Essential Feats?

[charlesatan]

Why? I'm not saying that I practice, or endorse, munckinism, but in the case of feats the essential feats are essential for the very reason that they're extremely powerful. For a fighter, a better will save is extremely powerful. For an archer, being able to fire into melee without taking a -4 penalty is extremely powerful and essential.

Thanee suggested there was a difference between the two, but I can't see it. What makes a feat essential if not for the fact that it's extremely powerful, either effectively shoring up a character's weaknesses, or enhancing the character's strengths?

My take on it is that there are several methods to beef up a character, whether shoring up weakness or increasing their strengths (so at a certain level, I agree with you). But still, I don't think your list of "must haves" is really essential; I mean a typical Fighter, for example, might take several routes for combat, whether it be melee (Two-Weapon Fighting, Reach Weapon, Two-Handed Weapon, or even Unarmed Strike) or ranged. Perhaps if you're focusing on the latter, Iron Will might not be an essential feat since it is possible you're out of the range of the enemy spellcasters, or you're not the primary target of spells that targetr Will saves since you're not in the limelight of melee. Or the setting/GM might not feature a lot of spellcasters, so Will save becomes less of a problem. Or for the Barbarian, if he went for the Two-Weapon Fighting route, Power Attack might not be a no-brainer unless he's wielding two one-handed weapons.

 

[charlesatan]

I've never found wands useful for in-combat healing, except in the case of a fallen ally you're trying to stablize. They are simply too expensive. Outside of combat, yes, wands are fantastic. But in combat you need a lot of healing in as few actions as possible.I'm not familiar with that spell. Where's it from? For a single target, yes. But in many cases I'd rather spend that action casting an augmented Mass Cure Critical Wounds.*shrug* I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I can easily imagine an archer without Rapid Shot. But unless I'm building a higher-level character who can afford a Seeking bow, going without Precise Shot is unthinkable to me.I've never played in or DM'd a group that was coordinated enough to have several melee characters continually taking 5' steps and delaying to allow them to be adjacent to a foe when it's their turn but 10' away on the archer's turn. Perhaps your groups are better at this. I'd be interested in hearing how this works out, since you'd have to take flanking into account as well, as well as the monster's movements. If two fighters try to flank, and they move 10' away to accomodate an archer, the monster is likely to move toward one of them, meaning the other one loses his full attack when he moves to engage the next round. Or they both fight on the same side of their foe, each sacrificing their flanking bonus for the sake of the archer. Worse if one of them is the rogue hoping for sneak attack dice.

Thinking on it further I have to ask, in all honesty, is this something you've done during the game, or did you just throw this out as an off-the-cuff counter to my points about Precise Shot?

I think at high levels, Staves would be better than wands. But still, it is a valid option, especially if the bard/rogue has a maxed out Use Magic Device.

Vigor is from Complete Divine, which gives you fast healing.

At the point that you can cast mass cure critical wounds, you're probably a level or two away from casting Mass Heal. Although choosing mass cure critical wounds or Heal depends on the situation. Again, it's not a no-brainer choice; if you only have one tank for example and the other characters are in a defensible position, the cleric only needs to bother with casting heal on the tank. Of course if your party is the type that goes on an all-out grand melee, well, the augmented mass cure critical wounds might come in handy.

As for Rapid Shot vs Precise Shot, if your archer can deal a lot of damage (probably through collision magebane bane bows/arrows) before the opponent actually gets into melee, I'd probably go for rapid shot. Or who knows, the party might be a hit-and-run squad with Spring Attack (or a lot of archers), in which case, Rapid Shot would be a better choice than Precise Shot. Again, it depends on the party. And if you're just a four party group, chances are there's only one character acting as "tank". The tank character can make a full attack, and take a 5-foot step backwards. It's the archer's turn and then he can unleash a barrage of arrows. Then it's the monster's turn, who takes a 5-foot step forward and makes a full attack. Repeat. But in my experience, the archer takes both feats (I don't see why he can't take both, unless it's really in the early levels). But to the defense of Rapid Shot, there are times when Precie Shot doesn't come into play (from a character who has both feats); the archer could just be focusing on another set of enemies while the melee guys focuses on another set of baddies. As long as the archer can make a full attack, he always utilizes rapid shot. Of course he also uses Many Shot when he goes guerilla-fighting...

