sounds underpowering to me. there aren't many feats you can qualify for at 1st level. and lower attributes qualifies you for even less over the course of your career. but i just wouldn't using this Variant without an easily accessible means to compensate for the missing points. like either a drastically increased point buy, or a series of attribute substitution feats, like a theoretical Dex to damage feat as a good example. and this encourages players to find even more dump stats, which pushes power in favor of the wizard.
I am setting up a creation document for my players for the upcomming Kingmaker campaign i will run this fall. THey are likely going to get a 20-point buy. One thing i was kicking around is allowing the players to buy feats with points, like 3 points gets you a feat.
Has anyone tried this...is it unbalancing...i want the players to have more flexibility and play WHATEVER type of character they want. In turn, with fewer points to stat out the characters, it will somewhat reduce thier overall power level - or am i just dreaming.
Thanks for your help.
Any player that trades in the ability points for the feat will be doing so because he knows it is more efficient so his power will not decrease. I don't know of any first level feats off the top of my head that might be worth the trad unless I have a feat intensive build and/or I want to get another feat ahead of time.
You will not be reducing their overall power though. Feats and class features are the main ways to get better. I am thinking that overall they are getting a better deal.
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1 of my favorite things to do for my players is give them a "reward" for coming up with a great backstory that would tie in the little bit of extra that they wanted to have going into the story...
story says "my char did this his whole life growing up"
character gets X feat or boost or trait as bonus
or having something that is a positive/negative thing going through the story (this one is a little more difficult to show without just giving an example)
example: my rogue character really really wants to have X item and in the story it helps him to get Y and z items throughout his whole life and here is the story of how he stole X item and why it shouldn't cost him anything
GM says: that's a great story. you have also stolen item 1zA97 which just so happens to be a cursed head that mumbles all the time and you can't seem to get rid of it no matter what you try to do (with hint that it might be important in the game if no one else knew about said head and that it might be important later)
that's my 2 coppers of a different approach
Weighing the cost is easy (or I'm thinking too simplistically). 1 feat gives you weapon focus, that's a +1 to hit, where as two stat points in my str gives me hit AND damage. Then again point blank shot gives you hit and damage, and toughness is just like having +2 con, except no fortitude save and class related benefits.
All in all I think a low level feat is worth about 1 stat point. You just have to figure out what a good cost is, 3 points gets you from 10-13 so that's way better than a feat, but getting from 15-16 is 3 points so that's about right. But those are the opposite ends (unless your players buy 18's... mine don't) I think 2 points might be better but seems like a fair system to me. At a glance at least.
I like the idea; I think it's definitely worth pursuing. It would probably be a good idea to go slowly through everything that every character gets for its race, for its feat options at 1st level, and other stuff, and then compare those things to the existing feats for which characters would qualify at first level and maybe set up a three-column ledger where you make something like 2-point, 4-point, and 6-point feats (or 1, 2, 3; or whatever).
Go through the feats, categorize them into those columns, create a bunch of 1st level characters playing around with this, and see how they turn out.
I also am in favor of the concept. It always bugs me that the human fighters can get three starting feats.... but any nonhuman non fighters only get ONE...
I MIGHT suggest capping it at 3... since starting with 3 feats obviously isn't overpowered... since some combos already allow it.
of course taking 6 off your point build is pretty strict, so i don't really see anyone trying to abuse it too much....