Absentminded_Wizard at [unixtime wrote:1089020049[/unixtime]]
Then why do spells like GMW and Divine Favor scale with level? If scaling is okay for spells, then why not feats?
GMW, shield of faith and barkskin scale because they're granting bonuses you're getting normally from more valuable magical items. So the spell basicalyl replaces a magic item. this doesn't really cause any balance problems, aside from giving spellcasters cheap gear. But you aren't giving them a bonus they couldn't normally have because they don't stack.
Divine favor is an anomaly. It scales too much IMO for a 1st level spell, and should probably be cut to a +3/+3 flat bonus because right now it's useless at low levels and broken at high levels. But lemme instead use divine power, which is actually a good example of a balanced scaling buff. DP takes an action to cast (or uses the quickened action), which the feat doesn't. As written in the core this isn't a broken spell. However, it does become broken if you make it persistent. Though I have always said that persistent spell is broken, and I always will.
And as a whole spells tend to scale because you can only cast 1 spell per round. Having cone of cold memorized doesn't make your fireball any better for instance. Where as with feats, you can have multiple feats and magic items working at once. When you use dodge, you can also use weapon spec, weapon focus, spring attack, elusive target, cleave and power attack in the same round. Spells aren't like that. That's why they scale.
There's a fallacy in your argument, and it's based on the fact that player characters and NPCs are different things and made with different rules. When we introduce the ability for player characters to get very high ACs, or even complete immunity to one or more kinds of physical attacks (such as granting incorporeality), we are in no way making Fighters hosed - we aren't even making them weaker. We are hosing Giant Scorpions, and Giant Scorpions alone.
You're really not hosing giant scorpions though, because they'll still probably be able to hit, you're hosing balors, nightcrawlers and all the other monsters that aren't ridiculous like giant scorpions. Now those monsters in turn have to use magical attacks, because they can't count on physical attacks much at all.
And once you start accepting that all non-Tarrasque style monsters use magic attacks exclusively then you've hosed fighters. Because half of what fighters do is get great ACs and good hp, so they can win at normal physical combat. Once you accept as a design goal that physical combat becomes obsolete, well that means everything shifts to magical combat, that means everything the fighter has focused on for the past 20 levels is now obsolete.
Oddly enough you've made the feat
worse by improving it, because when you improved it you accepted the design paradigm that the feat doesn't matter because only a select few monsters use physical combat and you geared the feat to combat the giant scorpion while totally making the balor and pit fiend unable to hit the character, therefore completely forcing them to resort to magical combat exclusively.
For the fighter's hit points to mean something, creatures of all kinds have to keep using physical combat. I'm not just talking about Tarrasque style creatures, I'm talking about balors, undead, golems, dragons, NPC fighters, NPC rogues, etc. etc. and it has to work reasonably well, otherwise they'll all use magic or they'll simply be chumps.
I don't have any problem with having Tarrasque style creatures require magic to deal with, because those creatures are a distinct minority. If you feel there's a problem with them, then I would redesign those creatures, as opposed to trying to redesign a general feat which ends up making them the only creatures capable of landing a hit.
If the goal is to level the playing field agaisnt huge monstrosities, then you simply create a feat that does something like doubles the size penalty to attack, or gives a +4 bonus against gargantuan or bigger creatures. If you think characters need help against big stuff, then target the fix exclusively there, instead of making NPC rogue and fighter opponents as well as any number of other powerful creatures totally obsolete.