Treating Available Feats like Spell slots

[Judging__Eagle]

Like it says in the title; instead of the current set up whereby a character "picks" a feat (whut? No really, from a linguistic viewpoint, "picking a feat" is beyond stupid; a creature should "perform" a feat); they instead can choose to 'spend' their "Feats" over the course of an adventure to perform tasks that they needed to complete within the adventure.

Thus spellcasters aren't locked forever more into a single Crafting or Metamagic feat that they are now forever trying to jury-rig into solving their current problems.

Likewise, and more importantly; martialists are able to "perform" feats over the course of an adventure in a manner that remotely resembles the actions of source material characters.

Going for the Tome of Necromacy & Tome of Fiends set up whereby Feats are restricted by Level or CR makes the most sense. However, I also get the feeling that many "Level 1" Martial Feats will likely have higher tiered analogues.

[Kaelik]

Ah, the age old question, to ignore JE's stupid thread because he is stupid an incapable of thought and let it die, or to once more, into the breach, try to teach dumb JE, and perhaps someone else might benefit...

JE, you skipped the step where you figure out why feats are a good thing you want to include in the game.

If all characters spontaneously cast from all feats in existence on some kind of resource schedule, then they aren't character customization, they are just another class independent (mostly) resource management system that everyone has, and you have to wonder why having some asshole pull out immunity to fire when he's fireballed is supposed to be on a separate not class related schedule instead of just being a class feature somewhere.

If feats don't make two characters with the same class different characters all the time, so that faced with the same situation they solve it in different ways, then what the fuck is the point of feats?

[the_taken]

I came up with the concept of giving people a feat slot progression like a wizard's spell slot progression, and then assigned levels to the feats to fit in feat level slots. Does that work?

[Kaelik]

I came up with the concept of giving people a feat slot progression like a wizard's spell slot progression, and then assigned levels to the feats to fit in feat level slots. Does that work?

Again, what the fuck do feats do in that system?

[the_taken]

I came up with the concept of giving people a feat slot progression like a wizard's spell slot progression, and then assigned levels to the feats to fit in feat level slots. Does that work?

Again, what the fuck do feats do in that system?

Same as before, you just get more of them but also indirectly have a minimum character level to qualify for them.

After combining it with you Skill Groups system and hacking in custom XP tables and AD&D multi-classing, I think I have a more balanced game, though the characters have crap tons of abilities really fast. I can't play test though, because I'm a bad DM and am already playing too many games.

[Kaelik]

Wait, so you pick your feats on level up, and you just get more of them, and that's basically the only change? So you don't pick them on a daily or some other basis, so they are nothing like spell slots? I mean sure, whatever, giving people a new low level feat at the same time as a higher level feat isn't objectively terrible.

[Leress]

Same as before, you just get more of them but also indirectly have a minimum character level to qualify for them.

After combining it with you Skill Groups system and hacking in custom XP tables and AD&D multi-classing, I think I have a more balanced game, though the characters have crap tons of abilities really fast. I can't play test though, because I'm a bad DM and am already playing too many games.

Error...

[the_taken]

Error...

I implied that I'm bad at running sessions and putting together campaigns, but if you want to poke at my game design skills you can go eat a creamy sausage.

---

The problem I see with being able to swap out feats is that it can break immersion, especially with character concept feats like Toughness or Deceitful. Why would someone be able to suddenly become less tough or more honest overnight, then have the option to go back to being that way the next morning? (Even if they are shit feats no optimizer would take ever. Immersion!)

[Occluded Sun]

Honestly, I think this would be a poor hack to D&D, but a great base on which to build an entirely new game.

Have you considered designing a rule system yourself, starting from first principles?

[Kaelik]

Error...

I implied that I'm bad at running sessions and putting together campaigns, but if you want to poke at my game design skills you can go eat a creamy sausage.

---

The problem I see with being able to swap out feats is that it can break immersion, especially with character concept feats like Toughness or Deceitful. Why would someone be able to suddenly become less tough or more honest overnight, then have the option to go back to being that way the next morning? (Even if they are shit feats no optimizer would take ever. Immersion!)

1) Your game design principles include characters with the same XP being different levels, they are objectively garbage, so I guess you will be catering a hell of a lot of creamy sausage.

2) I agree that swapping out feats is not a very good system (or at least not without signicificant traing time), but to my mind, swapping them out on some system or another is the only thing that can really be meant by "making feats like spell slots."

