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Recently, I've been thinking very long and hard about the organization structure of the feats and the rates of acquisition for the various kinds of feats. I've seen a lot of ideas that I've liked, and have helped me to form my own synthesis of others' ideas and my own. The purposes of these suggestions are to better match my own internal expectations of what should be parceled where, and to most accurately replicate the intangible (and admittedly subjective) "feeling of Pathfinder" - which has been the major driving force of why I've preferred Paizo's iteration of the game to any other that I've tried.
I'll go in alphabetical order.
One common complaint that I've seen, and one which I've come to share after a great deal of thought, is that the ancestries feel like they've been unnaturally stretched out over a character's career. You don't get enough at the beginning to feel satisfied, and then you feel like you get to slowly "buy back" all of the things that these ancestries used to have as a given. Now, I really like that many of those things are optional. I really like it. But the current implementation feels like too little butter for too much bread. There's alse a frustrating inelegance to heritage feats. Nowhere else in the game is there such a stipulation that this feat may only be taken now, and if you pass it up you are S.O.L.
So I would suggest that we stop trying to spread the butter so thinly. Instead of giving 5 acnestry feats over the course of the whole gamut of levels, instead give those 5 ancestry feats right away at level 1. It's not even like many of the ancestry feats have a level greater than 1 anyway. Now make "Adopted Ancestry" a universal ancestry feat, allowing you to take any non-heritage feat (although I would change the name of the trait from "heritage" to "biological," that's what it really means to say). For those ancestry feats that were level 5, each and every one of them was a variant of "if you have your ancestry's weapon familiarity, you now get access to critical specializations for those weapons." Giving that at level 1 is probably too strong, but since they're all basically identical feats, you can wrap all those up together as a level 5 general feat with the prerequisite that you must have your ancestry's weapon familiary feat.
I also suggest that more of these feats could then stand to have benefits that scale with level, so you can continue to get "more dwarfy" in the areas of dwarfiness that you chose as you get higher in level, without the weirdness some have a hard time accepting like Half-Orcs developing darkvision at level 5.
Class feats are presented as your way of customizing your class. I like this concept a lot. It has a lot of benefits, not the least of which is striving to make each class have meaningful choices throughout a character's career, and to notionally prevent cookie-cutter characters. There could stand to be a great deal of balancing for power level of class feats throughout characters, but that's not what I want to talk about here.
The thing I want to talk about is that not all classes get the same number of class feats. Why are some classes inherently less customizable than others? It doesn't make sense to me. I get that invariably the classes with fewer class feats are the ones that cast spells, but it seems to me that making them less customizable is a poor way of achieving balance. The balance should be achieved by scrutinizing the content of the class, not by saying you get less content overall. You don't even necessarily need to add more feats to the classes for this, since you can always take a lower-level feat you passed up. If the feats are hard choices because they're all good (debatable at present, but that's not the point) then getting a chance to pick the one you didn't give the nod can be something worthwhile.
I would like to see every class get a class feat at level 1 and every even level thereafter. That being said, I'm fine with the structure that some classes have which gives you a specific level 1 class feat depending on other choices you make. As long as everyone is getting access to the same quantity of content, I think that's good enough.
This is a big one. As discussed in another thread, I think that the basic mechanics of a combat style should be universally accessible, even to those classes which have nothing interesting to add to them. We shouldn't have to have n different feats for two-weapon fighting, etc., where n is the number of classes in existence. And if you don't have n different feats, then you have characters of classes that can't use a fighting style in any reasonable way because the system was not made adequately future-proof. This is a little insane, and flies in the face of the elegance that this edition has been striving to achieve everywhere else.
So I would prefer the building blocks of combat styles, things like Power Attack and Double Slice and others, be made into general feats. Give them the Combat trait, so that you have the design space for some classes (like the Fighter and its martial ilk, for example) to have different interactions with them (like potentially choosing one instead of a class feat). I would then give a general feat at all odd levels, starting with 1. As I discussed earlier, Class Feats are really "class customization options" - general feats are those things that used to be feats in 1st edition once you remove all of the options that should obviously have been made into class feats instead. I don't think we should get less of them in this new edition.
