Feats have been one of the best, and occasionally most annoying mechanics of the D&D game since 3rd edition came out. Since then I've heard the phrase "You can never have enough feats!" I created a system in my homebrew (3.5, not PRPG Beta) where a player could sacrifice a feat for a stat point and, well, no one thought it was worth taking. Well, one did and that was only to round a 15 that was bugging him up to a 16.
I ran into two feats, one I traced back to Book of Nine Swords and one I only know the origins of in a PbP game. I'm sure it exists elsewhere but I've no clue where that might be. The BoNS feat was Superior Unarmed Fighting (or something to that effect) and I think this feat is just plain cool. It allows someone to make an effective pugilist and increase their unarmed damage without dipping into monk or getting the shaft. It grows with the player and while the damage is never as good as a monks it's enough that it doesn't suck.
The other feat I found was Ambidextrous, with 3.5 we saw that feat go the way of the dodo as the mechanics were combined with the then Two Weapon Combat feat to make the now Two Weapon Combat feat. Still, some people found it strange that while it combined the two feats the person who took them was never, in fact, ambidextrous. Ambidexterity is the equal use of both your right and left hand/arm, by definition you have no off hand. The feat I ran into fixed that by saying that your character had no off hand. I.E. A two weapon fighter using that suffered no strength penalty with his "off" hand.
My main regret is that I was absent during the feat discussion of the PRPG and never thought to at least try and get some variant of the above two feats into the system. Gods know I'm house ruling them. Still there needs to be a purpose to what I'm writing so here it is:
What sort of feats out there do you think are just plain cool? Not stuff for some uber build but feats that are downright neat? Perhaps the flavor of them struck you or maybe you thought "why the hell wasn't this made sooner?" whatever tickles your fancy.
I definately agree with your assessement of Superior Unarmed Strike, it is pretty much the only thing from the Book of Nine Swords that I ever used in my own games. While it isn't something I want to see in every game, I have a soft spot for Barbarian brawlers as a character archetype, and a feat which allows them to steadily improve their base damage beyond a piddly 1d3 is a nice way to facilitate that.
Other non-Core feats I really like:
Versatile (Source?): A feat that lets me choose a pair of permanent class skills is great for 3.5 characters who want to have some non-traditional specialty. In PFRPG this might be a little abusive because of the changes to the skill system, of course.
Versatile Performer (Complete Adventurer): A feat that allows you to use your highest Perform skill bonus for several perform skills. This is really neat for bards who want to have more than one type of performance at their disposal.
Animal Bond (Complete Adventurer): A feat that adds +3 to your effective druid level assists greatly with multiclass/PrC builds and with rangers who would like their companion to be a bit more potent.
Short Haft (the 3.5 PHB2, although there was a similar feat in Dragon Magazine at some point) This is a handy feat that lets pole-arm fighters "choke up" on their weapons as a free action, allowing them to attack adjacent targets at the expense of their reach until they spend another free action to extend their reach again in a later round. While the realism is debatable, the utility is undeniable.
Most of my absolute favorite feats however, come from Arcana Evolved and its supplements, many of which have been reprinted in the Book of Experimental Might. Hands as Weapons, Speed Burst, Rapid Strike, and Compensate for Size are particularly neat new concepts. Then there are feats like Weapon Specialization, Opportunist, Defensive Roll, etc. which are class abilities in D&D, but work just fine as feats in a system where they aren't the only things that make a boring 3.5 class worth taking. Of course, since I favor AE heavily, I'm not exactly the most unbiased commentator.
-C. Robert Brown
I *love* Speed of Thought from the Expanded Psionics Handbook.
Back in 3.5, I was also a big fan of Able Learner from Races of Destiny, making multiclass humans oh so much more flexible. I'm also a fan of Weapon Finesse on principle, because I enjoy light fighters.
Also the Scorpion Style, Gorgon's Fist, and Medusa's Wrath feats help out on Unarmed strike, for monk's or anyone.
Like the OP, I created houserules to affect the feat progression.
One of my first houserules was that you could spend XP to purchase a feat. The cost was 1/2 of however much XP you need for your current level. So, if you were 5th level, it would cost 5,000 XP to go from 5th to 6th, so a feat would cost half of that, or 2,500 XP.
But it was too steep. Nobody ever did it.
So I lowered the price to 1/4 of a level, so that 5th level character could get a feat for 1,250 XP.
But I still only had a couple people do it.
