Buying feats. always better?

[bjoern]

So I've been regretting not grabbing sculpt spell to make my greases and glitterdusts encounter winners. I have even been thinking about retraining one of my feats to sculpt spell.
Then I realized that a lesser rod of sculpt spell costs 3000gp.
After stewing on that idea for a while, I'm actually kind of glad that I didn't take the feat. As 3000gp gets me all I would use the feat for anyway.
After all buying Iron Will for 3000 gp is widely regarded as the superior choice.

So I ask you this:

What other feats are better purchased than taken?
At what point is it no longer "worth it" to buy a feat rather than take it.

Of course feat taxes and prerequisites would mandate taking a feat such as sculpt spell rather than buying an item that emulates it. But for feats you may want just to use it for what it is, when does the gp value exceed the feat slot?

[Rebel7284]

Your feat slots grow linearly. Your WBL grows in a weird quartatic-ish progression. At some point, if you are likely to use the feat at all, it becomes worth it to just buy it.

I like Mobility for 10K on an armor.

[QuickLyRaiNbow]

One important part of my calculus is "how screwed will I be if this gets taken away?". If you absolutely must have Sculpt Spell to be valuable, getting it as a rod means that you're super vulnerable to sundering, disarming, grappling, being taken prisoner and all sorts of other little thingies that might come up during a campaign. So you might as well take it as a feat. If it's just a nice thing to have, then it's probably better to spend money.

[nedz]

Metamagic Rods are cool but they do have limitations


Do I want to use this more than 3/day ? OK you can buy two, or more, Rods I suppose — but there is still a limit.
Do I want to use multiple Metamagics on one spell ? You can only use one Rod per casting — any other Metamagic you wish to use at the same time must be from a feat/class feature
Can I afford it ? Possibly not if you want them at low level (typically not) or you are in a low wealth campaign.


Also some Classes give free Metamagic feats as class features, so do you need to buy a Rod at all ? What are you going to spend those feat slots on ?

[bjoern]

One thing that a rod can do that a feat can't:
Use more than one meta on a spell since the rod doesn't raise the spell slot and a feat does.

So with a rod you can metamagic your highest level spells and spell slots

[Oddman80]

Are there any other feats that can be purchased?

The Boots of Agile Leaping are very similar to the Skill Trick "Back on Your Feet"

[Extra Anchovies]

Are there any other feats that can be purchased?

The Boots of Agile Leaping are very similar to the Skill Trick "Back on Your Feet"

The Otyugh Hole can also get you Extend Rage, Menacing Demeanor, or Skill Focus (Intimidate). It also doesn't specifically say that you can't benefit from multiple otyugh holes, nor does it prevent gaining the benefit from an otyugh hole from multiple nonconsecutive weeks (although it does imply that each individual stay only grants one feat, regardless of any extra time past one week). So by RAW I think you could buy as many as all four if you were a half-orc barbarian, but that's cheesy enough that your DM would probably whack you in the head with Complete Scoundrel.

[nedz]

A Ring of evasion exists.

Also, whilst not strictly replacing the feats, most of the +2/+2 Skill feats can be replicated with a couple of cheap items.

[Drackstin]

A Ring of evasion exists.

Also, whilst not strictly replacing the feats, most of the +2/+2 Skill feats can be replicated with a couple of cheap items.

in a game i have been playing in i found a ring of evasion on a dead adventurer. greatest thing to ever happen to my warforged barbarian. my DM hates it and trys to tell me things have no saves now lol.