power bonus stacking

[unan oranis]

Has anyone played enough to know how much the rule of "bonuses not stacking if from identicle sources" affects the game?

It seems like a pain to double check that all the bonuses aren't overlapping from simular sources... it makes sense for enhancment bonuses but for powers and feats??


Also, you can only use one action point per encounter, but the monsters can use as many as they have? I guess they don't get to really use their healing surges so fairs fair...



--

unan

 

[Plane Sailing]

I've not seen the books yet, but since we know some things give a 'power bonus', some things give a 'feat bonus' and some things give a 'race bonus', that might be the whole stacking thing covered there.

So it if a warlord attempts to give you a +4 power bonus to hit and a cleric attempts to give you a +1 power bonus to hit, you only get the +4.

This will prevent the stacking madness which could blight 3e if it got out of hand.

 

[unan oranis]

yeah thats exactly how it works...

the only thing worse than power-stacking-madness would be power-stacking-checking-insanity

probably it will all work fine, not sure yet though I've only played one session and just learned about it

 

[Xzylvador]

I disliked this most for my rogue... Quick Draw (draw weapons as part of the action in which you use 'em and +2 feat bonus to Initiative) and Improved Initiative (+4 feat bonus to initiative). No stacking, so Improved Initiative only improves init with +2 if you take both. Would it be broken to allow feat stacking? Or rule that some do and some don't?

 

[Grazzt]

Also, you can only use one action point per encounter, but the monsters can use as many as they have? I guess they don't get to really use their healing surges so fairs fair...

unan

Correct. Even Solo monsters only have 2 Action Points by default (unless the DM rules otherwise). And depending on the tier of monster, they only have 1, 2, or 3 surges they can use.

 

[FourthBear]

My guess is that allowing feat stacking won't break things with just the feats in the Core Rules. I think the problem will almost inevitably come a couple years down the road, after supplements and articles have presented a much greater variety of feats. For example, Quick Draw and Improved Initiative giving a total of +6 might not seem so bad, but when you add them together with the new Bloodied feat from the Realms supplement, Superior Initiative from Heroes of Speed and the race specific feat Gnomish Alacrity, thing could get pretty silly.

 

[Aegir]

In the aforementioned case of +init feats, I'd prolly allow Imp. Init as an unnamed bonus, but all others would be a feat bonus unless they state otherwise. This is also a practice I'd likely extend to all other similar cases: the basic version of any direct bonus feat (Imp Init, Weapon Prof/Focus, Skill Focus, etc) would be unnamed, but anything else would be listed as a feat bonus, so they'd stack with the "generic" bonus feat, but overlap with everything else.