Feats as Treasure?

[sydbar]

When i start running, i've been thinking about giving each of the players a special feat, but it will be from a non wotc source, and i will choose what they get, but it will be a feat that they can use, depending on how the role playing of their character is heading. They will have to earn the bonus feat from a challenging yet doable encounter.

 

[Corbert]

So, is it just nice fluff then? Unless there is some reason they coul;dn't have taken the feat the next feat slot they get I don't see how this is really treasure.

No, it's not fluff. I use it to introduce homebrew feats and feats from books my players don't have. This gives them options they wouldn't have otherwise, but they don't have to take the feats if they don't want to.

 

[Crothian]

No, it's not fluff. I use it to introduce homebrew feats and feats from books my players don't have. This gives them options they wouldn't have otherwise, but they don't have to take the feats if they don't want to.

So the only way for them to get these feats is therough the book? They couldn't just take it on their own like by buying the book or borrowing it themselves?

 

[Kelleris]

Bottom line, I think this is a nifty idea to try out in a party as a house rule, but if anybody ever published a book that attempted to spell out rules for it, I would shout "broken" at the top of my lungs.

Why? One of the nice things about magical items is that they can, in theory, do anything at all. So you can put a gold piece price to anything, really - I don't see why permanent feats would be any different. You'd just make them too expensive to pick up really early without major sacrifice, so Spring Attack would be too expensive to get at less than level 4 or 5, say. And if you keep the requirements intact, this is really a non-issue, given that almost no feat chains are balanced around limited feat slots, but around prerequisites, i.e., the reason you can't take Whirlwind Attack early is not that you don't have the slots for it, but that it has a high-ish BAB requirement.

In fact, I would argue that if a feat chain is balanced on the assumption that you'll have X feats at Y level, the feats weren't well designed from the get-go.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Upper_Krust thinks that one level of wealth is worth 2 feats. (He used to think it was worth 1 feat, but he reconsidered.)

So if you give two feats as treasure to a character with the expected wealth of a 14th level character, he now has the expected wealth of a 15th level character. When that same character gets to 20th level, he should have the expected wealth of a 19th level character. (In other words, the gp value of those feats is level dependent).
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[ForceUser]

That's basically a defending longsword but a whole lot better -- no loss of damage and up to +5 not limited by the weapon's enhancement bonus. If defending is accurately priced, I'd say that's a minimum +3 market modifier.

I dunno--it's the feat, not the defending property. The bonus to attack and damage were fixed at +1, and he could take up to a net -4 on attack to gain +5 AC. Defending doesn't work that way--one can only lose from attack what the sword's bonus is. If the feat is considered better than the defending property, then I guess it was better. But it certainly didn't break the game.

 

[ToddSchumacher]

In my next homebrew campaign I'm going to implement training, and you cant get a new feat or skill unless you find an NPC with it to train with. i'm also going to provide books as part of treasure that give access to feats and such without having to find an NPC, and to get Feats that are not otherwise available. Though the time to train is doubed.

 

[DonTadow]

My campaign is converting to a low magic campaign, and I've been tweedling these last few weeks on a training system where pcs can visit trainers whom will teach them one of a list of feats for money and partial XP. Also converting to the buy the numbers system so that feats have a cost.

 

[Deathmonger]

In my next homebrew campaign I'm going to implement training, and you cant get a new feat or skill unless you find an NPC with it to train with. i'm also going to provide books as part of treasure that give access to feats and such without having to find an NPC, and to get Feats that are not otherwise available. Though the time to train is doubed.

Sorry this is thread drift at this point, but um, how exactly is that going to make everybody at the table have more fun? By introducing a headache of bookkeeping for the DM and a convoluted system that penalizes players for coming to your game instead of another?

Maybe, just maybe, your storytelling abilities are so good that they will feel like those interactions are fun and interesting, but if so, you can bring that flavor into your game without requiring them to go to a Listening Teacher every time they want to spend a skill point. Done occasionally, and in moderation, this can be rewarding. But honestly, for every skill and feat? I doubt it will be more fun for anyone.

 

[DonTadow]

Sorry this is thread drift at this point, but um, how exactly is that going to make everybody at the table have more fun? By introducing a headache of bookkeeping for the DM and a convoluted system that penalizes players for coming to your game instead of another?

Maybe, just maybe, your storytelling abilities are so good that they will feel like those interactions are fun and interesting, but if so, you can bring that flavor into your game without requiring them to go to a Listening Teacher every time they want to spend a skill point. Done occasionally, and in moderation, this can be rewarding. But honestly, for every skill and feat? I doubt it will be more fun for anyone.

The DMG specifically states that DM's have the option to require their PCs to train before achieving levels, which includes gaining feats and skills.

Wheras I like the idea of having a trainer for speciallized feats, I feel that skills and more mundane feats (like toughness) can be learned and enhanced over a course of the adventure. That said, I think the author, and Todd believe that the real reason why they need a change is because of how unbelievaable it is that when a character levels he automatically gains these new abilities.

My solution for this is to use the Buy the Numbers system and have it replace leveling in my two year campaign. That way, characters use XP to buy feats and skills over time which makes the progression look a bit more natural than "hey i leveled i get all new abilities". This system combined with trainers whom specialize in the more "class oriented feats" can make a campaign more realistic without the additional rpg interaction.