Legends & Lore: A Bit More on Feats

[Klaus]

While you are right, I'm not convinced that is a bad thing. I really like the ideas of feats and prestige classes being merged in to sizable flavor packages.

Chalk me up as one who wants these feats to have *some* flavor, and not just mechanics bundled together. But I'd prefer if the flavor is as unobstrusive as possible. I see no problem with also having some flavor-heavy feats (like the Knight-Protector mentioned upthread) to fill the niche currently occupied by 4e's Themes.

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

I'd tweet this direct to mearls ...( in less than 140 char of course

Apparently I've discovered my first true sign of getting old. I can't figure out twitter...it is my "VCR flashing 'twelve=o'clock!' 'twelve=o'clock!' 'twelve=o'clock!'"

 

[Klaus]

Apparently I've discovered my first true sign of getting old. I can't figure out twitter...it is my "VCR flashing 'twelve=o'clock!' 'twelve=o'clock!' 'twelve=o'clock!'"

Done.

 

[thundershot]

Apparently I've discovered my first true sign of getting old. I can't figure out twitter...it is my "VCR flashing 'twelve=o'clock!' 'twelve=o'clock!' 'twelve=o'clock!'"

Don't feel bad. I can't figure it out either... I'm 38.

 

[JamesonCourage]

Seems a little forced. Not a bad idea at the core, but it's a stretch for the Interaction, at least. This might be a vote for turning it into something a little more meaty, like

KNIGHT-PROTECTOR
Proficiency: You gain Heavy Armor Proficiency.
Combat: CON mod DR when wearing heavy armor.
Exploration: When you take the Rear Guard position, you gain a +X bonus vs. attempts to surprise the party.
Interaction: You have a positive reputation in your homeland. NPCs from there are automatically considered Friendly.

Give the PC a role in the world, rather than just "I use armor good." That role uses armor well, but it isn't DEFINED just by armor. It also gives the DMs a meaty hook for saying, "Hey, this random shopkeep NPC is apparently from your homeland, now you get a discount!" or whatnot.

I still like this more than what we're seeing now (though I think your "exploration" perk is just a combat perk), but this seems even more forced than Vyvyan Basterd's. Regardless, these are all just rough ideas, and I think they're better than what we saw in the article. As always, play what you like

 

[mlund]

i.e. that it is an opportunity for designers to fill splatbooks with feats that grant X+Y+Z, A+B+C and then X+Y+A, X+Y+B, X+Y+C, X+Z+A, X+Z+B, X+Z+C, and so on and so on...

If that's a good opportunity based on having mega-feats that are easily "disassembable", I want to point out that we already had them disassembled in the first place when each part was a single, smaller feats.

I reiterate that the fundamental flaw with that 4E / 3.X model was that all Feats needed to be fungible barring those awful prerequisite chains.

If we assign an arbitrary metric like Character Points to a Feat, that system requires all Feats to be worth say, 2CPs. Any ability that's worth more or less than that is either unbalanced or locked into a narrow chain. On top of which adding options to a chain required nigh erratum and was seldom done.

I understand your idea that designing a bundle can be better for balance, for instance those Dodge+Mobility+SpringAttack together would have less problems if e.g. Mobility is used more rarely or worth less, as long as the whole package is worth right. A weak and a strong "sub-feat" together would compensate each other.

This is the way classes are designed, so that they don't have to worry if wizard's spells are much better than a wizard's knowledge bonus.

Indeed, if Feats are worth, say, 6CP at a go around then you can have A + B + C abilities with them being worth 3, 2, and 1 respectively. You could have X, Y, Z make up a feat with them being worth 4, 1, 1 too. Then, you can have A, B, Z or A, B, Y or even X + B but not have to worry about A, B, X combinations.

1) Feats are (or at least were, until now) meant to customize your PC on the smaller level, kind of like fine-tuning.

I think K.M.'s got that covered nicely.

2) Classes, which use the "bundle" design approach, grant their abilities gradually over many levels. Feats grant their abilities immediately, all at once, so if we now have mega-feats, we are going to have significant complexity bumps whenever our PC gains a feat.

Feats are an optional system to replace ability score increases.

The levels at which ability score increases come is part of each class, so they are factored into class progression.

Of course, spellcasters get similar (or bigger) bumps whenever they gain a new spell level

Indeed. I expect to see classes with less magical, ki, psionic, or primal custom powers to gain more ability increases (and thus opportunities for Feats if they want that complexity) over 20 levels than casters. (I also figure the first score increase for a caster will be used to gain +2 to their casting stat.)

- Marty Lund

 

[Li Shenron]

I reiterate that the fundamental flaw with that 4E / 3.X model was that all Feats needed to be fungible barring those awful prerequisite chains.

While I think the original concept of feat chains was fine, I do agree that it had problems, but for me the main problem was that it was too rigid, i.e. there were always these "root feats" like Power Attack or Dodge and Mobility that you had to take just because they were prerequisites to the feats you were really interested in. This was IMO the way they wasted an otherwise fine concept. I probably wrote many times on these boards that I would have wanted to see how a feat system worked without any prerequisite for any feat.

If we assign an arbitrary metric like Character Points to a Feat, that system requires all Feats to be worth say, 2CPs. Any ability that's worth more or less than that is either unbalanced or locked into a narrow chain. On top of which adding options to a chain required nigh erratum and was seldom done

Indeed, if Feats are worth, say, 6CP at a go around then you can have A + B + C abilities with them being worth 3, 2, and 1 respectively. You could have X, Y, Z make up a feat with them being worth 4, 1, 1 too. Then, you can have A, B, Z or A, B, Y or even X + B but not have to worry about A, B, X combinations.

I must have a completely different experience about feats in 3ed, because never I have felt a feat was overpowered to the point of house ruling it. I didn't have that many 3e books to be honest, so this could be the reason why. In any case I've never banned a feat or toned it down with house ruling (while I've done that with a few spells, for instance). OTOH, some other feats were certainly weaker on average and could use a good bump up.

Still, while in principle your idea of measuring a feat's worth is fine, I think it's wasted time, because those benefits are always going to be worth differently in different campaigns. So the only way to have a sensible measuring system is to make an assumption on what type of campaign and adventures are going to be played. This because feats cover wildly different things.

That measuring system could be worth only for combat feats, in which case yes it is possible to measure their benefits in this way. Still, with only so many feats available per character, I couldn't care less if two combat feats were unbalanced unless the unbalance was really wide. I certainly wouldn't sacrifice an entire gamestyle (the fine-tuning character customization) only to prevent character #1 to end up have a few CP more than character #2 at level 20th Which is going to happen anyway, and you know it, as soon as a splatbook makes the first mistake of offering an overpowered new feat.

Feats are an optional system to replace ability score increases.

That's the new target. It wasn't so until last May. My point is exactly that this new target (which is itself based on a target of allowing a character with feats and a character without feats at the same table, but it is not the only way to achieve that) can cause damage to other parts of the game design. The first damage seen ahead is the elimination of a valid and fairly popular gamestyle from the game, -1 to the supposedly paramount target of inclusiveness of 5e.

The second damage could be, that because it's impossible to balance combat benefits with non-combat benefits (since the latter are campaign-dependent), they may choose to silo the 3 pillars into each feats (like already suggested in this thread) which negates another valid gamestyle, that of being free of creating characters more slanted towards one pillar at the expense of the others.

 

[pemerton]

it's impossible to balance combat benefits with non-combat benefits (since the latter are campaign-dependent)

Why is this impossible? And why is non-combat so much more campaign dependent than combat?

One player in my 4e campaign has the bulk of his feats as non-combat ones (multiple skill trainings, linguist, ritual caster, etc) and also has an epic destiny whose 21st level benefit is non-combat (Sage of Ages, which grants +6 to all knowledge skills rather than the standard stat boost). As a result his PC is less effective in combat than some of the other PCs (though not too shabby) but clearly the single strongest PC in non-combat situations, especially those involving magic and lore. (But the same PC has a head slot item that boosts combat - bonuses to avoid dazing and stunning - whereas another PC whose feats are mostly, perhaps all, combat related has a head slot item that grants +2 to social skills.)

I don't think that balancing combat and non-combat need be all that hard, provided the non-combat abilities are clearly meaningful in play.

 

[Li Shenron]

Why is this impossible? And why is non-combat so much more campaign dependent than combat?

One player in my 4e campaign has the bulk of his feats as non-combat ones (multiple skill trainings, linguist, ritual caster, etc) and also has an epic destiny whose 21st level benefit is non-combat (Sage of Ages, which grants +6 to all knowledge skills rather than the standard stat boost). As a result his PC is less effective in combat than some of the other PCs (though not too shabby) but clearly the single strongest PC in non-combat situations, especially those involving magic and lore. (But the same PC has a head slot item that boosts combat - bonuses to avoid dazing and stunning - whereas another PC whose feats are mostly, perhaps all, combat related has a head slot item that grants +2 to social skills.)

I don't think that balancing combat and non-combat need be all that hard, provided the non-combat abilities are clearly meaningful in play.

Ok, saying impossible it was probably an overstatement...

I just meant that non-combat abilities tend to be more situational on average, and also more difficult to measure than combat abilities, which are more often based on numbers or at least can be measured in terms of action economy.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The first damage seen ahead is the elimination of a valid and fairly popular gamestyle from the game

Wait, I don't follow. What playstyle is invalidated by having +2 to ability scores every few levels?

The second damage could be, that because it's impossible to balance combat benefits with non-combat benefits (since the latter are campaign-dependent), they may choose to silo the 3 pillars into each feats (like already suggested in this thread) which negates another valid gamestyle, that of being free of creating characters more slanted towards one pillar at the expense of the others.

If they think it's a good idea -- which is a pretty big if. Right now the pillars don't seem to be relevant to the feat design: they're not trying to give you a way that wearing heavy armor is important in exploration, because it isn't clear that it is. We don't need to bemoan something happening that has no sign of happening yet.