[Tome] Non-Scaling Feats For Everyone!

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Which kinds of feats are ideal for Tome, and should we have a feat for each level?

Scaling Feats (leave it the same)
3
13%
Minifeats (a feat for each level)
20
87%
 
Total votes: 23

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Hicks
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Post by Hicks »

Tome of Fiends, it was written before scaling feats were a thing
Last edited by Hicks on Mon Sep 05, 2016 1:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by JonSetanta »

Thanks Hicks. I've read it many times but couldn't place where that specific feat was.
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Post by JonSetanta »

Hard Style Qigong
[Combat]
Prereqs: BAB 1+
Bonus: Gain Damage Reduction equal to your Base Attack Bonus, penetrated by attacks from a higher BAB.


Tai Chi
[Combat]
Prereqs: BAB 1+
Bonus: Gain Deflection bonus of +2 to AC, or increase this bonus to +4 by spending a move action. This increase lasts until the beginning of your next turn.
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Post by JonSetanta »

Giant's Force
[Bloodline]
Prereq: BAB 3+
Bonus: You get +8 racial bonus to Strength but also take a -4 penalty to Intelligence.


Well it's a try. Ideally you take this, and two other feats, and you have an Ogre or at least a size Large character with a few Ogre tweaks.
Alternatively, you could just grab one of the feats and forget the rest, and be a shonen anime protagonist. Strong but stupid.
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Post by Kaelik »

If you have small feats, there is no reason to have them being giant TEXA$ size bonuses to stats of all things. In fact, you probably want literally zero of them too boost stats at all.

"Being strong" may be an essential part of being an X monster, but the only people who are going to take the feat are people who are already doing everything else to be as strong as they can. You aren't making a feat that makes people strong, you are making a feat that breaks any RNG related to Str because this character was already going to max it.

That's sort of vaguely, if not acceptable, at least tolerated, in 3.5, because Dragons have more BAB than Fighters and are stronger than Fighters already, but if you are doing literally any work for a new system, you aren't going to give that to dragons, and so giving it to already strong characters is just breaking the RNG because you want there to be a feat that breaks the RNG.

For comparison, Ogres have a Strength of 21. Hill Giants have a Strength of 25.

Orcs with an 18PB Str have a strength of 22 Before Raging. An Orc Barbarian PC could straight up wrestle a Hill Giant at level 1 and win if he was Large Size without any feats increasing his strength at all.
Last edited by Kaelik on Thu Sep 08, 2016 4:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by JonSetanta »

Kaelik wrote: Orcs with an 18PB Str have a strength of 22 Before Raging. An Orc Barbarian PC could straight up wrestle a Hill Giant at level 1 and win if he was Large Size without any feats increasing his strength at all.
I see no problem with this, as the PC is meant to have strange and unusual heroic abilities, but you are right. It's just too much.

Perhaps I should just accept that size Large and Huge can't be split up and simply work off the Tome feats respectively.

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828
Large Size [Fiend]
Your size increases to Large.
Prerequisites: Character level 5.
Benefits: If your size would normally be Medium without this feat, it increases to Large (with all the usual changes).
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Post by Kaelik »

JonSetanta wrote:
Kaelik wrote: Orcs with an 18PB Str have a strength of 22 Before Raging. An Orc Barbarian PC could straight up wrestle a Hill Giant at level 1 and win if he was Large Size without any feats increasing his strength at all.
I see no problem with this, as the PC is meant to have strange and unusual heroic abilities, but you are right. It's just too much.

Perhaps I should just accept that size Large and Huge can't be split up and simply work off the Tome feats respectively.

http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=28828
Large Size [Fiend]
Your size increases to Large.
Prerequisites: Character level 5.
Benefits: If your size would normally be Medium without this feat, it increases to Large (with all the usual changes).
...............

Is your entire existence an elaborate troll of me?

Look, it's fucking fine that an Orc Barbarian can outwrestle a Hill Giant. That's not important. The important point is that STRONG PCS ARE ALREADY AS STRONG AS GIANTS, SO IF YOU GIVE THEM A FEAT THAT MAKES THEM MORE STRONG, THEN THEY ARE TOO FUCKING STRONG AND YOU BREAK THE RNG. ESPECIALLY IF IT MAKES THEM FUCKING 8 POINTS STRONGER.

The solution is not to make your small feat give MORE THINGS! The solution is to make literally zero feats that give +8 to Strength ever.

The Large Size feat only even exists because you are supposed to be able to take Fiendish Brute levels and end up creating a Beblith, and Bebliths are not Medium.

Since being large is not always an advantage, a feat that only changed your size would be too weak for a character that only ever gets 7 feats ever across 20 levels, so being a character who instead gets bigger and stronger is the compromise position, but that compromise position breaks the RNG, and that becomes more of a problem the more your game relies on the RNG.