As far as classes that have something interesting to say about a combat style, those classes should have class feats which alter the way those general feats work instead of reproducing the same feat with slight variations. This system is both future-proof and reduces conceptual workload when designing new classes. You don't have to think how class X does each and every combat style, you only have to think how this class would do any given one differently. If the answer is "it wouldn't," then that's not a problem - they can just use the vanilla feats.
I would also make Attack of Opportunity a general feat. During the previews it was suggested that any character so inclined could invest in being able to do this activity. This is why I felt that it would be okay for only the fighter to get it by default. But until update 1.3 that wasn't true, and now it's sort of true but only if you want to multiclass. If you make it a general feat, you can still give it to fighters for free, but anyone else has to pay some opportunity cost to get it. And then you can give the Paladin something else that's more interesting at level 6 which better competes with the other options of that level.
I'm going to set aside for the moment my feelings toward the quantity and quality of the skill feats. I understand that it's a playtest and the options are therefore narrower in scope than I would hope for, since there was only so much space in the physical book they were going to print.
The thing I want to talk about here is when you get them. Skill feats are a major source of character customization in the arena of what you can do with your skills, but currently every character (except the rogue) is exactly the same in every trained skill at first level. That's... just really unsatisfying.
I would like to see the acquisition of skill feats stay largely the same, with the exception that every character gets a skill feat at level 1 as well. That still gives the rogue 9 extra skill feats over their career compared to everybody else (still a significant increase) but allows for more diversity among early-level characters. I don't think 1 extra skill feat is going to make or break the balance of the game, but it can make or break how different multiple characters of the same ancestry and class can feel at the level that almost every player starts with, and the level that most newbies have as their first experience. I think the more diverse 1st-level characters can be, the better.
One difference that this change would make is that characters become a bit more front-loaded. If you're getting a lot of choices at level 1, it would have an impact on how long it takes to make a character - something that it seems that this new edition struggles with. Is that a worthwhile trade? I think so, though your mileage may vary.
Another difference it would make is with potential space savings. If you don't have to repeat some version of a two-weapon fighting feat, and a version of an archery feat, and so on, across every relevant class it gives you space to include some more interesting choices for character customization instead. Or more room for more diverse skill feats. Or any conceivable use for that word count that's better than making sure every class has access to the basic fundamentals of combat over and over again.
Overall, I think these changes would make for a more satisfying character creation and advancement experience than is currently offered in some areas, while improving the resiliency of the rules for future expansion in others. Does it dramatically alter the balance? Beyond level 1 I don't really think so, since that's when most of these changes take effect - and my impression of level 1 characters is that they could really use the help, since it seems a lot of the game's math assumes that an on-level enemy is tuned to be a minor boss battle. But there's only level 0 below level 1, and those monsters are designed so that they can still be a credible adversary for characters higher than level 1. I'm not sure to what extent that has changed as of 1.3 (I've only casually followed the math threads on this) but I think that giving those 1st-level characters some additional benefits can help offset the "monster singularity" in a way that can allow for the math of those level 0 monsters to remain relevant later without being over-tuned at level 1.
Ancestry Feats
I mostly agree. I think the most important choices should be made at lvl 1. The following Ancestry Feats should just enhance what choices you made at first. Being able to choose whatever at lvl 5 is like saying your background in Farming suddenly includes Merchants for no apparent reason. It doesn't make sense.
Class Feats
I agree. Everyone should get the same customization as others.
Skills & Skill Feats
I believe you should be able to double up on skills to become Expert at first. I also think that they should remove the level cap for skills. So if you wanted you could become Legendary at Athletics at lvl 5 if you were so inclined. I mean what does it hurt? I'm probably going to houserule those two changes in my game if they don't change by the time the final product comes out.
