Allowing players to "buy" feats?

[FishBonePendant]

I sometimes DM for my group and have my own set of houserules I use to make things a little more fair in my opinion.

I don't really like how a lot of feats and feat chains never ever get used because they either require worthless feats to start, or just don't give enough of a bonus to be worth 3,4,5+ feats. So I was planning on letting PCs pay to train with NPCs and learn some new feats without "wasting" feat slots. (I already have and use a system to sorta-remove the point of building really broken characters so I'm not too worried about everyone going full cheese.)

The problem is I don't really know what to price the feat training at, I figured one week's worth of downtime would be enough to learn Shield Specialization but how mush would it cost to train? Normal hireling rate for a week(7xlevel of trainer)? 200/300/400 flat gold?

[ExLibrisMortis]

You can use the magical locations from the second Dungeon Master's Guide (p. 235) and Complete Scoundrel (p. 142) as reference. For example, one of [Extend Rage, Iron Will, Menacing Demeanor, Skill Focus (Intimidate)] is priced at 3000 gp, from an Otyugh Hole.

[Coidzor]

You can look at magical locations that grant feats such as the Otyugh Hole and some magic items that grant feats for a ballpark range of prices

One of the biggest problems is that not all feats are created equal, so you'd have to either price them individually or come up with several categories to assign prices or price-ranges to.

You'd also need to somehow prevent someone from taking cheap feats and then Dark Chaos Shuffling or Psychic Reformationing them into more expensive ones as well in order to keep your pricing scheme coherent.

One way I've heard of doing it, IIRC from godskook(sp), was an XP cost that increased with each feat bought using the method up until a character had bought 10 feats. They may or may not have had a rule about not being able to buy feats if it would put one's number of feats above one's number of levels or one's number of feats bought in this way above one's number of levels/HD.

[WeaselGuy]

My DM let us get an Exotic Weapon Profiency feat for something like 2500g, and it included a common quality weapon of the type we gained proficiency in. We were playing in a steam-revolution era type setting, where firearms had just gained prominence with the elite, but he didn't want our builds to suffer from his inclusion of an item that we might not have had the proficiency to use.

Now that I think about it, I might talk to him about letting me import a Gunslinger from PF as my next character...

[OldTrees1]

It depends on the feat and the PC OP:Party OP ratio.

Some examples based on my personal judgement:
Item specific free weapon proficiency - 500gp(martial) 1000gp(exotic) 2000gp(double exotic like Katori resin)
Additional Exotic Weapon Proficiency (already have the EWP feat once) - 100gp
Craft Contingent Spell - Too high

[FishBonePendant]

I like it Oldtrees, I'll probably use a tweaked version of your set up. Do you think the number of prerequisites for the feat should also add on to the cost?

[Uncle Pine]

You may want to consider the prices of the following RAW ways to get extra feats:
- Many magical locations offer specific extra feats (I don't really remember the price but they're already been mentioned);
- Otyugh Hole + Embrace the Dark Chaos + Shun the Dark Chaos (or Embrace the Dark Chaos + Shun the Dark Chaos + Otyugh Hole if a character already has Iron Will): 7.900 gp for one extra feat;
- Standard slotless continuous custom item of Mirror Move (https://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20000901a): 24000 gp for one extra feat from a limited source (potentially more than one, but items are usually created with the lowest Int possible, which is 12 in this case).

If I had to introduce ways for the players to acquire extra feats I'd price them about 6.000-8.000 gp, because I feel like in a normal campaign it's hefty enough to avoid having character with hundreds of feats while giving feat-starved builds a way to shine more than usual.

EDIT: If you're simply interested in weapon proficiency feats, you may want to have a look at the weapon group feats (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/weaponGroupFeats.htm) variant in UA/the SRD.

[OldTrees1]

I like it Oldtrees, I'll probably use a tweaked version of your set up. Do you think the number of prerequisites for the feat should also add on to the cost?

If they want to skip prereqs, then I have it be a continuous magic item that has an increased cost based on the prereqs(adjusted if WotC messed up on the prereqs)

Training would require gaining the prereqs first and thus would not have an increase in the cost based on the number of prereqs. I still would not allow a feat earlier than would be balanced. Although I would allow many feats much earlier than WotC estimated.

This also applies to custom feats designed by Player+DM.

