Gamification of Fluff, Setting

[GilesTheCleric]

How do you feel about applying mechanical consequence to things that would otherwise be entirely under the GM's purview? For example, this feat:


Benefit: Whenever you are buying goods, the community you’re in is treated as one category larger

It explicitly calls into existence the already well-known quantum state of items available in a community, and makes it into something that's more metaphysical than at all grounded in reality.

[Inevitability]

I'm not so sure where 'applying mechanical consequence to things that would otherwise be entirely under the GM's purview' stops. Finding more stuff than other people when shopping around apparently is, but is a Sense Motive check to judge someone's HD? Is taking the Dragon Companion feat instead of diplomacying a NPC dragon into traveling with you?

[Venger]

How do you feel about applying mechanical consequence to things that would otherwise be entirely under the GM's purview? For example, this feat:



It explicitly calls into existence the already well-known quantum state of items available in a community, and makes it into something that's more metaphysical than at all grounded in reality.

I don't see how that's an example.

The gp limit on a community based on size is a mechanical consequence. If your player is so terrible at optimization he spent a slot on this, the least he deserves is being able to buy slightly more worthwhile gear sometimes.

It's not a heisenbergian state of items existing/not existing (which, btw, is in no way in violation of suspension of disbelief in deeandee) it's more about the kinds of characters who took this abysmal feat being spivs and especially clever at knowing a guy who knows a guy that will allow them access to special or rarified goods that you can't just buy at the store.

I understand what you're talking about in abstract, but could you give an actual example so we could gauge our response to this hypothetical more accurately? I'm struggling to think of something that qualifies for what you're talking about within the system.

[Crake]

I actually agree with giles here. That's something that I would prefer the players actually roleplay out if they want the benefit.

As for the dragon cohort example, well, dragon cohort actually gives a mechanical benefit for your companion, namely a trust that they won't betray you (unless you've been seriously mistreating them) as well as not having them eat up a share of the party's xp and loot (though they will be expecting some from your cut). Alternatively, if you don't take the feat, the dragon can still adventure with you, but he'll take his own share of the xp and loot and might leave or have his own agenda.

Either way, the feat comes after the roleplay. That is to say, you meet a dragon and say "i want him as a cohort", not, you get the feat and say "Now give me a dragon cohort". That's how we play it at my table anyway.

[Shackel]

To me if there's a feat applying mechanical consequence then it really wasn't under the GM's purview to begin with, not anymore than "attack rolls over the target's AC hit" or "a skill roll that matches or exceeds the DC of the task attempted is a success."

It's not like it has any less flavor than the rest of the metaphysical things in D&D like skill checks, HP, spell slots, etc: if you take it entirely at face value as written then of course it doesn't have any flavor or grounding in reality. Why is there a swing of almost 100% on skills if you aren't completely focused that allows someone who never touched an instrument in their life to perform at a professional level? What actually happens when you're hit because it's not like your ability to fight is lowered at all until you hit 0HP. What are spell slots?


I actually agree with giles here. That's something that I would prefer the players actually roleplay out if they want the benefit.

As for the dragon cohort example, well, dragon cohort actually gives a mechanical benefit for your companion, namely a trust that they won't betray you (unless you've been seriously mistreating them) as well as not having them eat up a share of the party's xp and loot (though they will be expecting some from your cut). Alternatively, if you don't take the feat, the dragon can still adventure with you, but he'll take his own share of the xp and loot and might leave or have his own agenda.

Either way, the feat comes after the roleplay. That is to say, you meet a dragon and say "i want him as a cohort", not, you get the feat and say "Now give me a dragon cohort". That's how we play it at my table anyway.

Unless you gain feats mid-level, isn't this just kind of ensuring that standard, boring feats get selected over actually interesting feats that often open up new options? That logic just doesn't make much sense to me, since that's the entire point of a feat: you choose the feat, now you get the benefit, not, you get the benefit/opportunity for the benefit, then you choose the feat later.

I'm one who likes to plot out feats, imply the character is building up to them and so on but I don't think I could see myself forcing others to do the same. How does that work for things like two weapon fighting? Do they need to express interest in two weapon fighting, start looking at pairs of daggers, etc? Are there multiclass restrictions in the same vein because I imagine that'd really lock someone into a build once they started and stop dipping which, if players actually do care about flavor, often ends up in far more unique characters.

[Florian]

How do you feel about applying mechanical consequence to things that would otherwise be entirely under the GM's purview?

That depends. I´m playing a lot of systems where you have to buy "in-game facts" with some kind of currency (like xp), but those are under the control of the individual player then.

For D&D/PF, that depends on how you as gm handle your world. I´m using the system as is, doing a lot of stuff with random tables, so things like this feat or black market access fit in with my style.

[Crake]

To me if there's a feat applying mechanical consequence then it really wasn't under the GM's purview to begin with, not anymore than "attack rolls over the target's AC hit" or "a skill roll that matches or exceeds the DC of the task attempted is a success."

It's not like it has any less flavor than the rest of the metaphysical things in D&D like skill checks, HP, spell slots, etc: if you take it entirely at face value as written then of course it doesn't have any flavor or grounding in reality. Why is there a swing of almost 100% on skills if you aren't completely focused that allows someone who never touched an instrument in their life to perform at a professional level? What actually happens when you're hit because it's not like your ability to fight is lowered at all until you hit 0HP. What are spell slots?

Everything beyond the players is the GM's purview. The capabilities of the player are the player's purview. So when a player picks a feat that affects the world around them, I think it's perfectly acceptable to say that that feat is encroaching on the GM's purview. Now of course, the GM can totally let the player take whatever feat the want, but a GM might want to say "there are 10 magic items available in this town, these specific 10 magic items. You took a feat that increases the town's effective size? Cool story, those 10 items are still the only ones that exist in the town".

All the other things you mentioned are specific to a player's capabilities. This is about the line between what a player's character creation options can do to affect the world around them vs the players actually affecting the world through actual gameplay.


Unless you gain feats mid-level, isn't this just kind of ensuring that standard, boring feats get selected over actually interesting feats that often open up new options? That logic just doesn't make much sense to me, since that's the entire point of a feat: you choose the feat, now you get the benefit, not, you get the benefit/opportunity for the benefit, then you choose the feat later.

I'm one who likes to plot out feats, imply the character is building up to them and so on but I don't think I could see myself forcing others to do the same. How does that work for things like two weapon fighting? Do they need to express interest in two weapon fighting, start looking at pairs of daggers, etc? Are there multiclass restrictions in the same vein because I imagine that'd really lock someone into a build once they started and stop dipping which, if players actually do care about flavor, often ends up in far more unique characters.

