Feats

[Sepulchrave II]

I'm going to run with the absurd notion I suggest in this post and assume the following:

1) A feat which grants an extraordinary ability that replicates a spell should be available at a level when the character could afford to buy an item which costs 10 times as much as a slotless item which grants the ability.

and, by even more spurious extension

2) A feat which grants a supernatural ability that replicates a spell should be available at a level when the character could afford to buy an item which costs 5 times as much as a slotless item which grants the ability.

The Blinding Speed feat grants 5-rounds of nonconsecutive haste every day; based on boots of speed the base cost of an unslotted item which did this would be 12K. It should be available at the same time as a 120K item - i.e. as an easy entry-level feat, which it is.

A slotless item which granted a continuous haste would cost 3 x 5 x 2000 x 4 (rounds) x 2 (slotless) = 240K. At 2.4Mgp equivalence, the feat would be available to a 46th-level character. Something like this:

Mercurial [Epic]
You possess extraordinary celerity.
Prerequisites: Blinding Speed, Epic Speed, Dex 40, (another requirement)
Benefit: This feat grants the extraordinary ability to move and act more quickly than normal. This extra speed has several effects.
When making a full attack action, you may make one extra attack with any weapon you are holding. The attack is made using your full base attack bonus, plus any modifiers appropriate to the situation. This ability is not cumulative with similar effects, such as that granted by a haste spell or by a weapon of speed, nor does it actually grant an extra action, so you can’t use it to cast a second spell or otherwise take an extra action in the round.
You gain a +1 bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC and Reflex saves. Any condition that makes you lose your Dexterity bonus to Armor Class (if any) also makes you lose dodge bonuses.
All of your modes of movement (including land movement, burrow, climb, fly, and swim) increase by 30 feet, to a maximum of twice your normal speed using that form of movement. This increase counts as an enhancement bonus, and does not stack with the bonus granted by Epic Speed or similar feats. It affects your jumping distance as normal for increased speed.


(Another requirement) is tricky: it needs to clearly limit character level, but it can't do so explicitly and I don't want the requirement to proscribe any particular class from taking the feat. Perhaps we'll need to come straight out with 'Character level 46th' - if not with this feat, then with others.

 

[Cheiromancer]

The difference in wealth between a 30th level character and a 31st level character is 279,100 gp; equal to two feats, according to UK's system. A feat should thus be the equivalent of a 140,000 gp item, more or less. A best item at this level is about 700,000 gp, or five times the amount granted by a feat. Which makes your x5 supernatural modifier highly appropriate.

The extraordinary pricing (x10) gives values appropriate for the late 50s or so. Which is also when artifacts (and their resistance to antimagic) would be coming to the fore.

After level 30 (for supernatural abilities) or level 60 (or extraordinary abilities) your method will give abilities that are above what a Krustean approach would call for. This can be balanced by adding more stringent prerequisites after level 30, and, when appropriate, switching to the extraordinary pricing.

A very interesting approach, indeed.

How do you see epic non-spellcasters developing? Will they take templates and such in lieu of levels? I'm thinking there are all sorts of ways you could get a high ability score if you didn't have to worry about spellcraft ranks and caster level.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

After level 30 (for supernatural abilities) or level 60 (or extraordinary abilities) your method will give abilities that are above what a Krustean approach would call for. This can be balanced by adding more stringent prerequisites after level 30, and, when appropriate, switching to the extraordinary pricing.

For high-end extraordinary effects (say a mind blank) - you'd be talking high 50s. I think this is OK - although I think I generally expect a steeper power curve than UK, as well.

An at-will true seeing effect (arcane version) would be worth 2 (slotless) x 10 (exceptional) x 6 x 11 x 2000 x 2 (minutes) = 5.28Mgp. A 60th-level character would possess a feat which granted this - O.K, this is an SDA with a DvR6 prerequisite. There again, most gods are around 60th-level or so - is it really that inappropriate? Maybe having DvR6 just bypasses a bunch of inconvenient prerequisites that Mortals have to meet.

Low-end supernatural effects offer a range of possibiliites. A supernatural 'invisibility at will' feat would be entry-level; maybe for a Shadowdancer it would be an appropriate feat - Hide in Plain Sight as a prereq. Maybe it's too much.

