I would have to disagree as it would make feats more powerful than class features at that point. What you are describing is going really unbalance things in the worse way possible I did play this with a group and it made me want a way to tax or limit feats.Instead I came up with this system (that I haven't had a chance to playtest so it can understandably increase the power of the PCs beyond intended range):
Any feat that is the beginning of a chain, evolves with the character. Whenever you meet prerequisites for another feat down the chain line, you can select that feat and combine it with the previous one. If a feat is a prerequisite to multiple possible paths, you may only select one path for this free upgrade, any additional branches need to be picked as full feats.Weapon Focus is a good example, it's a requirement for a plethora of feats and a +1 to hit with one weapon is REALLY BORING for a feat. This would allow you to pick one entire path that Weapon Focus is a prerequisite for at a cost of a single feat.
How does having Power Attack for free unbalance things? Or having a Weapon Focus that actually works, and it doesn't make you completely useless with any other weapon that isn't the WF one?
It's sort of beside the point, but, in lion taming, the lion isn't afraid of the whip, it's attracted by the whip and confused by the chair. Without the whip, the lion won't be angry at the tamer, and without the chair, the lion will jump on the tamer. No amount of whip skill is going to change that.
Which isn't important of course, this is fantasy and the fantasy of lion taming is that the lion is being cowed by the whip, not annoyed with a whip and steered with a chair.
You could dial whips in to be more realistic, or make them lean more into the whip fantasy, but making them suck and be mechanically expensive isn't the way to go. If effective combat whip use is something you want to be rare, and you blockade it behind feats, then the whip needs to serve some other purposes, aside from combat, in order to justify the cost.
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It's sort of beside the point, but, in lion taming, the lion isn't afraid of the whip, it's attracted by the whip and confused by the chair. Without the whip, the lion won't be angry at the tamer, and without the chair, the lion will jump on the tamer. No amount of whip skill is going to change that.
Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait, wut?
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It's sort of beside the point, but, in lion taming, the lion isn't afraid of the whip, it's attracted by the whip and confused by the chair. Without the whip, the lion won't be angry at the tamer, and without the chair, the lion will jump on the tamer. No amount of whip skill is going to change that.Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait, wut?
It's a trick, just like everything else you see in a circus. Old school tamers would go in with a mostly tamed animal who was taught to act ferocious, but those tamers didn't live too long. Mostly tame is not good enough.
Eventually Clyde Beatty came along and developed this chair distraction idea. The big cats would try to focus on the nearest point on the chair, and get confused by the four different points. When they close in, it looks to them like the chair is all around their head and they withdraw. If the cat is left alone to circle, they can get to a legless chair angle and pounce, so you use the whip to keep them angrily focused on the chair. When you lunge with the chair, the cat withdraws to a better vantage point, so you can back it up on to obstacles and such so it does tricks.
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It's sort of beside the point, but, in lion taming, the lion isn't afraid of the whip, it's attracted by the whip and confused by the chair. Without the whip, the lion won't be angry at the tamer, and without the chair, the lion will jump on the tamer. No amount of whip skill is going to change that.Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait, wut?It's a trick, just like everything else you see in a circus. Old school tamers would go in with a mostly tamed animal who was taught to act ferocious, but those tamers didn't live too long. Mostly tame is not good enough.
Eventually Clyde Beatty came along and developed this chair distraction idea. The big cats would try to focus on the nearest point on the chair, and get confused by the four different points. When they close in, it looks to them like the chair is all around their head and they withdraw. If the cat is left alone to circle, they can get to a legless chair angle and pounce, so you use the whip to keep them angrily focused on the chair. When you lunge with the chair, the cat withdraws to a better vantage point, so you can back it up on to obstacles and such so it does tricks.
Fascinating.
Anything that favors martials is not unbalancing for me.
I mean, at level 3 a Wizard can make a lot of enemies blind by just using a spell.
Meanwhile a fighter gets a +1 to attack, and that's something he doesn't really need that much help with.
Look at magic items. Wizards get access to Metamagic without having to meet prerequisites by using rods, and apply it to all of their spells.
