The Value of a Feat?

[OverdrivePrime]

I'm creating a number of custom items for my campaign, and I wanttomake sure the are WBL-appropriate. A small handful of these items will grant the use of a feat (a ring that grants use of Stunning Fist, or a pearl that grants blind fighting, for example).

So, how many gp is a feat worth? I haven't been able to find anything in the DMG item creation section that gives a value.

[Eldan]

I thought I had seen 10'000 gold as the worth of a feat. But you're right, it's not in the relevant section.

However, the Dark Blue Rhomboid Ioun Stone gives the Alertness feat for 10'000, though that's slotless, and a pretty worthless feat. (Might qualify for quite some prerequisites, though).

[Seerow]

Look up the spell Heroics in the Spell Compendium. It grants a bonus feat, and is a second level spell iirc. From there you can extrapolate the price based on the cost of a continuous item of that spell level.


edit: Yep just checked, it's a 2nd level spell that lasts 10min/level. So any fighter bonus feat at least can be priced at 2(spell level)*3(caster level required)*3000 (10min/level duration turned into a continuous effect) = 18,000gp, or 36,000 for a slotless item.


Incidentally, this means a Fighter's entire selection of class features is worth just over 1/2 a 20th level Character's Wealth By Level. I just thought that was interesting.

[Glimbur]

Depends on the feat. Alertness (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#iounStones)is 10,000. Snatch Arrows (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#glovesofArrowSnaring) is a lot more than 4,000 since it's 4K for 2/day. Metamagic rods aren't really a good measure because they don't increase the spell level. Mobility is an armor enhancement in MiC (I think it's +1 equivalent).

I'd eyeball it against established items. For example, the Blindfold of Truedark is similar but better (mostly) than Blindfight as an item, though if the pearl is slotless that makes it better. Stunning Fist is kind of sub-par for most folks, I'd guesstimate it at about 6,000 on a ring or as gloves.

[The Cat Goddess]

Well, if you go by the fact that Metamagic Rods duplicated the "Sudden" feats... only three times a day instead of once...

The "Sudden" metamagic feats are cheap by comparison to other feats.

[agahii]

In my games I set the cost to 5000 gp for an appropriate slot item that grants a feat (10,000gp slotless). Mostly because I don't want to micromanage the costs for feats that are better, or worse than the cost.

[mootoall]

Honestly, the best you can really do is eyeball it. I mean when a Fanged Ring costs so much more than a Monk's Belt (or other way around, whichever), and then you have an Otyugh Hole for many times less, it varies ridiculously.

[Seerow]

In my games I set the cost to 5000 gp for an appropriate slot item that grants a feat (10,000gp slotless). Mostly because I don't want to micromanage the costs for feats that are better, or worse than the cost.

Jeeze, here I was thinking 36,000 gp was cheap. I understand there's some bad feats with items already, like alertness, but 10k a feat with no restrictions or caps? I'm not sure I'd spend much wealth on anything else.

[CTrees]

(because I have to be "that guy")

So how much should Leadership cost? :smallbiggrin:

[Telonius]

(because I have to be "that guy")

So how much should Leadership cost? :smallbiggrin:

Depends on the cohort. :smallwink:

[Mr. Zolrane]

(because I have to be "that guy")

So how much should Leadership cost? :smallbiggrin:

How much does a nice dinner at a fancy restaurant cost? Cuz if I'm the DM, if you want Leadership in the game at all, some serious IRL bribery is in order :smallamused:

[Saph]

There's no possible way you can put a meaningful price tag on feats, because wealth grows quadratically while feats are gained linearly.

Ignoring class and race bonuses, a 3rd-level character has a WBL of 2,700 gp and 2 feats; a 10th-level character has a WBL of 49,000 gp and 4 feats; a 20th-level character has a WBL of 760,000 gp and 7 feats.

A 3rd-level character can't afford to pay 5,000 gp for a feat and even 2,000 gp would be a cripplingly high price. A 20th-level character will happily buy ten feats at a price of 10,000 gp each and consider it cheap. And if you offered an epic-level character feats for 10,000 gp, they'd buy every feat in the Player's Handbook, even the useless ones, just because they could.

