Feat every level...

[Crothian]

Crothian,

Are you using ToB in your games with the feat every level house rule?

We have the book, but no one is using it. The reason for that is everyone has a character they like from before the release of the book. One of the players has said he wants to use it for his next character so we might find out then.

No one has taken any interest in the feats out of there except our monk. THere is one feat that increases the unarmed damage or something. So, he may at some point take that. But I've found even with the addition of many good feats in the new books people are still sticking with the older feats.

 

[Crothian]

Anyone know how every feat a level effects the Warlock and their bonus invocation feat?

They just get a few more invocations. I found that the Warlock only wanted so many incovations anyway and was able to use the feats to get them. But he also had a lot of fun taking feats that made his character more well rounded.

 

[Quartz]

How does the granting of more feats affect the choice of taking a human or a non-human? It seems to me that the human's benefit of a bonus feat at first level is much diminished if all races get feats much more quickly.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

In the game that I ran using the "feat every level" variant. Half of the players (3 out of 6) still chose to play a human character... One did so specifically for the bonus feat. The non-human characters were: A dwarf, A whisper Gnome, and a Warforged.

Later
silver

 

[Crothian]

How does the granting of more feats affect the choice of taking a human or a non-human? It seems to me that the human's benefit of a bonus feat at first level is much diminished if all races get feats much more quickly.

It still helps. Even with a feat every level non of the players have ever gotten to the point of "I think I have enough feats". And I ran a game this way till 18th level. The extra feat is more useful at low levels, but that was always the case.

 

[Vrecknidj]

I've been running a home-brew campaign for about 5 years now, and the characters are isolated from most of the rest of the world. They don't have too much access to magic, or extra spells, or any of the usual stuff. I gave everyone a bonus feat at 7th and 13th level, and used a 40-point-buy system to toughen them up out of the gate (I also use a hit point system that gives a few more hit points than average).

So, I haven't used a "feat at every level" system, but I have added extra feats, and I figured I'd chime in with my experiences.

First, adding extra feats doesn't do much to game balance--unless you let it. I was afraid of some of the problems that have been mentioned (getting certain other feats too soon, getting prestige classes too soon, etc.). I figured that those things had been designed to not be available early on purpose and I didn't want to mess with that. My solution was to restrict the available bonus feats at 7th and 13th levels.

And, if I were to do a feat-at-every-level game, I'd probably do the same. I'd probably make a few lists of feats and tell my players something like:
1) You can take any feat you qualify for at the usual progression (i.e. every 3rd)
2) You can take any feat from list A at the remaining odd levels
3) You can take any feat from list B at the remaining even levels

Then I'd make up the lists of feats (trying to maintain some level of balance that cohered with the existing limits) and let them play. List A might include the saving throw feats, Run, Endurance, stuff that could be very flavorful but not necessarily over-powering in combat. List B might include all the fighter and magic feats.

Just a thought.

Dave

 

[kaomera]

I've used "one feat per level" in one campaign, and I really ought to try it again some time, with a different group. It seems like a really good way to get at more of the "fun bits" of the feat list; however, unfortunately, when I actually tried it out I found that (for whatever reason, I'm not sure it was directly related) several of my players just made extremely strange and ineffective feat choices. Where I expected that more feats would give them the option of picking up more different types of feats, and let the characters really shine in more situations, they skipped all of the standard feat selections, didn't build up any of the trees, and just seemed to pick stuff that they weren't really going to use anyway...

 

[eschwenke]

On the subject of how Fighters and Humans are affected by the rule, remember that the combned potency of the Fighter's bonus Feats should not be compared to the combined potency of the other characters non-bonus Feats, but rather should be compared to the combined potency of the Class Features of other classes. Likewise, the potency of the Human Feat should be compared to the Racial abilities of other races.

As for how this would affect PrCs, I would say that tweaking would be needed. Part of the idea behind Feats for PrC prereqs is that it forces the PC to make some sacrifices of versatility in the name of specialization. I would say that for every Feat listed as a prereq, the DM should require an additional 1-2 additional appropriate Feats.

 

[the Jester]

After a long hiatus from my low-magic, feat-every-odd-level game, we're going to be getting back to it soon here- prolly sometime in December. And after we play an arc of that, at some point I plan on running an anything-goes, feat per level high-magic campaign too.

 

[Crothian]

They are a lot of fun. Let the players play with toys!!