Regional/Racial Feats

[Lith]

Sea Farer
You are a veteran of ship born life, having spent time on raiders, fishers, or whalers.
Regions: Caedmon
Benefit: You gain a +2 on Balance checks and
Swimming checks.

 

[Emiricol]

Sea Farer
You are a veteran of ship born life, having spent time on raiders, fishers, or whalers.
Regions: Caedmon
Benefit: You gain a +3 on Balance checks and Swimming checks.

The traditional outlay is +2 to two skills, or +3 to one. Is the +3/+3 on this intentional?

 

[Lith]

It was a typo,

 

[Northman]

Lith, I would keep it +3/+3. This is a regional feat that can only be taken by those from Caedmon. So it's not available to other regions. That means by being from Caedmon you can't be from somewhere else and get their feats.

Also, +2 balance and +2 swim... I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who would take that over most other feats. In my experience the +2/+2 feats are rarely taken if ever. Making it +3/+3 then makes it worth thinking about.

 

[Emiricol]

I don't think we should break the official guidelines casually. +2/+2 and +3 are official WotC rulings. While I agree that both Swim and Balance are not the most common skills, I don't see it as "broken" either.

Naturally I'll bow to whatever the group says, but I think keeping within guidelines is more important than an extra 1 point to swim and balance. That's my opinion, at any rate.

 

[DMEntropy]

+3/+3 is a giant leap on to the slippery slope of munchkinism. +2/+2 or +3 is the convention set by the d20 rules system of WotC. Keep it that way.

 

[Renfield]

No, munchkinism is a chunk of what Mongoose publishes, or at least I think so, my players are minmaxers to the extreme and love Mongoose publishing I've tolerated it thus far... I'd say if people want a good example of regional feats they should take a look at the Forgotten Realms campaign setting book for examples, I think Kingdoms of Kalamar has some good ones too, and seeing as they're regional feats further restricted outside the standard prerequisites they should give some sort of edge over the standard feats, however only a slight edge. My personal opinion is that +3/+3 isn't too powerful, it gives a nice advantage in the earlier levels though like many feats balances out by the higher levels, not at all close to munchkinism. Though I must admit I am biased and have issues with WoTC and their ideas of game balancing so perhaps +2/+2 isn't so bad.

At the risk of making things more complicated I've always liked the idea of customising, making characters a tad more unique in a sense, making small options like an additional 4 skill points to divide between Swim and Balance checks so a character who preferrs blance to swim might pump +3 to that and +1 to balance. It's not much of a difference but it's nice to have options. BTW on the off topic note of customization, anyone know if D20 GURPS is any good? Worth buying at all?

 

[Northman]

The standard is +2/+2. But these are regional feats and should have an edge, as Ren said. Anyone can take +2/+2 feats. Big Whoop. Throw in the fact no one ever takes those +2/+2 feats and there seems plenty of reason to use +3/+3.

A regional feat should make someone say, "Hmmm, If I'm from Caedmon I could make a really cool sailor type..."

Oh, and Ren, giving points is an interesting idea, but there is a point max for skills at first level and you'd end up hitting those. Might be useless points.

 

[Renfield]

I didn't mean it like that, they'd be the bonus points one would get for getting a +2/+2 feat, only if they preffer one of the skills over the other they'd get +1/+3 or something of the sort. But yeah, I've never really considered any of the +2/+2 feats however, getting the +3/+3 would be hard to pass up depending on the character.

 

[Emiricol]

*bump*

I've put some feats in the submission forum as well.