Design and Development: Feats

[Rechan]

I wonder what the design principles behind the Heritage/Arena Fighting feats are. More to the point, how you decide what is balanced when you're making one of those feats.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I do think that they're right to be cautious about changing what things mean, in general. I mean, check out the amount of "WTF" directed at them for changing what "Archon" meant.

I think that in this case, I would have preferred "feats" to "exploits," but it's not a big enough deal that I really care. There are far worse offenders for horrible power source power names ("invocations," I'm looking at you!), and it's not like it is referenced a whole lot in other areas.

It'd be a minor change that didn't accomplish much, so it's meh.

As for the basic idea of 4e feats...I'm pretty okay with it. I like feats as modifications on characters or as gateways to new character definition -- basically what FFZ has as "support abilities." Must-have feats are probably better off as powers, and that's fine. That's not a problem with the powers system.

I kind of wish for a revisitation of tactical feats, however, with the payoff to reward tracking what happens in a round. Maybe these kinds of feats build on themselves, so the first "tactical" feat is really just kind of situational (if you don't shift in a round, gain X bonus), but the next one sort of adds to it (if you also don't move in a round, gain Y bonus) -- sort of a reward for following a particular pattern of attack that scales with how well you adhere to that pattern. Scaling complexity you can opt into is pretty OK in my book.

 

[Dedekind]

I kind of wish for a revisitation of tactical feats, however, with the payoff to reward tracking what happens in a round. Maybe these kinds of feats build on themselves, so the first "tactical" feat is really just kind of situational (if you don't shift in a round, gain X bonus), but the next one sort of adds to it (if you also don't move in a round, gain Y bonus) -- sort of a reward for following a particular pattern of attack that scales with how well you adhere to that pattern. Scaling complexity you can opt into is pretty OK in my book.

You know... that sort of sounds like something that would be in an "Advanced" or "Skills & Powers" type of book...

You could also do Power chains. Something along the lines of:

Trigger: PC uses an at-will in a turn, followed by an encounter power in the next turn without moving from their square.
Effect: PC gains bonuses to defense/attack/Something awesome happens!

 

[I'm A Banana]

Trigger: PC uses an at-will in a turn, followed by an encounter power in the next turn without moving from their square.
Effect: PC gains bonuses to defense/attack/Something awesome happens!

COMBOS!

Yeah, that's cool. It sounds like the design team's not a fan of it because it's too fiddly, but I think 4e lets slide some exceptionally fiddly things that aren't half as cool as these sound.

 

[LightPhoenix]

I found the article interesting, but the following bit annoyed me (emphasis mine):

The Player's Handbook only dabbles in this category, but some of these feats are already among the most compelling in the game. Few dragonborn characters don't consider Enlarged Dragon Breath, and I have yet to meet an elf who didn't pick up Elven Precision pretty quickly. Personally, I like these feats because they're straightforward in their effect and almost guaranteed to come up in every encounter. That means the player can understand the feat's value easily and can witness its utility often.

What this says to me is that the decision isn't really in what feats to take, but when you will be taking certain feats. I'd rather see them go back to their original concept of tying race to level, and granting these abilities automatically as a character levels.

It may also speak to the idea that perhaps these feats are fairly overpowered, and should be scaled back.

 

[Stalker0]

I really like the article and the new direction. Given that:

On the one hand, I like that there are lots of class/race specific feats to choose from. On the other hand, if I'm not that class/race, that block of text isn't useful. Martial Powers is absolute must-have for any martial class, but very few of the feats apply to more than one class and several only apply to one class/race combination. I guess that is part of the "Class and/or Race Is Important" philosophy but it does make some of the material limited in application. This is my only complaint about Martial Powers.

I'll agree here, I am all for feats that work on specific class/race combos, especially the ones where the race isn't ideally suited for the class. But not 90% of the feats, which is what it is now.

 

[OchreJelly]

I found the article interesting, but the following bit annoyed me (emphasis mine):



What this says to me is that the decision isn't really in what feats to take, but when you will be taking certain feats. I'd rather see them go back to their original concept of tying race to level, and granting these abilities automatically as a character levels.

It may also speak to the idea that perhaps these feats are fairly overpowered, and should be scaled back.

I think the racial feats generally tend to look really compelling. The two that the designers sited were feats that happen to be racials. It would have been interesting to hear them discuss racial feats in particular. Since one of their design goals was to make races more compelling, I wouldn't be surprised if it was intentional to make the racial feats a little stronger.

Do you know when they talked about tying race to level? I don't recall that from any of the design reading. My guess is they moved away from that due to economy of actions / options where some races would just automatically get more than others.