IndyPendant
First Post
Well, I've done exactly this in my current campaign: 1 feat every odd level. In addition, I gave them a bonus 'flavour' feat at each of 1st and 2nd level. (Flavour feats are non-combat feats, like Alertness for example.) And, in all honesty, I regret it, for a number of reasons.
What I found was that far from urging the players to take 'weaker' feats they normally wouldn't, all it allowed them to do was take a larger number of powerful ones. --And my players are amongst the best roleplayers I have ever met, and are not at all unwilling to deliberately weaken their char for 'roleplaying reasons'. And, as a minor point, I've discovered it's a real slap in the face to Fighters; suddenly, their bonus feats aren't as useful, comparatively. I've already told my players that in my next campaign, we will be reverting back to the standard 1/3 levels for feats.
However, I should mention that my game is most emphatically not a low-magic campaign; the party has a druid, a cleric, a wizard, and a fighter/sorceror in it for example. : ) And it's a module--Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, which has a rep for mulching parties that has some of my players nervous--which could have influenced their feat-buy, since modules aren't well known for their rp content... And, finally, this campaign had been originally intended as an alternate campaign for when not enough players showed up for the 'main' game to be able to play it, so I decided to let the players have some fun and play slightly over-the-top heroic chars (hence in part my decision for feats every other level.) --What ended up happening was that for various reasons that don't need to be detailed here, most of us (players and gm alike) came to enjoy the alternate campaign more than the main one! --And so the Temple campaign sort of took over. (And let me tell you, it's *hard* for a GM to challenge intelligent, capable, and experienced players controlling very powerful PCs while running thru a fixed module...: )
So while it hasn't worked for me--allowing a feat every other level--there are other factors complicating things. And I've sort of resigned myself to having powerful PCs for this campaign--and we're all enjoying ourselves, which is what really counts in the end. Now, I'm using this campaign to experiment with some of my wilder ideas--most of which, embarrassingly, have ended up being scrapped (grrrr...: ). In a low-magic campaign that's designed with this idea in mind (the module, of course, wasn't), this idea could fly. I would caution you though to throw a bone to Fighters, since bonus feats are their Big Thing. --Just what type of bone, I don't know unfortunately.
I hope that helps!
What I found was that far from urging the players to take 'weaker' feats they normally wouldn't, all it allowed them to do was take a larger number of powerful ones. --And my players are amongst the best roleplayers I have ever met, and are not at all unwilling to deliberately weaken their char for 'roleplaying reasons'. And, as a minor point, I've discovered it's a real slap in the face to Fighters; suddenly, their bonus feats aren't as useful, comparatively. I've already told my players that in my next campaign, we will be reverting back to the standard 1/3 levels for feats.
However, I should mention that my game is most emphatically not a low-magic campaign; the party has a druid, a cleric, a wizard, and a fighter/sorceror in it for example. : ) And it's a module--Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, which has a rep for mulching parties that has some of my players nervous--which could have influenced their feat-buy, since modules aren't well known for their rp content... And, finally, this campaign had been originally intended as an alternate campaign for when not enough players showed up for the 'main' game to be able to play it, so I decided to let the players have some fun and play slightly over-the-top heroic chars (hence in part my decision for feats every other level.) --What ended up happening was that for various reasons that don't need to be detailed here, most of us (players and gm alike) came to enjoy the alternate campaign more than the main one! --And so the Temple campaign sort of took over. (And let me tell you, it's *hard* for a GM to challenge intelligent, capable, and experienced players controlling very powerful PCs while running thru a fixed module...: )
So while it hasn't worked for me--allowing a feat every other level--there are other factors complicating things. And I've sort of resigned myself to having powerful PCs for this campaign--and we're all enjoying ourselves, which is what really counts in the end. Now, I'm using this campaign to experiment with some of my wilder ideas--most of which, embarrassingly, have ended up being scrapped (grrrr...: ). In a low-magic campaign that's designed with this idea in mind (the module, of course, wasn't), this idea could fly. I would caution you though to throw a bone to Fighters, since bonus feats are their Big Thing. --Just what type of bone, I don't know unfortunately.
I hope that helps!