Melee don't have equivalent.
Honestly, that idea of choosing Weapon Focus and gettings access to 1 chain is awesome.
If you want another chain, take another WF.
It finally gives martial options to do stuff.
Is the enemy immune to fear? Good then I use my Trip line.
Does enemy have 4 legs? Then I switch to bullrush or something else
How does having Power Attack for free unbalance things? Or having a Weapon Focus that actually works, and it doesn't make you completely useless with any other weapon that isn't the WF one?What they were talking about is a Feat that increase with your levels, which is basically a Class Feature. That doesn't work as You then get a Increase at level as a class feature and then again as a feat.
Take Weapon training for Example:
Every four levels thereafter (9th*, 13th, and 17th), a fighter becomes further trained in another group of weapons. He gains a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls when using a weapon from this group. In addition, the bonuses granted by previous weapon groups increase by +1 each. For example, when a fighter reaches 9th level, he receives a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with one weapon group and a +2 bonus on attack and damage rolls with the weapon group selected at 5th level. Bonuses granted from overlapping groups do not stack. Take the highest bonus granted for a weapon if it resides in two or more groups.A fighter also adds this bonus to any combat maneuver checks made with weapons from his group. This bonus also applies to the fighter’s Combat Maneuver Defense when defending against disarm and sunder attempts made against weapons from this group.
They were saying make a feat work the same way, not take the next feat in the progression to add another +1. In this case you will end up with martial characters doing more damage then the Magic Classes.
I think you misunderstood my idea... mostly because I have trouble wrapping my head around your explanation.
My idea is as such (keeping with the Weapon Focus as initial feat).
Level 1: Take Weapon Focus with an aim to explore the Dazzling Display tree
Level 3: Your Weapon Focus becomes Weapon Focus + Dazzling Display as a single feat for no cost to you.
Level 5: Your Weapon Focus + Dazzling Display now becomes Weapon Focus + Dazzling Display + Gory Finish...
I like this idea in principle but i think it should scale back to basically 2 to 3 "feats" per feat selection, that scale up via some metric be it level or BAB or Save bonus. I feel like the end result should be that 2 feat choices should give you almost all of a fighting "style" or feat "pod" as it were, with a handful of consolidations and adjustments to the "tax" feats to make them less taxy.
Here's an example of what i'm thinking
Two weapon fighting the feat grants TWF immediately, then improved at 6, greater at 11
Two weapon specialization grants like, double slice, two weapon rend two weapon defense, spread out over a few levels
Weapon specialization requires fighter 4 and weapon focus but grants Weapon spec, greater weapon focus and greater specialization, at appropriate levels
You do the same thing with all those neat ultimate intrigue social feats, but you slap them on the ends of skill focus, or deceitful or other skill boost feats.
If you can spend 2 feat selections to have all the moving parts to your fighting style it feels like less opportunity lost spending feats on non combat abilities which you also make more relevant by attaching the effect feats from sources like ultimate intrigue to the skill boost feats in the same way.
I wouldn't apply any of this to any casters.
Full casters don't need help.
I'd consider it for 3/4 caster, just maybe.
The point isn't to give it all in one choice. Its to cluster the two or three most similar into a single choice. Feat trees that run seven deep would by necessity require 3 to 4 feat choices under the system i propose.
It is in a very real way an attempt to turn feats in general but combat feats specifically into vigilante talents because every fighting style but two handers being feat hungry is kind of a structural issue preventing martial versatility.
Did you catch where i said do the same to the non combats? Cause you do the same to the non combats, attach them to things like skill focus and deft hands etc.
Beyond which a focus on combat and skill feats actually narrows the gap between casters and martials. As an example, lets say every feat or spell is a character effect. Its a choice your character makes that provides some sort of influence either on their own stats or the world around them. A sorcerer has 54 fixed "effects" at level 20, one of those effects can be wish.
Fighter and Rogue have a bit over 20 depending on your choices, and are restricted to feats which while constant are lower impact than spells especially at higher level.
spells are expended so fine, let them keep the higher impact, limited resources in a game should have higher impact, but the overall constant nature of feats doesn't warrant having half the total character effects as someone with high impact spells. To address the issues with feat based characters you have to begin by at least offering them a similar number of options as spellcasters.
Ryan you said,It is in a very real way an attempt to turn feats in general but combat feats specifically into vigilante talents...and Letric said,I wouldn't apply any of this to any casters.
Full casters don't need help.
I'd consider it for 3/4 caster, just maybe.Both of those are telling me to give preferential treatment to combat feats and/or martial characters.
Martial characters do have a problem with having diminishing returns at higher level. But that is only a problem for higher levels, not the lower levels which are balanced relatively fine. Do notice how most classes with talent go from: Talents to Advanced Talents at level 10; That concept might be what is missing from feats, not necessarily scaling. Which is part of why feat tax removal rules can be so weird, most people target the lower level feats making things heavily unbalanced early on, but the mid-late level feats still have the same problem of not doing enough.
I think careful consideration and reexamination of feats is more time consuming but ultimately better than a quick/rushed "1 size fits all" approach.
Yes. Because I don't think any melee should need a feat to trip someone. Any caster can do that with 1 spell.
My problem is versatility. Giving this option makes it possible for melee to actually have options on what do to without having to invest every single feat into tripping.
You could tell me "but it's overpowered". No, it's not. A fighter (having so many feats) that can specialize in 2 handed combat and archery! Now a flying creature it's not impossible for the fighter to deal with, she just takes out her bow dealing 1d8+4 with all those beautiful feats!
Instead what we have now, is that the fighter needs to wait for the wizard to cast fly.
And imo, yes, casters need no help in this game, none at all.
Well that is interesting.
Still the point remains that the Whip is not meant to be a damaging or easy weapon, and the feats unlock that option.
If you want a more damaging whip with less feat investment, just grab your choice of: Urumi, Cat-o-nine-tail, Scorpion Whip, or Nine-section whip. All of which are design to deal more damage and/or pain.
more evidence whip as practical weapons
The problem with whip feat lines is that they're expensive and don't do much. It makes sense to make it expensive since it should be rare, but then it needs some non-combat benefits to make it worth the cost. Rarity isn't inherently valuable.
How you expand whip specialization would impact the type of game world you play in. It could be tied to bluff, intimidation, climb, acrobatics, handle animal, grappling, disarming, dirty tricks, or be more fantastic with variable lengths depending on need or acting like a legitimate weapon but only when enchanted with elemental damage.
Making strictly bad options that don't fulfill the relevant fiction they are intended to support is an option, but I'm not a fan. If you want realism, then the whip isn't a weapon, but a tool for specific animal handling, profession, and performance tasks.
Can I add a Option 4?
* Feats should be edited to fit the fantasy and rules. They should all meet minimal conditions for them to be selected
...pretty sure that's just Option 3...
Martial classes are never going to be OP in comparison to 9th level casters. They simply do not have the world bending abilities in their theme. Your fighter is never going to create a demiplane where he can jump in, rest heal and rememorize and pop out two rounds later. Your rogue is not going to bind an army of demons and your gunslinger isn't going to scourge an entire town off the map with storm of vengeance.
The amount of power that can be shoveled at non spell having martials without them moving outside the bounds of power set by the core rules is absolutely massive.
feat consolidation like that isn't actually likely to up their raw numbers...what it IS likely to do is give you fighters and rogues that can swap between weapon styles and combat maneuvers without being completely gimped at high level, or specialize in 1 or 2 weapon styles and maneuvers and have a bunch of skill based feats for non combat solutions available as well.
Will they be better than they were? Yeah that's the entire point. Feats as a whole compared to spells are either too weak, or not numerous enough
Question!
Why not also remove the spell Feats or feats for casters in general?
Because things like item creation and metamagic feats are honestly good for the game and leaving them as solitary choices is less disruptive as a whole than removing them outright or figuring out ways to make them available as class features or rituals