How do you figure that? Again, take whatever feat you want if it affects your character's ability, but if you're going to take a feat that literally introduces a new character out of thin air just because you want a cohort that can do XYZ? That's not how we run it. The benefit of the leadership feat is gaining agency over the NPC, not manifesting whoever you want into existence.

[Dagroth]

So you're saying you are arbitrarily limiting things like the Leadership, Wild Cohort & Dragon Cohort Feats... taking options out of the players' hands.

[Pleh]

A worthwhile thought, Giles. I appreciate the effort to bring up the conversation.

I think the discussion up to this point is struggling with a lack of terminology, which leads me to want to refine the semantics surrounding the issue. People lack a proper name for the subject matter and so they're reaching for practical application examples that might not be the most helpful way to look at the subject.

Going back to the drawing board, I think this is an issue that 5e philosophy helps with immensely. By that, I mean in the way that 5e creates "gamified modules" of play. 5e explicitly states that you don't need to use Grid-Based combat, but provides rules for it in case you want to apply them. Meanwhile, 3.5e explicitly states that you do need Grid Based combat, but it nods and winks that all of the rules in the book are more or less optional.

This is to say that some games benefit from using a grid space mechanic, thus making character options that manipulate the grid space useful. Likewise, most RPGs use the Action Economy system of some variety and so character options that manipulate a PC's Action Economy are effective and worthwhile.

But not every game of D&D emphasizes or uses an Economic Market mechanic, which the Resourceful Buyer feat manipulates. If you take the feat in an average D&D game, its unlikely to be mechanically useful because most DMs don't handle in-game marketplaces in a mechanical manner.

However, a few tables really do make a game of tracking the nitty-gritty financial economics of the PCs and the world. You have to keep track of ammunition, spell components, and haggling with merchants. In that system, Resourceful Buyer makes sense. It's actually advantageous because no matter what town you are in, you have better opportunity to prepare your party for the next combat encounter because you always have better resource options at your disposal.

The problem is that most tables do not use the "economics module" in their gameplay and the feat becomes rather functionally meaningless, much in the same way that a game that did not use Grid based combat would find character options that improve your ability to move through threatened squares to be less functionally meaningful.

I think the main reason that people tend not to utilize "economic modules" in their games is that taking the other capabilities of PCs to their logical extreme in that kind of system leads into Tippyverse, where players cast spells to harvest minerals and materials to make effectively limitless money, but also radically altering the in-game marketplace from how it was meant to function.

Economics Gameplay has been done successfully in some games. The best example I can think of is the Borderlands series, where the only point to Money is getting access to more powerful weapons and the point to having powerful weapons is hunting down more powerful enemies who drop more money and more powerful loot. The fun of the economics in those games is actually making a game of routinely pausing the adventure to do a quick calculation as to which gun is better. It becomes almost meaningless unless you also incorporate the Weight Encumbrance rules to limit the dollar value on what the characters can take with them back to the market.

---

TL;DR You call it the "gamification of fluff," but that's all anything in D&D ever was. "I hit it with my sword" is fluff. "I cast a Cone of Cold" is fluff. The problem comes up when one player is trying to gamify something the rest of the table wants to leave fluffy. If the whole table wants to gamify commerce and economy, Resourceful Buyer makes sense.

[Crake]

So you're saying you are arbitrarily limiting things like the Leadership, Wild Cohort & Dragon Cohort Feats... taking options out of the players' hands.

If you think that's arbitrary you might want to double check the meaning of the word, and considering most tables instead just ban leadership, do you give those people just as much of a hard time over it?

Even by the absolute RAW of the feat, the player is not in complete control of the cohort's details.

[GilesTheCleric]

The problem comes up when one player is trying to gamify something the rest of the table wants to leave fluffy. If the whole table wants to gamify commerce and economy, Resourceful Buyer makes sense.

I see your point, and it's a good one. There's definitely some aspects of the game that should be a table consensus. Another example might be defining circumstance bonuses to diplomacy for good RP (or more reasonably, just houseruling diplo).

But I think that Crake mentioned a key distinction -- player vs. extra-player. 3.5 is a pretty pro-player system, and I think our community here encourages a bit of that. It's kind of necessary, really, in order to have a discussion with grounds we all agree on.

Feats like Resourceful Buyer extend the control of the player beyond that of their character and out into the game's setting. As another poster said, where do we draw the line for things like that? Should we? I wanted to hear what everyone had to say about it.

[Dagroth]

If you think that's arbitrary you might want to double check the meaning of the word, and considering most tables instead just ban leadership, do you give those people just as much of a hard time over it?

Even by the absolute RAW of the feat, the player is not in complete control of the cohort's details.

If you allow a Feat, then you should allow the Feat. If you tell the players "the Dragon Cohort Feat is not available", that's your call. If you tell the players "the Dragon Cohort Feat is available, but you guys will only run into one dragon during the game that you'll be able to use the Feat to get... so only one of you gets to have the Feat"... that's not cool, IMHO.

If you say "The Leadership Feat is available, but I will make all the NPCs and you don't get to pick their classes"... that's not cool, IMHO.

I'm not saying that you don't get to make the NPCs... but if someone gets the Leadership Feat, that should mean that they're out recruiting and probably know exactly what kind of people they're trying to recruit at the very least.

[Pleh]

I see your point, and it's a good one. There's definitely some aspects of the game that should be a table consensus. Another example might be defining circumstance bonuses to diplomacy for good RP (or more reasonably, just houseruling diplo).

But I think that Crake mentioned a key distinction -- player vs. extra-player. 3.5 is a pretty pro-player system, and I think our community here encourages a bit of that. It's kind of necessary, really, in order to have a discussion with grounds we all agree on.

Feats like Resourceful Buyer extend the control of the player beyond that of their character and out into the game's setting. As another poster said, where do we draw the line for things like that? Should we? I wanted to hear what everyone had to say about it.

Oh, I absolutely agree. Especially in games where the relationship between the players (including the DM) is less familiar, there is a need for strong boundaries of power. It's a good thing that games establish a controlled theme of the players are absolute authority of their own characters while the DM is the absolute authority of everything that is not an aspect of a PC.

However, that isn't a necessary structure of play, just a good practice to keep in helping maintain a cooperative spirit of play.

To answer your question, yes, in *most* cases we absolutely should draw these kinds of lines. Many games need this kind of restriction on character options so that players aren't breaking the DM's world and the DM isn't breaking the players' characters.

