Epic Feats

[Crothian]

Right. It also makes some classes infinitely more attractive than others - a level of fighter suddenly becomes far better than a level of any other class, because you can go immediately to the epic abilities without messing around for 20 levels.

A Wiz20/Monk1 doesn't start getting the monk's epic level abilities right away - they have to go through 19 more levels of monk first. Similarly, a Wiz20/Ftr1 shouldn't be able to grab epic fighter feats right off the bat (except with his character-level feats, of course).

J

Actually the wiz20/monk1 can get any epic monk feat that he qualifies for. The wiz20/fighter1 is the same way. Being able to select an epic feat and having the prerequites are 2 different matters.

 

[toberane]

You are, of course, completely right. But unfortunately, some people love to ignore the spirit of the rules if they can troll out some extra power out of the letter of the rules, even if they aren't worded correctly and even the designers say they didn't mean it that way.

I don't believe this violates the spirit of the rules at all. 3E completely redid multiclassing from the previous editions, putting the emphasis on total class levels. Before, a 7th level fighter/7th level wizard was about as powerful as a 9th-10th level character. In 3E, they are every bit as equal in power to a full 14th level character. By the time you have reached Wizard 20/Fighter 1, you have gained adventuring experience equal to Wizard 21 or Fighter 21. If you are taking on a level of fighter, AND HAVE THE PREREQUISITES TO GAIN A BONUS FEAT OFF THE EPIC FIGHTER LIST, why shouldn't you be allowed to take it? It isn't like you haven't learned the skills, gained the abilities, or taken the feats just like the 21st level fighter who wants the feat. No one is saying that you should waive the prerequisites. Most of the really powerful epic feats require that you have already taken a bunch of non-epic feats first, plus have a strength of 25 or something similar. If you have a combat mage who decided to take these feats on his own at lower levels, and he now has the prereqs to get an epic feat, why is it against the spirit of the rules to let him take it as a bonus fighter feat?

 

[Crothian]

Has anyone actually looked at the Epic Fighter Bonus Feat list and seen how many of the feats can be taken with none of few prerequites?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Before, a 7th level fighter/7th level wizard was about as powerful as a 9th-10th level character. In 3E, they are every bit as equal in power to a full 14th level character.

First, I have to disagree: the Ftr 7/Wiz 7 might receive the benefits of two classes, but it costs him the higher-level benefits: above-mentioned character might be a good fighter as well as a capable spellcaster, but he's got only 4th-level spells, while a Wiz14 has 7th-level spells and his spells are twice as strong (or at leas stronger, as some spells have caps). The Figher/Wizard may be happy about his Ice Storm or Charm monster or Improved Invisibility, but the Wizard will have stuff like True Seeing, Dominate Person, Several Bigby's, Prismatic Spray, Delayed Blast Fireball, Chain Lightning....... Likewise, a Fighter14 will have quite a lot more feats, one iterative attack more, and so on. You actually lose power if you multiclass.

Second, In 3e you'll be Ftr 7/Wiz 7 when others have reached 14th level of their class, so you'll lag behind 7 levels. In 2e they will have level 9 or something, so you lag behind 2 or 3 levels, no more. And you have most powers of those two classes!

Multiclassing has been made weaker in 3e, but it has been made more versatile, so that's OK, and it was to strong IMHO anyway.

By the time you have reached Wizard 20/Fighter 1, you have gained adventuring experience equal to Wizard 21 or Fighter 21.

No. You have gained adventuring experience equal to Wizard 20 and Fighter 1. Your career consisted mostly of casting spells, seaking spells, learning spells. You have devoted a 1/21 of your time as a fighter. You only have 1 level worth of information on how to be a fighter. While you might be a great wizard, you're a lousy swordsman - especially compared to a Ftr 21. That Guy has slaughtered more monsters with his steel than the Knights of the round table together. He knows how to fight, he's done it uncounted times, and he's pushed his powers as a melee machine further all the time. But you have only occasionally used the sword and have devoted most of your learning time to dusty tomes and old sticks.
Epic Fighter Bonus feats (or epic bonus feats for every class) are not a result of your adventuring - that's what the normal feats (and epic feats) you get every 3rd level are for. Those feats reflect your swords(or marks)manship, your skill in using weapons and melee tactics. And if you have only been training to be a fighter for about a couple of weeks, you don't know all the secrets that make up the fighter bonus feats.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Has anyone actually looked at the Epic Fighter Bonus Feat list and seen how many of the feats can be taken with none of few prerequites?

Has anyone looked at the epic fighter feats and noticed that they aint that much beter than normal feats. Oh look yet another off hand attack at another -5 to hit, that 20/1 wiz/fighter is spanking things in mellee combat know thanks to those epic feats.

multiclass characters have it hard enough, throw them a bone already. this is basically just the epic variation of someone taking one level of monk for the benies. So instead of saying oh well some crap players who take a level in a class just for the benies get a small hookup, everyone wants to punish the vast majority of players who multiclass becasue the vanilla classes were too rigid to fit their character conecept without multiclassing. Don't ditch the rules on page 8, ditch your crappy players.

