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Feats: What Are They For?
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<blockquote data-quote="Mad Hamish" data-source="post: 6120436" data-attributes="member: 25321"><p>Or maybe feats always were meant to be the big bucket where you put things that don't fit anywhere else, or a way of grouping things that multiple classes could get access to or that individual characters should be able to choose whether they have them or not?</p><p>(Weapon Specialization, Spell Mastery etc come under the last case there)</p><p>It's easier & cleaner to have, say, endurance as a feat and a Ranger getting it as a bonus feat than it is to have Endurance as a ranger ability and either have to give other classes some method of getting it or not allow anybody else a way of getting it ever...</p><p>Much less 2 weapon fighting...</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That strikes me as a bad idea. </p><p>For a start it means either </p><p>a) you get much less flexibility for characters, as things stand a caster can go for metamagic, item creation or more general feats and can mix and match as desired. </p><p>b) you make the classes themselves much more complicated and have a lot of duplicated abilities between classes.</p><p></p><p>For a) </p><p>A character can choose to improve their combat abilities in one area (point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot...) or become more of a generalist combatant (point blank shot, power attack, combat maneuver feats....), become tougher to hurt in combat (dodge, maneuver, toughness....) or do non-combat things (skill focus knowledge skills...) or item creation, metamagic, boosts to class abilities (improved channeling, extend what channeling can do)</p><p></p><p>(My 17th level Pathfinder Wizard has Augment Summoning, Combat Casting, Craft Staff, Craft Wondrous Item, Eschew Materials, Extend Spell, Magical Aptitude, Quicken Spell, Scribe Scroll, Spell Focus Conjuration, Spell Mastery, Staff-Like Wand, Superior Summoning & Toughness) </p><p>another wizard could have a completely different set of abilities from feats (the sorcerer I'm currently playing has Improved Initiative, Combat Casting, Craft Wondrous Item and will be getting Additional Traits, Toughness, Persistent Spell, Still Spell, Piercing Spell, Silent Spell, Reach Spell, Selective Spell) </p><p>A Barbarian/Sorcerer/Dragon Discipline I'm playing will have a completely different load of feats.</p><p>Coming up with a system where a class can get that degree of customisation without feats is going to be awkward and probably effectively come down to a feat system limited to selections made available to the class.</p><p></p><p>The loss of metamagic would be a huge loss to a lot of characters (especially spontaneous casters who depend on them to a fair degree to keep lower level spells useful and for versatility)</p><p></p><p>for b) if you want to keep metamagic and item creation then you offer people choices in their class or you just allow everybody in the class to do them. So either people don't get to choose how much metamagic they get or they can only choose to get, say, full metamagic but no item creation or you've effectively brought the feat system back inside the class.</p><p></p><p>How do you offer a system which lets a fighter choose "I'll pump my archery up as high as I can", "I'll go 2 handed fighting", "I'll be a 2 weapon fighter", "I'll be board and sword", "I'll mix a bit of archery with a bit of 2 weapon fighting and I'll make myself harder to hit and be good at tracking"? How fine grained can you make it without making it as general as a feat system?</p><p></p><p>You either don't allow anybody to ever channel to affect elementals or everybody in a class gets that ability</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>But isn't communicating and influencing people part of the Bard's job? So shouldn't they learn languages as part of their class progression? Otherwise they aren't the best at it they ever could be...</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mad Hamish, post: 6120436, member: 25321"] Or maybe feats always were meant to be the big bucket where you put things that don't fit anywhere else, or a way of grouping things that multiple classes could get access to or that individual characters should be able to choose whether they have them or not? (Weapon Specialization, Spell Mastery etc come under the last case there) It's easier & cleaner to have, say, endurance as a feat and a Ranger getting it as a bonus feat than it is to have Endurance as a ranger ability and either have to give other classes some method of getting it or not allow anybody else a way of getting it ever... Much less 2 weapon fighting... That strikes me as a bad idea. For a start it means either a) you get much less flexibility for characters, as things stand a caster can go for metamagic, item creation or more general feats and can mix and match as desired. b) you make the classes themselves much more complicated and have a lot of duplicated abilities between classes. For a) A character can choose to improve their combat abilities in one area (point blank shot, precise shot, rapid shot...) or become more of a generalist combatant (point blank shot, power attack, combat maneuver feats....), become tougher to hurt in combat (dodge, maneuver, toughness....) or do non-combat things (skill focus knowledge skills...) or item creation, metamagic, boosts to class abilities (improved channeling, extend what channeling can do) (My 17th level Pathfinder Wizard has Augment Summoning, Combat Casting, Craft Staff, Craft Wondrous Item, Eschew Materials, Extend Spell, Magical Aptitude, Quicken Spell, Scribe Scroll, Spell Focus Conjuration, Spell Mastery, Staff-Like Wand, Superior Summoning & Toughness) another wizard could have a completely different set of abilities from feats (the sorcerer I'm currently playing has Improved Initiative, Combat Casting, Craft Wondrous Item and will be getting Additional Traits, Toughness, Persistent Spell, Still Spell, Piercing Spell, Silent Spell, Reach Spell, Selective Spell) A Barbarian/Sorcerer/Dragon Discipline I'm playing will have a completely different load of feats. Coming up with a system where a class can get that degree of customisation without feats is going to be awkward and probably effectively come down to a feat system limited to selections made available to the class. The loss of metamagic would be a huge loss to a lot of characters (especially spontaneous casters who depend on them to a fair degree to keep lower level spells useful and for versatility) for b) if you want to keep metamagic and item creation then you offer people choices in their class or you just allow everybody in the class to do them. So either people don't get to choose how much metamagic they get or they can only choose to get, say, full metamagic but no item creation or you've effectively brought the feat system back inside the class. How do you offer a system which lets a fighter choose "I'll pump my archery up as high as I can", "I'll go 2 handed fighting", "I'll be a 2 weapon fighter", "I'll be board and sword", "I'll mix a bit of archery with a bit of 2 weapon fighting and I'll make myself harder to hit and be good at tracking"? How fine grained can you make it without making it as general as a feat system? You either don't allow anybody to ever channel to affect elementals or everybody in a class gets that ability But isn't communicating and influencing people part of the Bard's job? So shouldn't they learn languages as part of their class progression? Otherwise they aren't the best at it they ever could be... [/QUOTE]
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