[FishBonePendant]

Holy Cow!! This weapon groups thing is pretty sweet and definitely something I'll use. I'm on SRD all the time how have I never clicked the link to this?

[Flickerdart]

There's an interesting precedent set by a Truenaming PrC in terms of pricing - they're paying for creatures and not feats, but the payment scheme is based strictly on their WBL. I think it's something like half of the gold they're supposed to gain for their levelup?

Anyway, the point is that a feat slot gained at level 18 is worth much more than one gained at level 1, when bonus feats are both plentiful (between racial, flaws, and tolerable fighter dips) and ineffective (Point Blank Shot and Weapon Focus, yeahhhhh). So having a flat cost for feats makes no sense. I would instead do something like (earliest level you could get the feat)*2000, and then restrict the list very heavily. So worthless garbage like Weapon Focus is cheap and becomes affordable a couple of levels after you could normally get it, but things like Rapid Blitz put a significant dent in your wallet.

[FishBonePendant]

...Anyway, the point is that a feat slot gained at level 18 is worth much more than one gained at level 1, when bonus feats are both plentiful...

Excellent point, I'll take that into consideration. Thanks!

[DarkSonic1337]

But rapid blitz is so bad Q_Q.

Don't but too much emphasis on "earliest level you could gain the feat" forpricing feats. Most feats that are level locked require:

1. Sufficient bab-most of these are combat related feats and there's quite a few feats here that are much weaker than their prereqs would suggest
2. Sufficient caster level-caster level boosters make it hard to judge what you're "lowest level you could get this feat" actually is.
3. Sufficient levels in a specific class-There really aren't many of these. Off the top of my head I can only think of some Rogue feats?
4. Other feats-the existance of bonus feats makes it hard to judge when you could get some of these too.

I think feats have to be judged on a case by case basis, the same way metamagic rods are.

[Flickerdart]

But rapid blitz is so bad Q_Q.
It's pretty decent if you can buy into the prerequisites and build yourself to use it. Incorporeal-type skirmishers enjoy it a lot. If it were a great feat, I wouldn't even be considering it for this, but ~36k at level 20 is a good chunk of change without being unaffordable. If you wanted to just give away feat slots, why charge at all?

[Seerow]

There's an interesting precedent set by a Truenaming PrC in terms of pricing - they're paying for creatures and not feats, but the payment scheme is based strictly on their WBL. I think it's something like half of the gold they're supposed to gain for their levelup?

Anyway, the point is that a feat slot gained at level 18 is worth much more than one gained at level 1, when bonus feats are both plentiful (between racial, flaws, and tolerable fighter dips) and ineffective (Point Blank Shot and Weapon Focus, yeahhhhh). So having a flat cost for feats makes no sense. I would instead do something like (earliest level you could get the feat)2*2000, and then restrict the list very heavily. So worthless garbage like Weapon Focus is cheap and becomes affordable a couple of levels after you could normally get it, but things like Rapid Blitz put a significant dent in your wallet.

How many high level feats are actually worth being high level though?

I mean your example of a high level feat is Rapid Blitz. For which you already need like 5 other feats on top of the BAB requirements. Even worse if you think about Greater Two Weapon Fighting and the like. Oh and how do you price Stunning Fist? It requires BAB+8, but Monks get it at level 1, do you price it as an 8th level ability or a first?

Meanwhile under this pricing standard, Divine Metamagic: Persist is going to be priced as a level 1 feat because a character with flaws can go Extend Spell->Persist Spell -> Divine Metamagic all at level 1. But then a caster wanting to pick up the Fiery Burst reserve feat has to pay the level 5 feat cost instead because of the 3rd level spells prerequisite.

The level you can get it at has basically no impact at all on the power of feats.



Personally if I were going to set gold prices on them, I would probably make them all a set price. While I considered grouping by category for the sole purpose of setting higher prices for certain feats, down that path lies setting up a feat point system, and that is a lot of work. The system assumes each feat is of equal value regardless of what you spend it on, and leaves it up to the PC to determine what is worthwhile for them. That is probably the best way to continue handling it just for simplicity and ease of use.



It's pretty decent if you can buy into the prerequisites and build yourself to use it. Incorporeal-type skirmishers enjoy it a lot. If it were a great feat, I wouldn't even be considering it for this, but ~36k at level 20 is a good chunk of change without being unaffordable. If you wanted to just give away feat slots, why charge at all?

