New Design & Development: Feats

[Jefe Bergenstein]

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.

And honestly, can anyone see being a wizard and NOT taking this feat? To me that means its either broken, or needs to be a class ability.

 

[The Little Raven]

And honestly, can anyone see being a wizard and NOT taking this feat?

If I'm playing a wizard of the Emerald Frost, I definitely wouldn't have this feat.

To me that means its either broken, or needs to be a class ability.

Class-only feats have existed since 3rd Edition. Nothing new.

 

[Xethreau]

I have a few things to say to various things said in this thread so far:

-There is no evidence of Two-Weapon Fighting moving to a class power. Many classes in 4e art has been seen dual wielding. Including a tiefling fighter, and the other tiefling on the front of the Races and Classes book.

-I am not too happy with the name "Golden Wevern Adept" myself, and since the other names kind of stink too, I think an 'in-between' name like "Spell Sculpting Adept" might be suitable.

-I *really* like the idea that Najal speculated, and agree/hope that a system like that is put into place.

-I do not think that Golden Wyvern will any more of an organization than the field of Biology is in real life. There may be organizations who study the area, or perhaps even dedicate themselves to it, but I doubt such a thing is necessary to run the world.

-As a person who was not introduced to some of the 'classic' flavor of D&D during its prime, I was not much of a fan of some of the systems in place during 3e (including Wizard's schools, rules on planes, etc.), and found myself having to do a lot of reflavoring many many things. Even though this time around, I am going to build my campaign world roughly arround 'core,' I have little problems with changing fluff to fit my needs, and this is partualy from the practice I got in 3e. Please keep an open mind, people, when listening to fluff. [Example] Just because there is a Peylor in core does not mean that that has to be your campaign's sun god.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

My problem with the wizard traditions whether physical or philosophical organization is that they don't mean anything and have no resonance. Golden Wyvern? Iron Sigil Snake? utterly meaningless and don't create any idea of what they're about.

Whereas the old-style spell schools had deeper meaning that was hard coded into both culture and the English language. Need a master of death magic necromancy leaps out at you, the word has been used for centuries and has cultural grip. On top of that its a literal description of what it does. Wizard who changes things. Transmutation. The root meanings of the word describe to you just what the school is supposed to do. While people may argue a bit over exactly where particular spells belonged they could be easily moved around between schools to fit if necessary.

But these new traditions aren't broken up like that, they're treated more like the divisions between fighting styles of a martial art. And the names themselves have no association with any meaning let alone a connection with a general theme of magic. So it becomes more difficult to move certain features you don't think thematically belong together because they've been built into the mechanics with too strong a relation.

 

[Voss]

And honestly, can anyone see being a wizard and NOT taking this feat? To me that means its either broken, or needs to be a class ability.

I can easily see a reason not to take this feat. If blasting spells aren't totally revamped and made useful, there really is no reason to take it.
Alternately, if you can still make an illusionist/enchanter style wizard, there isn't much of a need for it.
At best, even for a blaster, its a minor perk that allows you to place the AoE just a little more precisely without annoying your party members.

To be honest, all of these feats strike me as significantly low-power. If every feat is on the same level and will be through ALL the splat books, thats fine, but I don't expect Wizards to manage that.

Toughness is just toughness + improved toughness. 2 extremely weak feats making one fairly weak feat.

The combat advantage one may be OK, depending on what exactly that means.

The action point thing is just insulting. You want me to spend a very limited mid-level resource to spend another limited resource in a limited situation that only occurs if I fail a perception check? Bzzt. Try again. The deny combat advantage feat just sounds better all around, and I can spend a low level feat, and no other resources. Even just allowing a reroll to avoid the surprise would be better than this nonsense.


Not happy with specific classes eating the general, useful feats, either.
Or a horrible mechanic like action points being shoehorned in.

The first real crunchy preview isn't supposed to turn me off, folks! Its bad enough I'll have to rip out the horrible naming conventions and ignore fully half the PHB races. And I liked the idea of 4th edition!


Oh, and some of you are becoming very certain that your speculation about how multi-classing will work is almost certain fact. You might want to rein in that optimism, even if only to avoid personal disappoint, let alone muddying up the rumour mill.

 

[Rechan]

And honestly, can anyone see being a wizard and NOT taking this feat? To me that means its either broken, or needs to be a class ability.

1) The feat specifies powers centered on the mage. These are things like Arcane Strikes and stuff that come out of the wizard's staff. Not every wizard is going to specialize in their staff.

2) As it was quoted earlier from the Design and Development: Wizards article, Golden Wyvern wizards specialize in blasting with their staves. So I'm betting money this feat is only going to be taken by Golden Wyvern wizards. If every wizard is a golden wyvern, then yes, everyone will take it. But an Iron Sigil wizard may not be able to take it.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

And thus the class glut of 3.5.

Really feats were a great counter to this issue.

Are you trying to say that the "class glut" was significantly worse than the feat glut? There were a lot of prestige classes, sure. But there were more feats by at least an order of magnitude, if not two.

 

[Gloombunny]

2) As it was quoted earlier from the Design and Development: Wizards article, Golden Wyvern wizards specialize in blasting with their staves. So I'm betting money this feat is only going to be taken by Golden Wyvern wizards. If every wizard is a golden wyvern, then yes, everyone will take it. But an Iron Sigil wizard may not be able to take it.

Ideally, any wizard would be able to take it, but it would be a stronger choice for a wizard who picked the right talents to go with it. There would golden wyvern wizards and iron sigil wizards because the system naturally encourages that, rather than having it hard-coded in. And you could have a wizard who dabbles in both styles, and ideally that would be just as effective overall.

 

[Rechan]

Ideally, any wizard would be able to take it, but it would be a stronger choice for a wizard who picked the right talents to go with it. There would golden wyvern wizards and iron sigil wizards because the system naturally encourages that, rather than having it hard-coded in. And you could have a wizard who dabbles in both styles, and ideally that would be just as effective overall.

It's possible. We don't know if there's some sort of pre-requisit.

If there's no pre-requisit (aside from say, 'You need Golden Wyvern Initiate to get Golden Wyvern Adept'), then a wizard could spend all their feats nabbing all the low hanging fruit from the various schools.

 

[jasin]

And honestly, can anyone see being a wizard and NOT taking this feat? To me that means its either broken, or needs to be a class ability.

Well, that depends on what spells, powers and other feats look like.

In the context of 3E, it would be a very attractive feat, but even now, I could imagine a wizard that focuses on (say) enchantments or rays or summoning and has more important things to take.