General Feats
Now here's where I don't agree. Combat style is apart of the class. If you make two weapon stuff general feats then why isn't sneak attack? Or Hunt Target? In a game with classes such as Pathfinder it makes more sense for weapon styles to be apart of the class structure then just general. Everyone CAN TWF or 2-hand or shoot a bow but the Rogue shouldn't be able to be as good as the Fighter unless he wants to train like the Fighter, so take the Fighter Archetype.
Now if they removed the class system entirely (or instead made it very broad) and made most of the class abilities into the feats anyone (or mostly anyone) could take I would enjoy that as well. But I think the change is a good change for keeping the classes unique and special. Fighters will be good at Fighting, Rogues will be good as sneaking/skills, Rangers will be good at tracking and taking down targets, Barbarians will be good at... Being mad? Lol
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General Feats
Now here's where I don't agree. Combat style is apart of the class. If you make two weapon stuff general feats then why isn't sneak attack? Or Hunt Target? In a game with classes such as Pathfinder it makes more sense for weapon styles to be apart of the class structure then just general. Everyone CAN TWF or 2-hand or shoot a bow but the Rogue shouldn't be able to be as good as the Fighter unless he wants to train like the Fighter, so take the Fighter Archetype.
I would argue that things like sneak attack and hunt target are already an instance of what I'm talking about: a class ability that alters existing mechanics to put the class's unique flavor on it.
I would also argue that the combat style is a feature of a character rather than a feature of the class, or at least I think it should be. And with those being a general feat to reflect that, there's still an opportunity cost associated with developing a combat style in its most vanilla form, while a class like the fighter would instead have something that they could do to maintain their supremacy over the vanilla version - whether that be through a class feat which alters and empowers that style, the ability to grab more styles faster than anyone else, or use their class-given flexibility to temporarily pick them up on the fly, or whatever else can be dreamed of in heaven or on earth, in rules supplements now and forever.
I don't think that making the basic building blocks more freely available in any way contradicts the possibility of making some classes able to be better at building off those blocks or use them in different and flavorful ways. It lowers the floor with the barrier to entry, but has no effect on the potential ceiling of customization.
I guess my point is that it's hard to define what exactly entails a "class feature" and what doesn't. To me classes have focuses, if you want to have a class that's good with weapons (Fighter) then you need to limit the other classes with those weapons. Otherwise the Fighter becomes almost pointless, like in P1E. Now if those classes have a specific theme of their own give them their own feats for those themes. But leave the genaric theme of good with weapon to the Fighter.
The Fighter now has a purpose. You want to be REALLY good at TWF? Be a Fighter. Want to be REALLY good with a bow? Be a Fighter. Want to be REALLY good at 2-handers? Be a Fighter.
Want to be sneaky, skilled, and agile? Well you're going to have to give up being REALLY good at TWF. Can you still do it? Absolutely. But will you be REALLY good at it? No. Because you want to be REALLY good at sneaking, skills and agility.
Even the only other class that gets TWF/Bow (the Ranger) is because that fits it's (prior) theme. I would argue they should have abandoned it and made more broad feats that work with Hunt Target and have different effects depending on what weapon they're using. That would focus the Fighter even more as the weapon master.
To me that would have been ideal.
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The thing I want to talk about is that not all classes get the same number of class feats. Why are some classes inherently less customizable than others? It doesn't make sense to me. I get that invariably the classes with fewer class feats are the ones that cast spells, but it seems to me that making them less customizable is a poor way of achieving balance. The balance should be achieved by scrutinizing the content of the class, not by saying you get less content overall. You don't even necessarily need to add more feats to the classes for this, since you can always take a lower-level feat you passed up.
You've hit the nail on the head for summing up a lot of my feelings, but this point stands out to me right now. I believe the one of the reasons that spellcasters aren't seeing the same feat progression as other classes would be the current multiclass system. You could grab the required multiclass feats and then essentially make a full spellcaster that has access to an entirely separate set of abilities of another class.
I could be wrong in this, but I'm okay with looking at this issue (it's more fun to customize your character through feats than it is through spell choice). As it stands right now (especially with the recent multiclass document), someone could put together a decent gish character, but a few more feat slots for full spellcasters could tip the balance a bit more over the line?
