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The basic idea is that, in order to alleviate the issue of "feat tax", limited feats, or balance the optimization issue a little bit, what if we introduced a system where a character gains "points" to spend on feats?
In introducing this system, each feat would have to be evaluated and given a "point cost". For example, skill focus would be 1 point, and the other end of it, sacred geometry, might be 5 or 6 points. Standard combat or generally "good" feats are 4 points or so.
level 1, a character begins with 4 points. Humans gain another 3 or 4 points at level 1. Every level (not every odd level), a character gains 2 points. A VMC character instead gains 1 point every level.
Would this improve the balance of the game, do you think? Encourage more varied builds?
I think generally speaking you'd see more people taking "flavor" Feats like Skill Focus or Persuasive if some decent Feats (Blind-Fight is a good example of a helpful though situational Feat) cost 3 Feat Points rather than 4 for "must haves" like Power Attack or Two-Weapon Fighting.
Other than that, I wouldn't expect much variation.
I don't think it would change much for the amount of effort that would be required to systematically go through each feat and give it a value. Even then, it wouldn't be accurate. If you want to mitigate feat tax, there's better solutions for that, even if it's just turning some feats into traits or allowing players to bypass prerequisites on a case by case basis.
Sounds like something Sean K Reynolds suggested over a decade ago back in 3e. Although as I recall, the points *heavily* favored casters in his system.. seemed almost like the reverse of what I'd want it to be.
His stuff has been taken down for a while now I think.
The premise is good though, and if you weren't planning on boosting feats to all be "really good", you could do this instead. That way a fighter might be able to pick up a set of feats each level instead of just one, while a wizard still only gets one metamagic feat at a time, etc.
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First question: What's VMC?
I really like this premise, but I can also see it being a headache. You would probably have to put points to every Core and APG feat, maybe even the Ultimate X feats.
Something else you can do with this rule is have all traits cost 1 point and everyone starts with 6 points. Another rule you could throw in is have each feat cost 1 additional point for each prereq you don't meet.
I've played something along these lines before. Its a pain in the butt. The obstacles I saw;
1) The price of feats are determined by the GM and often are experimental. In the case I experienced the archery feats were 1 feat point and Power Attack was 3. This was by the merit that archery took more feats than two handed fighting despite archery being more busted by nature. Of course this immediately meant that I could take a fighter and go to town hard with archery at level 1.
2) There is no way to cover all the feats unless you have hard limits on what feats exist. This can leave out third party, Player Companions and Campaign settings and even then you'll be there all day unless you limit it to the core rulebook. You could just make spot pricing but this leads to problem #1 where unfamiliar or misunderstood feats are priced awkwardly.
Personally I favor scaling feats. There are really only a relatively short list of feats causing the problem and combining them into scaling feats helps out a lot and takes little work.