 

[Cheiromancer]

If we tie feats to the wealth system, a high level feat will be equivalent to a divine ability to a lower level character.

For instance, if it is tied to one's "best item" (1/5 of its value, or whatever), then a 60th level feat will be the equivalent of 8 30th level feats. If it is tied to the change of wealth it will be approximately 4 30th level feats.

I personally would like a system that could be extended further- I'd rather use a quadratic relation than a cubic relation, and a linear relation might be best of all.

i.e. eventually switch the wealth formula from a cubic relation to a quadratic relation, but express feats in terms of the difference in wealth between one level and the next. The natural place to do this is at 100th level, where UK's formula and our formula agree. That's way out of our design space, so we probably don't need to worry about it. But some future iteration might bridge our work and UK's.

 

[Cheiromancer]

For high-end extraordinary effects (say a mind blank) - you'd be talking high 50s. I think this is OK - although I think I generally expect a steeper power curve than UK, as well.

I'm still revolving this around in my mind; I think you are right that we will have a steeper power curve than UK. I think he may be mistaken in pricing SDAs as equivalent to six feats- each is, in fact, merely a high level feat. But the power of a feat is roughly a function of the square of the level (or maybe even its cube) and that is what makes it as powerful as 6 lower level feats.

I'd really rather not have it be a function of the cube of the level (i.e. directly proportionate to wealth). It's OK that a feat at 21st level is twice as powerful as a feat that can be earned at 14th level; that fits the intuition that an epic feat is roughly twice as strong as a non-epic feat. But I'm afraid that the curve will get too steep if we peg 42nd level feats as 8 times as strong as 21st level feats.

[edit] There's some discussion of feat-items, Escapologist and the ring of freedom of movement near the bottom of this page.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I'm not commited to anything at present - just playing around with numbers, and seeing where they lead us.

We're back to the point where we need to define balance again; which is kind of tricky, isn't it?

I'm having trouble switching back and forth between a cubic and a quadratic model; it seems to me we should adopt one or the other for everything, otherwise the system will break. I have to say, I like the way cubic wealth scales better than the ELH; but I don't want to be beholden to it, or have it dictate every aspect of magic item cost, feat power etc. etc. It seems to me that all of these things are interlinked, however.

What if we turn to a quadratic wealth model? Level^2 x 2000?

Obviously, this would involve a radical downpricing of many items, but if we're retooling everything else anyway, it might be the way to go. It really depends on how important the segue into UK's system is for you, though.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Thing is, if total wealth is cubic, then the amount your wealth changes each level is quadratic. If your total wealth is quadratic, then the amount your wealth changes each level is linear. If your wealth is linear, then the change each level is constant. If your wealth is constant, your wealth doesn't change at all from one level to the next. In none of these cases could you use the same model for both total wealth and the wealth earned in the course of going up a level.

If you want to use the same model for wealth and leveling up wealth, it has to be an exponential function; your wealth would double ever "x" levels, where x would be determined by us. I think such a system would break very quickly, though; I wouldn't recommend it.

I like the cubic wealth system, too; better than the ELH system, at least. And while I don't want to follow it rigidly, I'd like wide discrepancies to have an explanation. For instance, you might want equipment to play less of a role as you go up in levels, and feats to be correspondingly stronger. And so you make feats proportionate to the cube of the level (a fraction of total wealth, as you have it).

That would be fine; I was balking at it because if a level's worth of (cubic) wealth was two feats, and two feats were a level's worth of wealth, then the relation should be quadratic, not cubic. But adjust the expectation, and that's fine.

Do you *want* feats to be proportionately more important than items the higher you go? If so, then we should use the fraction of total wealth formula; no matter what formula we use, a feat should be the equivalent of a magic item worth some fraction of total wealth (1/20 for a SU ability, 1/40 for an EX ability).

Then the question arises of how powerful a high level feat should be. Cubic wealth with proportionate feats might be too steep. If so, then the level^2 x 2000 model would be worth re-examining.

The cubic wealth formula won't segue into UK's system until level 100; as far as I'm concerned, that's as good as "never". I won't let that stand in the way of balancing our system properly.