But actually I'm running a game with some friends right now where I am experimenting with the DM practice of having fewer secrets and sharing creative power. I've been asking players what kinds of stories or encounters they want to see their players go through and what kinds of rolls they want to be making. Are they even interested in making Diplomacy checks? What kinds of monsters do they want to fight? Are they hoping that combat is the primary tool for resolving problems or do they want to have more freedom to think outside the box (of violence)?

In a way, players already are coerced into giving a part of their character over to the DM: they have to fit into the DM's world somehow. The part of the character (particularly the backstory) that intersects with the world they live in remains at the mercy of the DM. Most games get past this by expecting the DM to review and approve or disallow character options before the start of the game. That's another good practice that isn't necessary, but helps keep everyone playing a spirit of ingenuous cooperation.

In asking the question, "Should feats like Leadership and Resourceful Buyer exist if they overlap player and DM jurisdiction?" the answer must come down to what kind of game is being played. The Default D&D experience would advise that players only attempt to use such mechanics after obtaining express DM permission (and ideally to have worked out a plan with the DM as to how it will be able to be used in the game so the player doesn't receive a nasty surprise).

These character options are fine when they don't cause a disjunction in the cooperative spirit. When the Players and DM can work together to use these mechanics to add another layer to the game, it's another positive achievement to stack on the game's score.

That said, feats like this might deserve to come with a warning label about the dangers these rules can create when the necessary cooperative element isn't being sufficiently looked after.

[Crake]

If you allow a Feat, then you should allow the Feat. If you tell the players "the Dragon Cohort Feat is not available", that's your call. If you tell the players "the Dragon Cohort Feat is available, but you guys will only run into one dragon during the game that you'll be able to use the Feat to get... so only one of you gets to have the Feat"... that's not cool, IMHO.

If you say "The Leadership Feat is available, but I will make all the NPCs and you don't get to pick their classes"... that's not cool, IMHO.

I'm not saying that you don't get to make the NPCs... but if someone gets the Leadership Feat, that should mean that they're out recruiting and probably know exactly what kind of people they're trying to recruit at the very least.

If they're out recruiting, then that's within the scope of gameplay, and will fall under the category of "meet an NPC, decide you like them, get leadership, is now a cohort". Note how you still have to go out and meet the NPC before you get them as a cohort in that example. Unless your suggestion is to handwave any actual interaction and just say "i go out recruiting, now i have a cohort" then it still functions the way I posit it to function. And I mean, hey, you can get leadership right away at level 6 (or 7 if pf) if you want, but you might spend the next 3-4 levels recruiting and only find a suitable cohort by that point, in which case you could have just gotten leadership then, and had an extra feat while you were looking around. Then take into account the NPC you like might be too high level to be your cohort right away and you can begin to see why picking leadership AFTER meeting a suitable cohort is a better option.

We typically don't just handwave social interactions, if you want to do something like go out and recruit a cohort, that's something you actually need to do, and not all games are paced in such a way that you can just stop what you're doing to spend the next few weeks recruiting a cohort.

[rel]

A question along the same lines;
Does the druids animal companion class feature also count as the player getting undue control of the game world?

By the RAW, they choose what type of animal it is, they seem to be able to choose what options it gets as it gains hit dice and they can get a new one to replace the old by doing some sort of unspecified 24 hour ritual.

[Crake]

A question along the same lines;
Does the druids animal companion class feature also count as the player getting undue control of the game world?

By the RAW, they choose what type of animal it is, they seem to be able to choose what options it gets as it gains hit dice and they can get a new one to replace the old by doing some sort of unspecified 24 hour ritual.

At our table, it's similar. Obviously by having it as a class feature, you have agency over the companion, the same way leadership gives you agency over the cohort (we also generally allow slight changes to cohorts once they're recruited, but no major changes, like swapping out class levels or changing key feats or class features), but in the event of a companion dying and needing to be replaced, we do require the druid to go out and find another companion, or buy one if they so choose.

[Shackel]

Everything beyond the players is the GM's purview. The capabilities of the player are the player's purview. So when a player picks a feat that affects the world around them, I think it's perfectly acceptable to say that that feat is encroaching on the GM's purview. Now of course, the GM can totally let the player take whatever feat the want, but a GM might want to say "there are 10 magic items available in this town, these specific 10 magic items. You took a feat that increases the town's effective size? Cool story, those 10 items are still the only ones that exist in the town".

When that player picks a feat that allows them to affect the world around them in a different manner, it is just as acceptable saying that it is "encroaching" upon the GM's purview as much as it is acceptable to say that believing that you hit an enemy because you exceeded their AC/other capabilities or that because your Diplomacy check is X their initial impression of you is Y is encroaching.

Sure, the GM has the ability to just say "sorry your feat is ineffective," in the same way that they can just say "your attack did no damage, your skill didn't succeed, this tower is anti-teleport, anti-scrying, anti-everything-you-try-just-get-back-on-the-railroad" but players also have the ability to leave because it's a well-tread topic on how annoying railroading can get. Perhaps this works for you group, but I don't think the same can be said for the vast majority.

The capabilities of the player would not matter in the first place if they cannot affect the world around them.

The GM might want to say "your feat is useless because there are only these 10 magic items" and the player is completely reasonable in not wanting to play in that game because the GM is so protective over what they perceive as theirs. And guess what's ensured when a GM does that?


standard, boring feats get selected over actually interesting feats that often open up new options

Because without explicitly screwing them over in a way that they can call out, have fun screwing them out of Power Attack, Spell Focus, numerical buffs and so on. Heck, this is how you get those players that clutch onto their rulebooks like rafts: when a GM gets weirdly vindictive over them just wanting to affect the world more.


All the other things you mentioned are specific to a player's capabilities.
How are they any more so than this? When a character takes this feat and the game they play uses this mechanic(rare but possible), this is now one of their capabilities, just as it is within their capabilities to Power Attack, Dodge, Two Weapon Fight with any modicum of effectiveness, use maneuvers and so on. Even in a game where this is not a mechanic, the feat can still be used as long as every thorp and village doesn't have an infinite magic mart because "would this item be available if this was a bigger place" can be asked.


This is about the line between what a player's character creation options can do to affect the world around them vs the players actually affecting the world through actual gameplay.

Right and I'm saying that line is all but non-existent except for corner cases like flavor feats that have names and NPCs attached to them. This feat for instance only means that you're better at snooping out magic items, thus making them more available to you for purchase.