Making feats buyable with gold gives a significant advantage to higher-level and higher-wealth characters. No matter what price you put on feats, they'll first be unaffordable, then expensive, then cheap, then pocket change - to begin with no-one will buy them, but once they hit the right point on the WBL curve they'll buy out every feat in the shop.

[NNescio]

(because I have to be "that guy")

So how much should Leadership cost? :smallbiggrin:

Oh simple. Your WBL is split evenly between you and your cohort. And the cohort's cohorts, and so on. :smallbiggrin:

[Gnaeus]

Making feats buyable with gold gives a significant advantage to higher-level and higher-wealth characters. No matter what price you put on feats, they'll first be unaffordable, then expensive, then cheap, then pocket change - to begin with no-one will buy them, but once they hit the right point on the WBL curve they'll buy out every feat in the shop.

I think that is a good point. But doesn't that kind of happen anyway? Most feats can be duplicated to a greater or lesser degree with spells of level 1-4, and that same character could be walking around with 2 of every potion and a bunch of 5 charge wands.

What if you put feats on an exponential scale, like weapons, armor, and stat buffs. Make the cost of the feat (number of feats purchased squared) x 5000 or something, make them all use the same slot and prevent them from being purchased slotless. I'm not sure if that would work, but it seems like it could be a solution.

[agahii]

Jeeze, here I was thinking 36,000 gp was cheap. I understand there's some bad feats with items already, like alertness, but 10k a feat with no restrictions or caps? I'm not sure I'd spend much wealth on anything else.

I think that no feat is so good that it should cost that much, if you consider the kind of thing you can get with a magic item already((I also require you to have feat prerequisites(either as a feat or an item) to make use of the item)).

You also have to consider the home-brew balancing I do in my games that make feats more or less about concept than raw power. Don't want to get into examples, but lets just say you would probably only buy like 2-3 items max, as most of my players do, and only then to round out a concept than for raw power.

[Seerow]

I think that no feat is so good that it should cost that much, if you consider the kind of thing you can get with a magic item already((I also require you to have feat prerequisites(either as a feat or an item) to make use of the item)).

Really? Things like shock trooper/leap attack would be just as readily available as things like alertness. Most feats get better when synergized with others, not quite good enough that a Fighter can become a good class, but good enough to create some scary combinations. Look at something like Jack B. Quick for example, and imagine being able to pull that off on top of a chasis with full spellcasting (which you could easily with feats at 10kg a pop).

While a lot of feats are pure crap, and the things that are like +1 to hit or whatever could be given away cheaply, there are a lot of good feats out there that give meaningful boosts and valuable options. Being able to have them and nothing else doesn't do much, but having them all and on top of that having a full set of class features? Yeah, it's scary.


You also have to consider the home-brew balancing I do in my games that make feats more or less about concept than raw power. Don't want to get into examples, but lets just say you would probably only buy like 2-3 items max, as most of my players do, and only then to round out a concept than for raw power.

And that's your homebrew, which has no bearing on the actual power of a feat.

[agahii]

Neither does the pricing in MY games, but you jumped on that pretty quick didn't you?

[agahii]

Really? Things like shock trooper/leap attack would be just as readily available as things like alertness. Most feats get better when synergized with others, not quite good enough that a Fighter can become a good class, but good enough to create some scary combinations. Look at something like Jack B. Quick for example, and imagine being able to pull that off on top of a chasis with full spellcasting (which you could easily with feats at 10kg a pop).

So if you cant make a fighter good with feats, feats are still too good to be cheap as magic items? That seems counter intuitive.

[Gnaeus]

So if you cant make a fighter good with feats, feats are still too good to be cheap as magic items? That seems counter intuitive.

Fighters have the two problems: that they lack utility out of combat, and if built around a powerful combo (in other words, any effective fighter) they are usually crippled if their combo won't work.

Example: a good charge build is very, very powerful at dealing damage. There are specific builds that can beat it, but it is very good at what it does. But if a situation does not allow for charging or can't be beaten by arbitrarily high numbers of hp damage, it sucks.

