Consolidating 100+ Feats into 2.

[jeffh]

I think this is the best solution, if you add the notion that the player must also find a nifty and appropriate name for the feat, you completely make all those +2/+2 feat obsolete.

Its a nice simplification. and even the "known" ones like alertness are covered.

This is exactly what I do, with a "handy list of pre-approved examples" given to the players, which is simply a list of all the +2/+2 feats in the 3.5 Player's Handbook.

I also give the bonus a type (Aptitude, as per D20 Star Wars) so the bonuses from these Feats don't stack. I'm not convinced it would be abusive if they did, and you can still take Skill Focus, Cosmopolitan and a +2/+2 feat if you want to be really ridiculously good at a skill; it's more of an aesthetic choice, really.

As for Feat and PrC prerequisites, my ruling is that if a prerequisite mentions Skill Focus or a +2/+2 Feat, then any combination of feats that gives bonuses to all the relevant skills will do. For example, if a PrC requires Skill Focus: Hide, Stealthy is considered to meet that prerequisite; similarly if a PrC requires Stealthy, Cosmopolitan (Hide) plus Skill Focus (Move Silently) meets that requirement. This also extends to Feats that give +2 to a skill and +1 to a save, a few of which are found in the FRCS and one more of which I've made up.

BTW, Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed includes a one-feat solution to what I call the +2/+2 Problem, very similar to the feat proposed in this thread.