Buying Feats with XP

[Dragonblade275]

Inspired from E6: The Game Inside DnD...

In my game, I'm unlikely to be able to convince my players to give Ryan's E6 an honest try. But, I still am thinking about introducing the idea that feats can be bought with Experience Points.

This has two goals in mind... To slow level advancement by encouraging the players to spend XP on feats and to help players create more well rounded characters sooner through feat aquisition that normally wouldn't be available in the standard rules.

The question is this: How much XP is a feat worth at any given level? And, regardless of what is fair, what XP price is high enough to be expensive but low enough to encourage players to take this option over saving up XP for levels?

Ryan presented in one of the posts in his E6 thread an idea that a level was worth four feats. And, I've heard that some have suggested that a level is actually worth 6 feats. I don't know, but here's what I'm thinking.

Buying a Feat for XP
A character may buy a feat at any point in their career so long as they have sufficient XP to spend without reducing their XP below the minimum required for their current character level.

The price of a feat varies by character level according to the following chart:

LVL	XP/Feat
1	250
2	500
3	750
4	1,000
5	1,250
6	1,500
7	1,750
8	2,000
9	2,250
10	2,500
11	2,750
12	3,000
13	3,250
14	3,500
15	3,750
16	4,000
17	4,250
18	4,500
19	4,750
20	5,000

The XP costs on the chart are figured using 1/4th the required XP needed to obtain the next character level.

Any thoughts?

 

[Aegir]

The question is this: How much XP is a feat worth at any given level?

That one I suspect would require some serious playtesting to know for certain, but I'd say the best place to start is something like 30-40% of a levels XP.

The other thing to consider is what type of game you run. If you use random encounters, or allow your characters free reign to go and do what they want, something like this may well create alot of situations where the group simply runs off to gain some cheap XP so they can buy a few feats.

However, if you keep a tight leash on XP (me personally, I simply level my PCs when the story warrants, but also award bonus XP for RP and char development that can be used for a variety of things, such as action points, or gaining an "extra" level if they save up enough), then this could work fairly well.

In fact... I'm tempted to add it as an option.

 

[wolfpunk]

This may be a very very abstract way of doing it, but here goes. The Keen magic quality imitates the Improved Critical Feat. A Kensai can imbue their signature weapon with a +2 bonus for 160 xp. If we assume that the Kensai is supposed to be a viable PrC because of the low cost associated with enchanting their signature weapon, we could double or perhaps triple the xp cost associated with imbuing their signature weapon and instead apply it to feats.


So the first bonus feat would cost 120 XP, and escalate until the tenth and each feat afterwards would cost 12,000 XP.

Obviously, a character would still need to meet the prerequisites for the feat they wished to purchase.

 

[Aegir]

So the first bonus feat would cost 120 XP, and escalate until the tenth and each feat afterwards would cost 12,000 XP.

My only concern is that this would add another level of bookkeeping to the equation, "So, this is the 3rd feat you've bought? 4th?"

A bit of a nit-picky issue I admit, but I'd rather avoid adding *more* things I have to track, personally.

 

[wolfpunk]

Not too be too obvious, but it is not that hard to mark those feats with an asterik or write them on a seperate line.

 

[Aegir]

Not too be too obvious, but it is not that hard to mark those feats with an asterisk or write them on a separate line.

Oh, sure, give the obvious answer.

 

[TonyTempest]

In all my games, characters have had the option to purchase feats for 4 skill points. I may change that to 5 when I play again, because Open Minded sets the ratio at 5:1. so, if you have 5 skill points and would rather have a feat, you can buy it that way. You must already fulfill the pre-reqs for the feat, etc etc.

David

 

[Quartz]

The problem I see here is that you're going to have PCs stop advancing in levels to buy feats then advancing again. You may want to limit the number of feats they can buy per level.

 

[evilbob]

Honestly, I think the "E6" mechanic has a lot of merrit in this discussion:

- you can purchase a feat for 5000xp
- you must be at least level 6 to purchase a feat

This avoids heavily stacking low-level characters with TONS of feats, and makes each feat really cost something. I would argue against feats costing more at higher levels: this simply encourages a player to never get past level 2 or so, but spend as much "cheap" XP on feats as possible, and delay leveling for as long as possible.

As for limiting the number of feats one can buy at each level, one way this can be done is in-game: simply don't stop raising the EL. Characters who are level 6 with 10 feats are going to get frustrated at their ineffectualness in EL 11 encounters. Granted, this is a bit harsh and may not suit every game, but it seems a fair compromise to granting this house rule. At low levels, getting more than one extra feat can set you back quite a bit, but by level 15 you could purchase 3 extra feats and only be 1 level behind.



The real question in this situation would be how to handle ECL and XP: are the guys who've spent 15000 XP to buy feats still going to be counted as having a lower ECL, and thus gain XP faster than their non-feat-purchasing counterparts (seems unfair), or do you try to include the extra bookkeeping to keep track of what a character's actual ECL -should- be so as to not give them any bonus (seems complicated)?

One idea I had off the top of my head would be to have two XP totals: one that counts as your XP for determining what level you are (this is the one that is lowered when you purchase feats), and one that determines your ECL (and thus how much XP you get from encounters). Essentially, you're creating - slowly but surely - a sort of level adjustment for your character this way.

Along those same lines, another idea would be to just say:

- 4 feats costs +1 LA
- you can purcahse those 4 feats at any "level up" starting at level 6

 

[Darren Ravenshaw]

As Quartz said it would be best to have a limit to the number of extra feats characters could aquire. Maybe limited them to 1 extra feat per 2 characters levels to start with. This way the characters would remain closer in "relative" power to each other at a given level for those that chose to aquire extra feats vs. those that didn't.

As for the cost what about a scaling system: First feat costs 500xp, the second costs 1,000 xp, and so on. This way the players have to do some leveling so they can have enough xp to spent on the feats without dropping below their current level.