Supporting Feats (inspired by Background Skills)

[Quorlox]

In the spirit of Background Skills, my group is toying with the idea I'm calling Supporting Feats. Some feats are weaker (Fleet, Heighten Spell), considered to be a feat tax (Combat Expertise), or highly situational (Eschew Materials, Bushwack). More often than not, these feats are not selected because there are better choices, but this could be changed by offering bonus feat selections that can only be chosen from a Supporting Feat list.

My thought is to allow a character to select a Supporting Feat at levels 2, 6, 10, 14, and 18.

I'm curious what others think, and what feats you think would be good Supporting Feats.

[Cyrad]

You could make them traits instead. They have half the power of a feat and you can take two traits by spending a feat. I did this with Exotic Weapon Proficiency.

[Quorlox]

Here is a list of our current Supporting Feats:

Altitude Affinity
Arcane Sight
Believable Veils
Carrion Feeder
Catch-Off Guard
Charge of Righteousness
Childlike
Combat Medic
Conviction
Corsair
Craft Ooze
Curse of Vengeance
Cypher Magic
Cypher Script
Deadly Finish
Deep Drinker
Desert Dweller
Desperate Battler
Disposable Weapon
Esoteric Linguistics
Exotic Weapon Proficiency
Falconry, Andorean
Field Repair
Fiendish Heritage
Flag Bearer
Fleet
Focusing Blow
Groundling
Harmonic Sage
Helpless Prisoner
Hymn Singer
Imperial Conscript
Improved Stonecunning
Improvised Weapon Mastery
Intrepid Rescuer
Iron Guts
Martial Weapon Proficiency
Nimble Natural Summons
One Eye Open
Potent Holy Symbol
Pure Faith
Racial Heritage
Reject Poison
Robot's Bane
Rugged Northerner
Run
Scavenger's Luck
Schooled Reserve
Secret Language (Teamwork)
Secret Signs
Seige Commander
Seige Engineer
Seige Gunner
Slow Faller
Sly Draw
Spell Mastery
Stony Step
Storm Lashed
Taldan Duelist
Throw Anything
Torch Bearer
Trapper's Setup
Troth of the Forgotten Pharoah
Tunnel Rat
Undermining Exploit
Undersized Mount
Unfettered Familiar
Wand Dancer
Water Skinned
Weapon Focus
Witch Knife
Wrest Charge

[AwesomenessDog]

Cyrad wrote:

You could make them traits instead. They have half the power of a feat and you can take two traits by spending a feat. I did this with Exotic Weapon Proficiency.

The issue is that there are traits that are stronger than feats: Finding your Kin trait(extra hitpoint and skill rank in a favored class on top of the free hitpoint or skill rank for favored classes) and the toughness feat (+1 hitpoint/level) are the worst offenders.

I also agree about feat taxing being stupid: personally if the feat prerequisite doesn't have anything to do with the new feat, I'll ask, "are you ever going to use [x feat]?" and if they say no, then they can skip the prerequisite because practically nobody uses combat expertise as is, and the only ones who might consistently now is the Unchained Monk.

[master_marshmallow]

I like the idea, but I'm not sure how many/how often you should get bonus feats.

I feel like one at first level is almost a necessity to help character builds exist properly.

[Quorlox]

I don't know how often they should be granted either, but I agree that one at 1st level is a good idea. Would granting one at 1st and then one every even level be too many?

[Mike J]

That's a tough question. When you look at the inspiration (Background Skills), players are "forced" to put ranks in non-adventuring skills. Most of those skills can be very useful if you are creative, so no real harm in giving out more. Feats aren't like that. You are "forcing" players to take feats that may never be used, even by the most creative player. More may not be better.

[Quorlox]

As our list has grown, most people have found things that they would like to take as much for thematics as mechanics.

[Quorlox]

We decided to add all Teamwork feats to the list since they require at least two people to be useful, and also Damnation feats since they should be easy to learn.