One group, however, had a character join them with a -2 racial level adjustment. So this new guy was 2nd level and the rest of the group was 4th level. They came up with the bright idea to have everyone else just buy feats until the new guy caught up, so I had a bunch of 4th level characters with something like 8 or 9 feats each, and in the same group was a 4th level character with a normal number of feats but a race that was worth a -2 LA.
It worked out fairly well, but it started getting awkward to plan any challenging encounters since they were level 4 but would tear up any CR 4 or 5 encounters, and most CR 6 encounters, but quickly, around CR 7ish, we were treading into TPK waters.
So I ended up capping it at 1 purchased feat per level, but you could save up if you wanted, and say, at 4th level, buy all 4 feats before rising to level 5.
I still never had anyone buy more than 1 or 2 feats total, except for the group I described above.
Note: this is on top of the fact that my 3.5 list of feats has over 1200 feats now. I've recategorized them to make it easier to find what you want. I've tweaked many of the weak ones to be more appealing. I've converted many class features into feats, like Sneak Attack, Trapfinding, Lore, Favored Enemy, etc., and I've made up a bunch of feats, such as feats that let you add +1 permanently to an ability score, or gain +1 to your BAB, etc.
Even with all that, right at their fingertips, players hardly ever were willing to give up 1/4 of their level to get a feat.
In playtesting, I made two fighters and leveled them up to 100,000 XP, with one of them never buying any feats, and the other one buying a feat at every level. The second one ended up several levels lower than the first one, but when I squared them off arena style, they fought each other very evenly.
So balance-wise, 1/4 of a level for a feat seemed about right, but nobody did it.
Sad.
With all those feats, I was hoping to see more than the most popular 30 or 40 feats get some actual use.
Everyone always goes back to the popular feats. Tried and true, they always end up picking those few feats and almot never anything else.
1200 feats and about 1100 of them have never been used by anyone. Even my bad guys.
So now I'm working on a system where feats are given out more frequently, but characters have to pick from different categories some of the time. But so far, it seems kludgey and gamey and I don't even like it, so I'll probably never implement it.
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1200 feats and about 1100 of them have never been used by anyone. Even my bad guys.
Quite a few of the 'ugly stepsister' feats (Combat Casting, frex) could probably be tweaked into Traits (reduced in power, in many cases!) and then a house-rule implemented that allowed any character to gain 1 Trait per character level.
1200 feats and about 1100 of them have never been used by anyone. Even my bad guys.Quite a few of the 'ugly stepsister' feats (Combat Casting, frex) could probably be tweaked into Traits (reduced in power, in many cases!) and then a house-rule implemented that allowed any character to gain 1 Trait per character level.
That is a very good idea. I may have to look into that.
Save "Feat" for something big and impressive, and use "Trait" for something smaller and less mechanically intrusive - then give out more traits than feats.
TYVM
Especially if you use the extra trait feat to give two traits instead of a normal feat... of course if suddenly we have many more traits to choose from the limit on how many from each category might have to change.... maybe instead of 1 each period 1 per 4 levels with the possibility of starting with 2 from a category?
Hmmm... that could be something to do with useless feats like the 3.5 Spell Focus. :P That was one change I thought was unnecessary, especially considering at higher levels every monster seemed capable of saving against your spells unless you tweaked them out. Considering it was only spells of a certain school I didn't see anything wrong with it being +2
I created a new category of magic item in my 3.5 games called "Mystic Tattoos". Basically, you could purchase them, and they gave you a virtual feat. You couldn't use said feats to meet the prerequisites for other feats or prestige classes (with the exception that mystic tattoos counted your prior mystic tattoos for prereq's sake, so if you bought Weapon Focus as a MT, you could then buy Weapon Specialization as an MT).
The price for these items was 2,000 gp. Didn't seem like it'd be too much of an issue, and the first time I made them available, they didn't really do very well.
Then came the game with Incarnum and a Wu Jen... and people were buying MTs left and right and ignoring other magic items almost entirely. It got to be too abusive - as you get higher in level, 2k is just a drop in the bucket, and since some character classes have less need for gear, they can make due with extra feats with that gold. So, I've revised them again. When I next run a game, they'll still be available, but it'll be like this:
Mystic Tattoo
Cost: 2,000 gp, + 1,000 gp per prior tattoo.
Maximum tattoos: 5
I love feats, and I love the idea of them being more freely available. I hadn't expected it to be quite so much more.