Oh, but if you want the balance between feats and items to remain the same, then we have to use a quadratic method of estimating feats if we use a cubic wealth model. There's no way we can keep the proportion the same if we keep the degree the same.

 

[Greybar]

This is what I was attempting to do here though perhaps clumsily, by playing the level^2 against the level^3 we get a factor of merely (level) which I then turn into "gear points", which happen to also be equivalent to feats (+0.2 CR) according to UK's work.

The problem of "flat" feats verus "scaling" powers is why I had to add the incremental factors, so that once you spend a point on a weapon that weapon continues to grow in power as you level up. My spreadsheet used for generating the scaling function was only based on level 20 to 40 though, so there may well be substantial variance from the mathematical curve by CR100 and the like.

I think that the higher epic feats might well *have* to be scaling, or else the characters (particularly the non-spellcasters) will (at some point) have to dedicate all of their future feat earnings into chosen channels just to keep them relevant.

My disclaimer on the above (and linked thread) is that I know I haven't put nearly the thought and analysis into epic levels as most of the contributors to this area have, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

 

[Cheiromancer]

I don't understand your system. Could you work out an example for a 30th or 40th level character, so I can see how it works?

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Spell and Item Candidates for Feats

I'm going to concentrate on buffs & defenses, rather than offensive spells - although interesting possibilities abound (an at-will supernatural acid fog as a Draconic Heritage feat springs to mind, for some reason).

There are pretty wide discrepancies in existing epic feats if they're tied to wealth - e.g. the Fast Healing feat replicates a 300K item according to the ELH (ring of rapid healing); 300K might be about right - a nonepic ring of regeneration is 90K, and the epic version repairs damage about 100 times faster for a 30-something level character. According to the system I propose, the Fast Healing feat wouldn't be available until level 50 or so - and even then as a (Su), not an (Ex) ability.

Conversely, the Energy Resistance feat replicates a minor ring of energy resistance - which is a paltry 12K. It's a crappy feat, let's face it - no-one in their right mind would take it. Still, it's about right for a slotless (x2) Ex (x10) effect with no other prerequisites.

As noted, Blinding Speed works as a low epic feat based on boots of speed.

Armor Skin works - a +2 natural armor feat should be worth 8000 x 2 x 10. It should be available without any other prereqs, and it is.

Epic Fortitude, Epic Will and Epic Reflexes can each be seen as replicating +4 unnamed bonus items to 1/3 of your saving throws - i.e. (32,000 x 2 x 10)/3 = 213,333 gp value. Perfect for an immediate epic feat.

Epic Reputation provides a +4 unnamed bonus to 5 skills - a slotless item which did the same would cost 2 x 2 x (1600 + 1.5 x [1600 + 1600 + 1600 + 1600]) = 44,800 gp. Apparently, this is a somewhat generous feat - using the wealth guideline, it shouldn't be available until level 27 or so.

Epic Skill Focus provides a +10 unnamed bonus - a slotless item would cost 40K. Generous, but not overly so.

Great Charisma etc. provide a +1 unnamed bonus. If they provided a +2 bonus, the equivalent slotless item would cost 16K. I'm inclined to suggest that these feats should grant a +2 bonus to ability scores - they've always seemed kind of weak to me: c.f. Armor Skin.

Improved Spell Resistance. Well, assuming that we're using the nonepic pricing ( :\), this feat replicates a 40K increase in a slotless item.

Perfect Health emulates a slotless periapt of health (15K); the partial poison immunity is an added plus, although not much use against devastation scorpions. It's probably about right - Con 25 and Great Fortitude are prereqs.

Polyglot. A continuous, slotless comprehend languages device is worth 6K. Unsurprisingly, Polyglot is weak.



Here's one:


Combat Prescience [Epic](Su)
Prerequisites: Epic Reflexes, Sense Motive 60 ranks, Wis 40
Benefits: You are never surprised or flat-footed. In addition, you have a general idea of what action you might take to best protect yourself. You gain a +2 insight bonus to AC and Reflex saves. This insight bonus is lost whenever you would lose a Dexterity bonus to AC.

Costing (foresight): 1.5 (10 mins) x 9 (SL) x 17 (CL) x 2000 (continuous) x 2 (slotless) x 5 (supernatural) = 4.59Mgp / lvl 57.