Discussing 4e Subsystems: Feats

Continuing on our journey through the 4e subsystems, I thought we would take a look at something not newly conceived, but new in its own way nonetheless.

Feats
The core idea of feats have not changed as the modern edition slides from 3rd to 4th, but the purpose and scale of feats have changed greatly.
In 3rd edition, especially for martial classes, feats were a principal means of defining your character and acquiring your abilities. In 4th edition, they have taken a backseat to the powers system, as they now provide small bonuses to round out the character as opposed to defining it.

This “small bonus” notion I personally believe will become a problem for 4th edition, because it will become a glass system that hinders the growth of the game. The thing about feats is that they are one of the major customizations a player can do to his character (beyond powers and magic items). That means players want lots of them. Every splat will include more feats, just as 3rd edition splats did.

The problem is that when you put a tight power limit on what a feat can do, you limit the amount of variation that is possible. There are only so many small bonuses designers can give to feats, without starting to put silly bonuses that few players would ever want. In 3rd edition, a feat could be a solid single bonus, or several small bonuses. Take the tactical feats for example. Designers realized in 3rd edition they could take a series of small, situational bonuses and put them together to make a useful feat. This greatly increased the amount of customization possible. In 4th edition this will not be possible, and I fear that as more and more feats are realized, designers will be forced to power creep to create new exciting feats.

Ultimately, I think the biggest problem with 4e’s feat system right now is…there are just not enough feats. Considering players get many more feats in the new edition, there aren’t a lot more options to choose from. This leads to discussions of “cookie-cutter” classes and the like. I think this issue will be completely resolved with a few splat books, but I can understand people’s frustration.

All of the above said, 4e has made a few advances with the feat system I want to point out.

1) Racial Feats: The core racial feats are a solid way to enforce the flavor of various races, while further differentiating one race for another. Further, they are useful for expanding the archetypes possible. Take the dwarf for example. By stats, the dragonborn is the best fighter with his powerful strength. But the dwarf can take dwarven weapon training and match the dragonborn by using superior skill and weaponry. The dragonborn has feats to improve his breath weapon, which does help the fighter archetype, but is a decent boon no matter what class the dragonborn players. The halfing can take racial feats to jack up his AC, making him a tank even though his abilities wouldn’t normally suggest that, etc.

2) Off Ability Feats: 4th edition seems to have a drive to push players towards maximizing their best stats, but these feats are a nice way of rewarding players who don’t. Many of these feats provide solid abilities, but the price is pushing stats away from your strengths. Take spell focus for example, wonderful, powerful feat, but it requires a charisma of 13. Even if the wizard waits till epic level, he’ll still need to put one of his stat bumps in charisma. And if he wants it by paragon, he’ll have to put even more. I think the concept is wonderful, because it allows a player to play a set of options that doesn’t seem “optimal”, but they can take feats like these to pick up the slack. I will say that these feats have gotten a bad rap in the core, mainly because there are too many of them and too few of the general kind. Because players have so few options from feats right now, they chaff under the restrictions these feats demand. Once a new array of feat options becomes available, I think these feats will show their worth more.

3) Multiclass feats (super feats): I call them super feats because I think that is ultimately what they will become. Judging by the new gladiator article, WOTC is turning the multiclass feat into a character’s single “super feat”. Basically you get one feat that’s just plain better than other feats you can have, with the trade off being you can only have one. I think the idea of a super feat is fine, but I dislike its connection with multiclass. I think it will create a series of restrictions players will not like, and it will only get worse as new uses for the super feat become available.

So in conclusion, the feat system is not the most shining example of 4th edition, though its solid as a whole. It will be interesting to see how WOTC pushes the feat system, and whether my "glass ceiling" concerns hold true.

I think that there are some other problems with the feats as provided.

The most glaring example is all the spell damage feats (arcane fire, burning blizzard) which give +1/2/3 to damage but require some outre combination of ability scores - and will only be available on a fraction of the PCs powers anyway. Compare that with weapon focus which has no ability prereqs and is usable on the martial PCs main weapon with all his powers.

They should have either

a) broken the weapon focus down into their several classes of weapon and enforce an off-primary ability restriction for each of them

or

b) remove the ability restriction for the spell damage feats.

In my campaign I've done the latter.

(after all, with the current design of powers there is pretty much no effective difference in power level between the martial powers and the arcane powers at any given level in many cases - file off the flavour and you wouldn't know which was which, sometimes!)

Cheers

Plane Sailing said:

I think that there are some other problems with the feats as provided.

The most glaring example is all the spell damage feats (arcane fire, burning blizzard) which give +1/2/3 to damage but require some outre combination of ability scores - and will only be available on a fraction of the PCs powers anyway. Compare that with weapon focus which has no ability prereqs and is usable on the martial PCs main weapon with all his powers.

They should have either

a) broken the weapon focus down into their several classes of weapon and enforce an off-primary ability restriction for each of them

or

b) remove the ability restriction for the spell damage feats.

In my campaign I've done the latter.

(after all, with the current design of powers there is pretty much no effective difference in power level between the martial powers and the arcane powers at any given level in many cases - file off the flavour and you wouldn't know which was which, sometimes!)

Cheers

Click to expand...

I think Stalker0 already gave a good explanation why it is this way. And I agree with him. It's a benefit for those that don't dump-stat everything.