With all the supplements out there, D20 and non, there has been quite the influx of feats in the game since this editions conception. Unfortunately (or thankfully depending on your perspective) many of them have been useless, even (or especially) some none supplement feats (3.0/3.5 Toughness anyone?). I think the PRPG has made ample improvements on some though I'll keep my mouth shut on the "improvements" I wasn't keen on. Still, I remember on the few occasions of which I found myself a player my rogue would dip into two levels of fighter just so he could get an extra feat and better weapons and because my rogues were a little more melee oriented.
So xp for feats sounds like a good idea. Mystic Tatoos is an interesting concept as well. I've also been fond of giving PC's magic weapons or changing magic weapons so they mimicked feats as well. I know items like that already exist so my use of it isn't original by any means. Of course it takes only one powergamer to turn granting additional feats into a bad idea. I like the increase made by Paizo in the PRPG granting a feat at every other level and personally that strikes me as good enough.
Though I'm curious... what feats out there do people consider too powerful? Or, perhaps, too easily abused?
As much as I like them for keeping a character on focus concept wise while opening up a little more power for them the dual class feats are generally a bit much in 3.5.
When a single feat will allow you to take everything the swashbuckler gets then add on Sneak attack damage equal to a level 20 rogue I got to pause for a minute.
Snow magic is another one that quickly gets abuse without much trying (indeed it almost looks like it was made to be that way).
The 3.5 arcane strike can be abused if used with a lot of natural weapons (I've built a proof of concept once but it was a very complicated build... too much work IMO).
Generally if it helped none casters then the feat didn't bug me much... with the sole exception of the mage slayer line of feats, parts of those where more than they needed to be.
While I personally enjoy feats the problem I have with them is that there are too many. If you look at the sheer number obviously there are more feats that suck then those that are worth taking, especially considering how few you get the interesting, read suboptimal, feats get pushed off to the side. What I did in the games I run is allow for feat training. There are certain restrictions such as that you can't train for more feats than levels you have, so if you're level 1 you can only train for 1 feat. You also have to explain how you're training for it not just "Oh btw I train for feat X". I require an explanation about how you're training for it and if it doesn't seem like you're doing enough then I make them rework it or maybe go for another feat.
I started this when I noticed that if you go off for 5 years of game downtime to train with Usarakuwarinogona the great master of the Katana for that down time, you still come back that same level and with a -4 for not being proficient with that weapon. Most of my players use trained feats for stuff such as weapon proficiency in something they want their character to use or in the case of one of my sorc players she trained for precise shot, she tried to shoot as close as possible to her familiar and NOT hit it, needless to say she didn't do too well at first. In game time it takes about 5 months to learn a feat since it allows for easy scale in regards to weapon prof. Month 1 -4, 2 -3, 3 -2, 4 -1, 5 full proficiency!
Now it seems like players would abuse this to no end but there is one major rule I DM by, Anything I allow my players to do I'm allowed to do. Before every game I start I ask if the players want to have the feat training option if they say yes they understand that the NPCs can as well :)
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I would love to see the cleric class, supposed to be the best at channeling energy, have a progression that gives them more versatility at doing so.
Back when 3rd edition was first announced, I was wishing for a priest class that wasn't an armor-clad vancian spellcaster that could turn undead, but had *all* of it's class abilities focused around turn undead / channel energy.
In my vision, the Fighter would be feat-based, the Rogue skill-based, the Wizard spell-based and the Cleric class ability-based (as the Bard and Barbarian, to a lesser extent, turned out to be). (The Rogue turned out to be much less skill-based than I expected. I had envisioned them having to make a skill check, and their Sneak Attack success / bonus damage dice being dependent upon skill usage more than just positional / flanking issues.)
At 1st level, the 'standard cleric' would be able to channel energy to smite with a melee attack or heal with a touch. As level increased, the amount of energy channeled would increase, so that the priest would inflict or heal more damage.
With levels would also come access to special channeling feats (which could also be purchased using normal feats gained every three levels or whatever) that would allow the energy to be channeled in different ways, to put up a protective aura / ward, to smite someone at a distance with 'holy fire,' to repel specific sorts of creatures, to buff / enhance a touched ally, or a smaller sort of blessing / buff on all allies in a specific area, to levy a curse on a foe, to enhance healing to purge disease / poisons, to abjure away / exorcise opposing magics, to call forth divine servitor creatures, to dismiss conjured minions creatures from other casters (or outsiders in general), etc.
