Sean Reynolds' Feat Point system

[Heretic Apostate]

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/featpointsystem.html

So, what do y'all think? And given the criteria Sean lists, how would you handle non-PHB feats? (E.g., the splat books, the FRCS, d20 publishers, and so forth.)

 

[Chacal]

http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/featpointsystem.html

So, what do y'all think? And given the criteria Sean lists, how would you handle non-PHB feats? (E.g., the splat books, the FRCS, d20 publishers, and so forth.)

Not a bad Idea, but it has some strange side effects, like having 2 basic metamagics feats for the original price of 1 feat.

I can see the idea getting popular for players, because it's basically
-get more feats
-get feats that the DM was hesitating to allow, at a cost


For flavor, these costs could be campaign specific or race specific.

It short, it has potential but it involves lot of time/argument to set the costs.

Thanks for the link

Chacal

 

[Tessarael]

Not a bad Idea, but it has some strange side effects, like having 2 basic metamagics feats for the original price of 1 feat. [..]

Keep in mind that some of the metamagic feats (e.g. extending range, area) are relatively weak compared to some other feats. I like the way Monte Cook handled this in Arcana Unearthed: the Modify Spell feat basically allows you to do several PHB feats.

Just my thoughts ...

 

[Aaron2]

Using a 10 point scale seem awfully fiddly to me. If you buy a 6 or 7 point feat you've got to keep track of a dinky amount of points for later.

I was thinking of just having feats and half-feats.


Aaron

 

[Kemrain]

This is an awsome idea! I think it's great, and I'm deffinately going to use it IMC. Some feats just aren't worth it, and now you can get around gimping your character for the sake of story (not that I'm against that or think it's gimping, but still.) It makes the character I'm currently playing up for a new feet this level, and possibly 2 the next, and not only aren't they overpowered feats, they're things I've asked the GM if I can try to do without the feats anyways. (Really loosely ruled game, so it's allowed in some instances.) Hell, it makes the character I'm playing much more viable, and firmly entrenches him as the party's fighter. (Rog 4 Ftr 1 Rgr 1)

It should be playtested a little, and taken with a grain of salt, as some people could come up with really odd ways of getting more than makes sense, but overall, I love it! Consiter it added to the Great Folder of Kemrain's Gamestuff.

- Kemrain the Jerk who Prints things with Company Paper.

 

[FrankTrollman]

This was designed by a monkey.

One of the examples is that 3.5 Two Weapon Fighting is "better" than Weapon Focus because it gives you extra attacks. Two Weapon Fighting does nothing of the sort - it divides your attacks as the otherwise equivalent character would have a greatsword instead.

TWF is a joke, and WF is gravy. The "point system" - while perhaps laudable in concept - was designed by someone with no math talents at all. You'd be better off just having everyone roll dice to see how many feats they got.

-Frank

 

[Kemrain]

This was designed by a monkey.

One of the examples is that 3.5 Two Weapon Fighting is "better" than Weapon Focus because it gives you extra attacks. Two Weapon Fighting does nothing of the sort - it divides your attacks as the otherwise equivalent character would have a greatsword instead.

TWF is a joke, and WF is gravy. The "point system" - while perhaps laudable in concept - was designed by someone with no math talents at all. You'd be better off just having everyone roll dice to see how many feats they got.

-Frank

Assign whatever costs you want, the idea that some feats are worth less than others, and should cost less, is a good one. If you think the math is broken, please, by all means, make up new scores! And share them! Anyone can call it stupid, but if you can come up with a better way of doing it, that isn't stupid, you're doing it, and us, a service.

- Kemrain the Dis-Mathed.

 

[FrankTrollman]

If you could numerically assign actual values to the degree to which feats were larger than each other - you could likewise numerically increase the smaller feats until they were balanced.

If Combat Expertise isn't large enoguh compared to Power Attack, it can be numerically enchanced until it is.

Period.

-Frank

 

[RandomUsernamehmimo71]

FrankTrollman, I think you're right in that you /could/ balance feats using this, and, initally assumed that WoTC likely had a system internally to do just that.. Of late, I'm starting to wonder if they do any work trying to balance things, though..

The nice thing about a system of allowing feats to have more flexibility is that is that is Does allow for things to be better balanced, in the long term. Instead of trying to make sure "Run" is as powerful as "Power Attack", WoTC could look at each of them, run the numbers, play balance them in several hundred games, and give diversity.

I'm not sure there is any advantage in forcing all feats to be of equal power level. Some are, inherently, weaker in what they do. Why is it wrong to give the player the ability to take two lessser abilities, rather than one greater one?

Forcing everything to the same level seems to relying on oversimplification. Granularity is useful..

Colin

 

[FrankTrollman]

And I really think that there is room for half feats. Perhaps a half feat that gives +2 to one skill - so we could get rid of all those redundant feats that all do exactly the same thing (add +2 to two skills).

But having 70% feats isn't doing anybody any favors - if something is that close to half a feat, it should be half a feat - noone should ever have 30% of a feat unspent or something stupid like that.

But at that point we might as well hand out twice as many feats and charge two feat slots for some of the cooler feats (like Cleave). The sad fact of the matter is that even among gamers, people do not handle fractions well - and it should be rounded up to whole numbers whenever possible.

-Frank