Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Feat Points
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5015643" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I'm inclined to think that this is a better option than feat points.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I agree that they are usually not worth a feat, but generally not for the reason outlined. A weapon proficiency feat is generally worth +1 damage on your attacks. If I had a feat that said, "You do +1 damage with a weapon.", people might consider it slightly weak, but quite possibly some would take it. The real problem with the weapon proficiency feats is two-fold. First, if you want to engage in combat and don't have access to good weapons, its far more efficient to splash a class than it is to spend a feat. And secondly, if you are planning to go into combat with weapons frequently, chances are you already are proficient in virtually all weapons and don't need to spend a feat.</p><p></p><p>All that indicates that they aren't really worth buying, but I'm not sure that it means that they aren't 'worth a feat'. As I said, effectively they give you +1 damage on your attacks. The clerical 'War' domain gives you martial weapon proficiency and weapon focus for 'free', which effectively means '+1 to hit and damage'. That martial weapon proficiency is no less useful to the cleric than the weapon focus that SKR touts so highly, and no less valuable to them.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Do you do the same thing with spells? Maybe let a fighter pick up a few 1st level spells by practicing with them and gain a new one every few levels?</p><p></p><p>I'm not fully happy with the weapon proficiency system, but I've never seen a really nice non-abusable system that addressed all my concerns (similarity of weapons, no ethnic bias, balance, not yet another thing we are giving casters for free and then complaining that they seem overpowered).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, the problem with this feat is that in most campaigns, you get it for free, which adds it to the category of 'yet another thing we are giving casters for free'. Still, I agree with you that this is somewhat suboptimal and generally only really comes up if you've been imprisoned or otherwise lost your possessions.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm not sure I follow. Chasing in D&D according to the RAW is wierd because you have to plan it far more carefully than is reasonable (usually with some sort of overrun or overrun trap depending on how your read the overrun rule), but run certainly changes your speed and allows you to 'catch something' or just as importantly to get away from things that would otherwise be faster than you. However, I tend to see this primarily as a problem with the rules regarding chasing, not with the value of being able to run faster. Another probably even bigger problem with the Run feat is that most DM's seem to make all their encounter distances 60' or less. If you've got encounters starting at 400' or more with some regularity, then the ability to cover ground becomes more important.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No. 3.X Toughness didn't scale, but that doesn't make it worthless. It turns it into an NPC feat. At low levels of play its one of the most powerful feats in the game. The problem with it is that since it doesn't scale, its utility diminishes the longer that you play. There is a simple fix here though. If the feat doesn't scale; make it scale. </p><p></p><p>There is another subtle problem here with Toughness, in that unlike Dodge, Power Attack, and Combat Expertise, it's not a 'gateway feat' that opens up alot of powerful options to you. IMO, it should, allowing you to build a 'toughness' focused character the same way you build a str based power character or a dodgy dex based character.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Again, this isn't a problem with the feat. I know for a fact that if you don't make magic ideas readily purchasable that the item creation feats suddenly become hugely important. Obviously, just as in the real world, if you have readily available consumer goods, the ability to craft and create things yourself quickly diminishes in importance. If you don't have that, then the ability to craft and create becomes one of the most powerful and necessary of all skills. Arguably, making magic items freely available constitutes yet one more thing with are giving casters for free.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Limited utility, I agree, but Wizards generally get a couple of these for 'free'. I've rarely seen more than 3 or 4 spells on someone's list be metamagiced. However, this doesn't necessarily prove that they aren't 'worth a feat', as they are situationally quite useful and virtually all the monkeying around I've seen with them results in something clearly broken. And much like 'falling' I don't think 'silenced' or 'constrained' should be considered an unexpected event.</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure that 'quickened silence' would be any better than just 'silence' though as a 'counterspell', as quickened does not turn a spell into an immediate action. Maybe I don't understand what you mean.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes, it is, because 'Power Attack' is one of the more powerful and useful feats. Granted, in 3.X they managed to find a way to make it simultaneously less useful (in that fewer concepts could take advantage of it) and more broken (in that for those that could, it became even more powerful), but you are going to have a hard time convincing me of this argument using this example. I've a hard time imagining Power Attack ever be completely useless though. I will say that often I've seen feats created that are deep on a tree or have other significant prerequisites for no good reason. I will conversely say that I don't think feat trees go deep enough, and that fighters in particular need some even more powerful feats deep on feat trees for the sake of balance.