[Rawbeard]

"I didn't prepare Cleave today"

[Occluded Sun]

What if you established that it was only possible to change one feat every unit of time, say an in-game day?

So if a very powerful feat has pre-requisites, you'd have to plan for it in advance (as now), and you'd be unwilling to get rid of its supporting elements at a whim.

[codeGlaze]

What if the "slots" were more like... Array slots? You then only allow specific sets of powers to be slottable feats.

Then you have access to different arrays in different "stances"?

So your feats would act more like equipment, almost.
The stance system has,already been done, though. And that already sounds super "Jacky" as I'm typing it out.

I feel like feat slots could be interesting... But im,having difficulty thinking of scenarios where it would "work".

[Leress]

Error...

I implied that I'm bad at running sessions and putting together campaigns, but if you want to poke at my game design skills you can go eat a creamy sausage.

I am glad you care about my dietary intake.

Really, you can switch around feats, which most are not even worth writing down once let alone multiple times. Using custom XP tables for...reasons, to be fair I thought people around stop using XP because it was worthless accounting an it being a hold over from older RPGs.


So, Nom Nom, motherfucker.

[OgreBattle]

By performing feats do you mean you gain that feat and keep it, or you just use it once that event?

creamy sausage

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4496 ... t-linguine

[Judging__Eagle]

I mean something along the lines where creatures "feats" are counted as "clearing/resetting" once an adventure finishes; and in subsequent adventures the "feats" they will perform are closer to source-material/reality.

A fighter wouldn't so much "learn" cleave, as decide that cleaving is how they'll solve combats over the course of an adventure.

Basically, making "fighters" more like wizards; whereby they can remotely adjust and evolve their tactics or methods without feeling like they have to build some sort of feat-chain. Right now, the feat system is more like sorcerers, once you've learned Cleave, it's the only thing you can ever prepare. You will be unlikely to ever expect to Fight Defensively or Whirlwind.

The reason that I'm advocating for this is mostly to help "organic" players who don't ever have any idea or inkling to develop and stick to their character's actual build specialization. Specifically I got this idea because the amount of times that I've seen martialists with Tome [Combat] feats not using their feats every time the opportunities presented themselves in combat outnumbers the amount of times that a RoW Fighter ends encounters 30-40 CRs above themselves in a round's worth of actions.

Assuming that any amount of players will always pick the same feats in the exact same tactical situation should be self-evident. Except that such an asinine statement assumes that all players are the exact same in their mental appreciation of the current encounter's situation, as well as also assuming the totally insane impossibility that the tactical situation is exactly the same down to the results output by the RNG the exact same results no matter what the difference taken in actions actually is.

An other, more extreme, change in the same vein could be that Feats not only "occupy" a limited resource (i.e. sufficient class levels); but also occupy "time" that they will limit a creature's choices. Possibly measures of time that are smaller than an adventure.

Obviously, "highest" tier feats should be less changeable; but "lower" conceptually powerful ideas should certainly be interchangeable.

The other direction would be to simply make all martial feats into combat maneuvers any character can perform; while actually investing in a martial feat simply makes success greater. Because really "Picking a specific enemy to Dodge" is not a feat that should be considered anywhere close to "Ignoring the somatic/verbal components of spellcasting" or "Be the child of an Outsider"

[Occluded Sun]

Except there are so many problems with wizard-style preparation...

What if you went with a sorcerer model instead? Fighters have a list of chosen options that they can select elements from as needed. And perhaps have to pay some kind of cost to change elements, once they're selected.

So you don't have to worry too much about not choosing Cleave for the day when you end up facing lots of mooks. But if you keep switching between Cleave and Weapon Specialization, you run out of resources.

[Kaelik]

Except there are so many problems with wizard-style preparation...

What if you went with a sorcerer model instead? Fighters have a list of chosen options that they can select elements from as needed. And perhaps have to pay some kind of cost to change elements, once they're selected.

So you don't have to worry too much about not choosing Cleave for the day when you end up facing lots of mooks. But if you keep switching between Cleave and Weapon Specialization, you run out of resources.

Actually he's advocating the Beguiler/Rainbow Servant method.

Where every day a Fighter wakes up and the first time he runs into enemies he selects from every single feat ever written what he wants to do for that fight.

[Occluded Sun]

Then I think the relative power of feats would need to be adjusted. If you can choose, say, two feats from a very long list, each feat must be generally about as good as any other, and only specific conditions make one more valuable.