How do you figure that? Again, take whatever feat you want if it affects your character's ability, but if you're going to take a feat that literally introduces a new character out of thin air just because you want a cohort that can do XYZ? That's not how we run it. The benefit of the leadership feat is gaining agency over the NPC, not manifesting whoever you want into existence.

Well you answered how I figured that riiight...


And I mean, hey, you can get leadership right away at level 6 (or 7 if pf) if you want, but you might spend the next 3-4 levels recruiting and only find a suitable cohort by that point, in which case you could have just gotten leadership then, and had an extra feat while you were looking around.


Here. If they want an interesting flavorful feat that not every average joe would have, they either need to "prove" themselves worthy of the feat or the GM screws them. So screw it, Power Attack it is. Extra Rage it is. Can't screw me out of that. Why be interesting when the GM just becomes vindictive? Why bother with any feat that could theoretically be achieved through just flavor when the only thing you get is a little bit of control. Wowee, I can make sure my GM doesn't screw me out of this NPC that has little to no reason to abandon me... or I can take a feat that improves my character.

Maybe Leadership just strikes such a terrible chord with you but having to spend 3-4 levels with little to no use of your feat just because you dare you put your grubby PC fingers on your almighty GM's world(!) sounds like there's no reason to actually try to mechanically interact with... well, anything at all. The rules don't matter at all.


I see your point, and it's a good one. There's definitely some aspects of the game that should be a table consensus. Another example might be defining circumstance bonuses to diplomacy for good RP (or more reasonably, just houseruling diplo).

But I think that Crake mentioned a key distinction -- player vs. extra-player. 3.5 is a pretty pro-player system, and I think our community here encourages a bit of that. It's kind of necessary, really, in order to have a discussion with grounds we all agree on.

Feats like Resourceful Buyer extend the control of the player beyond that of their character and out into the game's setting. As another poster said, where do we draw the line for things like that? Should we? I wanted to hear what everyone had to say about it.

I don't think a line really needs to be established: if a feat has the ability to imply things about the world, they should work with or just tell the GM. That's it.

It's not that it's rude to dare interact with the GM's stuff at all, it's rude to spring it on them without their notice because the players aren't the DM, they don't know everything and they don't know whether or not they might step on their DM's toes.

EDIT: Well, I guess, in a way, that is a line. It's just that the only thing it determines is whether or not you should need to go "Hey DM, is it alright if I take X" not whether or not they should exist.

[Bakkan]

I like the characters I play, and the characters my players play, to have significant narrative control in the world. I want them to be a part of the world and I want their actions and capabilities to influence it. I like playing characters who can decide where to go and how to get there. Having a mechanical representation for being able to find the hidden deals that no-one else can is fantastic, and no more disruptive to the world than having the ability to teleport rather than take the ship with the suspicious-looking crew.

In principle I also like feats such as Leadership, but from a practical perspective it eats up a lot of game time to have that feat and has some ambiguity about how much control the character has over his cohort's abilities. On the other hand, characters with Resourceful Buyer doesn't use up any more game time than they would otherwise. Furthermore, the mechanical impact of the feat is completely clear, as long as the DM is using coherent means, such as the DMG tables, of deciding what products are available in a community of a given size.

[Crake]

~snip~

I'll try and address your points, despite the malleable spite that is oozing from your post.

Firstly, you already brought up the point about character's rolls and hitting creatures etc etc. Those are actions taken by the player, not character choices, and as such is a strawman argument. They didn't take a feat "hit this particular enemy" which enables them to hit the enemy every time or something like that, they are interacting with the game world and using the agency over thier character to affect the world around them. That extends to all your points about characters using their capabilities to affect the world around them.

Where the line is drawn for me is players using their character creation options to affect the world around them without actually interacting with the world. So it goes from "This is what there is, you guys can do with it what you will" to the player saying "no, my feat says there should be more". Your claim that people will go just for the "boring numerical feats" is a false dichotomy, implying that the only choices available are "feats that affect the game world" and "feats that affect the character in boring numerical ways".

The actual dichotomy presented in this thread are: "feats that affect a player's capabilities" and "feats that affect the world around the player without actually interacting with it".

By the way, I want to note that at no point did I say you could only begin searching for a cohort after you got the leadership feat, in practicall all of the games we have played, we find interesting and fun NPCs that we say to ourselves "i want him/her as a cohort", and then as soon as we hit level 6/7, bam we get leadership and have a cohort. The problem arises when you want a specific cohort, and haven't put in the effort to go and find such a cohort, and of course, the pacing of the game may also limit your capabilities to search. I never said you had to take the feat prematurely, I only said that if you did, you may find yourself with an effectively dead feat for a while.

The way you posit the feat should function is that you should get the feat, and then a cohort should just walk up to you, and simply begin to faithfully and dutifully follow your lead.

As for everything else, well, the difference between the way I run it and the way you seem to run it is that the things these feats tend to do I allow the players to do without taking the feat by interacting with the world. Instead, you're fine with players wasting character creation resources and reducing gameplay opportunities by simply turning it into a game mechanic. If my players want access to more varied items, they go around and talk to different people, gather information, and find those items through actually playing the game. Likewise, not every NPC that travels with the party is going to need leadership, because leadership is not necessary to make friends.

Also, I advise you not to make assumptions about how people run their games based on their opinion around a single discussion. It just makes you look like an ass. Because yes, that tower has anti-scrying, and yes that tower has anti-teleport, but the players have just as much agency to dispel the permanencied private sanctum, the forbiddance, or hell, just cast earthquake and bring the whole tower down. Implying that me and the other DMs at my table railroad just because we don't twist the world to suit the players is in and of itself a fallacy. We give the players agency, and their capabilities give them different means to enact that agency, and twist the world to their liking themselves. What we don't give agency to is the players' feats. A feat, chosen on it's own, without having been used by the player through interacting with the world, should not have the capability to change the landscape of the world. It's only through being used by the player that it should do anything.

[Shackel]

I'll try and address your points, despite the malleable spite that is oozing from your post.

I'll be real with you here: there is some admitted disdain towards both the perceived "gotcha" style of DMing I'm catching whiffs of from the former post and the fact that I was catching a bit of superiority. Now, that may very well have been heavily perceived too and I apologize if it is, but it really was coming off to me like that dreaded "proud of screwing over my players" attitude. With that being said,
so be it, then, let's view capabilities in a black-and-white "this affects the world." They take Power Word: X. They have a class feature/feat/ability/spell/what have you that says "they improve all starting relations with them by one rank." Ability/spell/feat/what have you that causes animals to not approach you naturally. The feat that gives you an animal companion. The class that gives you an animal companion, that's one too, same for familiars.

