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*Pathfinder & Starfinder
On The Horrible Naming
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<blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 3911731" data-attributes="member: 57267"><p>Nobody is saying (or at least I'm not saying) that any feat should explain its mechanics in its name. That would be absurd.</p><p></p><p>Currently, in 3.5e, I have over 1200 feats on a single list I typed up. I left off hundreds of feats I thought were pretty worthless for the sake of 'slimming' down the list to 1200 or so. A few of those feats have goofy names like Robilar's Gambit, but the vast majority of them have descriptive names.</p><p></p><p>When I, or a player, scans my list looking for feats to take, we don't want to have to look up hundreds of them to figure out what they do so we can decide which to take.</p><p></p><p>Thankfully, 3.5e core books are 100% descriptive. At the very least, they are descriptive enough that a fighter knows he doesn't need to look up Spell Focus, and a mage knows he doesn't need to look up Two-Weapon Defense. Some of the splat books deviated a little, but still most of those feats use descriptive names too.</p><p></p><p>For the most part, once a person has looked up a feat like Power Attack once, they will be able to see Power Attack in some monster's stat block and will have a pretty good idea what it does, since the name is suggestive of the mechanic that they already read.</p><p></p><p>Robilar's Gambit is not very suggestive of the mechanic, but at least that mechanic does involve sacrificing something of value to gain an advantage. It's bad, but still marginally suggestive.</p><p></p><p>But Golden Wyvern Adept has no suggestion, at all, of the mechanic. In fact, it might even be a monk fighting style, or even a fighter fighting style (who's to say that in some campaign there couldn't be a school of fighters who train whip-daggers coated with poison and refer to attacking with these weapons as stinging like a wyvern - maybe these guys call them selves Golden Wyvern Adepts.)</p><p></p><p>So yeah, I don't like feats, or spells, or any other game mechanic, where the name has no reference to the mechanic.</p><p></p><p>Feats like this on my 1200 feat list are very irritating.</p><p></p><p>And one day, 4e might have 1200 feats. I sure hope they don't have such crappy meaningless names. If the core books have meaningless names, they will set the standard for the rest of the splat books, and more are sure to follow.</p><p></p><p>I hope WotC nips this is in the bud and sets a good example of meaningful feat names for all the books to follow.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DM_Blake, post: 3911731, member: 57267"] Nobody is saying (or at least I'm not saying) that any feat should explain its mechanics in its name. That would be absurd. Currently, in 3.5e, I have over 1200 feats on a single list I typed up. I left off hundreds of feats I thought were pretty worthless for the sake of 'slimming' down the list to 1200 or so. A few of those feats have goofy names like Robilar's Gambit, but the vast majority of them have descriptive names. When I, or a player, scans my list looking for feats to take, we don't want to have to look up hundreds of them to figure out what they do so we can decide which to take. Thankfully, 3.5e core books are 100% descriptive. At the very least, they are descriptive enough that a fighter knows he doesn't need to look up Spell Focus, and a mage knows he doesn't need to look up Two-Weapon Defense. Some of the splat books deviated a little, but still most of those feats use descriptive names too. For the most part, once a person has looked up a feat like Power Attack once, they will be able to see Power Attack in some monster's stat block and will have a pretty good idea what it does, since the name is suggestive of the mechanic that they already read. Robilar's Gambit is not very suggestive of the mechanic, but at least that mechanic does involve sacrificing something of value to gain an advantage. It's bad, but still marginally suggestive. But Golden Wyvern Adept has no suggestion, at all, of the mechanic. In fact, it might even be a monk fighting style, or even a fighter fighting style (who's to say that in some campaign there couldn't be a school of fighters who train whip-daggers coated with poison and refer to attacking with these weapons as stinging like a wyvern - maybe these guys call them selves Golden Wyvern Adepts.) So yeah, I don't like feats, or spells, or any other game mechanic, where the name has no reference to the mechanic. Feats like this on my 1200 feat list are very irritating. And one day, 4e might have 1200 feats. I sure hope they don't have such crappy meaningless names. If the core books have meaningless names, they will set the standard for the rest of the splat books, and more are sure to follow. I hope WotC nips this is in the bud and sets a good example of meaningful feat names for all the books to follow. [/QUOTE]
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