I've finally decided to go in and houserule the heck out of Pathfinder to get the game to fit what I want out of it. One thing I'm not satisfied with are a lot of the core feats. So I'm going through to see what can be done to make every feat an exciting and tantalizing choice to made and feel like a real power upgrade for the character. Every time a feat is written down on that character sheet it should feel like the moment when an Immortal in Highlander cuts another Immortal's head off.
One thing that has been scratching my head for awhile is the +4 BAB prerequisite for several core feats. The feats are:
Spring Attack (3 feat chain)
Whirlwind Attack (5 feat chain)
Great Cleave (3 feat chain)
Shot on the Run (4 feat chain)
So far in my experience of the game I just haven't seen a need for these feats to have to emerge at level 4 and not before.
With Whirlwind you can't get enough feats until 4th level to actually pull it off, however in another thread, I'm looking at the overall value of the the feat, which might make it possible to happen earlier.
Still, what I'm stumped on is how the game gets gummed up if a character can pull off these feats at levels 1-3?
Looking back to when the feats were first created in 3.0 you see that all of them except for Shot on the Run had the +4 BAB requirement.
I'm not really sure why Shot on the Run, with 3.5 got nerfed to needing the +4 BAB? Even in 3.5 if you were playing an archer you wanted to use Rapid Shot as much as possible and not sit there ducking in and out from behind cover.
Aside from SotR, it looks like the other feats pre-req was encoded in the original 3.0 DNA. I'm always a bit suspicious of 3.0 design decisions. When it was published it was a complete overhaul of the D&D rules, which previously did not have feats, so a lot of these designs were trying to anticipate their use and play without an extensive history behind them. It wouldn't surprise me if the "+4 BAB pre-req" was inserted simply because these are all flashy moves and so should be delayed in level progression simply because they were flashy, not for any real game breaking elements to them.
So unless I'm missing something I'm inclined to scrub the pre-req away from these feats.
The major benefit I can see with this change is that more people are likely to use them with their characters. If you can grab, within one or two levels, a cool signature move then they are far more likely to be tried, rather than having to wait till mid levels to put all the pieces together.