If I could make a Polymorphed wizard or a DMM cleric who was also an Ubercharger, he could play the damage game better than the fighter, but still be better at everything else.

[Seerow]

Neither does the pricing in MY games, but you jumped on that pretty quick didn't you?

Actually the pricing in your games is your business, but when you mention that pricing in response to someone asking what a feat is actually worth, it is expected you are saying as much in the context of actual feats, not your gimped homebrew feats. Especially since where you said that all feats are 5kg you mentioned nothing about you lowering the price of feats.


So if you cant make a fighter good with feats, feats are still too good to be cheap as magic items? That seems counter intuitive.


Gnaeus pretty much already covered my response to this. You can make a fighter that is decent, generally at one trick. With feats as cheap magic items, you can have a gish that has everything the fighter has, plus the versatility of 9th level spellcasting to back it up. Or a tome of battle character with as many feats as the fighter. Or a cleric with as many feats as the fighter.

Sure, the fighter could spend the same gold and have two tricks instead of one. On the other hand, the other characters have the fighter's trick, plus all the versatility from their class features to back it up, both enhancing the trick beyond what the fighter could do, and making it usable more frequently, plus having other things to back it up when the trick just won't work.

[agahii]

So the wizard uses a good portion of his gold replicating an admittedly fail fighter tactic, and the fighter uses that same portion getting awesome existing magic items?

[Gnaeus]

So the wizard uses a good portion of his gold replicating an admittedly fail fighter tactic, and the fighter uses that same portion getting awesome existing magic items?

Charging or battlefield control are NOT fail tactics. They are solid Tier 4. They have one awesome trick, which may not work.

If my wizard can charge better than your fighter can (and with Polymorph, Heroism, Heroics, and half a dozen fighter feats, he can.) can you use magic items to out wizard me? No. The wizards spells are usually more powerful than same level WBL. And I am not going to spend ALL my gold on being a fighter. If you price feats so high that duplicating a fighter is not worth my gold, you prevent the wizard from taking this route, but if the feats are so expensive that they aren't worth buying, why price them at all?

[Seerow]

So the wizard uses a good portion of his gold replicating an admittedly fail fighter tactic, and the fighter uses that same portion getting awesome existing magic items?

No, the Wizard(Or Sorcerer)/____(class with full BAB and suitable proficiencies here)/Abjurant Champion/Swiftblade uses a good portion of his gold to do everything the fighter can do, plus everything he normally does.

The Fighter uses the same portion of gold to get a small portion things that the above character does for free, and still doesn't get most of the more awesome options, because most of them aren't available via gold (at least to a non-caster)

[agahii]

So your argument is that fighters are not good, so feats should cost a lot? Everyone knows fighters are bad, so I do not include them in my arguments. Yes I homebrew fighters as everyone that has optimizing players should.

What i'm saying is that I do not care that cheap feats devalue fighters, because their value is so low already. If you don't homebrew fighters, then what can I say, try to balance for them all you want with magic item costs, I doubt it will help. I will not hinder other players because of one crappy class. If your argument was applied to other things then fighter should only pay like 1/5 the cost for all magic items, because they are better used in a wizards hands.

[Seerow]

So your argument is that fighters are not good, so feats should cost a lot? Everyone knows fighters are bad, so I do not include them in my arguments. Yes I homebrew fighters as everyone that has optimizing players should.

I homebrew fighters as well (hell I have the link in my sig), but that's not the point. The point is that Fighter's aren't as useless as you claim. They are far weaker than other classes, but not because they don't have any tricks, but because an optimized player only gets one trick.

But when you can spend the cost of a new suit of armor to pick up that trick, while still having your class features? It's more than worth it. There's enough decent feats out there that making them all dirt cheap and being able to get as many as you want does have a huge potential to break the system.


What i'm saying is that I do not care that cheap feats devalue fighters, because their value is so low already.

Apparently you also don't care about raising the power level of gishes, warrior clerics, and other martial types.