And a lot of feats become meaningless. Weapon Specialization: Maces is exactly the same as WS: Axes in terms of choice. And collapsing them into a single feat might not be the best bet. Simply gaining extra to-hit and/or damage is hard to evaluate and compare with things like Whirlwind Attack.

[hyzmarca]

Here is my suggestion. Go with Permanent Feats, which are permanent methods of character customization and Materia Feats, which come from magical glowing rocks that are mined from the Earth by the evil power company and slotted into your weapons and armor. Also get rid of the Fighter class and replace it with the SOLDIER class, all caps.

[Prak]

Actually I could see a sort of Specialization thing for martial characters, where feats are grouped into basically spheres, and each adventure the martial type gets to "Spec Cleaving" or "Spec Archery" and it basically says "you have all the feats up to your character level for this adventure"

So, I guess-

Cleaving Specialty
You specialize in hacking down great numbers of small enemies.
1st: Power Attack
2nd: Cleave
4th: Great Cleave
6th: Whirlwind (why the fuck does this require the "I'm hard to hit" chain?)
(etc)

Maybe it cares about how many feat slots you have, because some groupings, like Cleave, above, peter out pretty quickly, so if you're 12th level, then you get to take Cleaving Specialty and, Iunno, Archey Specialty for your next 3 feats.

[Judging__Eagle]

I'd probably (if I wanted to go the d20 route) classify Feats into some form of tiers:

Mortal (CR >1 to CR 5)
Where your trash that should just be combat options; the way defensive fighting & power attack were treated in RoW {Dodge, Track, Cleave, Craft Consumables}

Epic (CR 6 to CR 10)
All blatantly supernatural feats {Prescient Defense, Nightstalk, Sweeping Strike, Craft Focus}

Legendary (CR 11 to CR 15)
Implausibly supernatural feats {Invisible Guard, Windhunt, Blitzing Hew, Craft Artifact}
[The Epic Level Handbook might have material for these?]

Godly (CR 16+)
Ignored. Alternately: Campaign defining feats {Planar Ruse, Astral Trace, Juggernaut Smite, Craft Demiplane}

Most likely; feats that are "lower" than your current tier don't permanently lock a characters potential feats. While feats of your current tier cannot be unlearned until you level up.

Also, no feat chains. Mortal tier feats like Dodge or Cleave retain their value compared to Prescient Senses or Sweeping Strike because they can be switched out for situationally appropriate choices. The fact that you can't get every feat shouldn't mean that a character/player can't see a lower-power option as a viable stopgap.

What Frank said about Races of War's failures in its feats regarding the fact that limited choices are as paralyzing as too many choices is part of what got me thinking about "feat slots" in the first place. Feats that did only give raw numbers should instead provide a new choice that are in the same vein. Feats that are pure number boosts; should probably die. Weapon Focus [bonus to attack/damage] has to be changed [perhaps to: weapons of [Type], count as Magic in your use when you spend 1 minute assessing them], but Combat School [e.g. certain combat actions trigger combat maneuvers] can stay in. Feats that give horizontal power growth should be the entirety of choices.

[Occluded Sun]

I don't think people should be able to choose, at will, from all the available options. Otherwise people start making the same choices, because one set of options is likely to be better, even if it's merely situational.

Perfect balance is improbable, but there should be multiple strategies available with different costs and benefits.

[Lokey]

Is material a misspelling of martial? What kind of games of DnD do you run where casters aren't already ridiculously OP and you remove one of the few limitations (granted crafting is only like two feats out of several feat package choices and wiz gets a lot of them free at level 1 and the other tier 1s get at least something).

[Ice9]

I've seen this as a suggestion for the Fighter. It has some potential, but:
1) This is involved enough to be a character's primary resource mechanic. So it should be only for certain classes that don't otherwise get one.
2) Picking from all feats ever during combat is shit, don't do it.
3) Picking from all feats ever while physically at the table is moderately shit, don't do it often.

So I would have some kind of mechanic like:
1) Fighters get X stances, probably increasing with level. Switching stances is a swift action.
2) A stance is Y feats, which might also increase with level.
3) Changing out the whole contents of a stance takes some downtime, like scribing new spells would be - maybe a week.
4) Occasionally (like 1-2/day), you can switch one feat in a stance for something else, lasting for that day. The equivalent of Wizards leaving an empty slot to prepare on the fly.

Feats that were made for this mechanic should be made to involve as little recalculating as possible. Rerolls or activated bonuses would probably be better than constant bonuses.