New Design & Development: Feats

[Cadfan]

Also, Alertness now stacks with Skill Focus: Perception.

 

[WarlockLord]

Woohoo! Stupid names RETURN!

 

[M.L. Martin]

Also, Alertness now stacks with Skill Focus: Perception.

Not necessary. They define it as a 'feat bonus', and it's possible that Skill Focus in 4E will be the same.

 

[Ruvion]

If 4e is designed to simplify (as intended):

All bonuses provided by feats would be a feat bonus.

Following this train of thought, then all bonuses provided by arcane spells (or wizard powers if you will) would be arcane bonus.

Which nicely ties in with the power source concept...martial bonus, divine bonus, etc...and I guess talents would provide one of these types of bonuses.

If these are the only types of bonuses...then the world of stacking would be quite a bit simpler than what it is now. A lot of ifs...but one can always hope.

 

[Guild Goodknife]

Interesting read, but ugh on the feat name for Golden Wyvern Adept. What is wrong with "Shape Spell" or a different descriptive name rather than playing, "lets make feats with fanciful names game" by the 4e designers?

Player: "Okay I'm taking Golden Wyvern Adept feat for my wizard."
DM: "Whats that do?"

And how is Shape Spell self explanatory? It hints on the actual use of that feat but you need to know the exact gain nevertheless. I mean, i could think of at least half a dozen other things a feat named 'Shape Spell' could do. Personaly i dislike overly bland names for feats/powers.

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

And how is Shape Spell self explanatory? It hints on the actual use of that feat but you need to know the exact gain nevertheless. I mean, i could think of at least half a dozen other things a feat named 'Shape Spell' could do. Personaly i dislike overly bland names for feats/powers.

This is particularly apt given that the feat's effects aren't anything like 3.5's Shape Spell, instead being more akin to Extraordinary Spell Aim (which also won't work as a feat name now that Spells involve attack rolls, or whatever we end up calling them). It brings back shades of some of Monte Cook's complaints with the 3.5 revision in general -- that things are similar enough to think you know what they mean, but not enough to actually be confident that you're right.

I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Golden Wyvern either, but this certainly isn't a sparkling alternative, and when you say you're taking Shape Spell for your feat, I'm still going to ask you what it does anyway.

Edit: Wait a second, does 3.5 have a Shape Spell? It's not in the SRD... it's it CArc material? Maybe I'm thinking of Sculpt Spell. The point pretty much stands either way, though.

 

[Rechan]

This isn't "Shape" spell so much as it is "Hole in the Middle" or something. You know, "The square the fighter in is uneffected - the rest get blasted."

Shape spell effects the area of effect - turning a line versus a cone versus etc etc etc.

 

[Masquerade]

I find it most interesting that, beyond tier, none of these feats have prerequisites. I also like how easily summed up all of these feats are (just one or two short sentences without pedantic explanation). As such, I hope these examples are indicative of feats in general.

 

[Guild Goodknife]

I find it most interesting that, beyond tier, none of these feats have prerequisites. I also like how easily summed up all of these feats are (just one or two short sentences without pedantic explanation). As such, I hope these examples are indicative of feats in general.

I second that! I really hope that the heroic/paragon/epic division will be the only prereq in the books! If there must be any feat chains they should be as short as possible. ^

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

I find it most interesting that, beyond tier, none of these feats have prerequisites.

I hope this proves to be the case in the final product. It was always annoying to run into feats that fit a character perfectly but had prerequisites that didn't. Combat Reflexes, for instance, has a few neat children that don't really jive with the AoO-monster concept of the parent.

It should also simplify the build process considerably. As someone who dislikes first-level play and enjoys multiclassed characters, I was always annoyed by the level of grunt work involved in figuring out whether my levels should be Bard/Crusader/Crusader/Bard, Bard/Crusader/Bard/Crusader, Bard/Bard/Crusader/Crusader, and so on and so forth. Skill rank requirements were especially annoying for those characters.