New Design & Development: Feats

[Sadrik]

How does a published setting, which is usually more fluff heavy, help me if I don't like the names WotC comes up with?

I think, Golden Wyvern Adept is the first feat in a "paragon path" which takes the place of the PrC system. I actually like this. If you dont want that "path in your game- ban it. Make a new path, keep the abilities but change the name of the path etc. You decide.

 

[jasin]

I find it really weird that they thought "you can make your attack in the middle of your move" was a power too specific to be taken by anyone and should be limited to particular classes, but that "you can omit areas from the effect of your wizard spells" is good enough for anyone.

 

[Sadrik]

I find it really weird that they thought "you can make your attack in the middle of your move" was a power too specific to be taken by anyone and should be limited to particular classes, but that "you can omit areas from the effect of your wizard spells" is good enough for anyone.

My guess is that spring attack will be a martial "spell" that martial characters will take and have the same types of restrictions as a wizard taking fireball.

 

[Perun]

Petty as it may sound, one of my chief concerns about 4e was that that Spot/Listen and Hide/MoveSilently would still be separate skills.

So...yay!

My list of expectations for the 4e includes:

• fixing skills(merging of some skills, removing others, etc. in general, I hope the skill system resembles that in SWSE)
• reducing the amount of magic items, as well as the characters' dependence on them, and (hopefully) fixing item creation process
• reducing/eliminating the feat (and PrC, should they remain in the game) bloat
• simplifying monsters
• keeping gnomes as one of the PH1 races

Everything else, including the wizard tradition names, is good

Since it looks like they're covering at least four out of five, I'm happy

 

[grimslade]

I don't have a complaint.

Meaningful choices are good. It appears that feats like TWF, Spring Attack, etc. are being re-dedicated and siloed off into classes. That might be good for streamlining difficult decisions for newer players, but it is indisputably bad for player choice overall.

I made a rather simple observation in response to Klaus that it is better design to allow the player the choice of just taking TWF instead of forcing him to multiclass into fighter.

Your rebuttal was that it was preferable to multiclass into fighter to make up for the shortcomings of the cleric (which, as I pointed out, are actually the shortcomings of TWF).

And yes, quite frankly, as you put it: that's a noob suggestion. Slowing down your caster progression is a sub-optimal choice on a much more staggering scale than TWF.

To create a dual weilding sword lovin' priest of Kelanen in 3E, hands down the better cleric will take TWF feat rather than 2 levels of fighter and losing an entire level of spells + 2 caster levels.
The better holy swordsman will take the 2 fighter levels (+1 BAB and an extra feat).

This is a design flaw with 3E. You have to stay cleric or appropriate PrC to be a cleric at a decent power level to ECL. The TWF feat blows chunks for a cleric because of the stat requirement. 15+ dex on a cleric? A cleric who takes TWF for a feat wasted one of his limited feats and is sub-optimal. If the cleric takes some fighter levels he has diluted his caster levels and is sub-optimal. Where is the good design? Where is the increased choice? A cleric must be a caster first -melee second or else he is sub-optimal. So whether the class design is flawed or the feat is flawed; there is a flaw that needs to be corrected.

The simple thing would be to fix the feat, but that would be errata not a new edition. 4E seems to be addressing the larger change of the class/multiclass system. I feel this is a good choice/design because although the feat system in 3E allowed many choices, it was only an illusion of choice because most feat choices were sub-optimal for classes. Tie the big feats to classes that can use them and use the 4E feats to customize those talent trees. It does help 'noob' proof the game but that is a good thing. If you're able enough to tinker with sub-optimal feat choices in 3E, I am sure you will be able to jigger the multiclass system in 4E.

I will also add that clerics (or druids) are horrible examples to use for this discussion because they bring way to much to the table to begin with. The 3E cleric is a juggernaught that needs no feats or 'build' to be effective. It is a class without peer in the PHB and a PrC amongst NPC classes when you add in splat books.

 

[AllisterH]

That would be even worse than using the name golden wyvern in both places since now you'd have a disconnect between one version and the other and that means lack of clarity.

Personally, I very much prefer my feats and powers to be relatively clearly named for what they do rather than have some flowery label that has no direct meaning. Sculpt Spell or even Exclude Area would be far clearer to work with as a DM handling several NPCs at a time.

Er, how so?

Even if the name was "Exclude Area", until you play with it a few times, you still will have to go to the PHB to see what the Feat actually does.

Exclude Area tells me nothing just like Power Attack tells me nothing intrinsically. Really, is there ANY feat that you can decipher how it works without reading the text?

 

[Guild Goodknife]

And I implied that renaming an odd PrC or spell now and then isn't quite the same as renaming a core class or feat.

Well, here we disagree. Not much to discuss then.

Dude, I'm not getting that common sense you mentioned. How does a published setting, which is usually more fluff heavy, help me if I don't like the names WotC comes up with?

It wont help you if yout don't like the names in general. It helps you if you find it to much work to tinker with published stuff like classes, feats or spells until they fit your homebrew.
Apart from that, it's not like D&D has ever been an absolutly setting neutral game. There has been always stuff in the corebooks that wouldnt fit in somebodys selfmade campaign world and that's all i tried to point put, dude.

 

[Cadfan]

I find it really weird that they thought "you can make your attack in the middle of your move" was a power too specific to be taken by anyone and should be limited to particular classes, but that "you can omit areas from the effect of your wizard spells" is good enough for anyone.

Emphasis added.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Exclude Area tells me nothing just like Power Attack tells me nothing intrinsically. Really, is there ANY feat that you can decipher how it works without reading the text?

But it is easier to learn, memorise, whatever. If the name (your mental bookmark) has a connection to the content, you have an easier time learning it, not forgetting it. While not a full-fledged mnemonic, it's still helpful.

Furthermore, what bothers me: Pre-determined names for reference-heavy things. Class names? How often do you look it up? Once per level-up, hence it's easy to "ignore" the name.
Feats and spells? Much more often, even on the table, as in "Hey, pass the book, I need to look up 'Golden Wyvern Adept'!" - then you have the flavour at the table.

Cheers, LT.

 

[DamnedChoir]

I was really, really looking forward to 4E as a marked improvement for D&D...until I got the impression that there was going to be even more Straightjacketing than 3E, which dropped my enthusiasm quite a bit.

Defenders shouldn't avoid attacks, but absorb them! Fighter with a bow? I don't think so!

Sigh.