Pondering feats which get better without 'scaling'

[Veklim]

Ok, so I'm idling reading posts and eating my reheated Christmas dinner after a looooooong shift at work, and my addled brain throws a single, cystal-clear idea at me...so I decide to post it for a) discussion, and b) to remind me of the idea tomorrow...I shall proceed via rant, since that is how my mind conveys stuff to me...

Feat chains are great and all, they give you choice over how far to speciise down one track of abilities, they offer the fighter something to do between fights (i.e. search frantically for SOMETHING to aim for to become relevant) and they represent a continued training throughout levels. They suck for every other reason there is...

Scaling feats are nice because they allow feat abilities to STAY relevant, but are often touted as unfair, since they can actually detract further from fighters once another class can pick up a scaling version of improved trip and roll just as high as the fighter can...

What I propose is this; feat synergy. For instance, you take power attack, and it functions as the feat states, but when you take a feat with power attack as a requirement, you gain a small bonus to power attacks as well as the feat in question. Same applies for any feat which grants numerical boni and is a prerequisite for another feat.

Further to this idea, the fighter could gain greater and/or more varied synergies, and perhaps some feats could grant extra abilities if other non-requisite feats are also acquired (this would fit especially well with tactical feats, both new and old).

All I wanna know is this...anyone else think this idea has legs?

[WbtE]

You could implement this by fashioning "families" of combat feats after the Draconic type. E.g. Dodge could be an "Agility" type feat, giving a +1 Dodge bonus to AC for every two Agility feats the character has.

I'm sure that this has been done, actually, but I have no idea where I would have seen it.

[Durazno]

Frozen Feet would be the one to ask about that, I think. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14643065&postcount=46)

[Grod_The_Giant]

It's not a bad idea. It could even be a functional idea. The biggest issue I can think of is presentation-- it would be difficult to convey, in a summary format, how the feats all interacted.

Also, if the system went on for long enough, you could wind up with horrible frankenfeats-- imagine if everything that currently has Dodge as a prerequiste instead added a function to Dodge. That's not as big a concern for a homebrew project, but it's worth thinking about.

[Just to Browse]

By virtue of not scaling, the feat has the same problem again. Namely, the featmonkeys have to take feat chains in order to get level-appropriate abilities, so you're taxing them just as hard as before except now you also have walls of text.

The true 2 options here are a) get rid of featmonkeys and don't let feats scale, or b) make scaling feats such that featmonkeys are getting an increase in horizontal power instead of vertical.

[ZeroNumerous]

The problem I'm seeing: Aren't you just using scaling under a different name? Instead of scaling naturally with levels, you're proposing feats gain incremental numerical bonuses from... taking more feats. Which means you're just scaling based on feats, which are based on levels, so... Things are just scaling with levels. Except now you can choose not to scale.

Now: Correct me if I'm wrong, but your complaint seems to center around the idea that any class gets the same benefit as fighters from scaling feats. Well, if you would rather gate scaling behind a requirement of having X fighter levels, then just do that. Don't make things more complicated than they need to be.

I, personally, have no problems with the idea of scaling feats in 3.5 at least. But that's because I always advocate people not playing fighters, and instead playing Warblades/Crusaders/whatever other Fighter-but-better that they'd like to play.

[SiuiS]

You could implement this by fashioning "families" of combat feats after the Draconic type. E.g. Dodge could be an "Agility" type feat, giving a +1 Dodge bonus to AC for every two Agility feats the character has.

I'm sure that this has been done, actually, but I have no idea where I would have seen it.

That's a hopefully off-the-cuff number. Improving dodge by one point every six levels?

The idea is worth considering, but is probably best to build this capacity into ground level feats and let feats with prerequisite shine on their own. Dodge can get "designate a target, get +1 dodge AC against them and an additional +1 dodge AC per [keyword] feat you possess", and even allow dodge to self qualify so the basic dodge bonus is +2. But any other dodge-based feat shouldn't have growth.

You may run into issues with people taking like, eight variants of dodge and getting absurdly high defense, but heck, if you want to spend ten levels doing this I won't stop you.

[WbtE]

That's a hopefully off-the-cuff number. Improving dodge by one point every six levels?

Totally off the cuff, though I was thinking about removing the one attacker only clause.


any other dodge-based feat shouldn't have growth.

It's fine if these feats have vertical growth, so long as their basic ability is a horizontal development. So to continue the Dodge example, Mobility - and this is wildly off the cuff for the purpose of illustration only - could grant an additional 5' step each round for every two [keyword] feats the character has.

[dspeyer]

I'm sure that this has been done, actually, but I have no idea where I would have seen it.

ISTR [luck] feats from Complete Scoundrel work this way.

[Veklim]

Hmm, I'm imagining a format like this:

That's about right, aye. Limited synergy is certainly the way, I'd only tack new abilities onto existing feats for those at the beginning of the feat chain, there would be a limit of 2 or 3 of these per feat anyhow, and beyond that the '+X / 2 feats of this family' would be a fairly good scale to run by.

I shall start producing a few examples in the next day or three, I intend to produce something which will be useful to any class, without being overpowered OR pointless, and by the same measure should allow for fighters to actually gain a diverse repertoire without changing the class itself. Other classes which get bonus feats would now gain from one or two feat families instead, meaning limited synergy optimising would be a natural progression without again having to change anything else....time will tell if this will work at all, but early interest and discussion leads me to believe there is certainly interest.

[Yitzi]

Feat synergy is definitely the way to go if you want to make the fighter good without essentially rewriting the class. The only question is whether to go for a direct synergy, as you propose, or something else (e.g. make a number of powerful-in-limited-situations feats, so that the fighter can take enough of them to have something for every situation but other classes don't have the feats needed to pull that off.)

[Veklim]

That's certainly a n option too...I'm gonna play about with a concept or three and put them put there, it will start with a synergy table, to explain the basic numeric scaling for 'root feats' of a feat chain. I'll expand on that by giving key feats extra ability synergy, but only some of them. The option for tactical-like feats wil l come from there. Ultimately I want something which changes little from core material, just adding a bit. Balance will have to go from there...

Watch this space, I'll do the groundwork and open it to discussion, see if it is going anywhere.