Each priest would simply channel 'sacred energy' to heal and smite, and perform whatever other functions they chose to perform, based on the channeling feats they selected. They would pray for spells at the beginning of the day, and wouldn't be spellcasters of any sort (barring multiclassing), and each diety introduced to the setting might come with their own special channeling feat (the god of magic might give his priests a channeling feat that allows some of his priests to expend an action channeling holy energy to enhance the arcane spellcasting of an ally, for instance, while the god of death might grant his priests the option of learning how to channel energy into a corpse to animate it as an undead minion).
Depending on the nature of 3rd edition spellcasting balance (which I knew nothing of back then), I'd proposed that the channeling priest might have a limited number of channeling attempts per day (and might be encouraged to learn Extra Channeling feats if he found himself falling into the 15 minute adventuring day trap), or there might be other limits on how channeling could affect someone (only X number of hit points healed per day, for example, or only one channeling active at a time), if the priest could channel all day long, to make them more like a Warlock, but without being unbalanced by allowing infinite healing or summoning or whatever.
But, it was not meant to be. :)
I don't have a problem with the vast number of feats, on the contrary, I think there should be even more. I like the idea of being able to make two 20th level characters in the same class, but both being completely different from each other purely due to feats.
Though I wish there were far less "must-have" feats. If a feat seems to be taken over and over again, to me, it's a poorly designed feat. I like the idea of using them to make your character unique, but in practise they server more to make character's more powerful, especillay with the number of combinations avalible (truthfully, I've never seen a single feat that was overpowering on it's own...I've seen plenty which are when taken with others).
Though I've always hated the "Feat-Starved" mentallity alot of folk seem to take. I don't think the standard progression is feat-starved at all, I think the origonal number was just right. I don't think the PF progression is feat-starved, yet even when playing with a feat every two levels alot of players seem to want more.
As for feats I'd like to see though? Truthfully I've always wanted to see more semi-magical feats. One thing I loved instantly when I opened the XPH was that with a few feats you could make a semi-magical warrior without level dipping. I even used these feats for my next character...and well...he was by far the most interesting character I ever made.
I wouldn't mind seeing more battle control feats though, somthing similer to Dutiful Guardian from the Drow of the Underdark book, or a feat which stops foes from tumbling past.
I'd also love more non-comabt feats as well...such as..say a semi-magical feat allowing character's to breath underwater, or gain premonitions.
Though I'm curious... what feats out there do people consider too powerful? Or, perhaps, too easily abused?
Monkey Grip, I hate that one.
Though I'm curious... what feats out there do people consider too powerful? Or, perhaps, too easily abused?Monkey Grip, I hate that one.
Ah, thank you, I was waiting for a post like that :P
Though I wish there were far less "must-have" feats. If a feat seems to be taken over and over again, to me, it's a poorly designed feat. I like the idea of using them to make your character unique, but in practise they server more to make character's more powerful, especillay with the number of combinations avalible (truthfully, I've never seen a single feat that was overpowering on it's own...I've seen plenty which are when taken with others).Though I've always hated the "Feat-Starved" mentallity alot of folk seem to take. I don't think the standard progression is feat-starved at all, I think the origonal number was just right. I don't think the PF progression is feat-starved, yet even when playing with a feat every two levels alot of players seem to want more.
I actually have to disagree with these two philosophies when combined. I honestly believe the original 3.x was a bit feat starved. Mainly due to the fact that feats, by their design philosophy (at least by my understanding) were supposed to be special, something you took that made you truly a cut above the rest, but it seemed to fail. Over the course of 20 levels, if you weren't a human or a fighter or something of the sort, you gained 7 feats which doesn't give you a lot to work with. Now if all the feats were awesome and worth picking, then sure, but that wasn't the case. Feats weren't as great as they were supposed to be which was one of the reasons I think the classes were 'Feat Starved'. The feat progression was made for getting Grade A material but your were only supplies with Grade B or C.
Granted anyone with a min-maxer mentality will learn to work within their confines somehow. Not to mention some classes supplied bonus feats and let's not forget the joy of being human so my opinion on the matter is just that. Were it somehow in my power I wouldn't force it on the community as a whole unless there was widespread agreement that the changes needed to be made. I'm quite glad the PRPG gave us a better feat progression though I wasn't keen on how some (i.e. Power Attack) were changed that becomes the joy of house rules. :P
I've never been keen on the 'If it's used a lot it must be poorly designed/too powerful' line of thinking. I believe some feats might have served better as class features, perhaps something like giving the rogue and the bard Weapon Finesse for free at some level or another (again, Pathfinder worked this out nicely) but I won't say Weapon Finesse is a poorly designed feat because I've yet to have a rogue in my games who didn't take that at some point. On the contrary, I think more feats need to be constructed like that. I'd rather have a few feats that I have a hard time deciding between because they're all good than a plethora of feats to pick and choose the few reliable and decent ones.
Another thing I disliked and wound up house ruling in my games was the obsession prestige classes had with "Combat Casting". A +4 bonus which you get only when casting defensively and it seemed every spellcasting Prestige Class and it's cousin required it. Instead I changed it to Skill Focus: Concentration. A +3 bonus that you get all the time rather than just when casting defensively. That way if they want such a specific feat like that they could take it by choice rather than as a sub-par requirement.
I actually have to disagree with these two philosophies when combined. I honestly believe the original 3.x was a bit feat starved. Mainly due to the fact that feats, by their design philosophy (at least by my understanding) were supposed to be special, something you took that made you truly a cut above the rest, but it seemed to fail. Over the course of 20 levels, if you weren't a human or a fighter or something of the sort, you gained 7 feats which doesn't give you a lot to work with. Now if all the feats were awesome and worth picking, then sure, but that wasn't the case. Feats weren't as great as they were supposed to be which was one of the reasons I think the classes were 'Feat Starved'. The feat progression was made for getting Grade A material but your were only supplies with Grade B or C.
Granted anyone with a min-maxer mentality will learn to work within their confines somehow. Not to mention some classes supplied bonus feats and let's not forget the...
Well..it could be said that if every rogue takes weapon finesse, why bother having it as a feat? Wouldn't simply making it a class feature they gain work too? No rogue can be a "cut above the rest" if the rest includes rogues, since they'll all seem to have the same feat.
Though I did mean it in a slightly broader sense. In the last campaign I played in, 3 out of 4 party members had taken the PF version of toughness...one was a fighter, one was a ranger, and the other was a druid. The barbarian was the only one who didn't have it. The feaeat didn't make those characters any different, it only made them more powerful. What was the point of making this a feat? It doesn't make the character's more unique or interesting...it gives them all the exact same thing, if anything it just makes the characters more alike.
The reason I dislike "must-have" feats is because I'd like to be able to take a feat purely to make my character unique, without fear that taking it in place of another feat make's my character less useful.
The feaeat didn't make those characters any different, it only made them more powerful. What was the point of making this a feat? It doesn't make the character's more unique or interesting...it gives them all the exact same thing, if anything it just makes the characters more alike.
I'm not trying to sound snarky, but if a feat gave a character blue hair, and everyone took that feat, then everyone would be alike because of the feat, correct? However, a feat which gives you blue hair certainly sounds like something which makes your character more unique.
Feats are mechanical. The effects are mechanical. A fighter who takes toughness (particularly the Pathfinder version) has more hit points than a fighter who does not, all other things being equal. They are tougher, hardier, and can take more hits before going down. This makes them unique relative to other fighters. However, hit points are also prized by just about everyone, so a feat which increases them is going to be popular. So, lots of people take toughness and get the same benefits. The same thing happens with power attack, spell penetration, weapon finesse, etc.
For my part, I don't like feats like Natural Spell. I don't know if this made it into the Beta or not (I haven't been keeping up with Pathfinder due to time constraints; I'm waiting to read the final product this fall). The druid class sets up a restriction about what a character can do while wild shaped. Then a feat is immediately provided to remove this restriction. The feat is specific to the class feature of the druid. It does not allow, say, a wizard to cast more spells he is polymorphed into a bear. It only works for the druid turned into a bear. The potential power increase to any druid by removing this restriction is great, so everyone takes Natural Spell. The game effectively assumes any druid is going to take Natural Spell and be able to cast spells while wild shaped, but rather than just changing the class feature, the druid has to burn a feat slot. That really rubs me the wrong way.
I suppose the only reason that I haven't house-ruled either the feat or the restriction out of existence is because I am not a big fan of wild shaping and therefore don't think about it that much.
I'll say this. I don't mind natural spell as much as I used to. With wildshape being nerfed I think it balances things out some. Yes, wildshape was nerfed, sure you can shape earlier but you are nowhere near as competent as 3.5 druid when it came to being wild shape. However, to each their own, my groups 'power gamer/role player' (a dangerous combination) loved druids and ironically, while he was capable of making them into some rather nasty builds I never had trouble with his druids even with Natural spell and 3.5 wild shape. However I imagine my experiences are different from those whose players found powerful builds or spammed the usefulness of various abilities. *shrug*