Proficiency, which grants access to just two more exotic weapons. To me, this one just kind of seems pointless, but maybe it’s perfect for someone else. (Plus there’s that “same name as an actual feat” issue again.)

Going back to what I said about the “feel” of this product, there a feats for firearms, archetypes of core classes, and the spell lists and class features of the new hybrid classes....none of which are things you will find in the Pathfinder Corerulebook. Yes, this nothing but a nitpick, and a really silly one at that. Still, it just kind of ruins the flow for me.

And I promise my last criticism is at least somewhat valid: the last feat, Zealous Faith, has the prerequisite of “Blessing, Dogma, Domain, or Inquisition” class feature.

“What’s dogma?” you may ask. Well, it is a feature of Flaming Crab Game’s priest class. My issue comes from the fact that no where near the feat, or anywhere else in the product (that I can find), does it mention that FCG has made a priest class...and the “priest” is probably the most repeated third party class that I have seen. I originally thought this feat was intended for another company’s class. Granted, this issue is minor and is easily resolved by looking at FCG’s other products. Still, just a sentence added near the feat letting the reader know about their priest class would have been nice.

Now that the negative is out of the way, I want to stress just how much I really LOVE this PDF. Not only will I be bugging a lot of my GMs about taking many of the feats found herein, but if I run a campaign and a player asks me if they can use these feats, I won’t even ask which one. This product has “instant approval” status with me. I really do think it’s that darn good.

Man, I wish I was still playing my chaotic good goblin rogue so he could take Improved Flank...

The benchmark of any product is this: is it something that can be used in a game.

Not only can Forgotten Core Feats be used, I believe it will be essential in my campaign. I would not be surprised if, by sixth level or so, each of my players had selected at least one feat from this book.

Of special note are the feats which deal with skills: giving you more skill points and giving you more class skills. Like archetypes, these feats will allow your player to better customize your characters and create book smart fighters or wizards who like to free climb in their spare time. Gorgeous.

(My original review did not post so apologies if this is a repost.)

As stated in the title of this review, this PDF is easily a favorite around my group (3pp and Paizo).

The cover on this PDF is gorgeous. It makes me long for a physical copy of the book. I'd request Flaming Crabs make a print copy if it were not for the short length of this book.

The line art inside is fun and illustrates a few of the feats inside. Even if this book is all crunch, the art makes the PDF easy on the eyes. I'm not sure if the artist Allen Morris does work with other 3rd party companies, but his work here is impressive.

The feats in this book are of about 4 different varieties. 1) Feats that are derived from traits that have been given a bit of punch. For example, Curious gives the character 3 feats of his choice as class skills. 2) Feats that little 'fixes.' For example, Iron Palm Technique lets monks use their Constitution instead of Strength to determine unarmed damage. 3) Feats that bring back some material from 3rd edition that we've been waiting for. For example, Intuitive Spellcaster gives the character +4 caster level in one class (max their total HD). 4) Feats that make you go, "Wait. Why aren't these core feats??" For example, Cunning gives the character +1 skill points per HD, not unlike Toughness gives +1 HP per HD.

Layout is standard 2 columns with a simple border. Beginning of book has convenient feat table.

This book has some minor flaws, however. Goliath Grip could use some clarification or rewording even if the intent is quite clear. One of the feats, Improved Favored Class is broken as written. And there seems to be a missing feat: Improved Combat Reflexes (a prerequisite for another feat in the book, Greater Combat Reflexes). The blokes at Flaming Crab Games have stated they will fix these issues, however. It's always great when a company responds to feedback. And it seems that Flaming Crabs does a good job responding to posts.

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Summary: 4.5 stars. Gorgeous cover. Fun line art. Simple and effective layout. Feats are great (balanced and very frequently used at my table). If Flaming Crab Games do in fact fix the minor typos, this is easily a 5 star book. I highly recommend it, especially at this price!