And to be frank, once again, what is a player capability if it is not used to affect the world around them?

Let's not descend to throwing around fallacies as if that's not only some end-all-be-all but as if there's bad faith behind it.


Where the line is drawn for me is players using their character creation options to affect the world around them without actually interacting with the world.

The line of "affecting the world without actually interacting with the world" is an arbitrary one to me because almost every option in some way shape or form implies something about the world, from wizards' familiars to druids having animal companions. If these somehow are exempt I don't see how Leadership is. Especially for say... paladin mounts and ranger animal companions which show up later and thus don't even have the excuse of just being level one.

Perhaps the misunderstanding here is that I'm assuming that a player would make mention of them having this feat in the first place. And yet, I still can't help but see an unnecessary amount of pushback and "ha ha gotcha" compared to something so relatively innocuous as picking a feat from a book. Not to mention all these parallels to high-level magic that I'm seeing, where the obvious option is to not be so attached to something that a player can simply bypass: few magic items with a feat that lets you buy more, long travels with teleportation, survival with Create Food and Water etc.

I'll admit, I'll be a bit of a hypocrite here: for someone trying to throw around fallacies and target faith rather than the actual argument itself, you sure did build up quite the strawman: where did I make the false dichotomy to numerical? Go on, I'll wait-

oooh wait, it doesn't exist. The word numerical comes up once in a list and isn't actually a real point. Whoops! I wonder how that happened when it was in a list of examples and yet "standard, boring" was used twice in two posts as the point.

But returning to the point at hand, while you may argue "boring", my complaint about it just winding up nudging players back towards standard feats is still a valid one: often the more interesting feats that don't have direct mechanical benefit will have more flavor to them. I see that as an opportunity to work with the DM, but to be honest the feeling I'm getting from you is that it's an attack on the DM.

If you want a direct black-and-white comparison: standard mechanical feats and flavorful feats. Often the least optimized feats in general, and often--since they rely and/or make heavy use of flavor--related to the world at hand or make base assumptions.


By the way, I want to note that at no point did I say you could only begin searching for a cohort after you got the leadership feat, in practicall all of the games we have played, we find interesting and fun NPCs that we say to ourselves "i want him/her as a cohort", and then as soon as we hit level 6/7, bam we get leadership and have a cohort. The problem arises when you want a specific cohort

Now, I feel you here: I already stated I, myself, am a fan of building up to feats. It's the idea of forcing that idea on others on threat of screwjob that I'm not so fond of. If a character finds an NPC they want to be a cohort and because of they, they want to take Leadership, that's great! But it sounds like there's a bit of an unfair timelimit put on players if they have[I] to do this in order to use the feat effectively.

In other word, the feat wouldn't be in the game if the player had to play Mother May I with the DM before they chose it, or, it would have that be a part of the feat.


the pacing of the game may also limit your capabilities to search. I never said you had to take the feat prematurely, I only said that if you did, you may find yourself with an effectively dead feat for a while.

Which is why this is the core of my problem with that attitude: why can it not be said that they were looking for them when or before they took the feat? Can people not multiclass either because a lot of these classes imply that it takes years of learning to get that one level yet over the course of potentially hours someone could get a level in it, too. It sounds like if you're level 7 and you thought, hey, Leadership would be nice, and this one cohort idea I have would be a great fit... too bad, how dare you have ideas spur of the moment.

Where on leadership does it say that it's premature to take it at any point other than not the prerequisite? I can't see it, and it just sounds needlessly spiteful instead of taking any number of other ways out that involve working with players rather than lording DM power.


The way you posit the feat should function is that you should get the feat, and then a cohort should just walk up to you, and simply begin to faithfully and dutifully follow your lead.

Being a hypocrite again: where did I say that?


As for everything else, well, the difference between the way I run it and the way you seem to run it is that the things these feats tend to do I allow the players to do without taking the feat by interacting with the world. Instead, you're fine with players wasting character creation resources and reducing gameplay opportunities by simply turning it into a game mechanic.

And again: that, too, is a false dichotomy. After spending a bit of time, I think I can sum up my position as such:

Building up to a feat in the way your describe is good roleplaying and a bonus. [I]However, I do not think that it is or should be the implied baseline. For me, the baseline is this:

Player: Hey DM, can I take [feat that affects more than the player]? (Let's say Leadership)
DM: How? (Assuming it isn't banned)
Player: Let's say I was calling for a bard to tell the tales of my grand victories.
DM: That works, sure / I don't think that works, what about X?

Does this say anywhere that the player cannot go off and chat with NPCs, establishing a close bond with a bard and/or astounding him until he follows along? No, just like how nothing prevents anyone who isn't a druid or has Wild Cohort from befriending any creature with Advancement rules and having them grow over time during fights. What the feat does is give them a cohort that they have control and agency over. It does not require that they had that over time.

And by all means, they could befriend that exact same bard and have them follow in the exact same way... and then take Leadership so they have a Warblade bodyguard. Just because the feat isn't required to do a task does not mean that the task is required to do the feat.

Genuine question: do you just axe every social skill from the game because that's the exact same thing. It's spending character resources to lower narrative opportunities by reducing them to a game mechanic.



Also, I advise you not to make assumptions about how people run their games based on their opinion around a single discussion. It just makes you look like an ass.

It must shine so greatly upon you, one who made all kinds of direct, explicit assumptions based on no example of gameplay whatsoever. Really, it must. Compared to... why, me not making any direct assumptions at all, at worst saying that the single example you gave of your policy on Leadership is a screwjob, and, in fact, only directly implying anything in a singular jab about the overall tone of your reasoning in the first place.

Really, if you're going to give advice, at least try not to disobey it more than the person you're condescending to. It, as you so perfectly put it,


makes you look like an ass.

[Florian]

where do we draw the line for things like that? Should we? I wanted to hear what everyone had to say about it.

That´ll come down to what you understand a RPG to be and what exact role the rules, players and gm have there. Systems like D&D are basically competitive and pit the characters against an encounter. Giving the players creative control here actually undermines this game mode, as would rewarding "good rp" or challenging the players with puzzles. The center focus here is the challenge and how the characters beat it.

The more you move into cooperative gaming, the less you focus on encounters and challenges, the more creative control helps move the game along.

