Ramification of removing most feat prereqs

[Efrate]

Hello.

My adventure path I have been running for a while is coming to an end soon, and since its my only game where I DM now, I have time to get back to actually building a world and all of that so I've been looking at some things. Current focus is feats.

How much does it/will it effect balance if nearly all feat prereqs are removed? Or how about combining feat trees into one feat. Point black shot gives you precise as well, Dodge gives you dodge and mobility, combat expertise has no int req, spring attack gives you all 3 of those horrible feats, two-weapon fighting gives you all those feats as you level once the prereqs are met, weapon finesse no longer has BAB 1.

And so on. Looking at core it seems very simple, I am more concerned with outside of core stuff. The ones that come to mind are the combat focus and luck feats, not sure how to consolidate of all those into one thing, or a few things.

The primary purpose of this is to give mundanes nice things, and more off them, and require less extensive feat trees to get an ability that will be largely irrelevant when you get it (whirlwind attack I'm looking at you!). Most BAB prereqs barring weapon finesse will be maintained, so if you take TWF when you hit the BAB req for ITWF you get it. These only count as one feat, so no physic reformation/dark chaos silliness not that my table does that anyways, but is it sensible? Epic feats will have the stipulation of being epic still ofc, and not sure how to alter class bonus feat lists but that comes later.

It just bugs me that if you want to be say a TWF rogue that is literally every feat you ever take with very few exceptions not spoken for. I am all for planning your character but pigeonholing people so much seems absurd, and I think it would make a lot of the more obscure, or not always optimal but nice, feats more appealing, and they could see use.

I say mundanes getting since things because most caster feats don't have solid prereqs of take these 3 other feats just to do this one thing you already do, but if you need 3 metamagic feats for whatever metamagic feat you really want, I think that can stay. Spell focus/g. spell focus and spell pen/g. spell pen are what come to mind immedaitely as sensible things to chain for the casters.

Subsystem feats like ToM, Psionics and incarnum will be dealt with separately, because I haven't looked at all their stuff extensively in ages.

Just an idea I've been playing with. Thoughts giant?

[J-H]

I just say "most feat requirements for other feats are waived" and keep final approval for myself. That prevents people from, say, taking Sudden Quicken at level 1.

[JeenLeen]

Seems a decent idea, especially if you keep final approval to make sure it fits with what is is meant to and not, for example, letting casters get awesome metamagic too early (as noted above.)

One alternative/mixed method could be something like changing pre-reqs into level pre-reqs for all non-fighter feats.*
For example, let's say there is a feat (Awesome Metamagic) that requires 2 other metamagic feats as a prereq. Change the prereq to whatever level a spellcaster could generally have two other feats.

This might be more trouble than its worth, given things like humans starting with a feat and some classes getting bonus feats.

*The rulebooks define certain feats as fighter feats. Keeping just the BAB pre-reqs for these seems to a good way to let mundanes have nice things.

Another idea is to let you 'level up' feats, changing a pre-req into something it is a pre-req for, whenever you could next gain a feat. This would be in addition to getting a new feat.

But, all in all, I think what you have as written sounds like a good idea as long as you stress (before game starts) that it's to help balance mundanes and let them get access to decent feats, so use of it is subject to DM approval. Not to say casters won't benefit as well, but don't feel bad if you can't get early access to some cool stuff.
Ideally, give players time to ask you before game starts about how certain feats will work, lest ruined expectations upset the game later on.

[Morphic tide]

Well, on the topic of compacting feat chains and trees, I've had several ideas for that. The easiest way to do it to the "boring numbers" feat chains is to merge them into one, scaling, feat. For example, Weapon Focus/Specialization being compacted into one scaling feat, with scaling based on either BAB or Fighter level.

Similarly, Power Attack could have it's normal scaling, and then at some point you get the benefits of Cleave automatically, and instead of Great Cleave, you have a scaling number of cleaves.

Point Blank Shot's tree can be compacted by having Point Blank Shot progress along the Rapid Shot side, with Far Shot being a separate feat "set."

[Twurps]

What we do in our group is: grant an extra feat to every non-caster at odd levels, we have a list of feats to select from, but it basically boils down to: Feats you only take because there prereq's. Half caster's get this as well, but at half speed (so 1, 5, 9, etc).

It's the first time we've tried it, so my experience is limited (and non-existent past lvl6) but it seems to work nicely so far.