An idea popped in my head a few minutes ago and I wanted to get it on here before I forget it.
What if instead of granting feats when you gain a new level, you were granted feat points? You earn a certain amount of points every level, say 2 points for generic levels and then 2 points every level you get a bonus feat. Each feat is assigned a certain feat cost. Most combat feats might cost either 2-3 points with some more powerful ones costing 4. The "+2" skill bonus feats would only cost 1 point. I know the idea needs some fleshing out and I'd love some suggestions. First, what effect would it have on feat totals? Second, what effect would it have on the game overall?
For me, it would give feat starved classes like Paladin and Rogue some extra rounding out while still keeping the fighter as a combat monster.
It's similar to how the Deadlands system grants XP but the XP would only be used for feats in this fashion. The max amount an edge costs in Deadlands is 5 points, which would be a ton of points if you only get 2 per feat acquired. It would still take a fighter two levels to get something that big.
This has been done, (maybe by SKR?) back in 3.5. *tries to summon someone who knows more about this*
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It sounds like a novel idea, and certainly one you could implement, but for me it just adds needless mathematics and makes feat builds even more difficult to manage. If you want to go down that road however I would look for a different system, one my personal favorites is BESM:D20 and Silver Age Sentinels who use a point buy customization system for almost everything but have core D20 rules for combat and such.
A few months ago someone posted a thread about estimating costs of feats in such system, basing it on link Austin posted above. You could look for it in conversions or homebrew sections.
Iread the SK link, and i must say i disagree on quite some value. I'm not going into it, but saying that the simple fact that each one plays in a different way may skew the value by a lot. Ex, crafting value can change a lot from a kingmaker campaign to a one in witch you have 3 months to save the word. I'm intrigued by the general feeling, but i think taht the balance will have no actual gain, leaving you with just a more complex method.
For me, it would give feat starved classes like Paladin and Rogue some extra rounding out while still keeping the fighter as a combat monster.
I have problems seeing any class as "feat starved", considering everyone gets more feats than they did in 3.5. And the Paladin and Rouge do get a fair amount of extra class features on alternating levels.
The other issue I see this as being majorly open to abuse knowing that players will be banking up points for the powerful feats.
Thirdly when SKR values the single most powerful scaling feat in the game at only 8 points, I'll just simply chuck his table entirely.
What I would say about the banking of points is that you still must pay for feat chains and all the reqs for the feats still need to be met. I'd love to see how this plays out. There have been a lot of times where I wanted to get feats but didn't want to waste a precious feat slot on them, even if PCs gets more feats than they had before. I am talking about things like teamwork feats and social feats, going down the combat expertise line when I already went down the power attack line. Things like that.