Chain Feats for Free

[Winston Colt]

I been thinking of letting my players receive chain feats for free if they take the first feat and have the prerequisites for the other feats.

Having to take several feats for Two Weapon Fighting and Vital Strike always annoye me as a player especially if Im not a fighter.

So I was wondering on other peoples thoughts on wether this would work and what other feat chains would be appropriate. Would allowing a fighter to take Weapon Focus and receive Weapon Spec. and the other feats for free be too powerful?

[Takamonk]

Well, rule number 1 is you're the DM. However, I think it's not a good idea.

At level 20, my twf crit fighter when properly built was clearing 350 hitpoints of damage on a "typical" round. Without free feat chains. All other PCs? Maybe 100, on a good round? 200 on a great round?

The point being, these feat chains were meant to be expensive for good reason. You'll be skewing the game drastically towards PCs that can benefit from the feat chains, and against those that can't.

My suggestion is to let the authors balance the game.

[kyrt-ryder]

Winston Colt wrote:

I been thinking of letting my players receive chain feats for free if they take the first feat and have the prerequisites for the other feats.

Having to take several feats for Two Weapon Fighting and Vital Strike always annoye me as a player especially if Im not a fighter.

So I was wondering on other peoples thoughts on wether this would work and what other feat chains would be appropriate. Would allowing a fighter to take Weapon Focus and receive Weapon Spec. and the other feats for free be too powerful?

This would be a healthy step towards improving game balance in a lot of areas.

Just be careful in regards to some of the more esoteric feat chains, or the rare casting-based-chains.

EDIT: and a note to address Takamonk's comment- the feats that actually change damage are fairly few and far between. For the most part feats tend to give a character more options, or let them use an option they already have better.

Lets take your twf crit build. He already had the two-weapon fighting chain, improved crit, and most likely had the Weapon Specialization chain. What more would he take to improve his damage, as opposed to becoming more flexible as a combatant?

[StabbittyDoom]

I was thinking of doing something similar next time I DM. Basically, if you take a feat to be good at some shtick, then any feats necessary for it to keep up are gained automatically. This means that TWF gets you ITWF and GWTF, but not double slice (as an example). However, item creation feats still stand-alone (as an counter-example).

The advantage of a fighter would then become that they could *truly* spend their general feats on odd stuff because their combat feats would be sufficient for their core style, a backup style and a couple small things besides.

As Takamonk says, this kind-of throws the normal balance out of the window, so you have to be ready to handle that if you do this. It will also make turns much more complicated (which I plan on countering somewhat by removing AoOs). I would, however, like to note that a TWF crit fighter would already have more than enough feats to cover everything that could possibly be more than trivially useful, so I doubt it would make them much more effective in a direct sense.

In other words: Is it a bad idea? Not necessarily, but it's certainly risky.

[kyrt-ryder]

How would it make turns that much more complicated StabbittyDoom?

Also, I'm in agreement with StabbityDoom on Double Slice being an example of a feat that isn't truly part of a feat chain for this purpose, although personally speaking I'm more inclined to get rid of that feat entirely and shift its benefits into the base system. There's no good reason to make a player have to track separate main-hand and off-hand damage bonuses.

[StabbittyDoom]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

How would it make turns that much more complicated StabbittyDoom?

Also, I'm in agreement with StabbityDoom on Double Slice being an example of a feat that isn't truly part of a feat chain for this purpose, although personally speaking I'm more inclined to get rid of that feat entirely and shift its benefits into the base system. There's no good reason to make a player have to track separate main-hand and off-hand damage bonuses.

It would make it more complicated because people have more options. Any time you add options, people take a bit longer to think about what they want to do. In addition, people (hopefully) take less direct feats that allow them to impose conditions or change the battlefield in some fashion (less Weapon Focus, more Cornugon Smash).

[kyrt-ryder]

In my personal opinion, having options is a good thing, and certainly not worth removing attacks of opportunity for.

My advice would be to try leaving AoO's in (especially if your table is already familiar with the AoO system) and see if adjustment needs to be made after testing it out.

Your call of course.

[Atarlost]

This is essentially the "virtual feat" concept discussed some time ago. I think it might have been from an early take of Kirthfinder or some such houserule document.

Any feat that "should just be a combat option" was free if you had the prerequisites, as were all but the first feats in some of the key chains like TWF (or all but the second feat in the maneuver chains since the first was combat expertise or power attack). It was specifically enumerated virtual feats, though, not a blanked chain removal.

[Marc Radle]

You might also want to check out the "Scaling Combat Feats" article in the premier issue of Gygax magazine.