Reactions to Feats after 6.5 PFP Tables


Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

After GMing several tables (six of PFS, one of Doomsday Dawn pt. 1) of Pathfinder Playtest over the course of the last ~10 days, I'm summarizing some free-form responses to things that were good/bad in addition to filling out the event surveys. This is a combination of player reactions as I observed them and my own opinions.

This was a topic that received mixed to negative feedback for the tables I've GMed for that made characters (only 3/6, and only two of those have been post-Gen Con where I've been involved in the creation process prior to game time). While not as visceral as the classes, several players felt the feats presented, particularly the general feats, were underwhelming in potency and that there were clear, "Best," choices to make.

*** PURE SPECULATION BEYOND THIS POINT ***
I think I'm warming up to the idea that we should only get a few General feats, kinda like the pace that PF2 has, but those feats should do a lot more each and should grow as your character does. As an example, both the Fighter and the Ranger get the feats Double Slice, Two-Weapon Parry, and Two-Weapon Riposte. Remove those feats from the class, and make that one "Combat" general feat. When you take the feat, you get the effects of Two-Weapon Parry and the Double Slice action. If you have Expert proficiency in both weapons you're wielding, you can also Riposte as per the effects of Two-Weapon Riposte. Then make class feats improve on general feats, like the fighter's feats to grant extra reactions, or give abilities like the Open and Press maneuvers or enhancements to the ranger's Hunt Target.

Right now, though, the sheer volume of choices has diluted the effects of each individual choice to the point that they're not interesting, and the need to plot out your choices to make sure they add up to a coherent final product means you're still stuck with the same barrier to entry/high degree of difficulty in character generation that made PF1 unfriendly to new players as the system aged and more options from splatbooks became available. I admire Paizo trying to reinvent the character generation process, but going back to what I said about classes - some folks have already nailed that process, and it's not a bad thing to crib an idea that works and build on it as long as you have something else original to differentiate yourself from the product you borrowed from (and you do - see my thoughts on Playing the Game).


I'm all for scaling feats as a means to make them an actually decent choice!

Community / Forums / Archive / Pathfinder / Playtests & Prerelease Discussions / Pathfinder Playtest / Player Rules / Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells / Reactions to Feats after 6.5 PFP Tables All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Skills, Feats, Equipment & Spells