[Crake]

~snip~

Any perception of "gotcha DMing" is an assumption on your end. We all know how it's played, and we all DM it that way, that's all just you projecting your past negative experiences onto the situation. Nobody is screwed over by anything, because we are all aware and happy that this is how it's played.

As for a false dichotomy, well...


Unless you gain feats mid-level, isn't this just kind of ensuring that standard, boring feats get selected over actually interesting feats that often open up new options?

That's where you basically implied that feats have to either be boring, standard feats, which you later expanded to say in a reply to my statement about said feats:


Because without explicitly screwing them over in a way that they can call out, have fun screwing them out of Power Attack, Spell Focus, numerical buffs and so on.

Which added to the notion that the "boring standard" feats you were referring to are the standard numerical buff feats. There are of course plenty of feats that open up new options that do not fall into either category, and many of which are not "standard, boring feats".

As for where you implied that the feat should function in the manner of "I got leadership, now i get a cohort who follows me dutifully", well, you mentioned that right around here:


that's the entire point of a feat: you choose the feat, now you get the benefit, not, you get the benefit/opportunity for the benefit, then you choose the feat later.

As for retroactive gameplay, sure you're fine to do that at your table, but at the table I play at, we don't play retroactively, but then at the same time, we take character options that make sense for our character at the time, rather than picking things and saying "yeah I was working toward that the whole time". I'm not saying that approach is wrong, it's just not how we play. Beyond short term stuff, like "yeah, I would have activated my abilities that I forgot to say before entering the room that we know for a fact is filled with enemies" (though one of our DMs doesn't even allow that) we just don't play with what is essentially retconning whenever it's convenient.

As for social skills, we require players to still actually roleplay, the social skills help determine how well your character executed that roleplay in character. You don't just walk up to the guard and say "I diplomacy the guard to let me in", you gotta roleplay it out, then you roll the dice and the GM tells you if it succeeds or fails, so there's no loss of narrative opportunities there.

Finally, I made no assumptions about how you play or run your games, only dealing directly with the arguments and points you put forth.

[Coidzor]

If you think that's arbitrary you might want to double check the meaning of the word, and considering most tables instead just ban leadership, do you give those people just as much of a hard time over it?

No, because there's more consistency and it's less odious to just be tiresome about not wanting players having such and such form of minion or ally than to try to read this random guy on the internet's mind.


Any perception of "gotcha DMing" is an assumption on your end.

Maybe, but we have what you've put into the thread to go off of. :smallwink:


How do you feel about applying mechanical consequence to things that would otherwise be entirely under the GM's purview? For example, this feat:



It explicitly calls into existence the already well-known quantum state of items available in a community, and makes it into something that's more metaphysical than at all grounded in reality.

If a GM is so bad at GMing that they can't do their job with a player possessing such an inconsequential feat, they need to go ahead and hang up their GM screen.

Besides, its the GM's own bloody fault for not being able to use their words if they don't play RAW when it comes to the mechanics of item availability based upon settlement size and they also allow a feat like that to be taken.

You shouldn't be playing Schrodinger's Ruleset or Mao with your players.

[Dagroth]

As for social skills, we require players to still actually roleplay, the social skills help determine how well your character executed that roleplay in character. You don't just walk up to the guard and say "I diplomacy the guard to let me in", you gotta roleplay it out, then you roll the dice and the GM tells you if it succeeds or fails, so there's no loss of narrative opportunities there.

Do you require your players to roleplay and describe how they pick locks or disarm traps? I've got a friend who is a professional locksmith and could do that. Does that mean he should get bonus XP compared to my computer programmer friend playing a rogue and just saying "I pick the lock... I got a modified 32, does that work?"

I am not personally an outgoing individual most of the time, but I enjoy playing characters who are. Should my character be penalized on their Diplomacy checks just because I personally am not always very diplomatic?

The way you describe your games, there's no reason to get the Leadership Feat. I could just roleplay going out and finding an Artificer (for example) of around the right level and then roleplay convincing them to travel with us... and roleplay gaining their trust & loyalty (all the while taking your attention from the plot & the rest of the party).

Or I could just say "During our downtime in this town, my character goes to find a 6th level Artificer to be my cohort since I got Leadership this level." You, as DM, could say "You don't find an Artificer in this town." which would be fine... but you should provide a path that enables the character to gain the benefit of the feat.

When you say things like "This town only has these 10 magic items for sale." you limit the flexibility of the setting. Who's to say that the guy with Bargain Hunter (or whatever the name of the feat is) can't happen on the guy who isn't a merchant, but has an item much like what he's looking for... or maybe just has an item that isn't what he's looking for, but is useful in its own way?

[Coidzor]

When you say things like "This town only has these 10 magic items for sale." you limit the flexibility of the setting. Who's to say that the guy with Bargain Hunter (or whatever the name of the feat is) can't happen on the guy who isn't a merchant, but has an item much like what he's looking for... or maybe just has an item that isn't what he's looking for, but is useful in its own way?

Indeed, you should never write yourself into a corner like that.

"These 10 magic items are the ones you can find available right now" does the job while leaving open the possibility of there being more not for sale or not currently available for sale or things changing in the future, possibly based upon the players' actions.

[Crake]

Do you require your players to roleplay and describe how they pick locks or disarm traps? I've got a friend who is a professional locksmith and could do that. Does that mean he should get bonus XP compared to my computer programmer friend playing a rogue and just saying "I pick the lock... I got a modified 32, does that work?"

No, because a lock isn't a sentient creature to be interacted with.


I am not personally an outgoing individual most of the time, but I enjoy playing characters who are. Should my character be penalized on their Diplomacy checks just because I personally am not always very diplomatic?

Note we don't penalize people for bad roleplay. The dice is the arbiter, the roleplay determines the direction.



The way you describe your games, there's no reason to get the Leadership Feat. I could just roleplay going out and finding an Artificer (for example) of around the right level and then roleplay convincing them to travel with us... and roleplay gaining their trust & loyalty (all the while taking your attention from the plot & the rest of the party).

There is, because leadership provides tangible benefits. As I said, you gain agency over the character, deciding their actions and generally how they feel and react to situations (although the DM retains veto power if he thinks something is egregiously out of character for the cohort). Additionaly, as a cohort, the character doesn't siphon their own xp, and doesn't expect an equal share of the loot for which they participate in obtaining (though they still expect a cut, generally from the player who took leadership).

Of course, you can just choose not to take leadership, make friends with the character, and adventure together with essentially an NPC party member, which has happened in games we play, but leadership does come with benefits beyond just making a friend.


