Feats/Wondrous Items based on videogames [3.5th ed] (PEACH)

[DanielLC]

I'm sure at least some of these have been done before. I only decided to do this because I just saw someone do one. I can't find ground pound, though.

Double Jump [General]
Prerequisites: At least 3 jump skill, BAB +3.
Benefits: You may now jump midair as a supernatural abilities. You can't do it again until you land. The practical purposes include: doubling your jump distance, jumping around corners, stopping falling damage, and jumping out of a pit trap before you hit the bottom.
Normal: You can't jump midair.
Wondrous Item version:
Boot of Double Jump
Faint transmutation, CL 3rd; Craft Wondrous Item, Jump, creator must have 5 ranks in the Jump skill, price 7,000 gp; Weight 1/2 pound.

Triple Jump [General]
Prerequisites: At least 5 jump skill. Double jump. BAB+5
Benefits: You may jump midair a second time.
Wondrous Item version:
Other Boot of Double Jump
Faint transmutation, CL 3rd; Craft Wondrous Item, Jump, creator must have 5 ranks in the Jump skill, price 7,000 gp; Weight 1/2 pound.

Wall Jump [General]
Prerequisites: Jump 3, BAB+3.
Benefits: If you jump into a wall, you may jump off as if you were doing a double jump.
Normal: You probably have to take some penalty.
Special: You can do this even if you jumped onto this wall from another wall, effectively letting you climb narrow hallways. This does not count as floor for the purposes of double jump. You can only jump perpendicularly to the wall, though you can hit it at any angle.
Wondrous Item version:
Boots of Wall Jump
Faint transmutation, CL 3rd; Craft Wondrous Item, Spider Climb, Jump, creator must have 3 ranks in the Jump skill, price 12,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

Air Control [General]
Prerequisites: Jump 3, Tumble 3, BAB+3.
Benefits: You can move horizontally as if you were a poor flier as a supernatural ability. Vertically, you fall as you normally would.
Special: This can be combined with wall jump to allow you to effectively climb walls, if you can jump far enough for it to work. It can also be combined with levitate for crude flight.
Wondrous Item version:
Belt of Impossible Acrobatics
Faint transmutation, CL 3rd; Craft Wondrous Item, Levitate, creator must have 3 ranks in the Jump and Tumble skills, price 18,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

Greater Air Control [General]
Prerequisites: Tumble 5, Air Control, BAB +5
Benefits: You can move horizontally as an average flier.
Wondrous Item version:
Belt of Absurd Acrobatics
Faint transmutation, CL 5rd; Craft Wondrous Item, Levitate, creator must have 3 ranks in the Jump and 5 in the Tumble skills, price 30,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

Ground Pound [General]
Prerequisites: Jump 3, Tumble 3, BAB+5
Benefits: As a supernatural ability, you may stop midair, do a flip, then hit the ground really fast. You take no damage, but whatever's below you takes 3d6 points of damage for every 200 pounds you weigh (equivalent to you being an object falling 30 feet.
Special: You may use this to stop falling damage. If you do a Ground Pound from higher than 10 feet, it's simply treated as falling from wherever you did the Ground Pound. If you use this as an attack, you make a touch attack against the target.
Wondrous Item version:
Underwear of Leadfall
Faint transmutation, CL 5th; Craft Wondrous Item, Magic Missile, creator must have 3 ranks in the Jump and Tumble skills, price 20,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

Constant Falling Speed [General]
Prerequisites: Jump 3, BAB+3.
Benefits: As a supernatural ability, you only fall 30 feet per round. If you are jumping, this allows you to move however far you jumped again for every 30 feet you go down.
Special: This does not prevent falling damage. If you fall into an antimagic field, you are instantly accelerated to the speed you should be falling.
Wondrous Item version:
Robe of Slowfall
Faint transmutation, CL 1st; Craft Wondrous Item, Feather Fall, price 2,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

Ladder Physics [General]
Prerequisites: Climb 3. BAB+3
Benefits: As a supernatural ability, you can climb a ladder while using both your hands for something else and looking in any direction.
Wondrous Item version:
Gloves of No-Hand-Climbing
Faint transmutation, CL 2nd; Craft Wondrous Item, Spider Climb, creator must have 3 ranks in the Climb skill, price 12,000 gp.

