Hypothetical class Thought experiment

[kulosle]

So me and my group have been engaged in a thought experiment. What if there was a class with all poor saves, 1/2 BAB, 2+int skill points, no class skills, d4 hit dice, and the only class feature it has was arbitrary high feats? You can't take any feat who's effects stack, so no arbitrarily high hit points or skill points or what have you.

We tried throwing around an actual number for how many feats you get like 100 per level, but it doesn't truly matter. What ever you want to do assume you have enough feats to do it. If you take this class you can't ever have any other classes till level 21 and this class wouldn't have epic levels.

The main problem is that you don't meet the prerequisite for the majority of feats. It's levels count as fighter levels though so you get all those feats, not that they are particularly amazing. Me and my group were hard pressed just to make this better than fighter.

So the question ends up being how good is arbitrarily high feats? And what can you do with them?

[Madara]

Well, there's a lot of feats that grant abilities(Thinking of the Commoner Handbook) so you could get some Incarnate and Binding going. Plus, there's a few feats that grant spell-like-abilities. If you pick the right race, you could take psionic feats for some solid boosts.

This theoretical class is better than fighter by far, simply under the assumption that you can choose any feat, as opposed to fighter feats. Then, dependent on how many feats you get, you could take the ones that boost skills, making you capable of using skills to some point.

[RFLS]

Be Kobold.
Take Dragonwrought.
Apply the Loredrake template.
Pick up Draconic Heritage for all heritages.
Boost your intelligence sky-high.
Take Able Learner and all of the Skill Focus feats.
Take the rest of the feats that add class skills.
Take most of the Incarnum feats.
You're now better than about half the classes in the PHB.

[Xervous]

IIRC there is a way to get spellcasting with an odd combination of feat investments.

The first feat to start this off (I forget what its called) gives you a few cantrips per day. You nab precocious apprentice because the aforementioned feat qualifies you for it. Then you take practiced spellcaster to bring your CL up to 4 at 4th level. You now qualify for extra slot, take it so you have a slot to do the following.

Earth spell + heighten spell + sanctum spell lets you cast a cantrip heightened to 2nd out of your 2nd level slot. It is then increased to 3rd by earth spell and 4th by sanctum. You can now cast a 4th level spell, so take extra slot to get a 3rd level slot. Repeat until you have 9ths.

Too lazy to look right now, but I'm sure there's a feat that gets you more spells known.

[kulosle]

Well again you can only take certain feats once, like extra spell, toughness, open mind, any feat that is exactly the same when you take it. Like you can take skill focus more than once because you can take skill focus (appraisal) and skill focus (jump). Their names are different and give you different things. So you can't get good spell casting.

You have to be a human or doppelganger to take able learner. And you start with no class skills. I see i forgot to mention that in the op. I'll edit that in.

All though just getting all the skill boosting feats does make you okay at most skills.

[GreenETC]

If I remember right, the best way to use an arbitrarily high number of feats has always been "Take the same feat a crapton of times." Like the trick for getting spellcasting through Extra Slot, or getting a bunch of PP through Psionic Talent.

Without that, I doubt there's even enough feats to make it worth your while. Feats are not really as strong as they get made out to be.

[eggynack]

Well, there's always leadership. Spell casting as a character two levels below your own is pretty good in general. Leadership is awesome no matter what you do with it, actually.

[Randomguy]

There was actually an earlier thought experiment that was a level 1 commoner with infinite feats, but could only take 1 of stackable feats (like toughness) and only feats that he could qualify for.
The result was pretty devastating due to groups of feats like Incarnum feats, Aberrant feats, Abyssal feats and so on.

For example, None of the Aberrant feats have any prereqs other than having X other Aberrant feats, (with the exception of Aberrant Wildshape) and the benefits depend on the amount of feats you have, so you can get a load of hit points, flight, a swim speed, reach, natural armour and a great Will save just from those.

[Devils_Advocate]

The succinct way to describe the concept seems to be that it's a class that has the crappiest everything except that it gives ALL of the feats (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/lists/feats). All of them. (But each only once and you can't use feats you don't meet the prerequisites for.) Except for feats you don't want, since some feats include drawbacks.

And that the crappiest everything includes the crappiest multiclassing restrictions in that it can't be multiclassed with anything.

I'm gonna say that that's got to be at least as powerful as anything you can make using the normal rules at level 1, and will be far, far more powerful than any legal level 1 character that doesn't abuse infinite loops or other ridiculous exploits.

By level 20, though, obviously your relative power will be way lower. You'll get to "unlock" a bunch of feats with your level-granted stuff, no doubt, but I suspect that they'll do much less for you than your initial burst of power.

[Harrow]

It would be really front loaded. There are a lot of feats that have low/no prerequisites besides other feats. So, at level one you would probably be better off than most any other class, except maybe casters using metamagic shenanigans or Artificers, who technically get access to all first and second level spells. However, while these could be built to face any particular situation better (again, maybe) you really don't have the limits they do and could face a much broader range of challenges much more efficiently than any other first level character.

Level 2, still the king. But level 3? Starting to lose your lead. The extra feat, spell level, and gold really go far for full casters. You fall further and further behind, probably starting to fall behind even Fighters (who have a much better chassis) and Paladin (Who have a better chassis and actual class features). At 6th, of course, you get leadership, which if used well means you'll never be far behind anyone else, if only because you build your cohort to match the strongest person in the party's build just a level lower.

[Mithril Leaf]

You end up being a weak binder, a moderately competent incarnum user, a moderately competent initiator, and a not terrible skill monkey. I'd honestly probably be willing to play it for a while, so I'm gonna say it'd be around tier 3.

[Incorrect]

As said, Leadership gives you a cohort.
But you can also get an Undead Cohort, a Wild Cohort, and a Dragon Cohort.
You are basically an entire party.

Now, if each of your cohorts take each of the leadership feats... :smallsigh:

[kulosle]

My group came to the same conclusion. Running the numbers on the skill feats, you can stay a good skill monkey for the majority of your levels, till level 11 or 12 i think it was. You quickly run out of attack bonus and damage feats, unless your unarmed. And you actually end up getting a lot of attacks and move speed, and you can take the sphinx claws soulmeld and you end up doing a significant amount of damage for a long time, but the problem is you miss... a LOT. But this might be able to be fixed if you put a lot of your WBL into it, but you might end up needing that for defenses. Haven't run the numbers on defense stuff yet, but i'd imagine you'd need it. But yeah we did get this stronger than i fighter for a long time.

[Harrow]

You're really going to feel not being able to take Open Chakra to bind things to your Totem Chakra and both the low cap on the amount of essentia you get and not getting something like the Totemist and Incarnate class features to raise the cap on how much essentia you can invest in one soulmeld.

But hey, you're still better off than the Soulborn :smallannoyed: