Feat Points?

[takasi]

Are you thinking kind of mini feats that the Stormreach MMO has?

No, he's talking about the same d20 system that Mutants and Masterminds 2nd edition uses. (The game we're playing this Wednesday as a break from D&D.) You want sneak attack? You pull from your build pool. You want a higher base attack bonus? You pull from your build pool. You want higher saves? You pull from your build pool. You want whirlwind attack? You pull from your build pool. You want to learn spells? You pull from your build pool.

It's like the point buy system for ability scores...turned up to 11.

It would be interesting if 4th edition "borrowed" some of the True20/MM2E stuff.

 

[Mark CMG]

not all feats are created equal.

That's certainly true but has it led to all fighters picking the same Feats? Or all Wizards? (Etc?)

Would a system that works on a point buy strategy be more prone to a single path (for each class) or less?

 

[RFisher]

Would a system that works on a point buy strategy be more prone to a single path (for each class) or less?

That's a very interesting question. My first thought was, "No". But then I thought over my Gurps & D&D experiences. I think certain advantages in Gurps did see a whole lot of use because they were considered good deals. Too good to pass up if your PC was of the general type that it fit. (Disads too. Actually, moreso for disads.)

It might be even more correct to say that they were good deals in my group. In a different group with a slightly different play style, what was a good deal might have been different.

In my experience, feat selection in D&D has been more diverse than ad/disad selection in Gurps. I'd also say that, in D&D, any lack of feat diversity has been less about bang-for-the-slot & more about prerequisites.

But, are nearly-too-good-to-pass-up deals necessarily bad? The idea I saw expressed in D&D 3e was that enabling choices was good, but not all choices should be equal. It did try to balance some choices, but for others it was happy to say, "OK, here you go, but don't say I didn't warn you." Some choices are suboptimal & have consequences.

Yet we still have the occasional half-orc wizard. I'm OK with those being rare.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I think, were I involved in the process, I would have designed feats as a two-tier system to begin with. I would have divided them into 'minor' (eg Toughness, the various +2/+2, silent spell, etc) and 'major' (power attack, improved turning empower spell). I would have given characters a minor feat every level they didn't get a stat point or 'major' (ie normal, every 3rd level feat). I think it would have encouraged character diversity and added a little flavor as feats that rarely see the light of day got some 'me' time. It would also have been a nice cookie for players to fill in the dead levels where they didn't get to tweak their character as much.

But that's in hindsight, and it would be two hard to retrofit at this point and still account for all the PrCs and splatbooks and third-party stuff. And I certainly wouldn't go down the point-buy route. If I wanted to play GURPS, I'd play GURPS.