JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Feats Volume I is a compilation of Feats from the various Silverthorne Races books that updates them for more general use and adds new material.
The feats are laid out in alphabetical order and follow the standard format for feats. They start with name, type (general, fighter, metamagic, etc...), brief description, prerequisites, benefit and normal. There are some things I didn't like right off the bat. For instance, Air Breathing is a feat that allows you to breath normally and notes that under normal circumstances, the character has a great difficulty breathing air. Okay, what race would that be applicable for? Some editing to provide a small listing of races that could actually benefit from this feat would make it useful as opposed to something that GMs will just mark off as being something to possibly keep in mind.
Other feats vary in usefulness and power level. Arcane Secret for example, is like weapon specialization in that you take it for a specific meta feat and that lowers the cost of the level by one. The example the book uses is a maximized fireball only being cast as a sixth level spell instead of a seventh level one. Powerful yes but with limits. Another potential high magic one with low effects is Cantrips allow you to cast three 0 level cantrips, once per day each.
There is a new type of feat, quarterblood, with entries for dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling and Orc, with each one granting you the ability to take feats unique to those races in addition to being considered of that race for all special abilities and effects. It has to be taken at character creation and can't be combined with other Quarterblood feats, which is kinda strange as you might've had more than one ancestor in the family tree.
The feats are varied but I found myself too often wondering what exactly I could use some of them for. The power levels seemed standard for most of them but a few made an eyebrow rise like Vorpal Blow. Sure, it's got a lot of limitations on who can take it and the victim gets a saving throw but it's still a very powerful, non-magical ability.
There needs to be some organization to the thing. Perhaps a monstrous section and a normal one? Hard to say as while the book is small, it is packed to the gills in terms of words per page.
The first interior page, the credits, could've easily been combined with the introduction. The art used is from the V. Shane collection but isn't faded enough as the text is difficult to read. Or at least, when printed on an inkjet printer, is difficult to read. Not all of the entries are formatted the same, for example, Burst of Radiance doesn't have the header formatting applied to it or when looking at War Cry, talking about the urstak's Base Attack bonus having something to do with the DC to resist the bellowing howl.
The book is good and immediately useful but needs another round of editing to make it more useful and easy to reference.
The feats are laid out in alphabetical order and follow the standard format for feats. They start with name, type (general, fighter, metamagic, etc...), brief description, prerequisites, benefit and normal. There are some things I didn't like right off the bat. For instance, Air Breathing is a feat that allows you to breath normally and notes that under normal circumstances, the character has a great difficulty breathing air. Okay, what race would that be applicable for? Some editing to provide a small listing of races that could actually benefit from this feat would make it useful as opposed to something that GMs will just mark off as being something to possibly keep in mind.
Other feats vary in usefulness and power level. Arcane Secret for example, is like weapon specialization in that you take it for a specific meta feat and that lowers the cost of the level by one. The example the book uses is a maximized fireball only being cast as a sixth level spell instead of a seventh level one. Powerful yes but with limits. Another potential high magic one with low effects is Cantrips allow you to cast three 0 level cantrips, once per day each.
There is a new type of feat, quarterblood, with entries for dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling and Orc, with each one granting you the ability to take feats unique to those races in addition to being considered of that race for all special abilities and effects. It has to be taken at character creation and can't be combined with other Quarterblood feats, which is kinda strange as you might've had more than one ancestor in the family tree.
The feats are varied but I found myself too often wondering what exactly I could use some of them for. The power levels seemed standard for most of them but a few made an eyebrow rise like Vorpal Blow. Sure, it's got a lot of limitations on who can take it and the victim gets a saving throw but it's still a very powerful, non-magical ability.
There needs to be some organization to the thing. Perhaps a monstrous section and a normal one? Hard to say as while the book is small, it is packed to the gills in terms of words per page.
The first interior page, the credits, could've easily been combined with the introduction. The art used is from the V. Shane collection but isn't faded enough as the text is difficult to read. Or at least, when printed on an inkjet printer, is difficult to read. Not all of the entries are formatted the same, for example, Burst of Radiance doesn't have the header formatting applied to it or when looking at War Cry, talking about the urstak's Base Attack bonus having something to do with the DC to resist the bellowing howl.
The book is good and immediately useful but needs another round of editing to make it more useful and easy to reference.
