I am forseeing problems with feats

[Sitara]

Its been confirmed that feats will be divided into Heroic/Paragon/Epic tiers. And apparently, that is ALL ther requirement for a feat will be i.e. a specific tier. (Though IMO a feat may have another feat(s) as requirement(s).)

That means a first level pc can take any feat of the heroic tier he could also take at level 10. Is it just me or does it seem this can lead to a boatload of balance problems, especially when splats are released?

In the core rulebooks this probably means that all feats are extremely balanced due to rigorous playtesting but I doubt splats will have have this kind of testing. (they have to take into account that a character could take this feat at any level. Not easy to do.)

 

[Jack99]

Its been confirmed that feats will be divided into Heroic/Paragon/Epic tiers. And apparently, that is ALL ther requirement for a feat will be i.e. a specific tier. (Though IMO a feat may have another feat(s) as requirement(s).)

That means a first level pc can take any feat of the heroic tier he could also take at level 10. Is it just me or does it seem this can lead to a boatload of balance problems, especially when splats are released?

In the core rulebooks this probably means that all feats are extremely balanced due to rigorous playtesting but I doubt splats will have have this kind of testing. (they have to take into account that a character could take this feat at any level. Not easy to do.)

Source?

 

[eleran]

No word has officially said that that will be all the prerequisites for feats. We don't know yet whether there might be feat chains or stat requirements for some. Also, it has been said that feats are generally weaker than they were in 3.X, and definitely weaker than powers/abilities will be in 4e.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Its been confirmed that feats will be divided into Heroic/Paragon/Epic tiers. And apparently, that is ALL ther requirement for a feat will be i.e. a specific tier. (Though IMO a feat may have another feat(s) as requirement(s).)

That means a first level pc can take any feat of the heroic tier he could also take at level 10. Is it just me or does it seem this can lead to a boatload of balance problems, especially when splats are released?

In the core rulebooks this probably means that all feats are extremely balanced due to rigorous playtesting but I doubt splats will have have this kind of testing. (they have to take into account that a character could take this feat at any level. Not easy to do.)

If you are correct, I don't see this automatically leading to balance problems. What it would require is that feats at each tier are essentially balanced with each other.

I could be wrong, but my impression is that part of the design plan for 4e is that things like feats will be useful even at higher levels. Either the power of the feat itself might scale with level, or the abilities a feat offers will be equally useful to a 1st level PC as a 10th level PC.

If they succeed in that, then not having a character level prerequisite wouldn't cause balance issues, but would allow players to choose the feats that fit the concept of the character best.

 

[Set]

Less Feat prerequisites, IMO, is a good thing. With different character types having different power-sources and different rationales for how they use their abilities, no one 'prerequisite' is likely to make sense anyway. Should Combat Expertise have an Int requirement, when some warrior archetypes focus on instincts than on rote memorization? Should TWF have a Dex requirement when there are classes (the Ranger) and races (anything with multiple arms) that just ignore that anyway?

I totally get the idea of Feat chains, such as TWF -> Improved TWF -> Greater TWF -> Epic TWF -> WTFcuisinartBatman! TWF, and those sorts of prerequisites I like, but others seem arbitrary and only sacrifice general utility for campaign-setting-specific flavor.

And the BAB prerequisite for a lot of Fighter feats is going to become less relevant with all classes having the same BAB.

 

[Campbell]

I'm actually hoping that feat chains are no longer go as deep as they did in 3e. I hated how feats like Whirlwind Attack basically forced you to plan your feat allotment several levels in advance and discouraged organic development of abilities.

Note : For the sake of this argument let's pretend that striving towards acquiring Whirlwind Attack wasn't a fool's errand.

 

[Nyaricus]

Its been confirmed that feats will be divided into Heroic/Paragon/Epic tiers. And apparently, that is ALL ther requirement for a feat will be i.e. a specific tier. (Though IMO a feat may have another feat(s) as requirement(s).)

That means a first level pc can take any feat of the heroic tier he could also take at level 10. Is it just me or does it seem this can lead to a boatload of balance problems, especially when splats are released?

In the core rulebooks this probably means that all feats are extremely balanced due to rigorous playtesting but I doubt splats will have have this kind of testing. (they have to take into account that a character could take this feat at any level. Not easy to do.)

As Mike said himself a while back now, you are only seeing one tiny portion of the game, without being able to compare it to all other aspects.

Once the rulebooks come out, we shall see how things are looking.

 

[Cadfan]

Set- I don't think that all classes will have the same BAB necessarily. They will have the same BAB progression, sure. But if fighters start counting from 4, while wizards start counting from 0, their BABs will be different.

It depends on how they phrase things. This is really a semantic difference. But phrasing them in this particular way would allow for a BAB requirement.

 

[Cadfan]

As for balance issues, that's not the perfect way to phrase it.

But I understand the general idea of the OP.

If a feat is exciting at level 1, it won't necessarily be exciting at level 10, especially since the player knows darn well that at level 11 he gets all sorts of awesome options. The player will mentally compare his level 10 choices to his level 11 choices, and wish he had the latter.

Its irrational in a way, but its how players think.

 

[Dausuul]

Its been confirmed that feats will be divided into Heroic/Paragon/Epic tiers. And apparently, that is ALL ther requirement for a feat will be i.e. a specific tier. (Though IMO a feat may have another feat(s) as requirement(s).)

That means a first level pc can take any feat of the heroic tier he could also take at level 10. Is it just me or does it seem this can lead to a boatload of balance problems, especially when splats are released?

In the core rulebooks this probably means that all feats are extremely balanced due to rigorous playtesting but I doubt splats will have have this kind of testing. (they have to take into account that a character could take this feat at any level. Not easy to do.)

I don't see it as being much of a balance issue, except insofar as splatbooks always have balance issues. Imagine that the prerequisites for 3E feats were simplified to Realistic (no prereqs), Heroic (level 8 minimum), and Superheroic (level 15 minimum). Would that be a difficult thing to do? Can you name any feats for which it would cause balance problems?

My experience is that the more complicated the prereq system is, the easier it is to mess it up. It's not a feat, but consider the original Master of Shrouds PrC. Its main prereq, as I recall, was a +5 Will save. It takes 6 levels before any class grants a +5 save bonus, so that ought to mean you can't get into MoS before 7th level, right?

Well, no. As any experienced optimizer could tell you, they forgot about multiclassing. With two levels in cleric and one level in wizard, you can get into MoS at 4th, which was most definitely not the intent--and since the key ability of the Master of Shrouds is to summon incorporeal undead, with the power of the undead depending on your MoS level, that made you way overpowered. If Master of Shrouds had just said, "Prerequisite: 7th level," it wouldn't have had that problem.

If they are in fact doing this, I'm all for it. The elaborate feat chains of 3E were among the many factors that forced players to plan out their builds many levels in advance. That both made life more difficult for newbie players, and crushed a lot of the excitement out of levelling up (at least for me). I think levelling up ought to feel like a whole new vista of possibilities opening out before you, not just another chug along the character build railroad.