Feats
Feats is a book in the series of "one word" supplements by Alderac Entertainment Group, presenting a flurry of feats for use with the d20 System, both new and pre-existing Open Game Content. The book attributes the writing the line editor Jim Pinto, compiling to Jeff Ibach, and additional writing to Andrew Getting, Sean Holland, Jeff Ibach, Patrick Kapera, Mike Leader, and Erik Yaple, but of course, the authors of the various OGC items are legion.
A First Look
Feats is a 144 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $24.95. This is very reasonable for a d20 System book of this size and format.
The cover of the book has the same grainy background with piping that is common to the series. The cover art, by Raven Mimura, is a nicely detailed picture of an axe-wielding warrior.
The interior is black-and-white. The illustrations are by Daerick W. Gross and Beth Trott. Gross is already one of my favorite artists in the AEG stable, and maintains the same high standard in detailed character pictures. Beth Trott is new to me, but her art is very appealing and interesting. Overall, the quality of art is high, if its placement a little sparse.
The body font text is dense. The feat layout necessitates that the feats be double spaced, but the paragraphs in each feats is single space, making the use of space fairly good.
A Deeper Look
AEG's ad copy for Feats claims that there are over 1000 feats in this book, 200 of which are new. It also claims that many of the feats herein have been reworked, which is probably good, because a book that tries to net feats from as many products as this one does is likely to get a few stinkers in the batch.
A enumeration of a significant portion of the feats herein would be beyond the scope of this review, but it might be fair to consider what went into this book. First off, the book does include feats from the SRD/PHB. If you want "one stop shopping" for feats out of this book, this might be a good thing. However, chances are that most people who buy this book already own all of these feats, so you will be buying a number of feats you already have access to.
The book also lists 64 other d20 System products in its OGC copyright statement, including many of AEG's own books, such as most of the other books in this series. Ironically, AEG fails to credit itself for material drawn from Swashbuckling Adventures.
It might serve to get a picture of how the content of the book pans out by taking a look at the sources of the book. So who does AEG draw from that is perhaps questionable? Well, some of its own books are a mixed bag, and I recall some of the clerical feats in Twin Crowns being a bit overpowered or unbalanced, as were the feats in a few of Mongoose's Quintessential books. The Complete Guide to Drow had some extremely abusive and mechanically wonky feats, but it appears that the worst of these did not pass muster to make it into the book.
Who is here that are good inclusions? Well, Green Ronin's Hammer & Helm introduced bloodgift feats, and I was glad to see those here. Badaxe Games' Heroes of High Favor series has had some pretty compelling feats, though only the first book in that series (Dwarves) appears to have been out long enough to make its way into this book.
So, were there any compelling sources of feats out there that could have made it but didn't? Some more recent books that might have been compelling inclusions probably missed out due to being published after most of this book was being compiled, such as the sacred and oath feats from the Book of Hallowed Might. The inclusion of the Complete Guide to Drow indicates that they were willing to incorporate material from PDF products, which leads me to wonder: why did they pass up Beyond Monks: The Art of the Fight, arguably the ultimate source of combat related feats?
The body of work that this book draws from is large enough that I can honestly not claim to own all of them; considering how large my collection is, I imagine that many people will find that they don't have many of the included titles. This is good, since it means more of the material will be fresh. However, the book does little to identify what feat came from where, so in some cases I will be unable to identify which book is the source, and those curious about the origin of a given feat will have some difficulty finding out.
The book itself is sorted into some fairly broad categories. Background feats are feats that stem from the character's background or lineage. Infernal pacts are feats that originated in AEG's Evil and are granted to a character trafficking with fiends. Magic feats include metamagic feats and a number of other feats the influence magic. Quest feats are a new type of feat introduced in this book, and have involved roleplaying requirements. The appendix is a page of "joke feats." All remaining feats are lumped into the catch-all General feats chapter.
A major portion of these feats are bloodgift feats. Introduced in Green Ronin's Hammer & Helm, blood gift feats are feats (many of them in feat chains) which spring from the character's lineage. Bloodgift feats all must either be taken at first level or require such a feat as a prerequisite. The ones from Hammer & Helm pertain to dwarves, but AEG introduces several new ones for other races.
