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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2282704" data-attributes="member: 4937">As far as I can tell, the 'stuff that counts' - really counts - in the class abilities is the improved ability to fill that character's token pool.  The improved selection of things to spend the tokens on has been by comparison a rather small improvement.  Since token pool replenishment maxes out for the archer at level 15, and for the hunter at level 17, if tokens are really valuable at all then we aren't going to see alot of multi-classing in either class.  However, just from what we've seen, an Archer 15/Hunter 5 doesn't seem to me to be a bad package.  Also, looking over the archer's list of class abilities, I don't really see anything that I think is going to make it worth giving up a full attack action, and I think the most common things to spend tokens on would actually be the earliest available class abilities.  The 'sniper' and 'killing' shot abilities are really narrow and less generally useful than the 'deadeye shot' abilities.Yes, it would.  It would be nice to know alot of things about playtesting, like in particular whether anyone tried any games outside of D&D's acknowledged 'sweet spot'.  So far both playtester groups seem to have focused on levels 3-7, which already work quite nicely in D&D as far as I'm concerned and so its not really that impressive that the game works at that level of play.  What would be impressive to me is if Iron Heroes allows characters to compete in typical published modules for say 12th level characters without resorting to anything more than a +1 sword.As far as the Feat Mastery mechanic goes, I'm not nearly as disappointed with it as I've been disappointed by the 'mundane spellcraft' that seems to be a part of the token system.  The richochet shot, the arrow ladder (if this works, why do you need a feat for it?), and the 'hunter's (horrible name) ranged trip ability all just seem a little cheesy to me, and if the general answer to question 'how do you let PC's compete without magic?' is 'pretend it isn't magic' then it a little disappointing.  However, there are a few things that bug me about the feat mastery mechanic, at least given the partial details that we've been given.  One thing that bugs me is that I would think that feat mastery would stack with your ability score bonus in the relevant ability.  For example, 'Dodge 1' as a feat might be available to characters with DEX 12+, or to charactes with Defensive Feat Mastery +1.  'Power 10' would be available to characters with Power Feat Mastery +10 and a 10 STR, or with Power Feat Mastery +5 and a 20 STR.  But if this is the case, it certainly isn't explained that way.  I can only assume that the new feats are written in such a way that they are only fully exploitable if you have the relevant base ability, otherwise the feat will likely be able to replace the relevant base ability such that I would always be tempted to play (for instance) a Beserker with high DEX and relatively low STR knowing that the character's feat mastery of Power feats will more or less completely make up for it.  In other words, I see this as being a more general version of the problem of Power Attack being mostly advantageous to finesse fighters with low strengths.Another thing I find worrisome - and admittedly this worry might go away on seeing the actual feats - is that I am hard pressed to imagine how a feat tree can be extended out to 10 feats without the upper end feats being utterly abusable.  Can someone here show me how power attacked can be improved 9 times without making 'improved superior greater power attack' utterly broken, or is 'power attack 2' is just a synonym for 'cleave' and 'power attack 3' is just a synonym for 'great cleave'?  Lastly, if the feat trees do go out to 10 feats in at least some cases, then their will be a strong temptation to advance as far down the tree as possible.  That means that even if the new classes are getting 20 (or more) feats by 20th level, almost half (and in some cases more than half) of those feats will be spent making your character good at the one thing that that character does.  This means character abilities which are deep, but not broad, despite the increased number of abilities/feats.  It's going to be very difficult to balance the increasing marginal value of additional specialization with the marginal value of going broad, especially with feat trees this tall and (to me conceptually) unwieldy.  Looking over the feat trees of approved feats in my campaign, I see that feats like Combat Reflexes, Dodge, Expertise, Power Attack, and Toughness do open up the way to 10-14 different feats each.  BUT, on the other hand the feat tree for each is never more than about 3 feats deep and I consider this a good thing.  The fact that the vast majority of feats on the list are available by 6th level if you decide to narrow your focus is deliberate and I like it.  It makes low level characters more diverse in their abilities.  Granted, I have a few homebrew feats which require BAB of +9 to +12 which only high level characters have access to - something standard D&D doesn't have enough of - but I don't want to make too many things like that.  If you are going to do that, you might as well make all feats into class abilities.  Why wasn't limiting a few feats to higher BAB an acceptable solution?  What does feat mastery give you that this doesn't?</blockquote>

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