 

[toberane]

First, I have to disagree: the Ftr 7/Wiz 7 might receive the benefits of two classes, but it costs him the higher-level benefits: above-mentioned character might be a good fighter as well as a capable spellcaster, but he's got only 4th-level spells, while a Wiz14 has 7th-level spells and his spells are twice as strong (or at leas stronger, as some spells have caps). The Figher/Wizard may be happy about his Ice Storm or Charm monster or Improved Invisibility, but the Wizard will have stuff like True Seeing, Dominate Person, Several Bigby's, Prismatic Spray, Delayed Blast Fireball, Chain Lightning....... Likewise, a Fighter14 will have quite a lot more feats, one iterative attack more, and so on. You actually lose power if you multiclass.

Second, In 3e you'll be Ftr 7/Wiz 7 when others have reached 14th level of their class, so you'll lag behind 7 levels. In 2e they will have level 9 or something, so you lag behind 2 or 3 levels, no more. And you have most powers of those two classes!

Multiclassing has been made weaker in 3e, but it has been made more versatile, so that's OK, and it was to strong IMHO anyway.

I'm sure I don't have a chance of changing your mind on this, but here's my perspective. If you wanted to multiclass in 2nd Ed, you had to be a demihuman, had to be a race that allowed the particular multiclass you want, had to split up your hit points (A fighter 7/Wizard 7 has hit points a little better than a wizard 7 but worse than a fighter 7) and had to abide by all of the drawbacks of each class (a fighter 7/wizard 7 couldn't wear ANY armor or else they couldn't cast ANY spells) and on top of that, since you had to be a demihuman, there is a good chance that your levels in one of your multiple classes would be cut short by the level limits.

In 3E, multiclassing is stronger, since anyone can do it, they get the full benefits of either class (all the weapon proficiencies, all the spells, all the attack bonuses, all the hit points, everything). The 3E rules tried really hard to get rid of most restrictions and make you simply have to pay a price for the benefits you got (You want to wear heavy armor as a wizard? Go ahead! You just have to realize that some of your spells may fail.) I guarantee you, the 3E wizard 7/fighter 7 has some advantages, not the least of which being that his touch, ranged touch, and ranged spells (the ones that often don't allow saves) will hit a lot more often than the wizard 14. If the CR14 bad guy breaks through your line of defenses and takes a couple of whacks at the Wizard 14, he could be a pile of ashes, but the Wizard 7/Fighter 7 wouldn't be nearly as badly off.

I have a 21st level rogue 17/fighter 2/ranger 2 right now, and I can easily point out to you how my character is much stronger because of the multiclassing than he would have been as a straight rogue 21. Sure, I only have 9d6 sneak attack bonus instead of 11d6, but I have 4 attacks a round, where a rogue 21 would only get three. I have several more feats now than I could have gotten as a straight rogue, and many of them were taken to improve my sneak attacks (like expert tactician). My hit point total is considerably higher than it would have been as a straight rogue. When it comes to damage dealt per round, I usually do as much or more than the 21st level fighters in our group, because I have used every advantage I can to ensure that I get to sneak attack A LOT, and many of those advantages were gained by multiclassing a few levels.

So I wholeheartedly disagree with you that multiclassing weakens characters. The level 14 wizard will have better spells and be a stronger spellcaster than the wizard 7/fighter 7, but he won't necessarily be a stronger overall character.

In response to my assertion that a wizard 20/Fighter 1 has gained the same experience in adventuring that a fighter 21 has...

No. You have gained adventuring experience equal to Wizard 20 and Fighter 1. Your career consisted mostly of casting spells, seaking spells, learning spells. You have devoted a 1/21 of your time as a fighter. You only have 1 level worth of information on how to be a fighter. While you might be a great wizard, you're a lousy swordsman - especially compared to a Ftr 21. That Guy has slaughtered more monsters with his steel than the Knights of the round table together. He knows how to fight, he's done it uncounted times, and he's pushed his powers as a melee machine further all the time. But you have only occasionally used the sword and have devoted most of your learning time to dusty tomes and old sticks.
Epic Fighter Bonus feats (or epic bonus feats for every class) are not a result of your adventuring - that's what the normal feats (and epic feats) you get every 3rd level are for. Those feats reflect your swords(or marks)manship, your skill in using weapons and melee tactics. And if you have only been training to be a fighter for about a couple of weeks, you don't know all the secrets that make up the fighter bonus feats.

Earlier I asserted that the Wizard 20/ Fighter 1 will be a more experienced fighter than a straight fighter 1. Put this assertion to the test. Have a wizard 20/fighter 1 square off against a fighter 1. The rules are that it is a straight fight, no magic items or spells, just one fighter's skill against the other. The fight would last all of about 1 round (less than that if the Wizard 20/Fighter 1 got initiative). It's common sense that a character that multiclasses to fighter at 21st level is going to be a lot better fighter than one who is only a first level fighter.

