Excising, Severely Limiting, or Strictly Organizing Feats

[Minigiant]

Seem that +1 bonus (either permanent or highly circunstantial) is a bad feat, by consensus. But out of curiosity:

What is an exemple of a *good* feat?

Suppose a party of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue.

There was no "good" feat.

This is mostly because there was no described role for feats. And unlike spells, there was barely a designed baseline for feats, especially as new feats appeared. And because feats have various usages ranging from combat, social interaction, or item proficiency; a feat's usefulness is dependent of the campaign the user is in.

That is why I hope feats are categorized.

[MENTION=1465]Li Shenron[/MENTION]

Personally I would have preferred each character to get X number of "special actions". Then each action type could have their own time frame usage. Wizards use Vancian spells and thus get own dailies. Fighters get stances and thus at-wills. Barbarians have one of their 8 special slots filmed with an Encounter Rage ability and the rest are at-wills. Etc. Then character could take Combat or Magic feats to trade "action" type for another or modify one of their existing one.

 

[Mattachine]

Examples of good feats, in my view:

Fighter:
Combat Improvisation--when using combat maneuvers X, Y, Z, you inflict damage (Str bonus? more?) when your maneuver is successful
Shake it Off--when an effect or attack gives you condition X or Y, you may make a (save, check, whatever) at the beginning of your next turn to remove the condition

Wizard:
Pyromancer--your fire spells have additional (range/area/damage/difficulty)
Expert Preparation--when you prepare/memorize spells, pick one slot for which you prepare two different spells, when you cast either spell in that slot, the other is lost from memory/preparation as well
Crazy Prepared--leave one spell slot open, you may cast any spell that would normally be prepared in that slot, at which point, the slot is lost as usual

Cleric:
Retribution--when fighting enemies of type X (based on alignment or deity portfolio) your spells gain range/area/damage/difficulty/only effect enemies
Deity's Favor--against attack forms based on your deity's portfolio, you gain a resistance/save bonus/defense bonus

Rogue:
Combat Trick--pick a skill, you may combine a use of that skill with another action, such as movement or an attack
Knockout--when you deliver a sneak attack, you may forego damage to attempt a knockout, if you hit, determine the maximum damage you could deal (if critical hit, calculate maximum critical hit damage)--if this damage would kill the opponent, it's knocked out instead
Versatile Master--pick a skill or type of task and use a different ability modifier to determine success, examples include swapping Dex and Str (athletics and acrobatics), Str and Con (endurance, concentration), Int and Wis (knowledge, puzzles), and so on


This is what I could come up with in 7 minutes. Details would depend on the 5e rules, of course.

 

[Psikus]

Seem that +1 bonus (either permanent or highly circunstantial) is a bad feat, by consensus. But out of curiosity:

What is an exemple of a *good* feat?

Suppose a party of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue.

These are some of my favourite feat concepts:
- Most 4E multiclass feats are great feats. They tend to provide a variety of abilities (attacks, healing, ability to mark...)
- Likewise, the Skill Power feat is ridiculously flexible and fun.
- Stuff like Arcane Familiar can be awesome, though the 4E implementation suffered from being quite underpowered next to the boring math feats.
- I love the concept behind Power Attack and Enlarge Spell in 4E, and 3E metamagic feats in general: modify your abilities by taking a penalty. Unfortunately, they tend to be poorly balanced.
- I like simple bonuses to non-vital stats. A +x to hit, damage or AC tend to be no brainers, but I have a soft spot for Toughness, Improved Initiative, Resilient Focus, or Cold Adaptation.
- I also like situational bonuses that make you care about mobility and positioning. Lost in the Crowd and Terrain Advantage are good examples.
- Finally, there are some otherwise boring feats that encourage you to specialize a character in interesting ways. I think Hellfire Blood (+1 to attacks with fire or fear) would be a really cool feat, if flaming weapons didn't exist and you had to pick actual fire powers for it. There doesn't seem to be a way to provide this effect for martial characters, though - Weapon Focus is NOT what I'm looking for, here.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Ah... the ever-present irony of how too much is never enough!

We went through months of people incessantly complaining when WotC slowed down their publication schedule of new books, while at the same time people are complaining that there's too much stuff for them to have to look through.

Here's two possible solutions.

1) If your list of feats to look through is too long... don't use all the sources the feats come from. Less sources-- less feats. Pretty simple. Use just the PHB and a single splatbook if it's really that big a deal to you.

2) You have how many sessions over how many weeks before you finally level up? Why not take a hour or two here or there and just take a glance through your big list of 200 feats to see if any strike your fancy? After all... if your character's advancement is that important to you that you don't want to just take a feat from the first PHB... then why is spending an hour over the course of how many weeks such a burden to you?

No one is forcing you to buy all these books, just like no one is forcing you to use the information in these books. So I see no reason to limit the amount of information that books can include in the future just because "it makes your head hurt" looking through them. The rest of us are not so fragile and actually enjoy it.

 

[tuxgeo]

Seem that +1 bonus (either permanent or highly circunstantial) is a bad feat, by consensus. But out of curiosity:

What is an exemple of a *good* feat?

