Ideas appreciated

[knifespeaks]

Ok, so IMC I am roleplaying feats and skills....

Nothing to difficult or involved, a balance between gameplay and flavour.

Skills are straightforward, but I need some inspiration behind feats...

What I am planning is to introduce the idea of feats in 2 ways - first, like skills, in that you get trained in 'em...but also, where a player has indicated they are interested in a specific feat (either talking at the table, or in consultation with me), I would like to add it into the story...here's an example:

In combat, at a crucial moment, and on the back of a good to hit roll and some awesome damage (which finishes off their opponent in a gory explosion of flesh and bone), the bloodlust of the (fighter-type) rises and they immediately strike out at a nearby opponent - ie, Cleave.

Just looking for some thoughts from the community on their approach to this....it won't be suitable all the time, but it is useful as a gaming tool to keep it fun and interesting.

 

[irdeggman]

Mechanics-wise - you might look at the 3.5 DMG pg 197+ for variant rules on How PCs improve (e.g., training rules).

Our DM implemented these with some variations:

He changed the costs to sp vice gp in order to prevent "busting" his local economies.

We can "pre-train" for the next level at various break points in the story (i.e., down time). This is broken down by weeks. We have to tell the DM what we are "working on" once we start any pretraining. That is what skills we are trying to increase, which feats we are working on and if we are planing on changing class. He then encourages us to role-play these things as we go along. This is easier some times than others - not all feats/skills play out well as being gradually learned.

PCs can "teach" skills/feats to other PCs for reduced (or no cost).

On another thread someone mentioned "awarding" sp for actions. He has at times awarded a "free" rank in a skill that the group has had to use repeatedly. For instance, after climbing in and out of a crevice repeatedly the survivors all received a "free" rank in climb. They could not however exceed the max rank limits. I would never award free sp, only ranks in a specific skill to reflect what has gone on in the game - and then make it real limiting so it feels special. The trade off being the time spent using the skill in question.


I like the color aspect you are trying to add. I would make it a point to use it after the PC has "gained" the ability in question but not before. It becomes a game balance issue if it is not done that way. EL (and corresponding CR) are based on what the PCs (and foes) know and can do, not on things their level normally doesn't grant them. Hence challenges become too easy or too hard if not carefully managed. Although an occasional application won't through things out of whack eventually the player's will start to expect these types of "rewards" and will want to see them doled out frequently and equally to all of the player's PCs.

Some things are real difficult to put in this way. Learning spells are real difficult to handle this way. Basically either the caster knows the spell or doesn't know it. Feats are easier to handle (in general, but again some are real difficult like item creation ones, although the metamagic ones could have real cool in game descriptions like maximized or enhanced fireball).