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Please assess power level and critique.
Certain avoidance [Certainty]
You have become disciplined and repetitive in your movements to avoid harmful effects.
Benefit: When making a saving throw, you may use your certainty score in place of rolling a d20, adding all other modifiers as normal. Your certainty score is twice the number of Certainty feats you have, but does not exceed 10 even if you take a sixth Certainty feat.
Certain timing [Certainty]
You have become practiced in the speed of your reactions.
Benefit: When rolling your initiative, you may use your certainty score in place of rolling a d20, adding all other modifiers as normal. Your certainty score is twice the number of Certainty feats you have, but does not exceed 10 even if you take a sixth Certainty feat.
Certain adroitness [Certainty]
You have learned to be careful and avoid obvious follies when performing most tasks.
Benefit: When making a skill check, you may use your certainty score in place of rolling a d20, adding all other modifiers as normal. Your certainty score is twice the number of Certainty feats you have, but does not exceed 10 even if you take a sixth Certainty feat.
Certain prowess [Certainty]
You are confident in avoiding rank errors even in the face of your foes.
Prerequisite: Any other Certainty feat.
Benefit: When making an attack roll, you may use your certainty score in place of rolling a d20, adding all other modifiers as normal. An attack made when using your certainty score in place of the die roll is never a critical threat.
Certain mage [Certainty]
You are confident in your spellcasting efforts.
Prerequisite: Any other Certainty feat.
Benefit: When making a caster level or concentration check, you may use your certainty score in place of rolling a d20, adding all other modifiers as normal.
Student of certainty [Certainty]
Your continued discipline in the arts of stability allows you to submit to chance but still fall back on your skill.
Prerequisite: Any two Certainty feats.
Benefit: When making a roll for which one of your Certainty feats would apply, you may announce before rolling whether to use this feat. If you do, you take the better of the rolled result or your certainty score. You may use this ability once per day per Certainty feat that you possess.
Special: You may take this feat any number of times, receiving three additional uses per day of the feat (in addition to the benefits of having an additional Certainty feat).
Stabilizing influence [Certainty]
Through example and morale, you can extend the benefits of your training to your allies
Prerequisite: Student of Certainty, any other three Certainty feats.
Benefit: When your ally makes a roll for which one of your Certainty feats would apply, you may as an immediate action before she rolls apply a daily use of your Student of Certainty ability to her roll.
Master of stability [Certainty]
Your discipline allows you to exceed the normal limits of customary results.
Prerequisite: A certainty score of 10.
Benefit: As long as you possess at least six Certainty feats, your certainty score is 12 instead of 10.
I don't think this is too unbalanced. Especially because you have to eat a number of feats to get the full benefit. After 6 feats, I would be about ready to give the PC 12's for all their rolls anyway!
I see you're trying to eliminate a lot of randomness with this feat chain.
The Certain Avoidance feat worries me. As a player, I'd love to have it at high levels, just to make sure I can't blow a save. Since I can make sure I get at least a 2 with that one feat, the element of randomness and dare I say drama is gone if I can't possibly fail a save against my strong save modifiers.
I have a similar concern with Certain Mage, but I'd have to see what happens when the mage gets to take 12 on concentration checks and how fast I can get to the point where I never fail one to cast defensively. This is after investing 6 feats, so I'm not as worried.
I'm not worried about Adroitness and I know of an archer who could use a decent score for Prowess. Only attack rolls and saves automatically fail on a 1, so I'm not worried about my skills as much. And if you're making a lot of attack rolls, that's plenty of chances to put the feat to use and you may not need a high value in your Certainty score.
Overall, I must ask what the design goal is for these feats. They're an interesting idea. I wouldn't want them in a game I'm playing in, though. Feats, to me, are meant to make my character capable of great deeds. Things that the commoners can't match. Taking a bunch of these gets you to the point where many of your rolls each day are going to be average, because instead of rolling you're going to be taking a 10 or 12. That removes the element of drama from the game IMHO. It just doesn't seem to be very heroic if you just "take 10" on a bunch of rolls.
But on a more positive note, let me add one more:
Certain lethality (Certainty)
Prerequisite: Certain prowess
Benefit: Instead of rolling damage for a melee or ranged attack normally, you may instead take the average result of the dice roll, dropping all fractions.
Special: This feat does not apply to spells or spell-like abilities.
You can take student of certainty multiple times, Lets say a 20th level character took nothing but certainty feats, at level 20 they take 20 on attack rolls and caster level checks.
The feat specifically states that your certainty score cannot exceed 10 (unless you get to 12 with the capstone feat).
A 20th-level character with Certain Adriotness, Certain Prowess, and eight copies of Student of Certainty could designate up to 31 total skill checks and attack rolls per day that would default to 10 if she rolled less than 10. Which, again, doesn't seem particularly overpowered for something that eats up all ten of your feats.
