Heirloom Items [Feat]

[Cabral]

Just some thoughts I had to add to a campaign to represent nobility and/or wealth.

Heirloom [General]
Benefit: Choose one item. That item is masterwork* at no additional cost.
Special: Can only be taken at 1st level.

Inheritance [General]Benefit: Choose 2,000 gp worth of items. At any point, you can "buy" items from your inheritance list at 75% normal cost.
Special: Can only be taken at first level.

Ancestral Item [General]
Prerequisites: Heirloom or must own a masterwork item* via the inheritance feat. Additionally, must research the ancestors who possesed the item before you and how it was passed down to you.
Benefit: Your intimate tie to your ancestral item allows you to enchant the item. You enchant the item by paying the market cost of the new abilities and spending 1 day per 1,000 gp cost (round off, minimum of 1 day). You do not lose any experience points. You do not need any spells, feats, or skills to meet the requirements. However, your character level must equal, or exceed any caster level requirements the item might have.
Special: If your ancestral item is lost or stolen, you lose xp equal to 1/25th the cost you've paid so far to enchant it via this feat.

*I need an immediate benefit for a character taking a non-weapon, non-armor item. For example if someone wants a ring.

What do you think?

 

[Lord Morte]

Ancestral Relic in the Book of Exalted Deeds does pretty much the same thing as your Ancestral Item feat. The Inheritance feat seems... off in some inexplicitable way. An interesting mechanic but it doesn't quite do what the Feat should. Sorry, that's no help I know...

I like the Heirloom feat. The benefit for non-weapon, non-armour, non-tools could be a +2 on Diplomacy as people recognise the obvious importance of your family based on the conspicious wealth of the masterwork item.

 

[domino]

Do you have the 3rd ed OA book? They have a similar set up with Samurai swords. The Samurai can enchant their swords, for free, and so on, with some caveats. It might be worth looking at, if you have it or can find it.

As it stands, I think they're too expensive. The ancestral weapon feat allows you to take your weapon. And then, put time into doing the same thing as could be done by buying another weapon? There's no cost difference, it takes the character time, and requires another feat?

The other two feats also seem a bit weak to me, as well. The Inheritance feat effectively saves you 500 gp? The Heirloom saves you 300? Considering the other things that feats allow you to do, those values seem awfully low to me.

 

[Li Shenron]

I agree with Domino, I'm having a hard time imagining someone taking the first two feats, while you can easily get that worth of treasure after 1-2 adventures.

Choosing an in-game cost for making a character simply born rich isn't easy. Furthermore, feats are basically abilities developed with time and training (tho you take them at level X, you're developing them during the previous levels) while nobility or family wealth is automatic. Well, you could say it takes time to administer your business, or time to spend in noble court "doing nothing" or be kicked out of aristocracy, but that's a little bit of a stretch isn't it?

However, the point here with your feats is that the players will always be weighting them from the power point of view. While at 1st level an extra masterwork item may seem great, soon it's not so great anymore. If you want to have a feat which grants additional wealth, try designing something that gives more money later, such as an estate income (tho I won't be able to design this myself).

The idea of the 3rd feat is good instead, and used by OA Samurai as mentioned already. I think a feat could be a good choice here: the character effectively gets the same benefit as a Craft Magic Weapons & Armors, with one restriction (only his heirloom item), a different cost (but in line with normal equipment costs) and without the need for spells.
I however still have problems with this sort of things (including the Samurai), because losing the item is too much a pain: not only you lose the item's worth, but you won't ever get your feat back, and you even add the Xp loss. This often result in the DM being morally compelled to "protect" your item, otherwise he'll get a sad and angry player (quite the same issue with spellbooks).

 

[Stalker0]

I agree, the feats seem weak to me.

The best inheritence ideas I've seen are ones that scale with level.

Basically, when the character chooses, he recieves an inheritance of 500 x level squared or something to that effect. So the earlier you choose your inheritance, the less you get, but hey when you need it you need it.

