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In my campaigns I've decided to use this home-brew system of gaining extra feats. In certain cases this could be considered very overpowered. Especially in late game when PCs generally have enough gold to fund a country. In such cases the rules can be edited such as a graph where the price rises as the PC increases in level. Though I generally find that the feats you'd buy in higher level tend to be a couple feats down the tree which naturally causes it to jump in price very fast.
I decided to share it to hear if anyone had any thoughts about it. Maybe if there were any loopholes I missed I'd like to fix that as soon as possible.
[In this campaign you can hire a teacher to teach you certain feats. (I added this to make it easier to acquire feats; since I find it a problem that most classes are so feat starved.)]
Rules:
-> You have to find a teacher that has the desired feat.
-> PCs can't be teachers.
-> You can only learn one feat in a given session.
-> To learn the desired feat you have to make a successful wisdom check DC18. (Each attempt takes 1 day) (You don't have to pay by the day)
-> It takes a whole day of training to acquire a feat after being taught by the teacher. (1 week if done while traveling)
-> The taught feat has to be considered a skill feat (Two weapon fighting, Point blank shot, etc.)
-> You have to already have the pre-requisites to learn the desired feat
-> To hire a teacher you must pay 5000 gold (+5000 for every step down that feat tree)
-> Teachers can be found in the guild closely related to the desired feat.
-> Teachers cannot teach mythic feats.
-> Taught feats cannot be retrained. If the PC retrains a taught feat's pre-requisite the taught feat is locked until the PC regains the pre-requisite feat in question.
I wouldn't make it a wisdom check it would favor some classes over others. maybe a BAB check? I would also maybe put a cap on how many they can learn such and such per level maybe.
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Yes, talk about over-powered!
You really shouldn't allow PCs to obtain an unlimited number of feats. Unless you have some other sort of hard limit, like max character level of 6, or something similar.
Other points:
- "a whole day"! Wow, that is so demanding. <g> I'd expect to need more downtime than just a single day.
- the 5000+gp cost seems like the only limiting factor in your system. Such a high cost means it's inaccessible at early levels, and easy to acquire at later levels.
- I understand why you don't want PCs to be teachers, given that the high cost is the only limiting factor. But it seems so artificial a constraint.
I'd rather see a method of attributing certain feats to magic items than this sort of giveaway system. I'd even rather see a system of giving away free feats, as long as it was limited to peripheral, suboptimal, rarely selected feats. But hey, it's your game. Have fun.
This would make more sense in a game where feats work more like prepared spells where you can know an infinite amount of them, but can only "prepare" a certain number of them per day.
I could almost see this system work if and only if you had to switch out one of the feats you already had. That way, you wouldn't be getting free feats as such. It would be like another sort or "retraining".
Otherwise, it allows PCs to get too many feats, too early. So no, I don't think it's a good homebrew rule at all. Too easy to abuse, regardless of the cost and downtime spent. After all, downtime is a quasi-infinite resource, and depending on the campaign, you can get as much of it as you want.
More training time and gold cost that are cumulative. For example, 1st bought feat costs 10, 2nd 20, 3rd 30 4th 60.... You can only learn so much stuff. (
Have you thought about P6?
I did something similar with a homebrew ruleset once. I gave each character a number of 'learned feat' slots, which could be filled by being trained by specific npcs or by reading magical tomes which bestowed the feat. Training took quite a while and quite a bit of gold, whereas the tomes worked pretty much like the attribute books. I think by the end of the several months long campaign, the characters ended up with about 3 more feats than they normally would have.
I'm thinking that just putting a cap on how many you can learn based on level would probably solve some of the OP complaints. (I'll start at the max you can learn is 1/4 of your level. Min is 1, and max is 5)
The whole thing about time being too short is valid, but I generally give the pcs only about a week or two of downtime per session depending on how many sessions since they last played. This is usually for crafting times, animal training, buying items, etc. So I don't give them infinite time to do whatever they like. Plus they are only allowed to purchase one feat during a session so it's not like they can spam buy as many as they want. Plus if they decide to do this mid session it would cause a bit of an flow break storywise if they just stopped mid journey for half a month to a month of time just to buy a feat.
I have thought of a cumulative price system though I'm not too fond of it being dependant on which number of feats they have already bought since feats aren't equal making it so they have to pay more for [dodge] than it would be to buy [manyshot] is a bit ridiculous in my mind.
If I would change the price I would make it more expensive since I generally try to limit the amount of OP magic items they have, and gold is the main bottleneck for that. So making the feats inexpensive makes the system easier to exploit this.
I definitely appreciate the criticism, and have personally thought about most of these points before, and will look deeper into the rules to make it better.
it sould be bab bases so full bab characters could get a few more feats than 3/4 bab and half bab characters wouldnt be fair to give the wizard as many feats as a fighter but only slightly boosting the fighters feat capabilities. so if you make it bab based fighters would get a potensial 5 extra feats but then wizards would only get a potencial 2 extra feats which seems more fairI'm thinking that just putting a cap on how many you can learn based on level would probably solve some of the OP complaints. (I'll start at the max you can learn is 1/4 of your level. Min is 1, and max is 5)
Our game 3.5 campaign many years ago did something similar but we ended up using this method. Not something I use now but here you go:
1). You have to find a NPC who has that feat that is at least 1level higher than you.
2). You can gain only one feat each level.
3). You must spend 100gp x level for training expenses. This is cost spent on finding a mentor and cost of the training.
4). You must expend 10% of the max experience points of current level (already earned). Example 10000 for current level and you have 3400 and you need 1000. You would expend 1000 and have 2400 left.
Four is used to really to curtail the abuse of gaining a feat each level and it is really restrictive at the higher levels as it costs more in gold and experience points.
More often than not players took two maybe three extra feats and often only in levels three to seven. Most players would stop at the mid levels due to the experience point cost.
AllendDM
In my games I added a Master Mentor (Item Creation) feat with the requirement of being at least 12th level, which allows characters to teach feats to others at the market price of 10,000 gp. Characters can only learn a number of feats in this way equal to a quarter of their base attack bonus.
I really don't like using BAB as the modifier since this is supposed to benefit all players with a flat rate. The main purpose is to give classes with lower amounts of feats, an opportunity to catch up with classes like fighter that have a lot of feats available naturally. especially since some of those classes could really benefit from item creation feats but will fall behind a bit if they take those instead of combat feats when they don't have enough of those to properly make use of their abilities. it's just making the disparity a bit bigger in my eyes.
But those classes mainly use feats to make it so they aren't as much of glass cannons. Anyways the aim is to make feats a little less rare in general, and not give any one class type a leg up above the rest. I'm not fighting to give power boosts to any one class type. I'm always hearing complaints of being feat starved, and this aims to at least give a bit of breathing room.
I am not sure giving feats to other classes based but on the fighter is a good idea either. My opinion but the fighter is underpowered compared to the legacy classes and is often very underpowered with the new classes. I use a variant fighter that actually adds A few more feats and gives him some more benefits.
I'm just giving comparisons. In no way am I saying that the fighter class is over powered. I'm just saying that they have a lot of feats.