Greater Ladder Physics [General]
Prerequisites: Ladder Physics, Climb 5, BAB+5.
Benefits: You may treat anything you can climb as a ladder for the purposes of this feat.
Wondrous Item version:
Gauntlets of No-Hand-Climbing.
Faint transmutation, CL 3rd; Craft Wondrous Item, Spider Climb, creator must have 5 ranks in the Climb skill, price 18,000 gp; Weight 1lb.

Edge Gravity [General]
Prerequisites: +3 bonus to reflex saves.
Benefits: You cannot accidentally fall off of a ledge, such as into a pit trap.
Special: You can still be bull rushed or otherwise pushed off of a ledge.
Wondrous Item version:
Boots of Steadiness.
Faint transmutation, CL 2nd; Craft Wondrous Item, Cat's Grace, price 8,000 gp; Weight 1lb.

Greater Edge Gravity [General]
Prerequisites: Edge Gravity, 10 Balance, BAB+5.
Benefits: As a supernatural ability, anything strong enough to carry you is treated as a floor. For example, you can run at full speed without penalty.
Special: This includes little tiny ledges jutting out of walls that you can't even fit your foot on.
Wondrous Item version:
Boots of Unfailing Balance.
Moderate transmutation, CL 4th; Craft Wondrous Item, Levitate, creator must have 3 ranks in the Jump skill, price 16,000 gp; Weight 1lb.

----
Does anyone know of anything else I should add?

Major Edit: increased prerequisites and made Wondrous Item versions.

[TSED]

Some one's been playing a combination of Devil May Cry... and... 4th ed? Might want to specify that in the title. I know next to nothing about 4th and have even less interest in it.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

No, it's 3.5. See the reference to Reflex save bonus in there? That's sure as hell not 4e.

Hmmm...I think you did forget at least one :smallbiggrin:.

Checkpoint Reached[General]
Prerequisites: Character level 15th
Benefit: Once per day, when reduced to -10 hit points or below, you may ignore the attack and instead regain hit points equal to half your normal total hit points.
Normal: Upon reaching -10 hit points, you are dead.

[DanielLC]

I also know next to nothing about 4th ed. I haven't been playing too much Devil May Cry. I've been reading too much TV Tropes (tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VideoGamePhysics). I'll add that this is for 3.5th ed. Someone tell me if it doesn't matter.

[Godskook]

Coyote Edge Walk [General]
Benefits: You may continue traveling across a chasm as if the chasm wasn't there. At the end of each move action, roll a will save versus DC 15 and DC 25. If you fail them both, you don't realize there's an edge. If you make both, you wisely don't look done. If you roll between them, you fall.
Normal: If you walk off an edge, you fall.

[Soup of Kings]

Head Stomp [General]
By keeping your knees bent as you fall and snapping your legs out straight as you near the ground, you can kick downward, landing much harder than normal. You can use this to your advantage in combat.

Prerequisite: Jump 5 ranks.


Someone else wanna figure it out from there on? I fail too hard XD

[Ascension]

They'd need higher skill requirements if you wanted to use them seriously, but they're at least good for a laugh.

[DanielLC]

Head Stomp currently has no advantage over Ground Pound. How about:

Head Bounce [General]
Prerequisite: Jump 5 ranks.
Benefits: If you jump on an opponent and make a successful touch attack, you deal 1d6 damage, make an automatic trip attempt, and can jump off of them again.
Normal: You would not be able to jump back off of them, and would probably fall prone yourself.
Special: If you fail the touch attack, you finish your move and your opponent gets an attack of opportunity on you. As long as you don't miss, you can continue jumping on people indefinitely.

I don't actually play this game (with the exception of a single session of an old edition) so I don't know how high the skills should be, though these shouldn't be used seriously in any case. I think the main use would be if you want to stat out videogame characters. Also, Head Bounce would be helpful for stating out a checker.

[MageSparrowhawk]

they actually could work really well as skill tricks....I'm pretty sure those are from the complete...adventurer? yeah.
and I agree with Ascension, they need higher skill requirements if they're going to stay as feats.

[Zeta Kai]

Am I the only one who has a problem with any of these?

I mean, these are cool Super Smash Brothers-style feats. A little goofy & kooky, but in some games, these could work just fine.

