Obsolete Feats

[TDarien]

With over 3000 feats in the 4e catalog and the vast amount of compiled errata. Slogging though the list of available options can be quite cumbersome, especially when errata, and to some extent essentials feats, have rendered certain feats obsolete. Has anyone taken the time to compile a list of these now sub-standard feats to help prevent players unknowingly taking an obsolete feat instead of a similar, though better, one?

 

[aurance]

I don't think so, other than some of the (excellent) player-made class handbooks in the WotC CharOp forums. It would be nice, but I'm not sure it would be entirely necessary - it's pretty hard to shoot yourself in the foot in 4e as long as you put your 18 post-racial score in your main ability score for your class and keep updated with gear. For my players, I figure if they want to do the research for the feats, they can go to the forum resources, but if they don't, it won't affect them too badly.

 

[ourchair]

I don't think so, other than some of the (excellent) player-made class handbooks in the WotC CharOp forums. It would be nice, but I'm not sure it would be entirely necessary - it's pretty hard to shoot yourself in the foot in 4e as long as you put your 18 post-racial score in your main ability score for your class and keep updated with gear. For my players, I figure if they want to do the research for the feats, they can go to the forum resources, but if they don't, it won't affect them too badly.

That just about sums it up pretty well.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, I think it would be kind of nice if CB could deprecate feats that are obsolete. If you want them you can turn them on, otherwise they don't show up in the pick lists by default. Shouldn't really be that tough.

 

[Destil]

From a performance standpoint, this is really something that needs to be done. Picking feats is absolutely horrid, the option to turn them off entirely (and not include the huge XML that goes back and forth with them) would improve it a lot.

There's also a lot of obsolete feats after the Essentials, given the amount of power creep (plenty of stuff that's downright better and has less strict prerequisites).

 

[ourchair]

Eh, I think it would be kind of nice if CB could deprecate feats that are obsolete. If you want them you can turn them on, otherwise they don't show up in the pick lists by default. Shouldn't really be that tough.

I agree and disagree.

It would be great for us not to ever see obsolete feats show up again, even if only by a filter.

The problem is that it would require someone to actually go through the all feats and make thousands of judgment calls on which feats are obsolete and which ones are not (as even non-mathematical feats may be rendered moot).

Nevermind the fact that some of the 'obsolete' feats stack with newer feats, so there're people out there who might want old feats to go with their new feats, just so they can max out one aspect of their character ("Whoohoo I just stacked as many feats as possible to get +18 to my base AC at Level 11!") to ridiculous ends.

 

[Ryujin]

Considering that the new Expertise feats give the original bonus AND something else nice, I would say that any of the overlapping old versions are obsolete.

 

[Obryn]

Considering that the new Expertise feats give the original bonus AND something else nice, I would say that any of the overlapping old versions are obsolete.

Sadly, we still need Totem, Ki Focus, Holy Symbol, and Flail expertise before those other Expertise feats can be deprecated. And, preferably, a better expertise/focus solution for weapliments.

I'd say all the dual-element feats from PHB1 can go. With Implement Focus, they're officially asinine choices except in corner cases where someone wants to use a bunch of different implements or something.

The Tribal feats are pretty awful, too - "Hey, if we ALL spend a feat slot on X, we can each get a bonus just barely better than taking (skill focus/improved initiative/etc)!" I know those haven't been replaced by better alternatives, but I'd love to remove them for uselessness.

Human Perseverance can go away, unless it's errata'd to stack.

-O

 

[Blue]

Eh, I think it would be kind of nice if CB could deprecate feats that are obsolete. If you want them you can turn them on, otherwise they don't show up in the pick lists by default. Shouldn't really be that tough.

I wish they would do an edition change to 4.5 where so they could take out the chaff. That's what Essentials effectively was, but because of the "no edition change" promise they need to leave everything in and compatible.

I think it's really hurting the game to have so much junk floating around. Especially with the rampant content addition from Dragon. I'm not saying get rid of the old classes, but would you rather buy a book to update the new classes to Essentials format with no new content, or have an edition change where they could clean up and then have a book with with improved content? The business plan for income stream still needs to include constant new material for sale, why not make it improved and cleaned up material?

Wizards has learned a lot about 4e since they first designed it, I'd love to see 4.5. Yes, people would complain about having to by boos, but that's what Wizards needs you to do anyway. More people concentrating buying fewer 4.5 core books means they can focus more time on those instead of on coming out with a lot of different books that will only get picked up by some percentage of gamers.

 

[Destil]

I think it's really hurting the game to have so much junk floating around. Especially with the rampant content addition from Dragon.

Dragon's not really the worst offender anymore, given the shear number of feats obsoleted in essentials (generally by purely superior feats and or those with easier prerequisites). But since it's pretty much purely digital I wouldn't shed a tear if all the worthless stuff therein was either brought in line (every at will with rare exception should deal 2x die damage at epic) or removed entirely if worthless.