Some feat suggestions


Skills & Feats


A number of feats are on the weak side in 3.5E D&D. Here are some suggestions:

1. Combine Medium Armor Proficiency and Heavy Armor Proficiency. Medium Armor Proficiency only provides +1 AC benefit over Light Armor, at the cost of a movement speed penalty. Alternatively, consider making Chain Shirt a medium armor instead of a light armor.

2. The damage with Improved Unarmed Strike is very weak. It should be increased to make it a worthwhile feat to take. Something like: "The damage for your unarmed strike increases depending on your size, from d2 to d4 for Small, d3 to d6 for Medium, and d4 to d8 for Large."

3. Spell Focus rightly was reduced from +2 in 3E D&D to +1 in 3.5E D&D. +1 may be a little on the weak side, but is roughly comparable to Weapon Focus. It's not clear when spellcasters should take this versus say Spell Penetration. My suggestion is to wrap these feats together - I don't think the result is too powerful, but others may disagree: "+1 to save DC, +2 to dispel DC, and +2 to checks to overcome SR for a chosen school of magic". Similarly for Greater Spell Focus.

4. Make the Dodge feat give a flat +1 dodge AC bonus. No need to recalculate when it is being used (as a Combat Feat in Pathfinder) or who it is being used against (3E and 3.5E D&D).

5. Simplify the magic item creation feats. There are too many of them, and some of them provide redundant ability. e.g. Brew Potion/Scribe Scroll (single use items), Craft Rod/Staff/Wand, Craft Wondrous Item/Forge Ring, Craft Magic Arms and Armor.

6. Improve the weaker metamagic feats, giving them some limited use per day. e.g. Metamagic feats increasing spell level by 1 could be done for free on the fly say 3 times per day; those increasing spell level by 2 could be done for free on the fly say 2/day; anything higher 1 free use/day. The spell level of the adjusted spell not to exceed the maximum spell level you have access to - so a 5th level Wizard would not be able to Maximize or Empower a Fireball. The metamagic feats that do increase the spell level more might require other weaker metamagic feats as prerequisities (ala the prerequisites for the Sudden Metamagic feats).

7. Consider combining Quickdraw and Rapid Reload.

8. Maybe make Arcane Armor Training and Arcane Armor Mastery regular feats rather than combat feats, so that you don't need to decide when they are in effect and remember to roll arcane spell failure when they are not. (These feats help fix the need for a prestige class like Spellsword with reduced arcane spell failure, so I rather like them.

I like the change in Pathfinder to Mobility - makes it a much simpler mechanic.

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