Again, this is what I'm seeing, but I have no numbers to back this up.
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@Leedwashere: very interesting post, I think you got some very clear ideas.
Ancestry Feats
I agree with your general idea, Ancestry is basically in the past, it's what your character already has. Developing the majority of your ancestry over the course of the game doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not sure if we specifically need 5 ancestry feats at level 1; I think picking 3 defining things that define just what kind of (dwarf, elf etc) might already be sufficient. For the non-heritage feats, you could enable picking them up with a General Feat later; or with a General Feat at level 1 if you really want a fourth heritage feat.
I do like the idea of feats that build on ancestry feats later on, like the dwarf's Boulder Step. But those could easily be general feats that require a particular ancestry feat. That's also more future-proof in case you later add another ancestry that ought also to have access to that feat. PF1 was full of stuff like "tough skin, only for dwarves and half-orcs", and then later on you get oreads as a player race.
Class Feats
I agree with moving some of them to a general pool, like Combat Feats that can be accessed as class feats by all the martial classes, or metamagic feats for all casters. Saves a LOT of repetition.
I want a more systematic structure to equipping classes with class feats. One idea that's been well-received is classes that pick a path at level 1, like the bard's muse and the druid's order. It gives focus and identity to the character, but it's not a straightjacket. You can swerve across to other paths as well, at the cost of a mild delay of your main path. In fact, often there isn't a feat for each path on each even level, so you have "leisure time" to broaden out without falling behind on your main feat path.
For that to work well though, it's important to identify paths that are not compatible. For example, archery and two-weapon fighting are not really a good combination because switching from one to the other requires a lot of weapon sheathing/drawing actions. Animal companions don't play very well with other paths because they're a drain on actions, so you can't move, do any 2-action activities of your main path, and command the companion. That's clunky and discouraging.
We don't have to prevent incompatible paths, in fact, they're an opportunity. If we want to stagger the levels at which new class feats for a given path become available (to encourage branching out), that means not all paths should progress at the same levels. But incompatible paths can progress at the same level without obstructing this.
For example, let's say the Archery and 2WF feat paths for some class get new feats at levels 1 (every path gets something at level 1), 4 and 8; then there could be another path centered around rallying allies/demoralizing enemies (which doesn't need hands free) moving at levels 1, 2 and 6.
General Feats
I was originally skeptical about moving combat feats into the general category, but right now most of them are "can't believe it's not combat" anyway: increased movement speed, perception as expert, better saving throws, stepping in difficult terrain are all massively popular.
Skill Feats
I think one way that Expert/Master/Legendary could be made to feel like they do more is to grant an appropriate skill feat whenever you upgrade a skill to a higher degree than trained. Instead of waiting at least a level between "I became a master of X" and "I can do things experts in X can't do".
I also think we need a lot more skill feats that give us 1-action activities that we can use in combat to do something else than attack. Because MAP makes third attacks useless against nontrivial enemies, and even second attacks don't look so good, it's worth looking for other things to spend your second or third action on. Intimidate is very worthwhile right now, but there really should be more options. Relatively easily accessed combat-relevant skill activities (like, once you take a skill feat at Trained) would make combat more diverse because people do a lot more than whack whack whack and hope for 20s.
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I guess my point is that it's hard to define what exactly entails a "class feature" and what doesn't.
That's fair, and it can be a pretty fuzzy area sometimes. I would like to offer what I think are 2 very good rules of thumb to consider when deciding what basket of feats an option should be placed into.
In first edition, we had only one type of feat, which led to a whole host of feats that had additional, sometimes very specific prerequisites. I think that these prerequisites therefore make for a good guideline on where any given mechanical concept that could be replicated in first edition wants to belong.
- Skill Prerequisites: If the mechanical concept had a skill prerequisite (so many ranks, trained in, etc.) then this concept should probably be a Skill Feat if/when it is included in second edition.
- Class Prerequisites: If the mechanical concept had a class prerequisite (or class feature prerequisite) then this concept should probably be a Class Feat if/when it is included in second edition.