36k isn't much at level 20, but at level 14 it's about 1/3rd of your wealth. Even at level 16 it's around 15%. Hardly a trivial investment. Especially when you are talking about buying all of the prerequisites on top of buying the feat itself.

[Flickerdart]

Meanwhile under this pricing standard, Divine Metamagic: Persist is going to be priced as a level 1 feat because a character with flaws can go Extend Spell->Persist Spell -> Divine Metamagic all at level 1. But then a caster wanting to pick up the Fiery Burst reserve feat has to pay the level 5 feat cost instead because of the 3rd level spells prerequisite.
I did say "restrict the list very heavily." I am not proposing this price scheme be used for anything except hitting prerequisites. Snapping up feat chain capstones isn't supposed to be cheap, either.

In my games I give players a second feat progression of crap feats, from a restricted list of things like Dodge, that serves a similar purpose.

[ExLibrisMortis]

You could give a discount for (or make a requirement of) staying with long feat chains that don't get tolerable until higher levels. The whole Spring Attack line is pretty cool, but five feats for so little is nearly useless. The same goes for Weapon Supremacy (sixth feat in the line), the Two-Weapon Fighting line (there must be dozens of weak feats in this) and the various shield abilities.

One way I considered doing this is adding more feats to the fighter, becase more feats and stuff at odd levels, but you can also flavour them as 'training regimes' and count them as treasure for your mundanes. For example:

Level 2: Dodge/Weapon Focus/Two-Weapon Fighting
Level 3: Mobility/Weapon Specialization/Two-Weapon Defense
Level 5: Spring Attack/Melee Weapon Mastery (any one)/Two-Weapon Pounce
Level 7: Bounding Assault/Greater Weapon Focus/Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
Level 9: Dash*/Greater Weapon Specialization/Two-Weapon Rend
Level 11: Rapid Blitz/Weapon Supremacy/Greater Two-Weapon Fighting

Most of these feats have requirements you couldn't reach at those levels (such as fighter level 18 for Weapon Supremacy, about the worst requirement ever, and the very worst Warblade ability), but hey, we were making these feats desirable. I'm not saying these are balanced, though.

*Or Fast Movement for +10' speed.

[Coidzor]

These (http://home.comcast.net/~ftm3/JHtB/feats.html) lists (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=jv16prcak0ok5ip96id4ku3gj5&topic=4099.0) may come in handy. :smallsmile:

Or they may muddle things further.


Holy Cow!! This weapon groups thing is pretty sweet and definitely something I'll use. I'm on SRD all the time how have I never clicked the link to this?

It is in the less traveled variant rules section, aye. Some interesting ideas in there, though some-to-many of them need further development before they're really good to use.

[Fitz10019]

You speak of them paying in gold...

But SonOfZeal worked on weighing feats, and buying them with feat points. If you don't use it directly because you want to maintain the gold idea, his list may help you decide fair pricing for feats of different values.

SonOfZeal's attempt at Fixing SKR's Feat Point System (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?245177-Fixing-SKR-s-Feat-Point-System)

[SiuiS]

The second party supplies for Rokugan have what you need here; kata.

Kata are a pseudo-feat mechanic that I can't give you to I much information on specifically (the elemental basics are OGC but I want to verify first), but the basic concept is simple: techniques taught to samurai that they mediatet or practice for temporary style shifts.

An example is, say, a basic kata that requires both power attack and combat expertise are prereqs. It costs 2,000 experience to learn but then you have it permanently (you also need to RP learning it from a master, and different schools have political requirements, won't teach outsiders, won't teach unloyal students, etc). You spend ten minutes performing the kata forms, and at the end of that time you gain the Kara's benefits. In this case it could be something weird like lose your entire attack bonus in any round you use combat expertise, but anyone who misses you takes damage to their weapon equal to your maximum power attack damage or something.

Example effects from the books are being shrouded in shadow energy and gaining concealment, as long as you move ten or more feet a round; being unable to move faster than a wall and losing any dodge bonuses to AC but gaining a cumulative attack bonus for every successful attack in a round; gaining a death attack which can be discharged once but being unable to speak or hide; gaining an AC bonus but taking a large attack and damage penalty.


An alternative to this is my current houserule, that certain feats that aren't worth the investment aren't feats but skill tricks. I'll try to find my old document in which feats are tricks... But in general, there are rules out there for stuff like this, we just need to find them. :smallsmile: