As it is, many of the classes that have menu choices can get extra ones for the price of a feat. Rogue, barbarian, Witch, etc. They can all take "Extra <Foo>" to get another choice. This is fine and all, but why not just have one big meta feat that works with all of these?
This is also forward compatible, in that other classes, like a 3rd party's work, or Prestige Classes (like the Stalwart Defender) can benefit from this as well.
This post was brought about by looking into the Stalwart Defender. It gets a menu choice, however there's no feat to get more of them. And feats that are specifically for prestige classes are probably not going to be published, thus creating an odd situation where there's a clear precedence for trading a feat for a new choice, but not all menu choice classes get a feat.
An "Extra Class Ability" blanket feat would have to define in its description what it applied towards. Not all class abilities have a corresponding feat to increase their uses/charges. In that situation, it would likely be easier for players to continue as-is with individual feats than to have to read through a massive feat description to see if their ability applies.
For example, a Paladin can take Extra Lay on Hands or Extra Channel, but Extra Smite Evil does not exist.
As it is, many of the classes that have menu choices can get extra ones for the price of a feat. Rogue, barbarian, Witch, etc. They can all take "Extra <Foo>" to get another choice. This is fine and all, but why not just have one big meta feat that works with all of these?
Because not all "menu choices" are equivalent to a feat in terms of power. I'm not even sure how you'd generically define "menu choices" in the first place.
Yes and no... Yes there should be a feat that dose what you asking for but the how many will varry from abilty to abilty. Ie 2 turn for cleric, 1 hex for witch, 6 Rounds of song for Bard ect. Any new class or prestige class should be writen with thees thing in mind and put out the same time as the class. Try making one your self see how it fits.I normaly come up with one new feat or rule each time we play.
I'd totally take the Extra Eidolon feat for my summoner.
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I am in favor of an "Extra Feat" feat for fighters.Would you be allowed to chose "Extra Feat" with the feat you gain for taking the feat "Extra Feat"?
Absolutely! Or you could use it to advance down the Feat feat chain, taking Improved, Greater, and Perfect Feat in order, each one granting an additional feat.
I can't tell if everyone is trying to be innocently funny, or sarcastically shooting down the idea...
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The root of the matter is: The feats for Extra Rogue Talent, Extra Rage Power, Extra Hex, etc. already exist in print and they work as intended. If a 3PP wants to make a new class or prestige class or whatever with another "menu choice" type of ability, then that 3PP should, if they wish, also produce a feat (preferably within the same supplement) to add the ability to trade feats for menu choices. It's not really that big of an issue as far as I can see, and it prevents the need for "identifying" what exactly a "menu choice" is for the purposes of such a feat.
Yes and no... Yes there should be a feat that dose what you asking for but the how many will varry from abilty to abilty. Ie 2 turn for cleric, 1 hex for witch, 6 Rounds of song for Bard ect. Any new class or prestige class should be writen with thees thing in mind and put out the same time as the class. Try making one your self see how it fits.I normaly come up with one new feat or rule each time we play.
By "menu choices", I meant things like Revelations or Rogue Talents. They are something which you can buy with limited resources that your class gives. For example, a rogue will have 10 rogue talents in their life span. With Extra Rogue Talents, there can be more. I do not mean channel abilities, or bardic music, or the like.
@hogarth: I think the inclusion of the Extra <Foo> feats already imply that the designers consciously decided that they were worthy of feats. If Ultimate Combat comes out with some really, really good rogue talents or rage powers, Paizo has already said that they are equivalent to feats by making the option there with Extra Rogue Talent and Extra Rage Power.
Such features that this feat would work with could be denoted with a key word or key phrase, much like how "bond" is. Yes, there are no feats that work of a generic bond, but it's understood what "bond" means in that it's a thing you decide at a given level and from then on it permanently alters your character's path. "Class Options" could be such a key phrase.
There is already precedent set for this type of feat. Aspect of the Wild is one feat that can apply four different things.
The root of the matter is: The feats for Extra Rogue Talent, Extra Rage Power, Extra Hex, etc. already exist in print and they work as intended. If a 3PP wants to make a new class or prestige class or whatever with another "menu choice" type of ability, then that 3PP should, if they wish, also produce a feat (preferably within the same supplement) to add the ability to trade feats for menu choices. It's not really that big of an issue as far as I can see, and it prevents the need for "identifying" what exactly a "menu choice" is for the purposes of such a feat.
It also applies to Paizo classes, notably the Horizon Walker, the Stalwart Defender, the Battle Herald, the Master Chymist...
Easily housed. It also leaves open the posibility that a class can get Feat-like Abilities (menu choices) that are more or less powerful than standard feats. If a class gave you abilities that were only on par with Traits, you'd probably want to grant two with the use of a feat. Say you made a variant fighter class that received a pool of more powerful abilities to choose from once every three levels instead of once every two, you wouldn't want that blanketed in there.
Most DMs can look at the Feat-like Abilities in question an easily determine if an Extra feat is acceptable. Probably shouldn't be in print, though.
@hogarth: I think the inclusion of the Extra <Foo> feats already imply that the designers consciously decided that they were worthy of feats.
Obviously. But you can't just define "menu choices" as "things like Revelations or Hexes or Rage Powers that are clearly intended to be worth a feat". Is a ranger's favoured enemy a "menu choice"? A horizon walker's terrain dominance? A battle herald's inspiring command? And if so, is it clear that those abilities are worth a feat to get extra choice?
EDIT: I missed a bunch of what Cheapy said. Personally, I think that Terrain Dominance is worth more than a feat and a ranger's favoured enemy is pushing it (i.e. you'd see fewer pure rangers and more fighters with one level of ranger and lots of feats invested in Extra Favored Enemy). I do agree that you could tag class features with an "Extra Option-compatible" key word; that would save some room in the rules in terms of duplication of feats, but not a huge amount I suspect.
Does that mean I could get an extra mystery for my oracle? Sweet!
Hogarth, I suppose another thing I'm advocating is changing the language of the classes already released to include that keyword.
I was iffy on the Horizon Walker, and I did not mean Ranger's favored enemy.
I guess this would need tighter language to convey exactly what I desire.
You would not be able to get an Extra mystery, or bloodline, or animal companion, or arcane bond, or anything of that sort. I lump those in with "bond", which I mentioned above. They are not all called bond (well, animal companions and arcane bonds are...but I digress), but they are all linked in that they are a choice that is different from the type of choice I desire the extra feat for. That's horrid wording, but I need to think of a better way to phrase this.
Essentially, there is a difference between a Witch's hex and a wizard's arcane bond.
I want this feat to affect things like the Witch's hex, but not things like the wizard's arcane bond.
3rd Party wise, a Shadow Assassin from SGG could get an extra Shadow Talent, but not a Shadow Style.
Come to think of it, that's a good distinction. Styles are the type of choices like Familiar / Bonded Object, or a druid choosing a cleric domain over an animal companion. This fundamentally changes the style of the character, whereas talents modify the style chosen.
Hogarth, I suppose another thing I'm advocating is changing the language of the classes already released to include that keyword.
Yeah, I figured it out eventually. :-)
It would save a little space in rulebooks, but it doesn't really bother me either way.
My concern isn't space, bit an elegant solution that is forward looking and backwards compatible with prestige classes.
The easiest way to do this would be to have a single feat called "Class Feature Enhancement", which allows you to choose an eligible class feature and have it enhanced in a way specified by the feature itself.
Then, each class feature (for example, each "menu" class feature) can have a clause in it that says, "Each time the [class name] takes the Class Feature Enhancement for this feature, she [chooses an additional option from the list, gains 6 additional rounds per day, etc]". Or, if it becomes standard enough, it could just be -- "This class feature is enhanceable; each Enhancement feat grants you [whatever]."
In other words, the feat can be generalized, and what the feat does for each specific class feature is specified in the class feature.
My concern isn't space, bit an elegant solution that is forward looking and backwards compatible with prestige classes.
I have a strong suspicion that while the idea is conceptually elegant, you'll find that you spend far more effort and space creating one general-purpose feat and rewriting all the base and prestige classes to use a special keyword (and delineating all the exceptions) than it takes to just create a new feat per class.
I say this based on what happens when writing computer programs :)
The easiest way to do this would be to have a single feat called "Class Feature Enhancement", which allows you to choose an eligible class feature and have it enhanced in a way specified by the feature itself.
Then, each class feature (for example, each "menu" class feature) can have a clause in it that says, "Each time the [class name] takes the Class Feature Enhancement for this feature, she [chooses an additional option from the list, gains 6 additional rounds per day, etc]". Or, if it becomes standard enough, it could just be -- "This class feature is enhanceable; each Enhancement feat grants you [whatever]."
In other words, the feat can be generalized, and what the feat does for each specific class feature is specified in the class feature.
+1
Problems:
Some of these abilities you can select multiple times (Extra Ki, Extra Lay On Hands), some you can select only once (Extra Channel). You'd have to call them out individually, and would require weird language ("If you use this to gain extra uses of lay on hands, you can take it multiple times, but if you use it for extra uses of channel energy, you can take it only once").
Some of these stack (extra performance), some of them don't (extra mercy), which means you'd have to call each of them out as suboptions in the feat, which means the "simple" generic feat ends up pretty clunky.
That means you'd also have to have additional language explaining that using it for extra channels doesn't preclude you from taking the feat again for another class ability.
You'd also have to add in a general rule that you couldn't take the feat until you had the specific class ability in question. Extra Lay On Hands has "lay on hands class feature" as a prereq, but Extra Class Ability doesn't have that (and you couldn't give that as a general prereq because that means the monk would have to have LOH in order to take extra ki).
It also makes the feat line ugly and cumbersome with parens or brackets. It's bad enough to have Weapon Focus (longsword) and Skill Focus (Knowledge [arcana]), I don't want to see Extra Class Ability (channel energy) or Extra Class Ability (ki). And if you took it multiple times, it would be Extra Class Ability (channel energy, 2). Bleh.
Problems:
Some of these abilities you can select multiple times (Extra Ki, Extra Lay On Hands), some you can select only once (Extra Channel)...
I think he's refering to what I call Feat-like Abilities. It's when a class gets a menu of specific powers to choose from usually every other level. This includes Rage Powers, Rogue Talents and Hexs. A good obscur example applies to one of the variant Rangers in the APG (Skirmisher?). He loses access to all spells but gets Hunter's Tricks or something like that. Look that up. I believe that's the kind of "Menu Choices" he's talking about. All of the the other things like Extra Rage, Extra Channel and such don't apply here ... unless I'm wrong.
I think he's refering to what I call Feat-like Abilities.
Fair enough. Though my fourth point still stands.
Don't forget about the fighter's Mythic capstone, Mythic Feat Perfection, which grants him the use of any and all feats and mythic feats. Even stuff that doesn't make any sense for him, like Extra Hex.
Man if that were around in 3.5 it would have turned into punpun with my groups scaling fighter rules (for every 3 fighter feats a character had, numeric bonuses from said feats increased by 1, and assuming extra feat was in fact a fighter feat, weapon focus and weapon spec would have had you doing infinity damage and only missing on a 1).
I think he's refering to what I call Feat-like Abilities. It's when a class gets a menu of specific powers to choose from usually every other level. This includes Rage Powers, Rogue Talents and Hexs. A good obscur example applies to one of the variant Rangers in the APG (Skirmisher?). He loses access to all spells but gets Hunter's Tricks or something like that. Look that up. I believe that's the kind of "Menu Choices" he's talking about. All of the the other things like Extra Rage, Extra Channel and such don't apply here ... unless I'm wrong.Problems:
Some of these abilities you can select multiple times (Extra Ki, Extra Lay On Hands), some you can select only once (Extra Channel)...
Correct, that's what I was referring to.
What I am proposing is that every single "menu choice" / "feat-like ability" class feature will have some text in the descriptive paragraph that goes before all the options. This text will label that ability as a Menu Choice (except with a better name).
For example, the paragraph describing rogue talents will start like this:
As a rogue gains experience, she learns a number of talents that aid her and confound her foes. These talents are a menu choice. Starting at 2nd level, a rogue gains one rogue talent...
The class features which work with this feat are now clearly labeled.
Now the feat itself has this wording, or something like this:
Prerequisites: Must have access to a menu choice class feature.
Benefit: Every time you take this feat, choose one class that grants a menu choice class feature. Choose one additional ability from that class's menu choice class feature. You must meet all prerequisites as normal.
It could use some tightening up on the words, but anyone should see what it's aiming to do.
This feat replaces Extra Hex / Extra Discovery / Extra Rage Power / Extra Rogue Talent, etc. Any class that has a menu choice class feature can use this feat to get additional abilities from that feature. For example, a gunslinger could use this feat to get extra Grit, instead of a feat titled "Extra Grit".
Biggest problem is that this wasn't thought of from the beginning. The Extra Rage Power, Extra Rogue Talent and Extra Hex are already in the books so it's kind of late to change that now. As a sometimes DM, I let my players know that this option is available to them if it's not in print already. Extra Hunter's Trick sounds perfectly reasonable to me. I don't see anything broken about that.
The problem with this feat would be that it was would mean that all extra menu lists have to be made with the idea of them being something you can get extra of by feats. As things stand now you can have choices that are weaker then a feat, or ones that are more powerful then a feat. After that you simply don't create a feat that allows a way to get to them besides taking class levels. If there is a generic feat that does this as part of common play EVERY menu you from here on out is more limited.