If you wait,sure you'll get a nice big bonus at the end, but meanwhile all your buddies are enjoying the use of their feat.

I would not recommend this kind of feat however if you start a game at high levels.

 

[WalrusThief]

I think Item Familiar from UA beats Ancestral Item, hands down.

 

[Celebrim]

My game differs from the raw in that starting characters get both a feat and a trait. Traits are generally benefits that you recieve on account of your characters background. One option is 'Wealthy' which gives you 10 times the normal starting wealth and a monthly allowance equal to one twentieth of what you started with. Traits with limited long term mechanical utility can still be attractive to people who prioritize role playing over mechanical optimization.

I've been looking for a mechanic for a heirloom trait, but I agree with the posters that before such a trait is interesting the heirloom must scale with level. Thus, it needs to give you access to a magic item that scales with the power of the wielder. Such things have been defined in D&D, although they are relatively rarely used in published material because they require a fairly long entry to describe. The difficulty I have in defining the trait is the difficulty in defining what abilities that the heirloom object will have at Nth level in a 'fair' way. And by 'fair' I mean that the heirloom be both somewhat mysterious to the player, and yet the player have some confidence that he won't be screwed by the DM. I think that what it requires is a random table that generates a new effect or upgrade every N levels, but writing up such a table is a lot of work for the advantages that would acrue by having it, so I've never gone that route.

 

[xigbar]

You don't need a feat to give a character more gold. If you're the DM, you can simply allow a character to be more wealthy. It wouldn't neccesarily be fair, but it would be realistic.

 

[Sekhmet]

As a DM, when one of my players almost invariably says "I want to come from a rich family," I think to myself... "What is rich in my campaign setting?"
The average commoner makes less than five gold pieces per year (remember, most of his purchases and sales will be in copper pieces).
A very good craftsman will make, perhaps, 20ish gold per week for about 1,000 gold per year. While this seems like a lot for an NPC, remember that they have to pay workers, buy materials, pay maintenance, and then the majority of the rest goes to personal bills (food, housing, clothes, tools, etc). At the end of the year, he still probably only has about 50-100 gold to his name if he's saved carefully and not spent for luxury items.
Noblemen are a little harder to think out, as they are more individual to their circumstance. Every peasant, every craftsman will be about the same, whereas nobles tend to vary widely.

Assume a Nobleman family (through tax revenues) will have (1d6-1)1000 gold at any given moment. Remember that much of this gold goes to keeping up the appearance of being wealthy (feasts, jewels, clothes), maintaining their lands (peasant's wages, crops, horses, soldiers), and giving taxes to their King (roughly one quarter to one half their total wage).
At the end of the year, the Nobleman family will have only about a fifth of it's initial wealth to give to it's inheritance (and that's if they want to be perfectly broke at the end of it).

With all of this having been said, the difference in a rich person's starting gold will be relatively small. Assume they have enough for a masterwork weapon and armor, nobleman's clothes, and any other relatively inexpensive equipment they might need. This already puts them well ahead of the curve against the other PCs, but doesn't do too much to dampen the game.
Also, make sure they all put ranks in Diplomacy, Knowledge(Nobility), and Ride - do not have Craft ranks, Profession ranks, or Knowledge (Dungeoneering) ranks.
"The nobility is built upon the lie that nobles are born, but when closely examined we find that a true nobleman is created."

 

[kitcik]

How about something like:

You get a free masterwork weapon and you get weapon focus with that specific weapon because you have used it all your life (see below).

Yes, it is weapon focus + a free masterwork weapon in one feat, but here are the drawbacks:

1) can only be taken at 1st level
2) when I said that specific weapon, I meant it. Not any weapon of that type. If your weapon breaks, fix it or lose the weapon focus. If you want it enchanted, no problem, but if you find another weapon that is already enchanted, too bad your weapon focus does not work with that weapon.