Absentminded_Wizard at [unixtime wrote:1089774699[/unixtime]]I'm sure RC will have a heart attack at the idea of scaling spellcaster-specific feats, but does it really hurt for wizards to have Scaling Spell Focus if all the save-boosting feats scale too?
Yeah, indeed I would.
Scaling spellcaster feats are really a bad idea, because SR is balanced on the fact that it's CR +11 or somewhere around there. When spell penetration grants a scaling benefit, that throws off the curve, and that's a bad thing. Now the curve has to be CR+15 at higher levels and so forth.
As for spell focus scaling, DCs are generally high enough already for one, and save or dies are already awesome. A scaling bonus for pure direct damage might be ok, but for save or dies, that's just too powerful. Because you only need one spell focus feat and your opponents need 3 save enhancing feats to compensate.
Maybe both the Cleric and the Fighter have Cool Dodge and Cool Weapon Focus. However, the Fighter has Cool Whirlwind Attack, Cool Save Bonus Increase, Cool Charge, and Cool Weapon Specialization.
Well, it depends on what these other feats do as well. Assuming you upgrade All feats, then maybe you could have scaling feats to keep the fighter on top of the cleric, but you'd still just be really inflating the game on the PC end, and you'd have to significantly boost a lot of the monsters too for them to keep up.
And then all you're really doing is inflating everytihng else, when it'd be easier just to deflate the caster's buffs. If divine favor/power/righteous mgiht granted fewer bonuses, then clerics wouldn't own and you could get back to a reasonable level of sanity.
Feats should be better, granted, but not +5 better... a +5 bonus is the Base attack difference between a 20th level fighter and a 20th level cleric. That's a lot...
I don't think the answer is to simply write off +5 as being a minor bonus. Just making the numbers bigger won't solve anything, it just devalues the d20 in the long run, and makes the game more predictable, because the percentages are changing by 25% now instead of 5%. It also devalues circumstantial modifiers like flanking, because a +2 is much more insignificant in the shadow of a +5.