Looking at the heroic tier feats, I see a little bit of a pattern for quite a few of them. I think one of the design philosophies was that a feat should come into play once every milestone, or once every 20 rounds of combat (which if each encounter is about 10 rounds of combat, is the same thing as every milestone). I'll try to give a few examples:
Action Surge - obviously once per milestone effect.
Feats that trigger on a critical hit - 1/20 effects.
Channel Divinity feats - since you can use only one of these per encounter, you will likely be using the feat once per milestone, while you use the two default class ones once every four encounters or so since they are more situational.
Armor Proficincy - these mostly give you +1 AC, which comes into play once every 20 attacks made against you. On a defender this is more frequent than every other encounter, so these feats are probably on the higher end of the power curve, though for a non-defender who doesn't get attacked quite as much, it probably comes out to once per milestone.
Feats that give +1 damage bonus to certain energy types - these come into play with every hit. Over 20 rounds, if you get 10 hits, that adds up to 10 HP's, which is about the same damage +1 AC would prevent, so it's comparable but this one does not fit the mold quite as nicely.
Healing Hands - The average paladin will be able to use this 2-3 times per day. Assuming there are 4-6 encounters per day, the frequency with which the effect comes into play would be about once per milestone.
Toughness - about once every other encounter, a melee character might end up with somewhere between 1 and 5 HP's, making the feat useful once every milestone. It's a little less useful for roles who don't intend to be front line.
So perhaps, the 1/20 or once per milestone rule could be used to design more feats without upsetting balance. Thoughts?
Action Surge - obviously once per milestone effect.
Feats that trigger on a critical hit - 1/20 effects.
Channel Divinity feats - since you can use only one of these per encounter, you will likely be using the feat once per milestone, while you use the two default class ones once every four encounters or so since they are more situational.
Armor Proficincy - these mostly give you +1 AC, which comes into play once every 20 attacks made against you. On a defender this is more frequent than every other encounter, so these feats are probably on the higher end of the power curve, though for a non-defender who doesn't get attacked quite as much, it probably comes out to once per milestone.
Feats that give +1 damage bonus to certain energy types - these come into play with every hit. Over 20 rounds, if you get 10 hits, that adds up to 10 HP's, which is about the same damage +1 AC would prevent, so it's comparable but this one does not fit the mold quite as nicely.
Healing Hands - The average paladin will be able to use this 2-3 times per day. Assuming there are 4-6 encounters per day, the frequency with which the effect comes into play would be about once per milestone.
Toughness - about once every other encounter, a melee character might end up with somewhere between 1 and 5 HP's, making the feat useful once every milestone. It's a little less useful for roles who don't intend to be front line.
So perhaps, the 1/20 or once per milestone rule could be used to design more feats without upsetting balance. Thoughts?