But the prerequisites are completely borked, which makes these feats broken as all hell. Let's take your average 1st-level Human Fighter. Now, he gets 3 feats at 1st level. He could easily pick up Double Jump, Wall Jump, & Air Control, just by spending 3 skill ranks in Jump, which is no real investment. Compared to other 1st level characters, my bouncing fighter might as well have wings.

Can anyone see how this could be a bit unbalancing? No? Well, let's take it to the next level. Literally.

At 2nd level, my bouncing fighter can invest another 2 ranks in Jump, & make a couple of interesting choices. I can take Triple Jump, & only touch the ground when I'm feeling sporting, or I can take Greater Air Control, & just make the DM cry & close his book in disgust. Yay for me, I broke the game at second level, without hardly trying.

The basic point that I'm trying to make is that the prerequisites are laughably low, which allows any yin-yang to do absolutely insane things on a regular basis. I know that that's sort of the point for many players, but there has to be some balance. Unless your running a Monty-Hall-style game, these feats need to be appropriately restricted.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Agreed, although I'll admit I wasn't looking at them for balance, but rather for amusement. Hence the lack of critique on the low requirements.

[Dancing_Zephyr]

Ukemi [General]
Prerequisites: Tumble 5 ranks.
Benefits: Once per round you can avoid being knocked prone.
Normal: Recovering from a prone position is a move action.

[Draco Ignifer]

Zeta - At level 5, any wizard can do way more than this. It's not unbalancing... Yes, you get peasants jumping around and going "woohoo!", but it'll only make a difference, if at all, from level 1 to 4.

[MageSparrowhawk]

While Draco has a good point, there is still the problem of a limited number of times spells can duplicate these abilities. These feats are on at all times, and spells like jump and feather fall are still limited in uses/day.

These should have a level requirement of at least 6 or 7. Maybe higher. Other than that, these look cool...

[Zeta Kai]

Zeta - At level 5, any wizard can do way more than this. It's not unbalancing... Yes, you get peasants jumping around and going "woohoo!", but it'll only make a difference, if at all, from level 1 to 4.

Don't give me that. Are we playing the same game. Sure, if you read the boards, some optimizing min-maxxing math-gods can show you how a tweaked-out wizard using 8 splatbooks can pwn the Tarrasque at level 2. But in an actual game, with an actual DM, your not gonna be able to argue that kind of cheese. And even if you could, it's still obvious blatant cheese.

But who care, right? Still, your statement that these feats are not unbalancing is bizarre to say the least. Compare these to ANY PUBLISHED FEAT IN EXISTENCE. Any of them. Go ahead, I'll wait.









Done? Okay, good.

Now, do you see a difference? I sure do. At first level, I can take a published feat, & get any one of the following:

A +2 bonus to 2 different skills
A +3 bonus to a single skill
A +2 bonus to a single saving throw
A +3 bonus to my HP
A +4 bonus to my Initiative
An enhancement to my spells, in exchange for casting them from a higher spell slot that I might not have
Some other minor benefit, which may be useful in some limited way

...Or I can take one of these feats at first level, & make absolute hash out of the DM's expectations of what a PC character should be capable of for the first 5-10 levels. Don't get me wrong, these feats are fun & interesting. But they are essentially giving you at-will spell-like abilities, which are not equal to most feats IN ANY WAY. It will make a huge difference in any game where they are allowed at all, & will probably break the game at these low levels.

D20 is just not designed for players to have these powers at-will at 1st level; it's as simple as that.

[Debihuman]

Sometimes, it's okay to do the crazy cartoony stuff even if the prerequisites are way too low. Personally, I thought these were a hoot--unbalanced but still a hoot.

Some of these need to come with their own sound effects: head bounce gets that boingy-boingy sound as each victim is bounced upon.

As for making these more adaptable to a real game: you can always increase the Jump requirement to more ranks. You could make Double Jump a requirement for both triple jump and wall jump.

What would be an appropriate prequisite for Air Control --that's too much like flying if you ask me. On the other hand, making the ability to levitate a prerequisite wouldn't be too bad. Now you know what to do with those boots of levitation.