The remaining feats in the background chapter are simply labelled "background" feats (one is labeled a "bonding" feat, but it seems like it is intended to be a bloodgift feat with the bonding bloodgift feat as a prerequisite.) Many of these feats follow the pattern of profession feats from AEG's Swashbuckling Adventures, granting new class skills and other benefits, though many that fit this pattern appear new or modified.
The second chapter is general feats. This chapter contains the most combat feats, and many of them are designated as bonus feats for fighters. The chapter warns you that some may be best translated into mechanics that anyone may use, and that that many of the feats may be unbalanced.
In the latter case, they certainly weren't kidding. Though they filtered out some of the more egregious feats from other references, some that appear here are blatantly overpowered. The winner of the "no way I'd allow that in my campaign" award is Assassin Strike, which makes any sneak attack lethal, no save.
As you might imagine, there are multiple takes on various concepts in the various d20 System books. In a work like this, you might expect that they merely take the best one, right? They don't. In many cases there are multiple spins on the same concept. For example, Deadly Edge adds +1d6 to sneak attack damage, while the Improved Sneak Attack feat from Traps & Treachery (which I have lamented in the past) increases all of the character's sneak attack dice to a d8, which scales with level and is a virtual must-have feat for rogues.
Another instance is variations of the skill focus feat. The book lists Skill Focus as providing a +3 to a single skill and only being available to elves with a constitution of 15+ (!), but the standard skill focus feat is not listed (which sort of complicates using this book as a one-stop resource for feats.) On the other hand, the Refined Skill Focus feat, from Heroes of High Favor: Dwarves is much more generic, providing +3 to any one skill or +2 to two skills, or grants two ranks in one skill. Were I the compiler, the former feat would have been out on its ear.
Another potential problem with the book is that many feats, when removed from a specific book, lose context given to it by the setting assumption and other mechanics in the book. In some cases, this is handled adroitly. For example, necromancy feats from Necromancy: Beyond the Grave are fairly powerful, but have potentially deleterious effects on the character when used (but this mechanic is not used in Feats.) These feats have totally reworked prerequisites, limiting them to higher level characters (but still arguably a bit powerful.)
An example that was not so well handled when taken out of context is that of the unarmored defense proficiencies from Swashbuckling Adventures. These feats provide an increasing AC bonus based on level for unarmored characters. While this breaks a basic rule of feat design (feats should not scale heavily with level), it might be okay in the Theah setting for which it was written, where magic is less common than the core d20 System assumptions and characters are expected to fit in to the swashbuckling archetype. But drop it willy-nilly into a typical D&D game with magic & monks, these feats promise to be very abusive. Some notes to provide a little context for when these feats should be used would be very appropriate.
The Infernal Feats chapter includes a type of feat introduced in AEG's Evil supplement, though one included here is new. The basic idea of these feats is that they require the character make a pact with a fiend in order to take, and that each feat has a drawback, but the power of the feat is above the norm for feats. These feats are interesting elements for villains, but as the book plainly points out, a character with several of these feats in the place of normal feats is rather powerful for their level.
The Magic Feats chapter includes metamagic and item creation feats as well as other feats that affect magic strongly, such as spell focus and spell mastery. There are several good ideas in this chapter, but it repeats a few common mistakes that befall many d20 System books. For example, it improperly uses the term metamagic to describe feats that do not modify spells. For example, arcane ritual mastery provides a +4 bonus to any skill checks involved in a ritual.
The Quest Feats chapter introduces a new sort of feat, the quest feats. Quest feat have extensive normal and roleplaying requirements to acquire, but have powerful effects (but not excessively so.) These have good potential for a game, but many of them have rather odd mechanical conventions that will have most DMs passing them up or redesigning them. For example, one feat, in addition to a +8 bonus against sense motives rolls, makes the character so that they have "no alignment, but sort of have an outlook like neutral evil." This sort of design does not sit well with me, as it is trying to evade a basic universal game element. The "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck" rule applies here.
Conclusion
The book does collect a number of interesting feats from a variety of resources, many of which you may not have heard of before. I found the background feats section the most interesting and potentially useful, and love how they ran with the idea of bloodgift feats. If you are starving for feats, this book should be a good purchase for you.
Unlike many other such collections, the writers and editors make a good effort to adapt or exclude feats that are not balanced or usable. However, not near enough has been done in this vein. A DM using this book will have to be very vigilant and filter carefully, as many of the feats herein have mechanical and/or balance issues.
Overall Grade: C+
-Alan D. Kohler