The problem with this feat would be that it was would mean that all extra menu lists have to be made with the idea of them being something you can get extra of by feats. As things stand now you can have choices that are weaker then a feat, or ones that are more powerful then a feat. After that you simply don't create a feat that allows a way to get to them besides taking class levels. If there is a generic feat that does this as part of common play EVERY menu you from here on out is more limited.
I thought a binary was being proposed so that a menu could announce itself as being one for which 'extra menu choice' functions. So if you have a list of super-powerful menu choices, you simply don't put that announcement.
The problem with this feat would be that it was would mean that all extra menu lists have to be made with the idea of them being something you can get extra of by feats. As things stand now you can have choices that are weaker then a feat, or ones that are more powerful then a feat. After that you simply don't create a feat that allows a way to get to them besides taking class levels. If there is a generic feat that does this as part of common play EVERY menu you from here on out is more limited.I thought a binary was being proposed so that a menu could announce itself as being one for which 'extra menu choice' functions. So if you have a list of super-powerful menu choices, you simply don't put that announcement.
Correct. I don't know who all has the book, but SGG's Shadow Assassin has two "menu choices", one called Shadow Style and the other Shadow Talents. Shadow Styles are far more powerful than Shadow Talents, and as such wouldn't be a "menu choice" in my language. Shadow Talents would, however. This illustrates the need for having language that denotes which class features this encompasses.
Dunelord3001: Further, Paizo has already said that those abilities are worth a feat. Since there is an Extra Rage Power feat, any extremely powerful rage power that comes out in Ultimate Combat, or any other book is implicitly equal to a feat, since you can take it with Extra Rage Power.
Somehow I don't think that's going to hold them back, since you can already get these without a feat.
Finally, I'm aware this is (probably) too much work to currently do, but I suppose it is something worthwhile to keep in mind if there ever is a Pathfinder.5
Plus! We'd have quite a few more interesting feats if they hadn't lost out space-wise in the books to the Extra Rage Power, Rogue Talents, etc feats.
I might not be explaining this well. My point isn't that there aren't extra menu choices type feats that already exist thus proving that some are of the power level that they should be able to be taken by a feat. I think we all admit that. Nor is that the binary is a bad idea. It's that for all intents in purposes the binary already exists in the forms of feats. Ones that are in the Goldie Lox lone have a feat, ones that aren't don't. Honestly what other menu you choices need a feat?
His point is that looking forward, there will be more classes with more "Extra X" feats printed. The idea in large part is to cut down on "Extra X" in the future.
'Menu Choice' type feats that exist already:(Core, APG e UM)
Extra Mercy
Extra Discovery
Extra Hex
Extra Rage Power
Extra Revelation
Extra Rogue Talent
Extra Arcana
Learn Ranger Trap is this for trapper rangers, but also works for non rangers, so it probably doesn't count
That is ALL the menu choice type abilities from all classes. All of them. Including one from an archetype.
Other menu choice abilities that could be inserted into a general feat, taken from archetypes and PrCs:
Inspiring Command
Hunter Tricks
Terrain Mastery (NOT Dominance)
Advanced Mutagen
Defensive Power
Cruelty
Adaptation
Shifter Blessing
Ninja Tricks
Not counting 3pp or homebrew classes that have to create their own version of "Extra X" feat evertime the class has that type of ability.
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'Menu Choice' type feats that exist already:(Core, APG e UM)
Extra Mercy
Extra Discovery
Extra Hex
Extra Rage Power
Extra Revelation
Extra Rogue Talent
Extra Arcana
Learn Ranger Trap is this for trapper rangers, but also works for non rangers, so it probably doesn't count
That is ALL the menu choice type abilities from all classes. All of them. Including one from an archetype.Other menu choice abilities that could be inserted into a general feat, taken from archetypes and PrCs:
Inspiring Command
Hunter Tricks
Terrain Mastery (NOT Dominance)
Advanced Mutagen
Defensive Power
Cruelty
Adaptation
Shifter Blessing
Ninja Tricks
Not counting 3pp or homebrew classes that have to create their own version of "Extra X" feat evertime the class has that type of ability.
Yeah I still say this should be a homebrew thing. For example, if I had a player playing an Antipaladin and he asked "Can I take another Cruelty instead of a feat at 5th level?" I would say "Of course." because if there's an Extra Mercy feat, that should extend to Cruelties. This is something the DM must do, because changing the OGL to include something is more work than it's worth.
Having an Oracle get an extra mystery power instead of a feat should be called extra class ability. Of course, no conflicting abilities. If a ranger chose archery, they shouldn't get two weapon fighting this way.