Debby

[Roderick_BR]

Parkout[General]
Prerequisites: Tumble 5 ranks, Jump 5 ranks, Climb 5 ranks, Run
Benefits: You can move at your full speed while climbing. When jumping long distances, you can make a Tumble check (DC equal to the previous Jump check +5) to grab a support to hang off. If you succeed, you can make an additional jump forward (DC equal to the previous Jump check +5, this DC keeps increasing for each additional jump) Until you fail a check (being subject to falling damage as normal), or lands (either because you want to stop, or because there's no more support points). Each additional jump allow you to jump up to your maximum jumping distance. You also reduce fall damage by 1d6. A tumble check (normal DC) reduces fall damage by 3d6 instead.
To use this ability, you must be wearing light or no armor and unemcumbered.
Normal: You move at half speed when climbing, and can't make additional jumps by holding on additional supports.

Inspired on old games like Prince Persia and Alladin (Snes).

[Flickerdart]

Intuitive Command[General]
Prereqs: Telepathy, CHA 16+
Benefits: You may issue orders to underlings without communicating verbally, regardless of the range. An underling is defined as an NPC of lower HD than you, of whom you are a commanding superior within the ranks of an organization or through the virtue of the Leadership feat.
As a free action, you are instantly aware of the amount of HP that any given underling as remaining.

Absolute Command[General]
Prereqs: Intuitive Command, CHA 20+, ability to use Mind-Affecting spells or SLAs
Benefits: Underlings cannot disobey orders given through Intuitive Command. If those orders are dangerous, they are entitled to a Will saving throw (DC 10+CHA modifier+your level) to resist the command. Taking this feat decreases your Leadership (but not Thrallherd) score by 1.

RTS yay.

[Soup of Kings]

Parkout[General]

That's not a happy typo. :smallbiggrin:

[Dogmantra]

They're NOT hallucinogenic!
Prereqs:Craft Alchemy 6 Ranks, Jump 3 ranks
Benefits: If you find a mushroom, you may eat it as a swift action. This confers all the benefits of an Enlarge Person spell, as if cast by a wizard of your character level
Normal: Eating mushrooms off the ground probably gives you food poisoning.

[TSED]

See, I was assuming that it was 4th ed because I read somewhere that their skills don't really reach 3.5 levels. That a +2 bonus is always relevant. Etc.

Seriously, you can hit level 15 and still find feats like triple jump harsh to get. They definitely need higher prereqs before I can even look at them without going 'blagh, broken.'

[Cieyrin]

Comparing balance of feats based off what the Wizard can do isn't a good way of going about this. Feats do nifty things and these would definitely fit better as Skill Tricks, from Complete Scoundrel. I do agree with Zeta that the prereqs are horribly low for what they do.

Also at Zeta, a tiny nitpick on your example Fighter, in that none of these feats are Combat feats that can be selected as a Fighter Bonus feat, so you'd have to wait a bit longer than what your example suggests =p.

Now, to skew this even further, I would almost say that I can do a number of these things already w/o these feats, just by horribly abusing Jump (and possibly a little psionics. Bear with me on this), which can be accomplished with one word: Thri-Kreen. Believe me, one of the funnest characters I've ever played was a Thri-Kreen with the Up the Walls feat and a levels of Psion for those useful Nomad powers and building towards the Elocater PRC was all I needed to do epic level jumping without being anywhere near that level. Whether it was getting to the roof by bouncing between a pair of alley walls or completely avoiding city streets by jumping roof to roof or even running up a wall and then leaping at a flying opponent to grapple his happy ass out of the air, this Thri-Kreen could do it. He made the Prince of Persia look like a school boy playing hookie in comparison.

Anyways, I digress. Now that I'm looking at Complete Scoundrel, I can see that we can already do Wall Jump by utilizing Leaping Climber and Wall Jumper, the first to get you on the wall and the second to leap from it, which would be your Move and Standard for the turn. The problem with this approach is that Skill tricks can only be done once per encounter or minute, so you'd have to utilize one of the Trickster PRCs to get you extra uses of those skill tricks to continue upwards. Either that or make a new Skill Trick, which I guess I'll coin as Wall Bounce.

Wall Bounce [Movement]
Why stop after making a leap and a bounce when you you can make it to the top?
Prerequisite: Leaping Climber, Wall Jumper, Climb 8 ranks, Jump 8 ranks
Benefits: You can climb a set of parallel walls by jumping from surface to surface. Make a Jump check to start the climb, treating the jump as if you had a running start, as per Leaping Climber. You can then jump to the other wall and continue to bounce till the end of your movement, treating each jump as if you had a running start. Using Wall Bounce is a full round action.

