Epic feats at 1st

[thehivemind5]

I'm gearing up for a homebrew campaign and I was thinking of implementing some sort of "favor of the gods" idea for the PCs. My immediate thought was to grant each character a single epic feat at 1st level, without prereqs. Would this work? If people could give me an idea of the cheeiest applications they can think of (so i know what to expect) and also a possible CR adjustment for the party, that would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Graf]

Generally the best epic feats "build" upon existing feats or class abilities.

So, no, I don't see this working very easily.

 

[CRGreathouse]

It would work just fine (although balance is anyone's guess) as long as you, the DM, choose the feats. Too many epic feats build on class abilities or other feats to make this work otherwise.

 

[Jack Simth]

I'm gearing up for a homebrew campaign and I was thinking of implementing some sort of "favor of the gods" idea for the PCs. My immediate thought was to grant each character a single epic feat at 1st level, without prereqs. Would this work? If people could give me an idea of the cheeiest applications they can think of (so i know what to expect) and also a possible CR adjustment for the party, that would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

Well, let's see.... possible problem feats....

Epic Spellcasting (Although this is probably more a case of Epic Spellcasting being so very breakable in general)
Fast Healing (Who needs a Cleric before status effects start showing up?)
Ignore Material Components (well... not particularly interesting at 1st level, but have fun when the spellcaster with this feat goes wild with Symbols, Glyphs, True Ressurection, and the like; makes for a much more powerful Vow of Poverty character, too)
Negative Energy Burst (is just plain mean)
Master Staff/Wand (turns a Wizard into a Sorceror, or very nearly)
Spontaneous Domain Access (pick one, prepare the other)
...
well, there's a lot that could become a problem. Depends on the build, the feat, and a handful of other things.

 

[Lorehead]

Well, let's see.

• Epic Spellcasting is a badly-designed system that learned nothing from Hero or GURPS. As a result, a seventh-level character can cast overpowered spells by loading them with mitigating factors. This is more of a long-term bet, unless you rule that the first-level character gets a minimum of one spell slot.
• If you rule that Improved Spell Capacity allows a wizard, cleric or druid to learn and cast spells two levels sooner than he could otherwise, this is a must-have. If you only allow him to use the slots for metamagic, a powergamer would probably pass. You'd also need to decide whether the caster gets bonus spells from specialization, domain spells, or the like.
• Automatic Quicken Spell would be very overpowered if you used the version in the SRD, but the version in Complete Arcane could be reasonable as a non-epic feat, considering that you can't take it a second time until 21st level. (It's definitely less troublesome than Sudden Quicken.) It's great for clerics, paladins and other characters with useful, short-term 1st-level buff spells. For sorcerers and wizards, it's probably an extra magic missile every round, which is more annoying than overpowered. You might want to subtly encourage these characters to use their quickened spells to cut down on buff time instead.
• Blinding Speed is less problematic in 3.5 than 3.0, less so for archers and dual-wielders than tanks, and much less so at 5th level than before. At low levels, it potentially more than doubles a barbarian's damage.
• In most campaigns, Holy Strike would be an amazing feat to have. Bane of Enemies is going to be nasty if one particular type of foe predominates (for instance, humans). Great smiting is more an investment for the future, but it overtakes Holy Strike at around 7th level. A barbarian wants Mighty Rage, which in 3.5 is both a 20th-level class ability and a feat that only an epic barbarian can take.
• Epic Dodge is astonishingly good at low levels, when most opponents don't have multiple attacks.
• Epic Toughness will make low-level characters very hard to kill.
• Spellcasters won't regret taking Improved Metamagic, particularly not in combination with Arcane Thesis.
• Incite Rage is a nice group buff in some parties, but those with only one barbarian will probably want to pass. Rage precludes spellcasting.
• Inspire Excellence offers only half the benefit, but without the disadvantages. In most situations, though, you'd end up using this like a mass bear's endurance or mass cat's grace, since a balanced party will have members who don't benefit much from Strength, members who don't benefit much from Intelligence, and so on.
• Lingering Damage is great for rogues, and only gets better with level. Sneak Attack of Opportunity is another good option for rogues with Combat Reflexes.
• Magical Beast Wild Shape only becomes relevant for a 5th-level druid, but its open-endedness presents the same opportunities for abuse as does polymorph, plus supernatural abilities.
• Negative Energy Burst is a nice feat for evil NPCs, but useless for PCs (even evil ones).
• Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting allows a character to get the entire TWF chain at the cost of one feat. Until his BAB hits +6, this is no different than Two-Weapon Fighting from the Player's Handbook, but its value climbs over the long term.
• Permanent Emanation is an interesting feat, balanced by the fact that these characters can apply it only to 0th- and 1st-level spells; you could even use it to duplicate a slightly better version of the paladin's detect evil at will. Bless, bane, sanctuary or detect magic all make interesting choices.
• Polyglot offers some fine role-playing opportunities without being particularly applicable toward killing monsters and taking their stuff.
• Spell Opportunity is not all that great at low levels; inflict light wounds isn't much better than a melee attack, and might even be worse. It starts to pay off when the cleric can get off an extra slay living or harm.
• For monks: Vorpal Strike.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The easiest way to do something like this is to go to the WotC site, download the epic feats from the SRD into Word (or your favourite word processing program), delete the ones you think are too powerful, alter the ones you think are good but need tweaking, print out, and hand to your players.

IMC, I've devised a system of "legacies" that occur every 5 levels. One of the things you can do with a legacy is gain a "mythic" feat. Some of the mythic feats are simply rewritten epic feats.

(EDIT: Just FYI, many of the feats that Lorehead notes could cause problems are the ones I cut. A few of them merely required rewriting.)

Good luck with it, and let us know how it goes!

RC

 

[CRGreathouse]

That's a really good analysis, Lorehead. I have a few questions and comments:

What's the Automatic Quicken Spell version in Complete Arcane?

Arcane Thesis?

Interestingly, I let a character in one of my campaigns take Polyglot at 15th level.

Epic Dodge is one of the strongest choices. It's normally balanced by hard prerequisites and many attacks, but on low levels without prereqs it's killer. Vorpal Strike and ISC/IM are the other ultra-strong choices.

 

[Drowbane]

I'm gearing up for a homebrew campaign and I was thinking of implementing some sort of "favor of the gods" idea for the PCs. My immediate thought was to grant each character a single epic feat at 1st level, without prereqs. Would this work? If people could give me an idea of the cheeiest applications they can think of (so i know what to expect) and also a possible CR adjustment for the party, that would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

A few years ago, one of my DMs ran a PC-Demigods campaign based in a Pseudo-ForgottenRealms. All the PCs started with the Paragon Template (ELH) at lvl 1. It was kinda crazy...