Feats and Skills by Stat
- Thread starter tallyrand
- Start date
Simplicity said:
You know, I think I'm actually fine with that.
For the first time in, well, ever, I'm thinking you could run a D&D game without any magicians at all and still be able to use the whole Monster Manual. That's actually kind of impressive.
And it sounds like PHB2 is going to include some more arcane and divine stuff, and if they're introducing more power sources in it as well, then it may be that they decided to front-load the martial characters into the first PHB intentionally. There are 4 martial classes in this first PHB, double the number of each of the other two types of classes, so it kind of makes sense that there would be more martial options listed.
Simplicity said:
It is not as bad as it seems. A large portion of the feats are for armor and weapon buffs. The huge amount of weapon buffs actually make the feats weaker as it reduces the number of weapons that the feat helps. Also many of the physical feats require Str and Con which double the number of entries into the list. Also there is a good chance that wizards will want to get some of the amor feats so it benifits both martial and arcane classes.
OchreJelly
First Post
Are there feats that have no prerequisite? I don't have the book yet so it's a genuine question. Thanks.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
I think that might be one of the main reason. All other powers will look more "magical" then the martial heroes.Jer said:
Simplicity
Explorer
JesterOC said:
So as long as the arcane classes decide to go more martial, there isn't a problem? :-/ 3.5e core had way more arcane feats than this.
This is what you get when you put Mr. Iron Heroes on the design team.
I can only hope PHBII will have the arcane details, yeah. But they haven't said anything to imply that it would.
Zurai
First Post
Just because a feat requires a mental stat doesn't mean it needs to be for a caster. Hell, I think in the 3.x PHB there were no caster feats that required mental stats - all the feats that required mental stats were fighter or general feats.Jer said:
My problem is that, in and of themselves, the mental stats do nothing. Int affects Reflex defense - but so does Dex, and Dex also affects Initiative, ranged attacks, and ranged damage. Wis and Cha only affect Will defense. None of the three mental stats do anything in and of themselves except affect defenses. All three of the physical stats have additional benefits. And, on top of that, there are only 16 feats that require mental stats (and over half of those are Wis-based) compared to well over three times that number that require physical stats.
To put it more bluntly, there is very little reason at all to even have a mental stat above 10 if you're not playing a class that makes extensive use of it.
Simplicity said:
To be fair, they were mostly the function of 3.5 game features that were either largely obsoleted to the caster's advantage (Spell Resistance removed making Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration redundant) or had their benefit rolled into the caster's basic progression (+1/2 class level to hit with Spell Attack vs. Spell Focus / Greater Spell Focus to keep up your Spell Save DCs).
The only thing really missing seems to be Meta-Magic Feats, which seem to have gone the way of Vancian casting.
Feats don't seem to be the obvious go-to build-feature for casters to buff their offenses. On the other hand, casters tend to have a much more flexible range of Defenses to target with their powers than the Martial classes do and mental stats seem to help more with Skills.
- Marty Lund
In fairness, there is a greater economy in some feats, Ritual casting encompasses ALL the 3.x magic item creation feats, and Wizards get that one for free. Jack of All Trades provides the equivalent up to +28 3.x skill points, even more with the broader application of fewer skills in 4e.
