"Sage" Feats

[the Jester]

One of the pcs in my game has taken the Wild Sage feat (I think that's what it is called) from Primal Power. It reads, "You gain a +5 feat bonus to Nature knowledge checks and to monster knowledge checks to identify a natural creatures. In addition, choose one of the following rituals: Dowsing Rod, Portend Weather, or Traveler’s Camouflage. You master that ritual and can perform it once per day without a ritual book and without expending components."

The wording is a little unclear here- I have been ruling that the +5 bonus applies only to checks to identify natural creatures, but the player in question is of the opinion that the +5 bonus applies to all Nature knowledge checks, arguing that not all Nature checks are knowledge checks. My feeling is, that +5 bonus is huge, much better than the Skill Focus feat's piddly +3, and you get a ritual out of it. However, I don't want to chud the player's choices.

Is there an official word on this? Does anyone have an opinion to offer? Am I being a tightwad, or is the player reaching here?

For what it's worth, there is a second, similar feat, Deep Sage, that effects Dungeoneering/aberrant creature identification and gives the ability to speak and read Deep Speech.

 

[boar]

There are two ways to read the feat. It looks like you're trying to read it as:

"You gain a +5 feat bonus to (Nature knowledge checks and to monster knowledge checks) to identify a natural creature."

Read this way, the qualifying phrase "to identify a natural creature" applies to both checks. That doesn't make any sense, though, because a "nature knowledge check to identify a natural creature" and a "monster knowledge check to identify a natural creature" are two different phrases for exactly the same thing -- namely, a check against the Nature skill to identify a natural creature.

Your player is trying to read it as:

"You gain a +5 feat bonus to Nature knowledge checks and to (monster knowledge checks to identify a natural creature)."

Your player is correct. Nature knowledge checks answer questions like, "What kind of climate does this flower grow in?" You're not identifying a natural creature here, just probing general nature knowledge.

A +5 bonus to such checks may seem overly large to you if all Nature checks in your campaign happen to be knowledge checks. That's not the case generally, however: an attempt to forage food, for example, would require a Nature roll but isn't a knowledge check, and thus would not receive the bonus from the feat.

 

[Alisair Longreach]

The +5 bonus only applies to the Nature Knowledge and Monster Knowledge part of the Nature skill. The bonus do not apply to the Forage and Handle Animal parts.

As a house rule I also add these rituals: Animal Messenger (PHB), Create Campsite (PHB2) and Purify Water (Arcane Power).

 

[KarinsDad]

The Nature skill consists of 4 parts:

Forage
Handle Animals
Nature Knowledge
Monster Knowledge

This feat gives a +5 to the last two of these.

He is interpreting it as:

a) You gain a +5 feat bonus to Nature knowledge checks
b) You gain a +5 feat bonus to monster knowledge checks to identify a natural creature

You are interpreting it as

a) You gain a +5 feat bonus to Nature knowledge checks to identify a natural creature
b) You gain a +5 feat bonus to monster knowledge checks to identify a natural creature

Normally, I would agree with his interpretation. Instead of +3 with the 4 areas of the Nature skill, he gains +5 with 2 of the areas.


However, you bring up a good point with Deep Sage. There are only three areas of Dungeoneering: Dungeoneering, Forage, Monster Knowledge. Getting +5 to two of the three plus a language is a lot stronger than getting +3 to all three.


This is where WotC fails with new conditional feats. They run out of ideas, so they start putting conditional additional bonus feats in. +5 instead of +3, but only if the moon is full and it is poker night. It's pretty lame.

Both of these feats should read +3 instead of +5. Total power creep here.


With other rituals and food sources, Forage is almost never used in the game system. And Handle Animals is probably pretty darn rare in most games as well. So, you should go with his interpretation at +3 instead of the +5 of the book. Just because something is written in a WotC book does not make it balanced.

 

[chitzk0i]

Another aspect of the Nature skill i Nature-based rituals. I believe the feat was worded this way to exclude rituals.

 

[DracoSuave]

"You gain a +5 feat bonus to (Nature knowledge checks and to monster knowledge checks) to identify a natural creature."

However, not all natural monsters use the Nature check.

For example, undead are identified using the Religion skill. However, this feat grants you the bonus to identify natural undead as well.

 

[yesnomu]

With other rituals and food sources, Forage is almost never used in the game system. And Handle Animals is probably pretty darn rare in most games as well. So, you should go with his interpretation at +3 instead of the +5 of the book. Just because something is written in a WotC book does not make it balanced.

Honestly, I can't see any reason to houserule the feat. It's fairly impossible to unbalance the game with knowledge checks and rituals, and Skill Focus is not exactly a best-of-breed feat to begin with--I don't see anything wrong with printing slightly conditionally better ones. If a player wanted to take one of these feats, or pretty much any similar one, I'd let them--better that than something like (the old version of) Hero of Faith.