Iron Plumage - Feat Chain for feathered creatures

[Karuth]

As a big fan of Tengus I thought it would be very cool if you could fight using your own feathers like throwing darts. Thus I created this feat chain.

What I am looking for is feedback regarding powerlevel (especially fitting prerequisites) and maybe better names for the feats. Other input is welcome of course too.

Also I can't shake the feeling that something like this exists already. But a quick search hasn't turned anything up. Maybe it was in 3.x? Or a different game system altogether?

Iron Plumage
Prerequisite: Feathered Race (such as a Tengu)
Effect: Your feathers grow stiff and hard almost like iron. You gain a +2 Armor Bonus to AC (does not stack with armor worn). This bonus increases by 1 for each feat in the Iron Plumage Chain. During winter your plumage grows fluffy and dense which increases the AC by 2 but also gives an armor check penalty of -1.

Feather Dart
Prerequisite: Feathered Race, Iron Plumage
Effect: With a flick of your arm (or wing) you can fire a feather as sharp as a blade. Treat the feather like a dart appropriate for your size, except the range increment is 25. It can deal slashing or piercing damage. Also the feathers regrow fast enough to neglect the impact on plumage, although extended fighting with feather darts gives the user a ruffled or even plucked appearance.
Feather darts count as natural weapons for spells like magic fang, but are limited to 50 shots as if they were ammunition.
A Monk can treat his own feather darts like shurikens for his monk abilities.

Improved Feather Dart
Prerequisite: Feathered Race, Iron Plumage, Feather Dart
Effect: Your feathers gain the ability to penetrate damage reduction. Choose one type of DR: silver, cold iron or magic. Your feathers count as weapons of that type. This feat can be taken more than once, each time it applies to a different type of DR (up to 3 times). In addition the feathers also deal 2 additional points of damage when used against a creature with DR they penetrate.

Feather Storm
Prerequisite: Feathered Race, Iron Plumage, BAB 5
Effect: Instead of a single feather you can lose a whole volley of feathers. This creates a 30-ft cone of razor sharp blades. The cone deals 1d6 damage per character level. If used against an enemy whose DR is penetrated with Improved Feather Dart you deal 1 additional point of damage per die. A reflex save halves the damage. The DC for this save is equal to half your character level + Dexterity.
Using this ability does use up a lot of feathers however. Each time you use the ability the AC bonus from Iron Plumage is reduced by 1. If the bonus sinks to 0 you can no longer use this ability. The full plumage regrows over night.

Large Feathers
Prerequisite: Feathered Race, Iron Plumage, Feather Dart
Effect: Your Feathers increase in size. This has several effects. Your AC bonus from Iron Plumage increases by 1 (in addition to the +1 you get automatically). If you have a fly speed, increase maneuverability by one step. If you have no fly speed your plumage now catches enough air so that you only take half falling damage. And lastly the damage of your feather darts fired increase by one die size and their range increment increases to 30.

[Orthos]

I have an avian humanoid race in my setting (in addition to Tengu) that could make great use of these. Thanks!

[+5 Toaster]

ok let's begin
Iron Plumage

Spoiler:

While I like the thematic flavor of the winter bit, It might be a little too specific. For example even Hawaii has a winter but I doubt this should work that way there. Maybe change it to cold climates only. although personally I'd just take it out, due to my next comment. While 5 feats is a hefty investment it WILL net you a +8 armor bonus, no dex limit, and only a -1 acp. In warm climates it will be a +6 armor, no dex limit, no acp. If take improved feather dart an additional 2 times it's a +10 armor bonus in winter, +8 elsewise. this essentially makes feathered races the go to races for lightly armored classes, or even fighters as it's better or as good (especially for dex builds) than full armor training with full plate. My suggestion is to either have it count as actual armor, with a max dex limit appropriate at to what it's current armor bonus is (look at armor averages to determine this), or maybe reduce it to a +1 every 2 feats. that will be still pretty significant but less so.

Feather Dart
I like but you need to specify how to replenish ammunition. I assume sleeping.

Improved Feather Dart
this has no issues from me

Feather Storm
It has a really low dc, how about 10+ 1/2character level+dex. considering you lose ac every time you do it. though if you implement my suggestion above I would suggest it going down after every 2 uses. This one is also requiring specifications on how to recover. Again I suspect sleeping will do it.

Large Feathers
seems fine to me.

[Orthos]

I was actually just coming now to correct the Feather Storm DC thing. I presumed the missing 10+ was a typo or oversight.

And I agree with Toaster's suggestions Re: Iron Plumage.

[Karuth]

Thanks for your replies :)

Lets start with the bottom. The DC for the feather storm.

I thought the 10 + 1/2 level + Ability Modifier was standard to calculate abilities?
Like the "Lesser hurling" or "Ferocious Trample" abilities from the Barbarian.
Although the "draconic breath" feat for kobolds adds the full level and is a limited ability.

If I rewrite it along draconic breath it would be like this:

Feather Storm
Fire a 30-foot cone of razor sharp feathers. The damage can be halved with a successful Reflex save against a DC of 10 + character level + Dex. The cone deals 1d6 damage per character level.
Each use reduces your AC gained from Iron Plumage by 1. The full plumage regrows after a good night's rest and a hearty meal.
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I assumed people knew that when I was talking about winter, that I mean when it's getting cold. I added it mostly for flavor.

Also Iron Plumage itself does not count for the AC increase (I should have made that clearer). So the maximum AC (with an investment of 7 feats!) you can reach in warm climate is 9 (11 in cold climate).

However a +5 Mithral chain shirt costs around 26100 gold, and Bracers of Armor +8 cost 64000 gold.
Why am I mentioning this? Because the value of a feat is roughly 20000 to 25000 gold (Ring of Evasion).
The 5 feat investment (AC +7) would therefore have a net-worth of roughly 100000 gold. And I have no problem if someone pays that much to have armor that does not hinder him.
But I agree that bonus is a little too high. So I have made two new versions.

Iron Plumage (Vers. 1)
Your feathers become as hard as iron and give you an Armor Bonus to AC (does not stack with armor worn). The Bonus starts at +1 and increases by 1 for every 4 character levels you have. (Maximum +6 at level 20)
Good if you do not take any other feats.

Iron Plumage (Vers. 2)
Your feathers grow stiff and hard almost like iron. You gain a +1 Armor Bonus to AC (does not stack with armor worn). This bonus increases by 1 for each feat in the Iron Plumage Chain (except iron plumage itself).

(Counts for both: During winter your plumage grows fluffy and dense which softens blows and gives you DR 2/piercing or slashing and an ACP of -1.)

This means you can reach AC6 with 5 feats and AC8 with 7 feats. By selecting the right prerequisites you can prevent a character from getting the feats too early. The winter coat still gives a little flavorful bonus but no longer interferes with the AC value.
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Feather Dart:
I intentionally did not specify how many feathers you can shoot before running out because I wanted to keep the feat simple. In my games I also do not track mundane ammunition for example (unless its a special situation).
But if you want some numbers how about this:
Each day you can fire 50 feathers before your plumage begins to suffer and lose AC. Reduce the AC by 1 for every 50 feathers fired. You regrow 50 feathers per con modifier (minimum 50) during sleeping.

And of course Feather Storm would then be equal to firing 50 feathers. And increase regrowth to twice the con modifier.