Or I could just say "During our downtime in this town, my character goes to find a 6th level Artificer to be my cohort since I got Leadership this level." You, as DM, could say "You don't find an Artificer in this town." which would be fine... but you should provide a path that enables the character to gain the benefit of the feat.

As I said, we don't like retroactive gameplay. If you're planning on taking leadership, be proactive about it. As for providing a path for the player, that's all well and good, the player is free to pursue that to their heart's content, but if they want it sooner, rather than later, then they have to convince the rest of the party to make it take precedence, or the player needs to do it in their downtime, and we don't just hand wave it. The example of it taking 3-4 levels is what would happen if the player only started looking for a cohort after they got the leadership feat, and didn't put it as a high priority, presumably because other in game events were taking place. But then, as I said, generally in the games we play, people find a cohort they like, and then take the leadership feat, and usually it's not something planned, it's just an NPC they interact with and like, and they decide they want them as a cohort, rather than the players actively going hunting for a cohort to match their tastes.


When you say things like "This town only has these 10 magic items for sale." you limit the flexibility of the setting. Who's to say that the guy with Bargain Hunter (or whatever the name of the feat is) can't happen on the guy who isn't a merchant, but has an item much like what he's looking for... or maybe just has an item that isn't what he's looking for, but is useful in its own way?

Again though, it comes down to "why do you need a feat for that". If the players want to put in a bit more effort to hunt for extra magic items that may be available within the community, kudos to them, and it will likely be rewarded at our table, but why have a feat for it?


No, because there's more consistency and it's less odious to just be tiresome about not wanting players having such and such form of minion or ally than to try to read this random guy on the internet's mind.

Our table's general mindset isn't about "not wanting such and such as a minion" but rather "if you want it, go and get it, it's not coming to you".


Maybe, but we have what you've put into the thread to go off of. :smallwink:

That was mostly aimed at the one person who took everything I said with a metric tonne of salt, clearly projecting some baggage he's lugging around with him :smalltongue: Worth noting that I have never really referred specifically to myself, and the assumption that this is all about my GMing is erroneous, because in the recent cases, I've actually been among the players, but even so, we've (almost) all had a hand at GMing, and we all play it the same way.


If a GM is so bad at GMing that they can't do their job with a player possessing such an inconsequential feat, they need to go ahead and hang up their GM screen.

Besides, its the GM's own bloody fault for not being able to use their words if they don't play RAW when it comes to the mechanics of item availability based upon settlement size and they also allow a feat like that to be taken.

You shouldn't be playing Schrodinger's Ruleset or Mao with your players.

The OP was asking about people's opinion's on the matter. The way our table handles those kinds of abilities is by simply not using them, we're all in agreement on that matter, so nobody's having any issue. The points I'm arguing are simply against the existence of those feats in the first place, because we all think they're pointless when you could just roleplay those situations to similar effect.

I would like to reiterate, this thread being about opinions all, that while I may be arguing in favour of my opinion, I'm not, at any point, saying that your opinion is wrong, just that I do not agree with it. Clearly I'm in the minority in this regard, but my table get a lot of fulfilment and enjoyment from our games, and have been playing for years without incident, so I don't think there's any reason to be claiming that the way we run our games is somehow lesser in any way than anyone else.

[Keral]

If you allow a Feat, then you should allow the Feat. If you tell the players "the Dragon Cohort Feat is not available", that's your call. If you tell the players "the Dragon Cohort Feat is available, but you guys will only run into one dragon during the game that you'll be able to use the Feat to get... so only one of you gets to have the Feat"... that's not cool, IMHO.

If you say "The Leadership Feat is available, but I will make all the NPCs and you don't get to pick their classes"... that's not cool, IMHO.

I'm not saying that you don't get to make the NPCs... but if someone gets the Leadership Feat, that should mean that they're out recruiting and probably know exactly what kind of people they're trying to recruit at the very least.

I'm quoting this because it seemed the most appropriate for what I wanted to adress; Also, I just quickly glanced at the posts after it, so I apologize if I'm saying something redundant.


Now, given the fact that everyone does whatever he wants on his table, provided the while table is in agreement, I think this particular isse is easily solved with a medium between the two points of view.

I agree that, as it has been said, Leadership shouldn't allow a player to create things where those things aren't there.
But I also find odd to choose the feat after the cohort has been met. Unless the player specifically likes *that* npc and that's what's prompting him to choose leadership.


On my table, if a player wants to pick dragon cohort they are free to do so, but they are warned that they won't just find a dragon sunning himself on the road. They can, however, go around and search for one which will then probably agree to become a cohort since the player chose the feat.

The same is true for regular leadership, a player had it befor dieing and I used to present him with a small selection of npcs to "chat up". All were avaiable to become cohorts. But none of them was "designed" by the player in question. I rolled them and created them based on what races were likely to be there and with decently varied types of builds.
This way if they wanted a spellcaster cohort they'd find one (provided they actually chose the spellcasting one, I didn't show them the statsheet beforehand and had instead to figure out by playing the npc's strenghts), but that could mean choosing a sorcerer rather than a wizard or a cleric. I wouldn't allow the player to dictate something like "I want a wizard cohort". They'd find what I provide, within reason.

[Dagroth]

No, because a lock isn't a sentient creature to be interacted with.

Note we don't penalize people for bad roleplay. The dice is the arbiter, the roleplay determines the direction.

But you are effectively penalizing me for not being good at Roleplaying a diplomatic character by giving bonus XP to the player who is good at Roleplaying a diplomatic character.


There is, because leadership provides tangible benefits. As I said, you gain agency over the character, deciding their actions and generally how they feel and react to situations (although the DM retains veto power if he thinks something is egregiously out of character for the cohort). Additionaly, as a cohort, the character doesn't siphon their own xp, and doesn't expect an equal share of the loot for which they participate in obtaining (though they still expect a cut, generally from the player who took leadership).

Of course, you can just choose not to take leadership, make friends with the character, and adventure together with essentially an NPC party member, which has happened in games we play, but leadership does come with benefits beyond just making a friend.

And it is still forcing the character to grow in the direction you choose, rather than the direction the player chooses. Because the player was either limited (sometimes severely limited) in the choice of cohort or had to wait (possibly multiple game sessions) before they gained even some agency to control the results of his feat choice.