- Racial Prerequisites: If the mechanical concept had a racial prerequisite, then this concept should probably be an Ancestry Feat if/when it is included in second edition.
- No Prerequisites: If the mechanical concept had no prerequisites (or only ability score or level prerequisites) then this concept was something that was freely available to basically everybody. It should probably be a General Feat if/when it is included in second edition.
If a mechanical concept unique to PF2 is something that some number of classes all get (2+? 3+?), then it should probably be converted to a General Feat. Clearly there's a reason why so many classes are already getting it, and it may be reasonable to conclude that even more classes might want it. It also allows you to reproduce the mechanical option once instead of multiple times.
An interesting consequence of laying out these rules of thumb is that it caused me to consider another group of feats that probably should (usually) be General Feats instead of Class Feats: Metamagic. Something like Reach Spell is pretty ubiquitous, and making it so that any caster can take it now and forever without having to reprint it for each one of them is probably a worthwhile goal. Much like with other mechanical concepts, though, I do think that there's definitely room to have some class-specific metamagic feats, that represent ways one magical tradition might handle situations differently than others. But some metamagics (like Reach Spell) function a lot more like basic building blocks than as the indelible imprint of class flavor.
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I do think that there's definitely room to have some class-specific metamagic feats, that represent ways one magical tradition might handle situations differently than others.
You could make these Class Specific feats simply modify General Feats of a certain type instead of being a separate mechanic itself.
I.E.
Fierce Bloodline Altering - Sorcerer 8
Requirements: At least one general Metamagic feat
Benefits: Whenever you apply a Metamagic feat to a spell specifically granted by your bloodline and that spell targets a single enemy creature you may include the following in the failure and critical failures for the spell:
Divine Spell: target is Sluggish 1 until the end of your next turn
Primal Spell: target takes 1d8 + level elemental damage of your choice
Arcane Spell: target is Enfeebled 1 until the end of your next turn
Occult Spell: target is Stupified 2 until the end of your next turn
Ancestry Feats
I agree with your general idea, Ancestry is basically in the past, it's what your character already has. Developing the majority of your ancestry over the course of the game doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not sure if we specifically need 5 ancestry feats at level 1; I think picking 3 defining things that define just what kind of (dwarf, elf etc) might already be sufficient. For the non-heritage feats, you could enable picking them up with a General Feat later; or with a General Feat at level 1 if you really want a fourth heritage feat.
I agree that 5 feels like a particularly large number of things to choose at level 1, I just had to remind myself that this wasn't actually change to the number of things that the system was already giving out, it just really accelerated them.
There's probably room to assume that everyone would have taken the level 5 feat at level 5 (I don't think that's actually true, but not the point) and then reduce the number of ancestry feats to 4. You could then condense and combine some of the less powerful ancestry feats and then reduce the number to 3.
One thing to consider in this thought experiment, though, is that the smaller number of choices you give out, the more each one of them has to be worth in comparison to the others. And the worth of those options sets the opportunity cost for choosing an adopted ancestry or branching out into a hybrid-based ancestry like Half-Elves and eventually things like Aasimars and Tieflings. You can use the fact that they get fewer ancestry feats as a balancing mechanic, but how harshly that effects them will be proportional to what percentage of your options you're giving up. Losing 20% of your Ancestry feat potential is a smaller disincentive than 33%.
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I do think that there's definitely room to have some class-specific metamagic feats, that represent ways one magical tradition might handle situations differently than others.You could make these Class Specific feats simply modify General Feats of a certain type instead of being a separate mechanic itself.
I.E.
Fierce Bloodline Altering - Sorcerer 8
Requirements: At least one general Metamagic feat
Benefits: Whenever you apply a Metamagic feat to a spell specifically granted by your bloodline and that spell targets a single enemy creature you may include the following in the failure and critical failures for the spell:Divine Spell: target is Sluggish 1 until the end of your next turn
Primal Spell: target takes 1d8 + level elemental damage of your choice
Arcane Spell: target is Enfeebled 1 until the end of your next turn
Occult Spell: target is Stupified 2 until the end of your next turn
Indeed. I think we can use this structure to adjust the general and specific relationships between classes, characters, and mechanical concepts as a whole.