The other important part of my first assertion is that YOU HAVE TO MEET THE FEAT PREREQUISITES. A wiz 20/Fight 1 will not be able to take the Super-Mega-Power-Ultra-Epic Cleave without first meeting all the prerequisites, which would be something like cleave, great cleave, even greater cleave, strength 25, etc. Now, if your wizard 20/fighter 1 meets these requirements, it means that you wizard woiuld have to trained in all these other things over the course of the last several (non-epic) levels, and so by the time he took the level of fighter, he WOULD have the necessary training to take the epic feat as a bonus feat. So where's the problem? Where's the inconsistancy?

 

[drnuncheon]

Actually the wiz20/monk1 can get any epic monk feat that he qualifies for.

Sure - using his every-third-level character feat. Nobody is advocating changing the way the character level feats work.

The wiz20/fighter1 is the same way.

That's what I'm disagreeing with. The fighter's bonus feats are a class ability, like the monk's flurry of blows, deflect arrows, or unarmed strike. The Wiz20/Mnk1 doesn't get epic-level class abilities for taking 1 level of monk. Why should the Wiz20/Ftr1 get epic-level class abilities from taking 1 level of fighter?

To put it another way...if you had 2 characters at 20th level - a Barbarian and a Fighter - and each took a level of the other class...

* The fighter would get the abilities of a 1st level barbarian: rage, etc. He can't even get the epic Rage feats, because they all need the Greater Rage or Rage 5/day class feature.

* The barbarian gets the benefits of being a 21st level fighter (with the exception of weapon specialization): he can pick any of the fighter epic feats with his fighter bonus feats.

Don't you think that's a bit unfair to the fighter? He had to go through 20 levels to get to the point where he could get the fighter epic feats, and along comes the barbarian who can get them after 1 level in fighter.

Now compare with multiclassing to cleric or wizard - oooo, first level spells! I think that if you allow a person with 1 fighter level to get all the benefits of an epic fighter, you are taking away one of the only specialties the epic fighter has (a metric boatload of epic feats), as well as making the combination of Otherclass20/Ftr1 far more attractive than any other.

Every other class has to go through a significant number of levels before they get access to that classes epic-level feats. You need 15-16 levels of barbarian to get the epic Rage feats. You need 18 levels of druid to get to mostof the wildshape feats. You need 17-18 levels of a spellcasting class to get to Improved Spellcasting or Epic Spellcasting. It's not fair to the fighter to give away his special epic abilities to someone with only one level in the class.

J

 

[Crothian]

The fighter is different from any other class in it's versatility. All the other classes are pretty much set in stone. If you use OA and allow a monk to trade certain abilities for feats, they can be epic feats. A wizard can take epic feats at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20.

 

[gamecat]

ewwww! Bodah's a Yucaipan! Yuck! Redlands Rules!

 

[toberane]

To put it another way...if you had 2 characters at 20th level - a Barbarian and a Fighter - and each took a level of the other class...

* The fighter would get the abilities of a 1st level barbarian: rage, etc. He can't even get the epic Rage feats, because they all need the Greater Rage or Rage 5/day class feature.

* The barbarian gets the benefits of being a 21st level fighter (with the exception of weapon specialization): he can pick any of the fighter epic feats with his fighter bonus feats.

Don't you think that's a bit unfair to the fighter? He had to go through 20 levels to get to the point where he could get the fighter epic feats, and along comes the barbarian who can get them after 1 level in fighter.

I don't think it's unfair to anyone. Come on, unless you created these characters at 21st level strictly to play an epic level campaign, then these are characters who have worked and slaved away to reach this level of development. Now, particularly in the case of the Barbarian, he may have most of the non-epic feats that he wants by the time he gets to 20th level, and he's a lot more likely to have prerequisites for the epic fighter feats than a Wizard 20. So, logically, if he has the combat skill and has learned the necessary prerequisites, then why shouldn't he be able to get epic feats? If game balance is your only reason, I'm gonna need proof that multiclasses taking the epic feats as bonus feats (which is how it reads in the rulebook) is unbalancing.

I don't buy that it is unfair because a newly multiclassed fighter will get more epic feats earlier in the game than a straight fighter class. It is a matter of relative power. When everyone starts out at first level, the fighter has a similar, if not more powerful, progression of feats compared to the other 1st level characters. You do realize that while everyone else is picking up their 2nd (3rd if they are human) feat at 3rd level, the fighter is picking up his fourth or fifth, depending on his character's race. This progression of feats is totally out of line with the other classes, yet it is not considered unbalancing for the low-level fighter, for some reason.

if you multiclass to fighter on your 21st level and take epic feats as your bonus feats, it is similar to the feat boost that straight fighters got at first level, only with the power of the feats advanced to equal the more powerful nature of your characters.

I went way longer than I meant to, and I'm not sure I was as clear on this point as I'd like to be. If you want any of this clarified, let me know.