As I said, we don't like retroactive gameplay. If you're planning on taking leadership, be proactive about it. As for providing a path for the player, that's all well and good, the player is free to pursue that to their heart's content, but if they want it sooner, rather than later, then they have to convince the rest of the party to make it take precedence, or the player needs to do it in their downtime, and we don't just hand wave it. The example of it taking 3-4 levels is what would happen if the player only started looking for a cohort after they got the leadership feat, and didn't put it as a high priority, presumably because other in game events were taking place. But then, as I said, generally in the games we play, people find a cohort they like, and then take the leadership feat, and usually it's not something planned, it's just an NPC they interact with and like, and they decide they want them as a cohort, rather than the players actively going hunting for a cohort to match their tastes.

So why can't the cohort the Player wants be someone that the characters randomly encounter on the road? Why should the Player have to jump through hoops just to gain the benefit of his Feat selection? Does the Sorcerer's player have to jump through hoops just to gain the ability to use the Sudden Maximize Feat he selected?

What if I say "I picked up the Leadership Feat and my Cohort will be this Artificer who just happens to be an old childhood friend who became an adventurer to find me... and just so happens to be in the town we just arrived in, asking if anyone has seen someone matching my description."

There we go, backstory established and reason for the Cohort to join up already figured out.


Again though, it comes down to "why do you need a feat for that". If the players want to put in a bit more effort to hunt for extra magic items that may be available within the community, kudos to them, and it will likely be rewarded at our table, but why have a feat for it?

Because that's the way the game works. If the characters are in Mugglesville, population 3500, then the GP limited to 3,000 GP. No items worth more than that are available unless the GM says so.

But... if I just so happen to have taken the Feat "Bargain Hunter" (or whatever its called), then I can find an item worth up to 15,000 GP. Not because I roleplayed it (though I certainly could add some RP flavor to explain it)... but because I have the Feat. If anyone can do the same thing by roleplaying it, then I have wasted a feat... not because I can't use it, but because it provides me no benefit over not having it. Heck, even Dodge provides a benefit over not having Dodge.


Our table's general mindset isn't about "not wanting such and such as a minion" but rather "if you want it, go and get it, it's not coming to you".

And I just showed how I could justify such-and-such a minion coming to me.

[Coidzor]

Ideally if the GM turns a feat into something covered by a skill challenge, they'd communicate this and the player would happily spend that feat on something else, or making themselves better at that sort of skill challenge.

[Telok]

I'd say no to the merchandise feat mentioned. But that's mostly because the DMG stuff about magic items and buying/selling in towns is silly. By those guidelines a town of 2001 adults has over 500 +1 swords for sale, with that feat a town of 100 would suddenly have over 100 +1 swords for sale when they didn't before. It's because they predicate everything on what the PC's are allowed to buy and the assumption that they'll never buy more than one or two of any one thing. It fails as soon as anyone isn't following the unwritten assumptions about how they're supposed to play the game.

Generally speaking, simple communication between players and GM prevents a lot of this sort of problem. Things like the DM laying out that a certain minimum of interaction with NPCs is expected and whether the world just gives stuff to the PCs or has to be interacted with to accomplish things, players telling the DM that they want to take leadership or merchant type abilities instead of springing it on the DM as a surprise. The game just runs better if you don't tell the DM one day that you took Leadership and now have a DMM cleric cohort and a bunch of 1st level dragonwrought kobold sorcerer followers.

[Shackel]

That was mostly aimed at the one person who took everything I said with a metric tonne of salt, clearly projecting some baggage he's lugging around with him :smalltongue:

All things considered, I would assume that the one carrying baggage and salt is the one whose response to being challenged is to go making condescending assumptions and, when they try to make their point more clear and dust off some of the hostility, make little passive-aggressive sideswipes.

But that might be the mature adult inside of me speaking, who knows. :smallsmile:


Any perception of "gotcha DMing" is an assumption on your end. We all know how it's played, and we all DM it that way, that's all just you projecting your past negative experiences onto the situation. Nobody is screwed over by anything, because we are all aware and happy that this is how it's played.

Great, and every single negative DMing trait has a table somewhere when it is adored. That does nothing and means nothing. Most of the post is playing semantics, trying to ignore the forest for the trees and other things that, due to your explicit recognition of fallacies, is more than likely in bad faith altogether.

If that's how you play, that's a-okay, I'm saying the baseline shouldn't be that at all. Since you're in this thread and you're suggesting the same line of reasoning as you have from the beginning, I'm still going to say that it shouldn't be at all.



As for social skills, we require players to still actually roleplay, the social skills help determine how well your character executed that roleplay in character. You don't just walk up to the guard and say "I diplomacy the guard to let me in", you gotta roleplay it out, then you roll the dice and the GM tells you if it succeeds or fails, so there's no loss of narrative opportunities there.


Finally, I made no assumptions about how you play or run your games, only dealing directly with the arguments and points you put forth.

I feel like if I even address this with the direct proof it'll start a trend in these posts where I need to routinely go back and quote where you make blatant assumptions. All I'll say is read over your post a second time, and don't play ignorant about it.

This doesn't address multiclassing or how any other interaction works with your way of doing things either, so the line of what is the player putting mechanical consequence to things outside their purview is still a gravely arbitrary one.


No, because a lock isn't a sentient creature to be interacted with.

Great: how about attacking or any other one of the myriad of ways to interact with a sentient creature?

The dice is the arbiter but it's rather clear that either the words don't matter because your skill is too low, or your roll doesn't matter because your words were good. Unless there's another arbitrary line it sounds like one of those simply don't matter and would never matter.



but leadership does come with benefits beyond just making a friend.

Miniscule benefits. This is what I get out of it: why get Leadership if by the time you get all the additional prerequisites added to do what you actually want with the feat, the benefits you get are marginal when you can just take any standard feat that assists your build and hopefully doesn't have too much flavor lest it interact with the world.




Again though, it comes down to "why do you need a feat for that". If the players want to put in a bit more effort to hunt for extra magic items that may be available within the community, kudos to them, and it will likely be rewarded at our table, but why have a feat for it?

Representing your capability to do that when maybe you don't have it. Like every other mechanic in the game.

[Mendicant]

But you are effectively penalizing me for not being good at Roleplaying a diplomatic character by giving bonus XP to the player who is good at Roleplaying a diplomatic character.

I don't think he's said anything about bonus xp at all, unless I missed something.

[rel]

A further question along the same lines as 'do you house rule animal companions'.
Does anyone restrict access to spell components?
Particularly the ones that are not worth any gold but are really weird like 'a piece of giant squid tentacle'.

[Crake]

I don't think he's said anything about bonus xp at all, unless I missed something.

You're correct, i didn't, we use party XP, so nobody gets their own little bonuses, a benefit for one is a benefit for all.