If you are making a small feat system, then the obvious super clear solution that any fucking idiot should be able to come up with is: "OH SHIT, DON'T MAKE ANY FEATS THAT ADD +8 TO A STAT."
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Post by JonSetanta »

How about +4?
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Post by Kaelik »

JonSetanta wrote:How about +4?
Why do you need a feat that breaks the RNG just to break the RNG? What possible point does it serve in your game, besides breaking the RNG?
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Post by JonSetanta »

If I'm breaking the RNG, then what does the Tome feat Large Size do so different?

My initial experiment was to break up powerful feats into smaller ones, supplied at every level, rather than single scaling feats that fuck up everyones' bookkeeping by level 6 or so.

Ironically I indeed have been making the same mistake. I realize that now.
But I do have some other experiments on the way...
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Post by virgil »

How about a feat that grants super strength without actually raising the stat?

http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=174573#174573
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Post by Kaelik »

JonSetanta wrote:If I'm breaking the RNG, then what does the Tome feat Large Size do so different?

My initial experiment was to break up powerful feats into smaller ones, supplied at every level, rather than single scaling feats that fuck up everyones' bookkeeping by level 6 or so.

Ironically I indeed have been making the same mistake. I realize that now.
But I do have some other experiments on the way...
The Tome Feat does break the RNG. It's really not that different except:

1) Tome is based on the idea of crazy powerful feats, so a feat breaking the RNG is slightly less of a problem.

2) Large Size was written when all the martial classes got literally nothing good, so it didn't matter if some random Core 3.5 Barbarian broke the RNG on attack and damage (especially since they already did, and the "base" RNG was really shitty damage numbers where fighters weren't supposed to do meaningful damage to monsters).

3) And then of course, Large Size is a problem in Tome games. It's still not as big a problem as Planar Binding, because Planar Binding, but the fact that you get more RNG breaking strength bonuses on classes that have high Strength and Strength based Daze DCs is a problem.
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Post by JonSetanta »

How about feats that grant permanent supernatural buffs identical to the spells they emulate?

Usually Cleric/Druid/Transmutation stuff.

Things like Enlarge or Bull's STR. It would grant Enhancement bonuses.
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Post by Leress »

JonSetanta wrote:How about feats that grant permanent supernatural buffs identical to the spells they emulate?

Usually Cleric/Druid/Transmutation stuff.

Things like Enlarge or Bull's STR. It would grant Enhancement bonuses.
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Post by JonSetanta »

I'm not so sure a feat granting at-will Feather Fall for Monks-to-be is overpowered.

Likewise, a feat granting Air Walk permanently at a higher level is fantastic for kung fu flicks.

More options, less number boosting.
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Re: [Tome] Non-Scaling Feats For Everyone!

Post by Neurosis »

JonSetanta wrote:I recently saw a cool image of an Azer (you know those flame headed dwarf people?) and thought, what if getting a burning head and/or beard was a feat?
Just a single feat. No scaling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buVOoGGYPg0
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Post by JonSetanta »

Cool song. Is that the Maryland flag I see? I'm from there..
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Post by Neurosis »

Clutch is easily in my top-five favorite bands of all time (not least because they are somehow MORE RIFTS THAN RIFTS*, which since we're only talking about the setting, not the rules, is a good thing, although their unparalleled hard-rock chops don't hurt).

That said, they've toured so much (they've been around like literally FOREVER) that at this point I think they're basically "from" everywhere, but if I had to guess, I'd guess Virginia.

*For instance, take just this one song from their new album, Psychic Warfare.
Firebirds! by Clutch wrote: Outside of Barstow
We got to living on the lam
Sometimes doing odd jobs
And sometimes living off the land
Yeah, things went sour
And the girl, she got to packing
When I asked her why
She said "There are two things you are lacking"

"Firebirds! Energy weapons!
Both of these things are interesting to me
I don't care how you get them
I need them both and I need them urgently"
Sorry, /tangent. I saw "Burning Beard" and just immediately thought CLUTCH HAS A SONG CALLED THAT!!
Last edited by Neurosis on Wed Sep 21, 2016 6:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
For a minute, I used to be "a guy" in the TTRPG "industry". Now I'm just a nobody. For the most part, it's a relief.
Trank Frollman wrote:One of the reasons we can say insightful things about stuff is that we don't have to pretend to be nice to people. By embracing active aggression, we eliminate much of the passive aggression that so paralyzes things on other gaming forums.
hogarth wrote:As the good book saith, let he who is without boners cast the first stone.
TiaC wrote:I'm not quite sure why this is an argument. (Except that Kaelik is in it, that's a good reason.)
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