Collapsed Feats

[Zastitnik]

Alright, as a set of house rules a couple of friends and I created a list of feats that don't add much to their prerequisite but are required for later, better forms, of said ability. Seeing this we decided to see what it would be like to collapse them down and just grant heightened versions at appropriate levels, would there be any major issues with:

Reducing TWF/ITWF/GTWF down to just TWF
Reducing PBS and precise into one feat, possibly reducing the benefits of precise to 30'. Point Blank Precision!
reducing mobility and spring attack into one feat, mobility attack!
Not sure about the maneuvers but I'd also be tempted to make improved -> greater.

making weapon finesse, combat expertise, power attack, deadly aim, piranha strike, agile maneuvers, cleave baseline. Mainly due to these being things that you'd think someone could totally do. Though I kind of just want to remove deadly aim, or at least rename it.

Lastly, we were tempted to make weapon focus/specialization and rapid reload apply to weapon groups instead of specific weapons.

This all probably seems quite drastic, but it's tiring to see someone forced to specialize to make a character concept work(TWF especially), and in our campaigns our players aren't necessarily rules-savvy so giving them the feats that are effectively required to be good seemed like a good idea. It's also a hope that maybe with this we can get fighters to branch their feat lists into general/story feats of interest. Or become valid switch-hitters.

[Mike Franke]

No problem really, you just greatly increased the amount of feats a fighter can take even beyond the fact that fighters already get the most feats.

So now a fighter can just take TWF and save his feats for other stuff.

This will in fact have a large impact on the class and the more feat chains you collapse the greater the impact in effect doubling or more the amount of feats a fighter can have.

I would love a fighter with 30 feats but that will change class balance.

I know it is hard to follow rules that limit creativity but the logical end result of this attitude is "why not just let every character have any feat they want" and why bother having classes at all we should just let each character pick from a list of powers like savage worlds.

Those kind of game systems are fun as well but even they limit choice to a certain number of powers which brings us right back to square one.

[Zastitnik]

Not to specifically attempt to justify, but to somewhat explain, the original reason this was proposed is because we were comparing dual-wielding and two-handed weapon combat. two-handed did better average damage and required one feat to do it, dual-wielding usually did less and required 5-6 feats depending on route to compete. I understand the fighter problem however, with access to so many feats, they might branch out, but I'm not sure what they could do to increase their damage drastically past that point, they could generalize and pick up more weapon types(kind of how I'd picture a fighter doing it honestly) or choose critical feats or what-have you, but it opens up the dual-wielding path to the same versatility options the power-attacking two-hander had all along.

[Ascalaphus]

I've actually gone a bit further, and collapsed many many feat chains.

LINK

This very obviously strengthens all martial characters, but especially the rogue and fighter, considered weak by many people on the forum.

In response to Mike's concerns: there are still limits, and they're not arbitrary. There's a method to the madness. The comments in the document codify my design decisions quite thoroughly.

It does shift the balance quite a bit, but in a direction I want it to; it empowers martial characters. It makes it easier to use maneuvers, reduces feat taxes on the rogue and allows a fighter to actually be versatile, because you can access many different feat paths. Meanwhile, other martials now get to enjoy a whole feat chain's goodies without sacrificing every other feat to get them.

[gnomersy]

Ascalaphus wrote:

I've actually gone a bit further, and collapsed many many feat chains.

LINK

This very obviously strengthens all martial characters, but especially the rogue and fighter, considered weak by many people on the forum.

In response to Mike's concerns: there are still limits, and they're not arbitrary. There's a method to the madness. The comments in the document codify my design decisions quite thoroughly.

It does shift the balance quite a bit, but in a direction I want it to; it empowers martial characters. It makes it easier to use maneuvers, reduces feat taxes on the rogue and allows a fighter to actually be versatile, because you can access many different feat paths. Meanwhile, other martials now get to enjoy a whole feat chain's goodies without sacrificing every other feat to get them.

Seems neat I like what I saw I always felt like all of the prereqs/investment kind of killed a lot of the feat chains for me. might show it to my DM as a possible change to our house rules for our next campaign.

[Zastitnik]

Thank you Ascalaphus, that's well written, though it does make me feel lazy to use someone else's work...

Have you tried these rules in games that got to high levels? And if so did it cause any major problems? I really didn't think it would since most players were going to grab these feats anyways it just changes the way they're allowed to play more than it overpowers how they play it.
I already know that in early games it tends to make the players seem powerful, since they get the "free" feats, but it's not overwhelmingly so.

[Ascalaphus]

Feel free to use this, and I'm very interested in how it works out.

I haven't actually playtested this yet; I'm trying to wind down a Vampire the Masquerade campaign to switch to some PF soon, but it's taking longer to finish up loose ends than I hoped.

I can only speculate about the effect on higher levels, and speculate I will. After say BAB +8, it will happen repeatedly that a fighter spends a bonus feat and immediately acquires an entire feat chain. At first the fighter is taking all the feats that fighters always take (Weapon Specialization and such). At some point, the good stuff really takes off; instead of picking only one maneuver chain, now he can actually pursue two maneuver chains and one or two of the oddball lines from Ultimate Combat that otherwise you would never get around to.

By level 12 or so, a fighter has a big toolbox of different feats. He'll have taken Iron Will and he can actually afford to spend his regular feats on noncombat stuff. Likewise, you'll see paladins and barbarians that actually do a maneuver chain.

Players will be more positive about mounted combat, since the feats to do full attacks from a mount become available roughly when iterative attacks become available; and the entry fee for mounted combat has been reduced a bit. I think even classes without a mount class feature will consider putting a few ranks in Ride now.

Also, around level 12 or so, a fighter or ranger can comfortably develop both melee and archery, no longer specializing in only one or the other.

The easy entry to maneuver feats, and the fact that you get about 4 maneuvers in one feat, will make people more likely to try a variety of maneuvers according to what the situation allows, instead of always trying to use the same maneuver whose chain they have.

I think the rogue deserves another mention for low levels. With these rules, a rogue "gets" weapon finesse for free at level 1 (everyone does; it's not a feat anymore), and he can take Gang Up or Improved Feint without Combat Expertise. This means that a rogue's chances of landing a sneak attack drastically improve. Especially for level 1 non-human rogues, who normally suffer from Dickensian feat starvation, will now be a lot nicer to play.

---

Anyway, I think I can start my own playtesting in about a month or so. And I intend to expand the coverage; currently only CRB, APG and UCombat are covered. Those are the main offenders though.