Changing Feat Progression (Beta)

[IndyPendant]

This is an idea I've been tossing around in my mind for a little while, which is an offshoot of 2 or 3 posts I have seen here. I have a Feats file that is approaching a 3-digit listing of Feats, and I was thinking: how unbalancing would it be to accelerate slightly Feat progression? This was my idea:

1) Every char gets a bonus feat at 1st and at 2nd level, in addition to any and all other feats they get. However, this feat can only be chosen among a list designated as 'Flavour' feats. I will go through all the feats and designate certain ones as 'flavour'; these feats would be things like skill bonuses, movement and sense enhancements, and so on (i.e. Run, Alertness, Track, and Endurance to name a few from the PHB.) Specifically, these feats can *not* be used to select *any* combat-related, metamagic, or item creation feats.

2) From 3rd level on, every char gets a Feat every odd level. This *replaces* the regular feats the char gets every third level, and can be 'spent' without restrictions--providing they meet all other requirements, of course.

Fighters still get their bonus fighter feats, wizards their metamagic/item creation, humans their 1st-level bonus, etc etc. What this results in by 20th level is 2 bonus 'flavour' feats and 3 bonus regular feats over what they usually get--which is hardly unbalancing, I think. It has the additional benefit that, of course, monsters and NPCs would get the same benefit--allowing me to add feats from my feats file to them, instead of swapping them when I feel a house-ruled feat would be better.

But what do you think? Would this be too powerful? Or do you like the idea? And, most importantly--why?

 

[Tywyll]

IMC I used the following progression:
At first level all characters gained a "Background" Feat, which was typically what you would call a Flavor feat.
Characters then gained a 'regular' feat at first level, then one at 2nd and one at every even level thereafter. At 21st level, they began a normal Epic progression (though we did not make it that far). Bonus feats for classes were unchanged.

The effects? Well, characters were slightly more powerful. However, I bumped up the Monsters and NPCs feats a bit as well, allowing me to customize the monsters by giving them Feats that were not availible when the monsters were created. I found that it tended to balance things out.

As always, it takes a careful eye to avoid abuse, but that is what happens when you use tons of books from 3rd party publishers.

 

[Drawmack]

Personally I don't like bumping up feat progression. I see problems in the way you have done it.

1) Super Rogue Saves The Day - Most feats that are adventageous to the rogue would fall into the flavor feats class, while most feats that are adventageous to the righter would not.

2) I'm not a ftr/rog, ftr/rgr, etc. anymore because I used my bonus feats to give me the bonuses I would have gotten from a couple levels of that other class, without the sacrafice of anything from my current class.

 

[IndyPendant]

IMC I used the following progression:

If you posted that idea here, it sounds like you might be the one that gave me my idea. I thought of that myself, however that then meant that the Fighter got 2 feats every even level and nothing every odd. Seemed better to me to insert another 'flavour' (or background if you prefer: ) feat and make the 'regular' feats every odd level. Also reduced the total feats by 1, which could be good in this case.

Personally I don't like bumping up feat progression. I see problems in the way you have done it.

1) This is very true--if you're limited to the feats in the PHB. However, the whole point of this really was to allow the hundred or so extra feats I've collected a chance to shine; for example, maybe a Fighter would take the 'flavour' feat Skill Affinity, which makes any 2 non-exclusive skills class skills for that char. Etc etc. There's tons of house-ruled flavour feats I have that I expect a Fighter to want.

2) Good! Multiclasses should be rare, and specific to a concept. And, btw, the reasoning here is sort of flawed, in that people take Fighter levels to get combat feats. You don't get a *combat* feat earlier under my system, until 5th level. Sure, you could say the bonus 'flavour' feats allow the char to use his other feats for combat--but I don't see any problem with that. And it would be *9th* level before you finally have a full bonus feat. (1st/3rd/6th/9th in the old; 1st/3rd/5th/7th/9th in the new.)

Keep the comments coming! I must admit, I was starting to wonder if anyone even had an opinion about this...: )

 

[Drawmack]

2) Good! Multiclasses should be rare, and specific to a concept. And, btw, the reasoning here is sort of flawed, in that people take Fighter levels to get combat feats. You don't get a *combat* feat earlier under my system, until 5th level. Sure, you could say the bonus 'flavour' feats allow the char to use his other feats for combat--but I don't see any problem with that. And it would be *9th* level before you finally have a full bonus feat. (1st/3rd/6th/9th in the old; 1st/3rd/5th/7th/9th in the new.)

fighter was listed first meaning it's the base class and the other class is the one taken later.