Now with the above, you can do your crazy wall jumping action and also fake it by using the prerequisite skill tricks. To make it particularly viable, you'll want to get some speed increases and skill bonuses so you can manage to get up to the top, probably leaving this in the province of monks and scouts or those with access to the proper magics (potions of expeditious retreat are your friend :smallbiggrin:).

Let me do an example to show it in action, so that we're all on the same page:
Elana, a 6th level Human Monk, has 9 ranks of Climb and Jump and Tumble, Skill Focus(Jump), Daredevil Athlete (3/day as an immediate action, get +5 on physical skill checks, including Jump), Acrobatic and Freerunner (Learn 2 new movement skill tricks, raise the skill trick limit by 1). Her skill tricks are Extreme Jump (If you make a horizontal jump of 10', you may move an additional 10' this round), Leaping Climber, Wall Bounce and Wall Jumper. Her Strength is 16 and Dexterity is 14. She's drank a potion of jump CL 1 and she's going to try to Wall Bounce up a a pair of alley walls 10' apart to the roof 30' up to escape her pursuers. Her total Jump bonus is 9 (ranks) + 3 (Skill Focus) + 2 (Acrobatic) + 8 (movement speed of 50') + 3 (Strength bonus) + 10 (jump), for a total of +35.

She makes her first jump roll of 15, for a total of 50, which gets her up 12.5 feet. She then bounces off that wall to the opposite wall, rolling a 12, getting her a Jump check of 47, easily clearing the gap between walls and gaining her another 11.75 feet, making her move so far a distance of ~28 feet. She bounces again off that wall, rolling a 16, for a check of 51, which allows her to jump a maximum of 12.75 feet up. She decides to only go up another 6 feet, which just clears the roof and lands her 14 feet past the lip and traveling a total distance of 42 feet.

So, you can see that all these jumps get a little confusing mathematically and I'll end the post here, as it's getting too bloody long, anyways. I may come back to write up more skill tricks later, though.

[DanielLC]

Can someone tell me what to change the prerequisites to, or at least give me some idea? Like, should I change 3s to 5s and 5s to 10s or what?

I don't really see why these would be that broken. Splitting up parties is a bad idea, so increasing the mobility of one party member, no matter how much, wouldn't make that big a difference, would it? If they take three feats so that they could climb walls, if they bring a long enough rope they could get the rest of the party up the wall, but you could do pretty much the same thing with a grappling hook.

It seems weird to give a large prerequisite for double jump, as that would mean that the jump their doubling is a long one. Then again, characters that can double jump generally have unrealistically big normal jumps.

And now I'll add a ridiculously overpowered and a ridiculously underpowered feat.

Command and Conquer Economy [General]
Prerequisites: Absolute Command.
Benefits: All buildings can be built 365 times as fast as normal. Resources can be gathered 30 times as fast as normal. You can make an underling pop into existence in a day for the cost it would take to train them.
Penalties: You can only do one thing at a time in any building.
Special: This does not allow you to train more units than your leadership score allows.

Pause [General]
Prerequisites: None.
Benefits: As a supernatural ability, you can stop time for everything except your own mind as long as you want. This allows you to take your time thinking of what to do.
Normal: You'd do this anyway, but it would annoy your DM.
Special: This doesn't explain why you can talk to your other party members, so you'll still annoy your DM.

[Enlong]

Not sure if this quite fits here, but here's one I mde, based on Metal Gear Solid 3's character The End.


Eternal Rest
You have learned of a form of death-like sleep that allows you to delay your final end.
Prerequisites: Venerable age.
Benefits: At will, you may enter a death-like sleep. In this state, your aging slows to 1/10th of its normal rate, and you cannot die of old age. If you wake from this sleep after your death of old age would have come, you still have one week left, and you may not re-enter the sleep. Rousing yourself from this sleep is a full-round action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

[Dienekes]

Konami Code
Benefit: During the face where every player is sitting down to start the game, but before the GM starts describing events or a player makes any action, whichever happens first. The player may stand up and yell "Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right A B." Upon saying this the players character gains any 5 items they wish, as though they somehow gained them between the events of the last session and the current session. At the end of the session all these items are lost.

