A Feat for an Additional At-Will?

[Celestian]

it would step on the most important Human racial power taking away a big reason to be human (IMO at least)

Not sure I understand why that would be. Humans get an extra at-will and extra feat. They could take the feat as well and have 4 at-wills.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

I'd put it at Paragon Tier... maybe even Epic. Given the limit on at-will powers coupled with a dearth of Paragon and Epic tier feats will basically make this a must have.

I don't think it'll kill the game by any stretch, but I would expect almost every player to take it at some point.

 

[keterys]

I think it is most desirable (as a DM or player) at heroic tier, and would suggest it then. It's mostly a comfort thing. People will be more comfortable having another at-will, and it will make the longer combats more interesting.

The actual effectiveness should rate quite a bit lower than weapon focus or other feats that actually stack with anything.

 

[brehobit]

Yeah,
Paragon tier might work. It would be popular of course...

Mark

 

[drachasor]

Yeah,
Paragon tier might work. It would be popular of course...

Mark

How popular, I wonder. Probably it would be most popular with wizards, but when I was making a Warlord I didn't feel like I'd want to spend a feat for another at will. Wizards already have a lot of feats to take too, improved initiative is definitely more important for them.

As for those that said it steps on the toes of being human, well any non-human that takes this is down TWO feats compared to the human, so I don't think it is that big of a deal.

Overall, I think you have to playtest this. I'd think it would be fine in the Heroic Tier though.

 

[IanB]

There are actually not that many classes that benefit from a 3rd at-will, and almost none that benefit from a 4th (wizard.) I think it would be stepping on the toes of the human way too much to be allowable, as suddenly the only class that they look like a decent choice for is the wizard.

In addition, I think there'd potentially be a bit of a balance problem with a human wizard carrying 4 at-wills. They have a lot of good choices and they're already pretty flexible with the swappable dailies and utilities...

 

[Archon of Light]

From a design (i.e. balance) standpoint, it's not a good idea as written.

First, it mimics the racial feature that humans gain. That diminishes the value of playing a human making it less attractive for players. Plus, it allows human characters to effectively double-up on their advantages.

Second, if the majority of characters are likely to take this, then that means it's too good. As a rule of thumb, anything that's too good not to take is potentially unbalancing.

Comparing this to other feats that do something similar, my suggestion would be something like this:

NAME THIS FEAT
You learn the use of an additonal At-Will power as an Encounter power, even if it is not of your own class. You must still meet all prerequisites and requirements in order to use the selected power.
Special: You can select this feat more than once. Each time you select this feat, select another At-Will power.

 

[keterys]

First, it mimics the racial feature that humans gain. That diminishes the value of playing a human making it less attractive for players. Plus, it allows human characters to effectively double-up on their advantages.

If every class started with 3 at-wills, instead of 2, would you say the same thing? How about 1, instead of 2?

This is comparable to how multiclassing feats work for the half-elf, but not as egregious since the half-elf gets less than a feat's worth.

Second, if the majority of characters are likely to take this, then that means it's too good. As a rule of thumb, anything that's too good not to take is potentially unbalancing.

This is not too good not to take. It's comforting. There are exceedingly few builds that gain notable power from it. It makes players happy, however.

Now, a feat that all melee characters should take... weapon focus. Does that make it broken? Well, it's certainly more powerful than another at-will, that's for sure.

You learn the use of an additonal At-Will power as an Encounter power, even if it is not of your own class. You must still meet all prerequisites and requirements in order to use the selected power.

This is pretty horrible compared to multiclass feats.

And still steps on the toes of the half-elf, if toe stepping matters to you

 

[SSquirrel]

This is pretty horrible compared to multiclass feats.

Altho you can take this one as many times as you like, whereas by RAW, you can only take 1 multiclass feat

 

[keterys]

Which may, in fact, matter once there are many more at-will options for each class.

Coincidentally, humans bonus at-will will benefit from that aspect, too. Aside: I wonder if there are any racial powers that are too powerful to get from a feat.

Obviously, it detracts from flavor if you can do that, but it'd be an interesting test at least.