Prestige Class Feat tax?

[Tilenas]

This would be forked from the 'Toughness Feat Alternatives' thread, if I'd only found the right button.

No alternative feat is needed or should be allowed. It is fairly common for Prestige classes to have a crap feat as part of its requirement to make you pay something for it.

That is something I had never thought about. I guess it makes sense from a balancing POV, but in terms of game design in general, I find the idea just horrible.

Tell me if I am missing something here:
A feat is a boon you get every three levels. Making characters take a feat they otherwise would never consider (be it because the feat is simply not 'good' enough, or because it doesn't fit the character concept), just to compensate for overpowered class features, is admitting that you as a designer have screwed up that particular PrC. But instead of fixing it, you're using the feat as a counterweight, i.e. perverting it by turning it into something negative.

I find this notion harder to accept than that some PrCs are build on certain stylistic concepts that happen to include underpowered feats.

I've always wondered why the PsiFist has Wild Talent as a prereq, while the Pyrokineticist and the War Mind have to have a pre-existing PP reserve. Having both requirements, which stylistically accomplish the same thing, appear side-by-side, makes it hard to believe that one of them is accidental, i.e. a result of sloppy design or whatever. While Wild Talent isn't an utter waste like e.g. Toughness, it's nowhere near the best psionic feats available in the XPH. It could serve as a feat tax, but compared to the PP reserve prereq, it only applies to certain characters, i.e. psionic races that get into War Mind for free, but somewhat unbefittingly have to take WT for PsiFist.

So I'm still unsure of what to make of this feat tax. Any thoughts/opinions?

 

[Dandu]

I don't believe in forcing players to take sucky feats for prestige classes either.

One of the problems with prestige classes in 3.5 is that you have to plan for them, which is interesting because if, for RP related reasons, your Paladin falls, he cannot become a Blackguard right away - he must have taken the feats Cleave, Improved Sunder, and Power Attack, as well as cross classed 5 ranks into Hide, in order to become a Blackguard.

What.

So, in order to fall and dedicate yourself to evil, you must have either planned it out in advance - perhaps your character subconsciously started on the road to hell before his start of darkness - or take levels in, say, Rogue between the fall and embracing of evil, which strikes me as a complication of the "Paladin falls, becomes evil bastard" process, especially since Sundering and Hiding aren't really... evil.

Honestly, the entire system could use some work...

 

[Talonblaze]

Well, there are some useless feats out there that lead to better progressions. It's really a choice of taking the lesser of two evils that you got in mind and roll with it.

Even Toughness has a few feats it opens up for to add to its usefulness.

For Prestige classes, who knows what the real logic is. Just that it's there. Doesn't always make sense to those on the receiving end, the devs seemed to thing it fit. So there's probably a reason.

After all, what's one feat compared to epic powers? In the long run, sure it will look useless as will probably most feats players take. But if it gets you to where you want you simply have these options; Take it anyways and do it as normal. Try a different way of obtaining a similar build. Or, throw yourself at the mercy of the DM to house rule it to be a bit more acceptable.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In some cases, the feats really do make sense- they form the basis for which some or all of the PrCl's core abilities are or are based off of. That a prereq feat may otherwise suck is, I think, usually coincidental.

By that, I mean I don't think that it was an intentional design directive that PrCls had to have a sucky feat tax built into them, just that in many cases, the thematically/mechanically appropriate feats were just poorly designed.

 

[Tilenas]

In some cases, the feats really do make sense- they form the basis for which some or all of the PrCl's core abilities are or are based off of. That a prereq feat may otherwise suck is, I think, usually coincidental.

By that, I mean I don't think that it was an intentional design directive that PrCls had to have a sucky feat tax built into them, just that in many cases, the thematically/mechanically appropriate feats were just poorly designed.

Yeah, I'm inclined to give them some credit there, too. Though it's basically choosing incompetence over malice, which isn't a comfortable thought at all.

 

[Androrc]

Yeah, I'm inclined to give them some credit there, too. Though it's basically choosing incompetence over malice, which isn't a comfortable thought at all.

I don't think it's incompetence... why would choosing a feat because it works thematically with the prestige class be incompetence?

 

[Dandu]

When you choose a bad feat in favor of a better alternative that is both appropriately powerful and equally flavorful.

ie, Dwarven Defender could have gone for Combat Expertise instead of Dodge.

 

[kitcik]

Yes, when picking feats, i always advise people to get out of Dodge.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

PrC prereqs generally come in three varieties: stuff that the PrC actually uses or needs to some degree (Frenzied Berserker and Power Attack, Incantatrix and a metamagic feat, etc.), stuff that isn't needed or used but that most characters taking the PrCs would have anyways (e.g. Spellcraft ranks for casting PrCs), or useless feat or skill taxes (lots of examples). The second type is usually there just as a "You must be at least level X to enter" entry barrier, the third type is just dead weight to counterbalance real or imagined power, and you're probably not going to enter the PrC without wanting the first type anyway.

I've found that in the vast majority of cases you can just flat-out remove all PrC prerequisites and instead simply require that you be at least level X, where X is the minimum level you could feasibly achieve all the prerequisites (and whether X counts early-entry tricks or not is up to your taste as a DM). You might even want to drop that level in cases like the Blackguard, where there's really no reason you shouldn't be able to enter at level 2. In the few cases where a feat/skill tax might actually make a measurable power difference (e.g. Incantatrix requiring Iron Will instead of another metamagic), you can either leave the original prereqs or require more stringent prereqs that actually make sense. I've run games where all but the most powerful PrCs and feats had their prereqs removed or altered in this way, and the major side effect was that the players were able to take feats and PrCs they wanted to take that made sense at the time, rather than pre-planning for 10 levels or saying "Well, that feat's cool, but it has 6 prereqs...."

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yes, when picking feats, i always advise people to get out of Dodge.

Very nice wordplay. Very nice indeed!