Standardizing bonuses

[Asmor]

Whether through laziness or intention, there are a lot of feats out there which give untyped bonuses. I'm sure there are powers and items which do the same.

My idea is basically to require all numeric bonuses to have a type based on their source, so all feats give feat bonuses, all powers give power bonuses, and all items give item bonuses.

Are there any potential 'gotchas' I should watch out for?

 

[Nymrohd]

Several. Most untyped bonuses are so by design so that they can stack at will with anything else. Especially feats that grant untyped bonuses have to remain so or risk making other feats weaker or even useless.

 

[Asmor]

Several. Most untyped bonuses are so by design so that they can stack at will with anything else. Especially feats that grant untyped bonuses have to remain so or risk making other feats weaker or even useless.

Do you have any examples of such a feat which only works as an untyped bonus?

I'm very wary of untyped bonuses since, by definition, they stack with everything.

 

[Nymrohd]

Sure.
Attack bonuses: Action surge, blade opportunist, combat reflexes, elven precision, precise hunter
Defense bonuses: Defensive mobility, dodge giants, lost in the crowd, nimble blade,
Damage bonuses: Dragonborn frenzy, power attack, powerful charge, two-weapon fighting
Also: Fast runner

These are just heroic tier PHB feats that would not stack with each other if they were feat type bonuses.

 

[Asmor]

Actually, looking at those feats, I guess I do agree with you that a blanket typing isn't necessarily a good thing. In particular, those feats are all situational bonuses, while it seems like the ones that give feat bonuses are 'always on.'

 

[keterys]

I had penciled in ideas for a typing system that used four types:

Personal (feat, race, background, paragon path, etc), Power (Class Powers), Item (Item Powers and Properties), Circumstance

So, you could have some feats be personal and some be circumstance... just means you can't benefit from multiple circumstances at the same time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Certainly the IDEA with feats is that situational feats are intended to be untyped and stack. In fact PHB 192 paragraph 3 of "How Feats Work" actually states that outright: "These situational bonuses reward particular combat tactics."

I'm not sure why you guys were referring at all to any bonuses not provided by feats. Some specific wording possibly aside power, stat, class, race, enhancement, etc bonuses all stack and there is no 'type' associated with them. There can be keywords associated with them, as is also true with feats, but I guess I'm not sure why it would be necessary to categorize them in any way.

I suppose there might be a few cases where a DM might want to rule on specific corner cases depending on the nature of a bonus, but they generally seem to be worded in such a way as to not require that.