Rebalancing Feats

[Ashkelon]

Unless the player wants to make a character that's really good at disguising and bluffing people. Remember, feats are for optimizing, they're for specializing. That person is now going to be vastly better at those things than a character who doesn't have them, and only somewhat less powerful in other regards (a +1 vs a +2 isn't that huge a difference).

Remember that the advantage on performance and deception only applies while disguised as another person. That is a fairly small benefit. The thing is, I want to give incentive to people who want to take fun RP feats like that. Most players are find with being "good enough" at Charisma based skills that they don't care about the feat. If they are a spellcaster, they are better off maximizing their primary casting attribute. If they are a weapon user, they tend to go for the powerful combat feats. Very rarely do I see players willingly take noncombat feats like actor.

Making combat feats less potent, means that feats like actor, skilled, observant, etc all become more attractive by comparison.

Then why take away some of the most powerful parts of those feats? Taking away the damage portion of great weapon master makes it far worse, and destroys the very point of that feat. I still feel like you're vastly overvaluing a +1 to an ability score.

You just stated that taking away the DPR aspect of Great Weapon Master makes it worse. That is exactly what I am trying to do. Remember how I said I would prefer players to take feats like Actor or Skilled instead of pure Combat DPR optimized feats?

Great Weapon Master (and the other's that I changed) are far more powerful than other feats. I'm trying to rebalance things so that they are more on par with other feats. Removing the -5 to hit for +10 damage portion and replacing it with +1 strength makes the feat more balanced when compared with other combat feats. It is still quite useful, but no longer mandatory.

With my modifications, a great weapon fighter might choose, Great Weapon Master, Skilled and +1 Strength, Medium Armor Master, Charger, +1 Strength and +1 Constitution, or something else entirely. All of those options are fairly well balanced against one another. Even noncombat feats become more appealing by comparison. Before, Great Weapon Master and +2 Strength were the clearly superior options.