It appears to me like the way classes, etc., are constructed in second edition as currently presented is like a paint by numbers kit. The general structure is provided in a fairly coherent manner, while the individual making choices generally only has the freedom to choose the colors they want to use.
The general thrust of what I would like this reorganization to accomplish is to treat the mechanical concepts of the game more like legos instead. There are lots of legos, and you can snap them together in interesting and immensely varied combinations. General, Ancestry and Skill feats represent the most basic pieces, while Class Feats/Features represent the more specialized pieces that you might find in one of the special sets. They build upon the basic tools to create a finished product, rather than always being an entirely separate sphere of character options by themselves.
In my opinion, the structure of first edition (where there was basically a feat for everything) lent itself very well to this lego-based character generation system. The biggest problem was that every kind of feat was competing with every other kind of feat, and therefore there were too few feats overall. I think the nominal setup of feat types in second edition can be a fantastic fix for that, but segregating them so harshly like they are, for me, starts to lose the feeling that Pathfinder gave me: that no matter what concept I had in mind, there was some interesting way to combine the pieces to make that concept work, or at least come close enough to it.
Skill Feats
I'm worried about these. On one hand it is great we get a pool of them to use that don't compete with other feats. But I can imagine that with new source material there will be too many to choose from and many may end up as pure filler that no one wants. It might be better to just remove the need to choose them, and instead have expert rank in a skill provide access to any feat of rank expert or lower. It seems to me that legendary diplomacy is all about doing more and better diplomacy than the untrained mook. Part of the legendary reputation is being about to apply talent and experience to pull off feats in many different situations, which is the opposite of what is in the rules now.
Like athletics for example, which has climbing, swimming, and jumping. Someone legendary in athletics just can't be a triathelete in this system, there isn't enough skill feat picks, and if you try that, you have to give up investing in feats for any other skills too.
I agree that the skills and skill feats section as a whole could use a lot of work with regards to the quantity and quality of the content. If I had my way with it, a lot of the things that are currently skill feats would absolutely be just something that someone could do with a skill at trained or expert or master or legendary. I would then reserve skill feats entirely for non-standard uses of a skill, like the sort of things represented by skill unlocks in Pathfinder Unchained, Occult Adventures, and other books since then.
That way you still have the proficiency gate for most things, and there's certainly room for many of the options to have automatically scaling effects based on your actual proficiency - so something like "make an impression" is something that anyone can attempt, but you can do it faster or to more people at once simply by virtue of having a better proficiency rank in diplomacy, while hypnotism (the occult skill unlock) would be a skill feat that you must choose to be able to do at the opportunity cost of not doing something else with your skill feat.
Ancestry Feats
I don't know that these really are needed. The alternate racial traits system wasn't that bad and the Inner Sea isn't really so mono-cultured that you would go to your homeland to gain access to ancestral qualities later in life. Perhaps there should be a fixed number of heritage feats for all ancestries given at first level, which you pick out of a pool of options like the alternate racial traits. Then the rest of the feats are moved to a section that is cultural and you get a handful of these later in life depending on the culture you pick to belong to. So an elf that sets out to make their fortune in the southern jungles or crown of the world will pick up aspects of that culture organically through picking feats that make sense to learn later in life and are relevant to the culture they learn them from.
One of the consequences of the change I suggest to ancestry feats, is that it basically sets the concept back to the days of racial traits and alternate racial traits. Except now they're called feats, because there's clear delineations in the rules about what feats are and how to get them. And, most importantly, the system doesn't set up any one of them as the default assumption anymore. The game doesn't assume that all dwarves have stone cunning and hate goblinoids, but some dwarves are weird and have something else. It's all a-la-cart... and it leaves open the design space to have lore supplements give suggestions of "packages" that a dwarf player might want to choose to best replicate this particular subset of dwarves of a regional or cultural significance (while at the same time including new and varied Ancestry feats for them).