The Weapon Focus doesn't need this kind of restriction, since other feats and powers create the same effect. Some weapon specific feats require these ability scores, and some powers gain bonus if using the right weapon depending on a different ability score then the attack stat.

I'm not too worried about the supposed "glass ceiling" since you could get around that problem by re-introducing feat chains. In other words, Basic Feat gets you a small benefit. Improved Feat gives you a bigger benefit, but Improved Feat has Basic Feat as a prerequisite. Greater Feat gives you an even bigger benefit, but you need to have both Basic Feat and Improved Feat to take it. Effectively, you get a single big benefit, but you tie up three feat slots to do so (see here for an example of how this might work).

What I think I would like to see more of are themed feats. There has been some talk in the House Rules forum on the possibility of having heroic paths or heroic heritages. I think these could be expressed fairly well by having thematically grouped feats.

Stalker0 said:

3) Multiclass feats (super feats): I call them super feats because I think that is ultimately what they will become. Judging by the new gladiator article, WOTC is turning the multiclass feat into a character’s single “super feat”. Basically you get one feat that’s just plain better than other feats you can have, with the trade off being you can only have one. I think the idea of a super feat is fine, but I dislike its connection with multiclass. I think it will create a series of restrictions players will not like, and it will only get worse as new uses for the super feat become available.

Click to expand...

I don't think this is such a big problem.
A lot of 3E multiclassing was done for similar purposes - get special abilities you wanted, qualify for a PrC.

The special Multiclass Feats will probably get you faster to your goal and will effectively not prove to be a strong restriction.

How many people really wanted to play something like a Rogue/Cleric/Wizard multiclass character that uses a Whip before?
What specifically was so unique to this character concept? What was the reason to add roguish abilities to a Cleric/Wizard? Was it the need for some skill points (gone away in 4E)? Or was it really the image of a Rogue? (Take Stealth and Thievery as a feat?)

The typical class combinations where usually thematically linked - Barbarian/Fighter/Ranger doesn't really need all 3 classes - and you mixed them all mostly because of some specific mechanical perks (I want a Barbarian/Ranger,but I need some more feats to get some cool abilities. I want a Barbarian that can track, and spending a feat for it is too expensive...)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:

I think Stalker0 already gave a good explanation why it is this way. And I agree with him. It's a benefit for those that don't dump-stat everything.

The Weapon Focus doesn't need this kind of restriction, since other feats and powers create the same effect. Some weapon specific feats require these ability scores, and some powers gain bonus if using the right weapon depending on a different ability score then the attack stat.

Click to expand...

I disagree - it is clumsy design. Anyone attempting to use the standard array is pretty hosed if they are a wizard (except for burning blizzard which requires Int + something).

It is a fine design to require Cha for spell focus and other ability scores for certain specific things - but a generic power damage bonus? Either treat weapons the same way as powers, or powers the same way as weapons. It is the only way that makes sense

The weapon specific feats which require ability scores are in the same boat as the spell specific feats (like spell focus) which require ability scores. No beef there.

Weapon focus is the strange outlier.

Taken in conjunction with the fact that every class has a 'secondary ability' which affects various powers except for the wizard, I can't shake the feeling that wizards were developed by someone else who wasn't quite on the same page as everyone else on the development team

Plane Sailing said:

Taken in conjunction with the fact that every class has a 'secondary ability' which affects various powers except for the wizard, I can't shake the feeling that wizards were developed by someone else who wasn't quite on the same page as everyone else on the development team

Click to expand...

I like the fact that not all the classes have the same degree of dependence on multiple ability scores, although I admit that I may not understand the game balance ramifications. Perhaps the designers intended the wizard to play differently? For most classes, I find myself using a 16-14-14-13-10-8 or 17-14-14-10-10-8 array, but for a wizard I might consider buying that 18. That would already give me a +1 to damage relative to those who bought only a 16 or 17 for their primary ability.

For a while I suspected the real reason that the arcane damage-increasing feats are harder to apply was that wizards damage more enemies at once than martial classes (essentially allowing them to apply the +1 several times each round). But the proliferation of arcane classes in roles other than controller might argue against that theory. (Unless these classes are designed to account for these feats.)

Pseudopsyche said:

For a while I suspected the real reason that the arcane damage-increasing feats are harder to apply was that wizards damage more enemies at once than martial classes (essentially allowing them to apply the +1 several times each round).

Click to expand...

I think this is generally true - a +1 against 3 foes per round far better than +1 against only one foe. Likewise, a +1 that deals half damage on a miss is better than a +1 anywhere else.

Pseudopsyche said:

But the proliferation of arcane classes in roles other than controller might argue against that theory. (Unless these classes are designed to account for these feats.)

Click to expand...

Note that for warlocks, more of the damage-increasing feats have at least one on-stat pre-req instead of both being off-stat.

I have never really looked at feats much on the numbers level, so won't delve into that.

But, I will delve somewhat into my sheer love for the way multiclassing-feats works. I like how it allows one to be really specific in how they multiclass their character and be able to choose what specifically they want and not get slapped with tons of "useless abilities" (in that it doesn't fit the character concept).

I also think it is neat how they are using it for more then just ordinary-multiclassing, but also to have specific multiclassing classes, weapon mastery, etc. I think it is neat how we are already seeing some different ways to use feats.