Suppose a party of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue.

All of the following is, of course, My Humble Opinion Only (MHOO):

Fighter:
- Quick Draw (draw item in act of using it; + Init.)
- Swift Recovery [trained in Endurance] (bigger healing surges)

Wizard:
- Alchemist (can make alchemical items starting at level 1)
. . . (or, for 4E Essentials Mages: "Ritual Casting")
- Distant Advantage (gain Combat Advantage for Ranged/Area against a flanked enemy)
- Enlarge Spell (already mentioned)
- Unarmored Agility (AC feat bonus when wearing no more than cloth)

Cleric:
- Combat Medic (stabilize dying as Minor, not Standard)
- Harbinger of Rebirth (+5 to death saves for allies in 5 sq.)

Rogue:
- Escape Artist [trained in Acrobatics] (escape as Minor, not Standard)
- Melee Training, DEX (melee attacks use DEX, not STR)

Everybody:
Armor Proficiency, Resilient Focus, Shield Proficiency, Skill Training, Timely Respite, Unfailing Vigor, Weapon Proficiency.

 

[Gryph]

I think I'd be okay if you got, say, 3 feats... all at first level. And that was that. They're good for a way to differentiate two similar characters, but we don't need feat trees or 12 feats all oriented on adding to damage. Just something cool for each character to be a little different / special.

Then morph those starting feats into Theme abilities so there is some natural grouping of feats by concept. With that we can drop feats altogether and I will be one happy camper.

 

[jodyjohnson]

I'd like to see feats with a restriction that says - 'you may only apply one feat to an action or defense per occurance'.

And no generic + to every action in a category feats.

No stacking of feats period.

 

[TwinBahamut]

Seem that +1 bonus (either permanent or highly circunstantial) is a bad feat, by consensus. But out of curiosity:

What is an exemple of a *good* feat?

Suppose a party of Fighter, Wizard, Cleric and Rogue.

An example of a great kind of feat would be the various dragonmark feats from the Eberron setting. They have strong flavor, are iconic options for the setting, have a significant mechanical kick because of the options they provide (spell-like abilities and such), and can build upon each other (lesser -> greater marks).

Of course, all the reasons that cause the dragonmark feats to be great feats also lead to them being my favorite example of what a Theme should be. The best feats build upon each other to create a strong flavor, but that is basically the same role of what Themes will be used for, and Themes do the job better. That only leaves the feats without good flavor, and there are not that many of those that I like. Ritual Caster, maybe, but that is one feat I'd rather see dropped so that you don't even need the feat to use rituals.

Random stuff like the feats that give you bonus languages are really the only thing that come to mind when I think of feats that make decent use of the feat concept.

 

[CM]

Some examples of "good" 4e feats (most of which are from Essentials). These let you ignore penalties or give you more options.

• Armor Finesse: You ignore the check penalty for wearing armor
• Heavy Armor Agility: You ignore the speed penalty for heavy armor
• Alertness: You are never surprised
• Battlewise: You use Wisdom instead of Dexterity for Initiative checks.
• Disciple of Shadow: Gain Darkvision 2
• Disciple of Stone: Whenever you spend a healing surge, you gain temporary HP in addition to the normal HP.

Some "good-and-bad" feats:

• Superior Will|Reflex|Fortitude
• Various weapon expertise feats

These have the inevitable +X to math but also have an interesting effect.

And some "bad" feats:

• Eager Advance: +4 speed on first turn of combat (too situational)
• Disciple of Inspiration: When you use an at-will attack power and miss every target, you gain a +1 bonus to attack rolls until the end of your next turn (way too situational, untyped bonus)
• Improved Defenses: Scaling +X to defenses.

One way of turning a feat like Improved Initiative from a "bad" math feat into a "good" feat would be if it let you roll initiative twice, taking the better result. I believe this has been mentioned already in one of the official polls.

 

[BobTheNob]

D&D worked just fine, in the days before feats were ever a twinkle in Monte, Jonathan, and Skip's respective eyes.

Here's hoping that it's not too late to, pardon the metaphor, slay that particular dragon before the beast is grown so large that it can never again be removed from its lair.

You know, Im not to opposed to this. I sorta agree. I see this paralleled in other things. Look at whats happening with Diablo and WoW...both are falling back to far simpler character definition models. I know they arent necessarily a perfect parallel with D&D(there are massive objective differences), but it seems like RPG designers are reaching a philosophical point where they have realized that "more" is not necessarily "better".

I am thinking that hyper-configurable characters arent necessarily the best thing for a game.

To me its like there is a sweet spot where you have enough tools to make a character unique enough to become enamored of it, then thats it. Anything after that is just bloat.

Are feats part of that sweet spot? Opinions will vary. But if I was to think of the most distinct adventuring party we ever had, it was our 2e Dark Sun group. Everyone remembers their character from that campaign with affection, and we didnt have feats back then. Not saying feats would have sullied the experience...but we got our gaming sweet spot without feats.

It just makes me think, not that they are a problem, but more that they are unnecessary to enjoying the game.