My qualm with augmented healing is that it's a "defensive" feat choice. What if the cleric is offensive (or worse, channels negative energy?); Augmented Healing would then be sub-optimal. I have a build where the cleric focuses on metamagic feats and Divine metamagic. As for the Fighter taking Iron Will, well, the feat he took to get something "defensive" could have been spent getting something "offensive" (i.e. Power Attack, Weapon Specialization, etc.). I mean in the end, there are three choices for any optimum character build: offensive, defensive (i.e. high saves and AC), or balanced (somewhere between the two).

 

[charlesatan]

Just to defend my obsession with this feat, the level at which it ceases to be useful is 18th, assuming a Con of 14 and maxed-out skill ranks (DC24[15+9th level]=21 [ranks]+2 [Con]+1 [minimum roll]). Of course, even if you're creating an 18th level sorceror, the feat still might be worth taking to free up 4 skill ranks.

Strangely enough, the only time I actually take Combat Casting are for my low-level cleric characters because they tend to use a lot of melee touch attack spells. Other than that, my sorcerer/wizard tends to stay far away from the enemy (or the ever-useful 5-foot step) when casting spells.

Personally, my heirarchy of resources is this: feats, skills, then magic items. If I can get a magic item that boosts my Concentration skill, then I'd go for that rather than spend skill points or feats. Over a choice between spending skill points or spending a feat, I'd go for spending skill points since feats tend to be scarcer. But that's a general practice and there are exceptions.

I'm not saying Combat Casting is not a good feat. It's just that it depends on what type of caster you're building. Even for secondary casters like Paladin or Ranger, I would even be hesitant to take Combat Casting since most of their spells are either "buff spells" or "ranged spells", which means I usually cast them far away from the opponent. By the time I'm in melee range, I do melee attacks.

 

[Thanee]

I've never found wands useful for in-combat healing, except in the case of a fallen ally you're trying to stablize.

I didn't speak of ingame healing. Even Cure Critical Wounds is not very good there, but better than nothing, until you get Heal, or the Paladin is around. Mass versions of the healing spells are next to pointless, if opponents focus on single characters, too.

Outside of combat, yes, wands are fantastic.

That's basically what I meant. Wands are used to cover outside of combat healing to save the spells for in combat healing. You won't need that often, anyways, so your spells are freed up that way, too. No need for Augment Healing, to do that.

A 12th level extended Vigor is a 4th level spell, that heals 88 points. A 12th level extended Mass lesser Vigor is also a 4th level spell and heals 44 points to multiple targets.

All of that is not very useful in combat, because it takes time (gives Fast Healing 1 and 2 respectively), but it's a rather "cheap" way of healing lots of damage after a combat, also freeing up spells in the same way as wands do.

Augmented Healing is only really good for in combat healing as long as you do not have Heal yet. Afterwards it's next to useless, because there are better options for both in combat and out of combat healing then. Not saying, that the 10 levels before that aren't important, but that doesn't make an essential feat to me.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Not, that this is a problem. Opinions can and should be different.

Thinking on it further I have to ask, in all honesty, is this something you've done during the game, ...

Yes, of course, happens quite a bit, that a melee fighter repositions to give the archer a better line of fire, and be it only to remove the cover penalty. Tactical movement is always done with relation to the group, not just the individual.

But the essence of that is just, that I don't feel Precise Shot is essential. Nonetheless it's so good, that I would pretty much always pick it up.


It's just a different viewpoint on what "essential" means, really. For a pure archer, I can certainly agree, that all three, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot and Rapid Shot are essentials. Actually, that's what my first post said, too... just adding Rapid Shot to the list. It's jsut the different value in Precise Shot and Rapid Shot, if I can pick only two of the three for whatever reason, it would be these (but even that depends on the concept).

Bye
Thanee