And perhaps there's room to dial in how many Ancestry Feats are given up front and continue to give one or two later, but the impression I get from Ancestries as a whole is, as Ascalaphus put so well, options that you're taking to mark out your past rather than something you should be picking up over time.
General Feats
I almost feel like the small number of "pure" general feats need to be handled in a different way altogether. The ones with strict prerequisites should just happen automatically. I can't really see someone with a 14 constitution not ever wanting Fast Recovery, so just give it to them if they qualify. The rest are just power gamey cheese and should probably go away or get folded into existing class paths where they make sense.
This starts to touch on the more general discussion of real choices versus false choices. I would say that, generally speaking, a real choice is one that the game makes no assumptions about the outcome while a false choice is one where the game assumes that you have something, and includes it in the basic math structure of the game - but continues to present as "optional."
So I would classify +X magic weapons/armor and skill boosting items (as currently presented) as false choices, while I don't think something like Fast Recovery really fits that mold in the same way.
In general, I'm a huge fan of the opportunity cost as a balancing mechanic. If you do X, it's chosen with the full knowledge that you're not doing Y instead. You have to think about what is more important to you. You get agency in deciding your priorities in a way that you don't get if something is automatic. And then what if (for some reason, for the sake of argument) you didn't want one of those automatic choices like Fast Recovery? This is why I'm thrilled that Finesse Striker is now a rogue option instead of a thing that all rogues always get.
Then the general feats could be convertible for anything you needed at a slight level discount depending on where they went. They could be used at level for cultural feats, -2 levels for class feats, -4 levels for archetype feats, or 1 for 1 as a skill increase. So a general feat gained at 7th level could be used on a 3rd or lower archetype feat, 5th or lower class feat, 7th or lower cultural feat, or increasing a skill rank to master or lower.
It's an interesting suggestion to be able to use general feats to select options from the other types of feats besides skill feats, but at an inefficiency price. I think it's a design space worth exploring, for sure.
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So, for the most part, this is what I would like to see from feats. The front loading of ancestry feats, the expansion of general feats and the inclusion of traits for general feats like combat, metamagic, etc. I'd also like to see a different trait for biological ancestry traits, and those focused on your upbringing. That way you could start with mechanics that reflect both what you are and where you came from.
So, along with the different traits, I'd like to see 3 ancestry feats at first level, and for character's to get a general feat every odd level, starting at one. Then with your general feats, you can choose to take a skill or ancestry feat instead.
I would also be okay with a stipulation that you can't take more than one kind of general feat (combat, metamagic) every 4 levels, or fraction thereof, because I'm sure Paizo doesn't want you to spend all your feats on combat, even if I think it would be fine.
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Gotta say the sentiment re: "3 ancestry Feats @Lvl" does remind me of my take that less powerful abilities could be "Half-Feat" Traits, and you thus have choice of 3 (weaker) Traits at 1st level OR 1 (stronger) Feat + 1 Trait. (and you can gain 2 (weaker) Traits in place of 1 Feat at higher level) That no matter what adds SOMETHING, and also gives more variety for those who don't need the stronger abilities. Seems like best compromise.
I actually thought this thread was about organization within the book. Making me think of things like why Monk Feats need to refer to Monk Powers in back of book, rather than just directly present the Monk Power amidst list of Monk Feats. (Caster Powers should be listed in their class, not alphabetically mixed in with generic spells, and Spells themselves shoud list Arcane/Divine/etc which isn't remotely obvious if you try browsing spells, and forces back-and-forth referencing of spell list)
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Fully agreed on all points of the OP. Particularly the need for combat feats purchasable with general feats.
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I actually thought this thread was about organization within the book. Making me think of things like why Monk Feats need to refer to Monk Powers in back of book, rather than just directly present the Monk Power amidst list of Monk Feats. (Caster Powers should be listed in their class, not alphabetically mixed in with generic spells, and Spells themselves shoud list Arcane/Divine/etc which isn't remotely obvious if you try browsing spells, and forces back-and-forth referencing of spell list)
This is also something that I think absolutely needs to happen before release. The amount of cross referencing in this book is ridiculous.