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 5015643, member: 4937"] I'm inclined to think that this is a better option than feat points. I agree that they are usually not worth a feat, but generally not for the reason outlined. A weapon proficiency feat is generally worth +1 damage on your attacks. If I had a feat that said, "You do +1 damage with a weapon.", people might consider it slightly weak, but quite possibly some would take it. The real problem with the weapon proficiency feats is two-fold. First, if you want to engage in combat and don't have access to good weapons, its far more efficient to splash a class than it is to spend a feat. And secondly, if you are planning to go into combat with weapons frequently, chances are you already are proficient in virtually all weapons and don't need to spend a feat. All that indicates that they aren't really worth buying, but I'm not sure that it means that they aren't 'worth a feat'. As I said, effectively they give you +1 damage on your attacks. The clerical 'War' domain gives you martial weapon proficiency and weapon focus for 'free', which effectively means '+1 to hit and damage'. That martial weapon proficiency is no less useful to the cleric than the weapon focus that SKR touts so highly, and no less valuable to them. Do you do the same thing with spells? Maybe let a fighter pick up a few 1st level spells by practicing with them and gain a new one every few levels? I'm not fully happy with the weapon proficiency system, but I've never seen a really nice non-abusable system that addressed all my concerns (similarity of weapons, no ethnic bias, balance, not yet another thing we are giving casters for free and then complaining that they seem overpowered). Again, the problem with this feat is that in most campaigns, you get it for free, which adds it to the category of 'yet another thing we are giving casters for free'. Still, I agree with you that this is somewhat suboptimal and generally only really comes up if you've been imprisoned or otherwise lost your possessions. I'm not sure I follow. Chasing in D&D according to the RAW is wierd because you have to plan it far more carefully than is reasonable (usually with some sort of overrun or overrun trap depending on how your read the overrun rule), but run certainly changes your speed and allows you to 'catch something' or just as importantly to get away from things that would otherwise be faster than you. However, I tend to see this primarily as a problem with the rules regarding chasing, not with the value of being able to run faster. Another probably even bigger problem with the Run feat is that most DM's seem to make all their encounter distances 60' or less. If you've got encounters starting at 400' or more with some regularity, then the ability to cover ground becomes more important. No. 3.X Toughness didn't scale, but that doesn't make it worthless. It turns it into an NPC feat. At low levels of play its one of the most powerful feats in the game. The problem with it is that since it doesn't scale, its utility diminishes the longer that you play. There is a simple fix here though. If the feat doesn't scale; make it scale. There is another subtle problem here with Toughness, in that unlike Dodge, Power Attack, and Combat Expertise, it's not a 'gateway feat' that opens up alot of powerful options to you. IMO, it should, allowing you to build a 'toughness' focused character the same way you build a str based power character or a dodgy dex based character. Again, this isn't a problem with the feat. I know for a fact that if you don't make magic ideas readily purchasable that the item creation feats suddenly become hugely important. Obviously, just as in the real world, if you have readily available consumer goods, the ability to craft and create things yourself quickly diminishes in importance. If you don't have that, then the ability to craft and create becomes one of the most powerful and necessary of all skills. Arguably, making magic items freely available constitutes yet one more thing with are giving casters for free. Limited utility, I agree, but Wizards generally get a couple of these for 'free'. I've rarely seen more than 3 or 4 spells on someone's list be metamagiced. However, this doesn't necessarily prove that they aren't 'worth a feat', as they are situationally quite useful and virtually all the monkeying around I've seen with them results in something clearly broken. And much like 'falling' I don't think 'silenced' or 'constrained' should be considered an unexpected event. I'm not sure that 'quickened silence' would be any better than just 'silence' though as a 'counterspell', as quickened does not turn a spell into an immediate action. Maybe I don't understand what you mean. Yes, it is, because 'Power Attack' is one of the more powerful and useful feats. Granted, in 3.X they managed to find a way to make it simultaneously less useful (in that fewer concepts could take advantage of it) and more broken (in that for those that could, it became even more powerful), but you are going to have a hard time convincing me of this argument using this example. I've a hard time imagining Power Attack ever be completely useless though. I will say that often I've seen feats created that are deep on a tree or have other significant prerequisites for no good reason. I will conversely say that I don't think feat trees go deep enough, and that fighters in particular need some even more powerful feats deep on feat trees for the sake of balance. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Feat Points
Top