Something has always bugged me about DND. Simply speaking, a martial class is very much outdone by its spellcasting brethren. While fighters are still wailing on one or two mobs and taking punches to the face, very nearly dying every turn, the wizard casually flies up, points a finger in the general direction of the nuisance, and blasts it with a ball of fire that roasts it and all its friends into Kentucky fried monster.
I've been wracking my brain on how to solve this, and an idea finally occurred to me. What's a martial depend on more than his BAB or his class features?
Feats. Feats make the fighter, just like spells make the wizard.
So an alteration is needed. I came up with a simple formula. It's by no means perfect, but it will empower your bow-and-sword pals accordingly.
At its most basic explanation, every class gets one feat per level instead of one every odd, with all characters getting a guaranteed feat at level 1.
Full martial classes with no spells, such as fighters (not counting bonus feats), rogues, and gunslingers, get 20 feats total (effectively, they have a feat progression of 1/level.)
Minor spellcasting classes, like paladins and rangers, get 16 feats total (.8/level)
Medium spellcasting classes, like bards and alchemists, get 14 feats total (.7/level)
Finally, full spellcasters keep the usual 10 feats total, or a .5/level progression.
Essentially, we subtract 1 feat per level of spell they can cast. The only exception to this rule is a full spellcaster, who would by this system have 11 feats, but... well, I'll explain the math later.
Hybridization, you say? Well, I can solve that conundrum for you.
Joe's a level 5 fighter. He has 5 feats. Joe's a pretty smart cookie, though, and decides some basic level 1 spells would greatly enhance his combat prowess and utility. Good on you, Joe! You get that Master's Degrees in Advanced Prestidigitation! Unfortunately for Joe, all that study time to turn him into a fighter 5/wizard 1 means he's flubbed his training in other areas. The result? This:
5 + .5 = 5.5. We round down in this system. For the purposes of keeping this clear, all classes begin at level 1 with a feat score of 1, then progress forward as shown by their spellcasting capability. If Joe takes a level in fighter, his feat score will jump to 6.5 as he exercises those previously-atrophied muscles and learns a new martial trick or two. If he decides to split into, say, a bard, on top of being pretty good at whistling, his feat score will raise to 6.2, and he STILL gets another feat because his feat score managed to pass to the next whole number. If he takes another level, though, his feat score will be at 6.9, just .1 shy of a full new feat. Take a level in ranger (for whatever reason, Joe's never been able to keep his attention on one career, so now he's got 4 different classes on him) and you get a feat score of 7.0, JUST enough to get that sweet, delicious 7th feat at level 8. Good mathemagics, Joe!... even if you did sort of shotgun your class specialization everywhere.
What does this mean for monsters, though? More feats means monsters would be easier to defeat, right? No, not necessarily. Monsters can also have class levels, and they get the same benefits as a player in this regard. I've strongly considered giving some monsters feats, but this isn't about making the game easier for the players, but giving martial classes more of a chance to shine in later levels with a wider range of choice. A wizard can use a large variety of means to dispose of an enemy, from polymorphing to incinerating to freezing to just dumping them on a pit. Now the fighter has a chance to do more than Greater Vital Strike Power Attack and hope that's good enough for everything he'll encounter. Now he decided to also invest on Improved Grapple. Or Teleport Tactician for that annoying wizard that always teleports out of the fight, giggling like a maniac because his concentration check bonus is too high for even Disruptive to work. Now you have Run to catch up with that flying jerk as he tries to escape you to the exit. Now you have *options*.
Just realized I put this in the wrong forum. Oops. That's embarrassing...
eh... i think streamlining feat trees by eliminating feat taxes would probably be cleaner. see this blog.
Not a bad solution, though I think the issue is not so much as players receive few feats as much as feats do too little.
How about a prerequisite feat can count as part of the feat it allows. Thus cleave and great cleave count as one feat, but only for fighter feats at first. See how it goes.
The OPs method is confusing. Can every character not a pure arcane caster take a feat a level till they run out of their allotment? It sounds like that.