Lathiira, I think you understand the design goal pretty well. Not all players enjoy the risk and drama of "rolling a 1", and some players like the idea of a character who is so highly skilled that they can train themselves to overcome that 5% chance. This allows characters to invest in that.
Years ago I wrote these features up into a class, but I realized they actually work much better as a feat set.
I agree with you that "Certain Avoidance" by itself can basically be used to avoid rolling 1's -- but only in situations where your character believes she'll succeed on a 2. There's a feat in a 3.5 splat book that, in addition to its primary benefit, also makes it so you don't fail your save on a 1; this isn't as powerful as that is.
In general a primary caster of level x can cast their highest-level spells with a concentration check of 15+x or 16+x, so with Combat Casting and a +6 stat bonus, you only need Certain Mage and two other Certainty feats to cast defensively.
In fact, this might be a good feat set for a spellcaster: Combat Casting, Certain Avoidance, Certain Mage, Student of Certainty. The spellcaster could expect to make most Will saves, automatically cast defensively, and designate the most important saving throws of the day as her three uses of Student so that if she rolls poorly she gets to take the 6 instead.
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You can take student of certainty multiple times, Lets say a 20th level character took nothing but certainty feats, at level 20 they take 20 on attack rolls and caster level checks.The feat specifically states that your certainty score cannot exceed 10 (unless you get to 12 with the capstone feat).
A 20th-level character with Certain Adriotness, Certain Prowess, and eight copies of Student of Certainty could designate up to 31 total skill checks and attack rolls per day that would default to 10 if she rolled less than 10. Which, again, doesn't seem particularly overpowered for something that eats up all ten of your feats.
Um did you double check that, because I intentionally specified attack rolls and spellcaster checks. Neither of those say that. Maybe they do on your copy at home, but not on what you posted. If that's just a general rule of certainty feats that's fine, but I'm just telling you what is written in your feats up there.
EDIT: Okay so on a second reading I understand that those feats just say use your certainty score and the previous feats say what the certainty score is. I understand that now and withdraw my previous statement, although seperating that section from the feats and just making that a general rule for any certainty feat would make it more obvious.
Lathiira, I think you understand the design goal pretty well. Not all players enjoy the risk and drama of "rolling a 1", and some players like the idea of a character who is so highly skilled that they can train themselves to overcome that 5% chance. This allows characters to invest in that.
Years ago I wrote these features up into a class, but I realized they actually work much better as a feat set.
I agree with you that "Certain Avoidance" by itself can basically be used to avoid rolling 1's -- but only in situations where your character believes she'll succeed on a 2. There's a feat in a 3.5 splat book that, in addition to its primary benefit, also makes it so you don't fail your save on a 1; this isn't as powerful as that is.
In general a primary caster of level x can cast their highest-level spells with a concentration check of 15+x or 16+x, so with Combat Casting and a +6 stat bonus, you only need Certain Mage and two other Certainty feats to cast defensively.In fact, this might be a good feat set for a spellcaster: Combat Casting, Certain Avoidance, Certain Mage, Student of Certainty. The spellcaster could expect to make most Will saves, automatically cast defensively, and designate the most important saving throws of the day as her three uses of Student so that if she rolls poorly she gets to take the 6 instead.
Some people enjoy the possibilities of rolling a 1, some don't. This I understand. Luckily my dice only do that to me on initiative rolls. You mention trying to overcome that 5% chance. But only on attack rolls and saves does that exist; no other d20 rolls have the verbiage indicating auto-failure on a roll of 1. Thus you can reach a point where you never fail in all those other categories without help. And if you eliminate the chance of failure, you might as well just let a computer run the math for you IMHO. I know what feat you referred to from 3.5; it only affects Fort saves, which meant you could get around death from massive damage and dying from save-or-dies, to an extent. Your feat would actually let someone potentially reach that point in more than one category.
Also consider what happens when your casters no longer fear failure of casting defensively rolls. Also, to a lesser extent, making concentration checks against damage. For that matter, when you reach the point your spellcasters are taking 10 on caster level checks (or 12), you eliminate the use of SR except when you have creatures that are pretty powerful compared to your mages and whatnot. It's not a big jump to then drive SR to uselessness, as level-appropriate foes might not be resisting any of your casters' spells.
It is factually true that level-appropriate SR can usually be overcome by an average die roll?
Those feats are pretty awesome! Instant 10 or 12 on attacks, saves, initiative and skills is (especially for someone whose dice tend to come 5 or less, like me) AWESOME!
But only if you commit yourself to the feat tree. They are really lousy to dip in, even taking four of them is kinda bad.
And BECAUSE you HAVE to put at least 5 feats on it to get some awesome, but not too awesome or you would break the game, this mechanic works and is perfectly balanced.
But thats just IMHO.
Resurrecting this thread to see if I can get any more feedback on this feat line, or suggestions on how to correct.
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