I was really into Feats once...

[MerakSpielman]

Once upon a time I was really into feats. The feats in the (3.0) PHB weren't enough. I downloaded two massive netbooks with hundreds of feats, and I was happy.

I was a DM.

I wanted to share this wealth with my players. But I knew they wouldn't be willing to read 200 pages of new feats the way I was.

So I spent much labor constructing abbreviated lists, granting special feats at certain levels based on organization membership or racial subtype, etc...

Now all characters had three times as many feats as normal.

You might think this overpowered them. That wasn't the problem that came up though.

They kept forgetting their abilities! They had so many kewl abilities and powerz they never remembered what they could do.

It turns out that they just wanted to role play - not revel in new rules and feats - and the feats from the PHB were quite enough for them.

Now I stick to core feats. Lots of feats are just too much trouble for the players to bother with.

 

[Nifft]

This is exactly why I hate Feats, PrCs and templates (intended for PCs) that grant 1/day uber-abilities. It's hard to remember every little trick that's in your repertoire, especially those that you cannot use very often.

-- N

 

[Crothian]

Just make a little cheat sheet if you really have so many abilities that you can't recall therm all. Even fighters with a crap load of feats still has less options then a Wizard, and somehow the wizards can keep track of their spells.

 

[Pierce]

Just make a little cheat sheet if you really have so many abilities that you can't recall therm all. Even fighters with a crap load of feats still has less options then a Wizard, and somehow the wizards can keep track of their spells.

I second this idea. I've begun making cheat sheets for each of my characters with a list of their feats and a short description of each. The big thing I've found is to make this sheet as easily readable as possible - feat names in bold red, bonuses in bold, whatever it takes to make it easy to scan.

 

[Eeralai]

To each their own style, but I love options.

My 17th level character is Bard 7/ Rogue 3/ Druid 3/ Lom Ainulindale 4. All of it is RP'd out for each class and it is probably a terribly suboptimal character build. We are using the Enchiridion of Mystic Music, the Lom Ainulindale is a homebrew PrC that is Mystic Music based.

I have 14 mystic Music abilities, 2 bonus spells, 29 skills w/ ranks (a few different perform and knowledge), Bard spells, Druid Spells, special abilities on the Silent blade and on the Assassin's Armor (both of which we took from an assassin that tried to kill one of us), Class abilities for all the above classes, and a magical inventory. My DM forgets what my PC can do, but I don't. It takes two pages to lay out my character sheet and I use PC Gen to do it all. It works pretty well for a "cheat sheet".

Maybe I am just weird though. Some of my players have a hard time remembering to apply their dodge bonus.

DOH! Apparently my wife is logged in. Umm, this post should have been from BardStephenFox. Ahem - Sorry about that.

 

[MerakSpielman]

It was kind of funny. One person was playing a cleric of Boccob, and the party was investigating a temple. They wanted to see if it was Hallowed (all official temples IMC are), but nobody had any Detect Magic spells left. After watching about 10 minutes of futile PC detective work, I finally had to remind the player that I had granted Clerics of Boccob a feat that allows them to use a turning attempt to detect magic. I think the problem was that they all had lots of abilities, but most of them just didn't come up that often. If it was a combat ability, I'm sure they would have remembered.

 

[chris7476]

Now I stick to core feats. Lots of feats are just too much trouble for the players to bother with.

I kind of agree. The more I play 3ed (I've been playing it since it came) the more I find myself going back to the core books. I'm just becoming desensitized to all the new "stuff" that's out now.

 

[DragonLancer]

I kind of agree. The more I play 3ed (I've been playing it since it came) the more I find myself going back to the core books. I'm just becoming desensitized to all the new "stuff" that's out now.

Same here. Most outside the corebooks are either over or under powered compared to whats in the PHB.
Now I just stick with the core books, and those in the setting I use (Dragonlance). Much easier.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

So I spent much labor constructing abbreviated lists, granting special feats at certain levels based on organization membership or racial subtype, etc...

Now all characters had three times as many feats as normal.

So you heavily over-did it with feats and decided it was the feats' fault that you gave the players three times as many as the rules called for? Did you ever stop to think that maybe you could keep the new feats in your game but just give players, y'know, the amount they're supposed to get?

 

[Von Ether]

Not in the groups I play, they love to get as many feats as they can and they never, ever, forget the edges it gives them in combat.

If you love feats, Kingdoms of Kalamar and AEG's book of feats don't let you down, espeicaly if you pick up anti-feats in the Villian's book.