[Kylarra]

Konami Code
Benefit: During the face where every player is sitting down to start the game, but before the GM starts describing events or a player makes any action, whichever happens first. The player may stand up and yell "Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right A B." Upon saying this the players character gains any 5 items they wish, as though they somehow gained them between the events of the last session and the current session. At the end of the session all these items are lost.Shouldn't you get 27 extra lives? (or 10x depending on how you want to play the math from contra) :smallwink:

[Pyrusticia]

Wall Jump [General]
Prerequisites: Jump 3.
Benefits: If you jump into a wall, you may jump off as if you were doing a double jump.
Normal: You probably have to take some penalty.
Special: You can do this even if you jumped onto this wall from another wall, effectively letting you climb narrow hallways. This does not count as floor for the purposes of double jump. You can only jump perpendicularly to the wall, though you can hit it at any angle.

As written, this cannot be used to climb walls*. In order to climb walls, you have to be able to jump off at an angle to the wall. Perpendicular jumping would allow you to make a sudden change of direction to charge someone who was chasing you (or jump over their heads), but it would do squat for allowing vertical movement.

*The caveat to this would be if you had slanted walls. You could, admittedly, use this to climb a pair of pyramids (although the distance between the two would get increasingly difficult as you climb higher), but what's the point? You can just climb one of those easily enough without this trick...

[Roderick_BR]

That's not a happy typo. :smallbiggrin:
I blame lack of sleep :smalltongue:

[DanielLC]

I meant perpendicular horizontally. I figured that that would be understood. Adding that would probably just make the entry more confusing.

[Another_Poet]

Assuming you mean these semi-seriously, and actually want to make useable feats of them, then I must say cool ideas but the prereqs are too low.

At first level (3 ranks in Jump) you're letting people double their jumping height and distance, completely avoiding many 1st level challenges. You're also letting them change jump direction mid-air, which is cool but could have unintended consequences in many low-level dungeons.

At 2nd level (5 ranks) you can auto-defeat any pit trap and auto-succeed on any climb check as long as there are two surfaces close enough to each other to Wall Jump.

More frightening is the Air Control feat (also available at Level 1) that doesn't specify a maximum distance or time limit. As such, it allows you to hover around indefinitely. That's far more powerful than the spell Levitate, and even Levitate isn't available at first level.

Since most of these feats grant supernatural abilities I think you should compare their effects to spells and consider what spell level they would be. Double that number and you have the approximate level at which they would be available to PCs. Design your prereqs to make the feats available at that level. Or, add a BAB requirement instead of skill ranks, so that you can make the feats available to fighter types sooner than casters. That will help the classes that need help the most.

Perhaps an even better approach would simply be to design a plane or demiplane with video game physics. That way any GM can treat their party to a session or two of goofy fun using Mario jumps and the like, without the PCs investing all their feat slots in it. Then when it grows old and everyone wants some real adventuring, it's back to the Material Plane and no harm done.

To put it in perspective, first level characters who want a good jump skill have a choice betweem your Double Jump feat (double all jump checks and gain supernatural abilities) or the core feat Skill Focus: Jump (a one-time +3 to the skill). I'm ure you can see how uneven they are.

ap

edit: Even better, make them into magic items! Shoes of the Plumber and Waterpack of Sunshine sound great to me!

[Zeta Kai]

various good points

While you are less succinct, you have correctly & thoroughly recapitulated my arguments. When 1st level characters gain at-will supernatural abilities with no foreseeable consequences, the game becomes seriously unbalanced. QED.

[Roderick_BR]

(...)Shoes of the Plumber (...)
That kinda reminds me of that movie... :smallsigh:

But yah, some magic itens... I know what to give my players in our next game now :smallbiggrin:
I may use my magic mushrooms too. (shameless plug in my sig)

[DanielLC]

More frightening is the Air Control feat (also available at Level 1) that doesn't specify a maximum distance or time limit. As such, it allows you to hover around indefinitely. That's far more powerful than the spell Levitate, and even Levitate isn't available at first level.

You're supposed to fall normally. I'll change that feat to make it more clear. I was wondering why someone suggested making ability to levitate a prerequisite when that would make this so much more powerful.

I suppose magic items would be better. I think I'll just make it both (the DM would choose which).