What happens to dark chaos shuffled feats when you lose a level?

[Crake]

Say you got to level 15, able to cast your brand spankin new embrace/shun the dark chaos, which you promptly do for all your feats because you can, then boom, you die (pfft, unlikely right?) and you lose a level. What happens to your dark chaos shuffled 15th level feat? Do you lose it? Or, because the 15th level feat is gone now, and replaced with something else, does it stay?

[Magikeeper]

I am not sure this is clear RAW-wise. That aside, there are basically two ways to rule how it works in your game:

1) You keep the feat. The side effect of this ruling is that it creates several ways of gaining an arbitrarily large number of feats. There is a second level spell that grants temporary fighter bonus feats, for example.

2) You do not keep the feat. I.E., any feat acquired by DCS fills the same 'slot' as the feat it replaced, and inherits any and all conditions that slot had [class, VoP, familiar nearby, etc]. This ruling stops arbitrarily large feat acquisition while still keeping DCS a very valuable tool.


My group assumes the latter option, and it is the one I recommend you use as well.

[Curmudgeon]

If you lose level X, you lose all the feats you acquired at level X. If X=15 and you used DCS on all your feats from levels 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, & 15 later during level 15, you lose the feats your character acquired at that level: every single feat you had.

[Magikeeper]

If you lose level X, you lose all the feats you acquired at level X. If X=15 and you used DCS on all your feats from levels 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, & 15 later during level 15, you lose the feats your character acquired at that level: every single feat you had.

Okay. I guess there are more than two ways to rule it. :P

I think this third option is not backed by RAW (moreso than the other options, anyway). That aside, this ruling would have numerous side effects. It would mean location feats are lost if you lose a level after you get them, that Psychic Reformation is now a quick way to loose all of your feats, skills, and possibly even class abilities, and that using the retraining rules is a very risky business.

I mean, if you really despise retraining or extra feat gain of any kind whatsoever I guess that ruling is a way to... no, not really. It's far too passive-aggressive and True Res would still work.

Hrm.. Psychic reformation is SR:No, and has no save. Depending on interpretation (does having the option and deciding NOT to alter a feat count as 'picking it' at your current level?) this ruling would possibly make it a niche offensive spell for taking someone out of the running permanently. Either afford a True Res or have a couple feat-less, skill-less, power-less HD.

[Crake]

Yeah, I'd have to agree with magikeeper here, that sounds like a really dubious ruling curmudgeon

Edit: The ruling on level loss says you lose the feat "associated with that level, if any". I wouldn't say dark chaos shuffled feats would all suddenly become associated with that level, and likewise neither would location or psychic reformationed feats.

The question I'm getting at here is, does dark chaos shuffling remove that level association, or not?

[Magikeeper]

The question I'm getting at here is, does dark chaos shuffling remove that level association, or not?

Embrace says the heritage feat "replaces".
Shun the dark chaos says it "removes and replaces".

You can interpret that as you like - I do not believe the exact meaning, with regards to D&D mechanics, of 'replaces' with regard to feats (or a similar resource, like skills) is ever specified. It is possible to argue it both ways, although I favor DCS feats keeping any and all associations.

In summary: RAW probably doesn't cover this. One option lets players buy as many feats as they wish at a very low price. The other just makes pre-set bonus feats, location feats, and racial bonus feats more versatile (and a good deal stronger). Decide how you want DCS to be used and go with that.

[Malimar]

If you lose level X, you lose all the feats you acquired at level X. If X=15 and you used DCS on all your feats from levels 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, & 15 later during level 15, you lose the feats your character acquired at that level: every single feat you had.

This interpretation is the evillest thing I can imagine. I love it.

[Curmudgeon]

Edit: The ruling on level loss says you lose the feat "associated with that level, if any". I wouldn't say dark chaos shuffled feats would all suddenly become associated with that level, and likewise neither would location or psychic reformationed feats.
So, if you've used DCS to acquire the feats at that level, what level(s) are those feats associated with? The whole point of DCS is you can acquire the feats you qualify for now, rather than just the feats you qualified for at lower levels.

Psychic Reformation, on the other hand, goes back and edits your history. You're limited to the feats you could have acquired at those earlier levels. Consequently, even though the editing is recent, the feats are still tied to those earlier levels.

If you use DCS you're eschewing low-level feats so you can gain higher-level feats. You don't (and oughtn't) retain the "protection" against loss of recent levels for the low-level feats you no longer have. You've acquired higher-level feats, and you accept the consequences of acquiring those feats at high levels. I don't see any other way to follow the rules here.

[Magikeeper]

I would say the 'whole point' of DCS is that you can make it so your familiar grants Improved Initiative instead of alertness, make it so that the Skill Focus(Diplomacy) your marshal dip gives you for free is now something your build needs, etc. I've played in parties using DCS all over the place and that's usually what it is used for in my experience. What combos, besides certain martial feat chains, are really so restrictive level-wise?


So, if you've used DCS to acquire the feats at that level, what level(s) are those feats associated with?

Blanket ruling that feats maintain the associations of the feats they replace solves this and prevents players from grabbing an arbitrary number of feats by abusing broken associations. If you got a feat from a temp buff spell, the new feat is still associated with the buff spell. If you got it from a nearby familiar, it is still associated with that familiar. If you take VoP, trade all the feats away, then trade VoP away, you also lose all the other feats that are still associated with the VoP slots. Works nicely and doesn't need any more rulings thrown at it.


Also, the broken association rule would only result in True Res being more important, or, failing that, would result in players timing the DCS to minimize any real risk. Or working out a way to get it very early on in order to set the feats at very low level (since the main benefit is better use of pre-sets). Basically, it is a restriction that can be mostly worked around by ramping up the optimization efforts. I don't think that is the intended result.


A final note: Even if we accept the psionic reformation argument, that still leaves location feats.

[Curmudgeon]

Blanket ruling that feats maintain the associations of the feats they replace solves this and ...
... and creates the problem of having feats associated with levels where they're illegal to acquire.

[ryu]

... and creates the problem of having feats associated with levels where they're illegal to acquire.

And? That is a significantly smaller problem than a character outright losing large portions of his feats every time a non-true res death happens. Depending on group it's not even a thing anyone will care about in any substantial way.

[Jeff the Green]

So, if you've used DCS to acquire the feats at that level, what level(s) are those feats associated with? The whole point of DCS is you can acquire the feats you qualify for now, rather than just the feats you qualified for at lower levels.

Where does it say that they must be associated with a level at all? Maybe one you DCFS, they cease to be associated with a level at all.