And of course, thus far we've been focusing just on the benefits of lots of martial feats. There's just as many good feats out there for casters, which can get even more problematic. One of the big limitations for metamagic heavy builds for a caster is lack of feats. Being able to get all of your metamagic feats, all of the feats that reduce metamagic cost, all the item creation feats (so you can get twice as many of the above), all dirt cheap has even more game breaking effect than just getting lots of martial feats.

[agahii]

Will never "unbalance" anything at all because NPCs can do it too.

Melee can now do more tricks, magic people can do the tricks too if they want to spend the cash on something worse than what magic can already do instead of making what they can do better. Melee can buy the magic feats and do some amount of magic things. Melee will do their tricks better unless the magic people buy weapons with magical effects as well as the feat items, and this will make them worse than a magic person who spent that gold on things to make their magic better.

[Lonely Tylenol]

I play a Wizard/Incantatar.

I would gladly pay 10,000 per feat for multiple Arcane Thesis, and also to have an Invisible, Cooperative, Still, Silent, Ocular, Fire Substituted, Searing, Fiery, Blistering, Miserly, Empowered, Split Ray, Twinned, Maximized, Fire, Cold, Electric and Acid Admixtured, Fell Drained/Animate/Frightened, etc (random blast spell; remember, multiple Arcane Thesis) at level 15 (once the Incantatrix 10 ability allows it), while also being able to cast Persisted, Chained, Reached buffs on others (including my cohort - thank you 10k leadership!), and persistent shapechange abilities on myself.

Nothing the Fighter can buy into can ever compete with that, unless they take several caster levels, at which point they stop being a Fighter. That is why feats at a static cost will further devalue the fighter, while simultaneously being ridiculously strong themselves.

[Seerow]

Will never "unbalance" anything at all because NPCs can do it too.

Wait NPCs are walking around with character equivalent wealth now?


Melee can now do more tricks, magic people can do the tricks too if they want to spend the cash on something worse than what magic can already do instead of making what they can do better. Melee can buy the magic feats and do some amount of magic things. Melee will do their tricks better unless the magic people buy weapons with magical effects as well as the feat items, and this will make them worse than a magic person who spent that gold on things to make their magic better.

Ignoring the point from my last post that the magic person can spend the gold on feats that make their magic better. Consider the cost of 10,000g for a feat (say sudden quicken) vs the cost of a Quicken Metamagic Rod.

No matter how you look at it, you're unhinging the game from one side or the other. Closing your eyes and saying "lalala it's not that good!" doesn't make it true.

[agahii]

I play a Wizard/Incantatar.

I would gladly pay 10,000 per feat for multiple Arcane Thesis, and also to have an Invisible, Cooperative, Still, Silent, Ocular, Fire Substituted, Searing, Fiery, Blistering, Miserly, Empowered, Split Ray, Twinned, Maximized, Fire, Cold, Electric and Acid Admixtured, Fell Drained/Animate/Frightened, etc (random blast spell; remember, multiple Arcane Thesis) at level 15 (once the Incantatrix 10 ability allows it), while also being able to cast Persisted, Chained, Reached buffs on others (including my cohort - thank you 10k leadership!), and persistent shapechange abilities on myself.

Nothing the Fighter can buy into can ever compete with that, unless they take several caster levels, at which point they stop being a Fighter. That is why feats at a static cost will further devalue the fighter, while simultaneously being ridiculously strong themselves.


240,000 gold? More if you meant more than 3 arcane thesis feats. Im sure you can think of something better for that much gold? Honestly it is my intention of allowing that combo. If you are trying to do that AND having fighter gimmicks then I'm betting you will run out of gold very quickly (and without the staple magic items you would have at that level).

Also you are comparing to fighter again, which I already said I dont care about because no PC will ever use fighter if they have a choice and arent just doing it for ulterior reasons.

[agahii]

Wait NPCs are walking around with character equivalent wealth now?



Ignoring the point from my last post that the magic person can spend the gold on feats that make their magic better. Consider the cost of 10,000g for a feat (say sudden quicken) vs the cost of a Quicken Metamagic Rod.

No matter how you look at it, you're unhinging the game from one side or the other. Closing your eyes and saying "lalala it's not that good!" doesn't make it true.

You do realize that you are just saying lalala I disagree right? My point is that having feats for cheap is a trap, I'd likely only buy 3-4 at 10,000 gold and only then to finish out a build. You would gimp yourself gold wise by trying to do everything another class can do via bought feats rather than sticking with empowering your existing abilities and having the things you would need at a given level.

[Seerow]

You do realize that you are just saying lalala I disagree right? My point is that having feats for cheap is a trap, I'd likely only buy 3-4 at 10,000 gold and only then to finish out a build. You would gimp yourself gold wise by trying to do everything another class can do via bought feats rather than sticking with empowering your existing abilities and having the things you would need at a given level.


You're ignoring the point. I've been talking about taking these feats to augment your existent ability (see the earlier comments about ToB classes, gish builds, and melee focused clerics/druids, and later the comments about casters picking up caster feats).

I'm not talking about a straight wizard picking up a bunch of fighter feats. I never have been. The point is, and always has been, that a bunch of feats picked up all at once will synergize pretty powerfully. The Fighter was brought up as an example of how enough feats can synergize to a really decent trick, even if the class's package as a whole isn't that great. (Seriously go back and read my first post responding to you mentioning the fighter, it was mentioning a Gish who is using a part of his gold to manage to have the feat setup of Jack B Quick, a build that uses an absurd number of feats for a pretty impressive counterattack routine).

You continue to ignore this, saying that all the feats in the world won't make a difference, and it is stupid to say that having too many feats is strong because you don't see any way you would use more than 3 or 4 feats. You who regularly plays with homebrew that reduces the power of feats, and seems to not realize that in the game feats are in fact actually a very legitimate source of power, just not good enough to make an entire class in of itself.

[Lonely Tylenol]

240,000 gold? More if you meant more than 3 arcane thesis feats. Im sure you can think of something better for that much gold?

A Ring of Spellcraft to handle Incantatrix's other class abilities, and... Nope! Everything becomes secondary to metamagic abuse once feats become unlimited.


Honestly it is my intention of allowing that combo.

Oh, I get it. We're ignoring all pretenses of a balanced game here.


If you are trying to do that AND having fighter gimmicks then I'm betting you will run out of gold very quickly (and without the staple magic items you would have at that level).

Well, since we're talking about an optimized game where the point is to abuse ridiculous combos, I use some equally ridiculous infinite-wealth loop to circumvent WBL restrictions, buy "staple" gear, and then every metamagic fear ever. We're already regarding world-breaking metamagic abuses as trivial here, so the leap is relatively semantic in difference.


Also you are comparing to fighter again, which I already said I dont care about because no PC will ever use fighter if they have a choice and arent just doing it for ulterior reasons.

You were the one who tried to undermine everybody else by pointing out that this was a contradiction that was somehow irreconcilable.

I'll go a step further, though: no class can compete with the Wizard's abuse potential for feat selection. The Cleric's Divine Metamagic simply can't hold because it can't compete in terms of sheer scale, and nothing the Druid can access by way of feats can compete with thirty metamagics applied to every spell for (almost) free.

In your "optimized" group, then, there are two tiers:

Wizards

and

Non-Wizards

There are several tiers in between them, but they are all empty.

[OverdrivePrime]

Wow. I did not mean to open that can of worms! :smalleek:

Okay, I can definitely see why there's no plainly stated mechanic for pouring a feat into a magic item. I foolishly forgot how everything jumps into higher calculus when high level casters are involved. (Comically to me, Queen's "I want it all" came up on iTunes as I was reading the responses.)

Happily, this isn't something that I'd allow my players to do. I'm creating a magic item for each of them and am doing my best to balance the items. Is an item with a 1/day use of stunning fist worth the same as an item with a 1/day use of Speak With Plants? Sounds like the answer is 'maybe'.

I'll wind-gauge the items with feats that are highly useful or prized by mages as very expensive (worth 25k) and feats that aren't that useful, or useful mainly to beatsticks as less expensive.

Thanks for the eye-opener, guys!