[3.5] Feats That Give One-Off Benefits

[Thurbane]

Hey all,

I'm looking for feats of a particular kind. I vaguely recall a feat that gives you extra gold at 1st level (maybe a FR feat?).

What I'm essentially looking for is the kind of feat that gives you some form of tangible benefit when you take it, that would remain if you re-trained or otherwise lost the feat (Dragonborn ritual etc.).

What's the concensus on Open Minded, for instance: would you keep the skill points after you lost the feat?

Cheers - T

[tyckspoon]

What's the concensus on Open Minded, for instance: would you keep the skill points after you lost the feat?

Cheers - T

RAW, no, but it doesn't matter, because you don't keep the skill points anyway - you spend them to buy skill ranks. They're consistently treated as different things by the rules, and while there are rules for how many skill points you get and how to spend them, there is no provision I'm aware of for losing ranks short of actual level loss. So yes, to the best of my understanding it's perfectly legal to take Open Minded, spend the points, Psychic Reformation/Chaos Shuffle it into a different selection, and keep the resulting skill ranks. (If you want to be especially annoying, you can take Open Minded an unlimited amount of times - so Reformation your Open Minded into a 'new' Open Minded to get 5 more skill points. 50 xp/5 skill points is a pretty good rate of exchange.)

[TheFurith]

If you can use things from 3rd parties AEG put out a book called Feats. It had some pact feats in it that got you gold and items and such. Some drawbacks such as them probably being stolen and such. I mean, that's what happens when demons give you things. But still, if you retrained them I don't see why you wouldn't get to keep the stuff. You'd just have an upset demon to deal with. Nothing new.

[remetagross]

Mercantile Background, from Dragon #315, gives you 300 extra gp at level one. Besides, you selll items at 75% of their market price instead of 50%, so that make that much more savings that persist even after trading the feat away.

[Thurbane]

RAW, no, but it doesn't matter, because you don't keep the skill points anyway - you spend them to buy skill ranks. They're consistently treated as different things by the rules, and while there are rules for how many skill points you get and how to spend them, there is no provision I'm aware of for losing ranks short of actual level loss. So yes, to the best of my understanding it's perfectly legal to take Open Minded, spend the points, Psychic Reformation/Chaos Shuffle it into a different selection, and keep the resulting skill ranks. (If you want to be especially annoying, you can take Open Minded an unlimited amount of times - so Reformation your Open Minded into a 'new' Open Minded to get 5 more skill points. 50 xp/5 skill points is a pretty good rate of exchange.)

Thanks for the info. Open Minded is solid, then.


If you can use things from 3rd parties AEG put out a book called Feats. It had some pact feats in it that got you gold and items and such. Some drawbacks such as them probably being stolen and such. I mean, that's what happens when demons give you things. But still, if you retrained them I don't see why you wouldn't get to keep the stuff. You'd just have an upset demon to deal with. Nothing new.

Thanks. I'd like to avoid 3rd party if possible, though.


Mercantile Background, from Dragon #315, gives you 300 extra gp at level one. Besides, you selll items at 75% of their market price instead of 50%, so that make that much more savings that persist even after trading the feat away.

That's the one I was thinking of, cheers. Also appears in PGtF, I believe.

[Zaq]

Arguably, you'd keep access to a soulmeld gained through Shape Soulmeld after losing the feat (just never unshape it or allow it to be unshaped).

Item crafting feats sorta-kinda apply—you'd lose the ability to make new items, but you'd keep any ones that you already made.

I can't think of any specific examples right now, but I feel like it should be possible to find feats that are later made redundant with class features or PrC abilities. Not quite a one-off benefit, but nonetheless useful for temporary feats.

[Goaty14]

I forget where to find it, but somewhere there is a 1st level feat along the lines of "silver spoon" for aristocrats that gives you 900 extra gp.

[Jormengand]

Primary Contact allows you to do the open minded thing, only less so, only it ignores the cap.

[WhamBamSam]

The higher order ability of Planar Touchstone (Were-Glade) will permanently grant you the shapechanger subtype even after the duration ends. I think it should stay if you retrain the feat as well.

[prototype00]

From my reading into the chameleon:

Shape Soulmeld - Already stated, soulmelds last forever until unshaped, fill as many slots as you can.
Extra Spell (as a wizard) - It gains you spells known (which basically means they appear in your spell book). When you retrain extra spell, those spells in your spellbook aren't magically erased, and you can go back and prepare them.
Item Creation - Ditto, make the item, then train it away. The only fly in the ointment is Craft Construct which requires craft arms and armour - but that feat you can pick up via an item (an anvil from races of stone IIRC)

prototype00

[Thurbane]

Some more great suggestions, thanks everyone! :smallsmile:

[DrMotives]

I'm having trouble finding it, but I recall a landlord feat in Stronghold Builder's that made a patron front expenses for building a base for the player.

[The Viscount]

Apprentice discusses how if you are in a class that grants the relevant skills as class skills you can get rid of it without penalty, so could work for entering certain PrCs.

Ancestral relic allows you to convert treasure directly into enhancements on a weapon without losing half value for selling. Presumably the enhancements would stay after retraining the feat.

[Thurbane]

Great suggestions, thank you! :smallsmile:

I hadn't considered another range of feats, but The Viscount made me think: req feats for PrCs, and then get rid of them once the PrC itself lets you self qualify. Would work with Dragonborn, but I think the retraining rules forbid it, from memory.

Militia feat to get all martial weapon profs, then into a PrC that has this as a req, but also gives full martial proficiency, for instance.

[Kaleph]

You may consider the following ones as good candidates (but of course, have a look to their description to assess if they would work at your table):

Open minded
Extra spell
Item familiar
Host feats (all), Host focus, Strength of two
Psicrystal affinity, Improved Psicrystal
Planar touchstone / Sandstorm Touchstone
Truebond
Martial stance
Open lesser chakra, Shape soulmeld, Share soulmeld
Obtain familiar / Dragon familiar
Ancestral relic
Wild cohort, leadership, undead leadership, dragon cohort

[Zaq]

Great suggestions, thank you! :smallsmile:

I hadn't considered another range of feats, but The Viscount made me think: req feats for PrCs, and then get rid of them once the PrC itself lets you self qualify. Would work with Dragonborn, but I think the retraining rules forbid it, from memory.

Militia feat to get all martial weapon profs, then into a PrC that has this as a req, but also gives full martial proficiency, for instance.

What PrCs do this? I'm sure there are some, but I can't think of any.

[DrMotives]

What PrCs do this? I'm sure there are some, but I can't think of any.

I think 3.0 had a bunch like that, they liked to give proficiency with all simple & martial weapons to warrior-type PrCs. 3.5 they started thinking there was no reason to do that, so PrCs rarely come with armor & weapon skill.

Edid: I had put in marital weapons instead of martial. Marital weapons would be a whole different discussion.

[Dagroth]

RAW, no, but it doesn't matter, because you don't keep the skill points anyway - you spend them to buy skill ranks. They're consistently treated as different things by the rules, and while there are rules for how many skill points you get and how to spend them, there is no provision I'm aware of for losing ranks short of actual level loss. So yes, to the best of my understanding it's perfectly legal to take Open Minded, spend the points, Psychic Reformation/Chaos Shuffle it into a different selection, and keep the resulting skill ranks. (If you want to be especially annoying, you can take Open Minded an unlimited amount of times - so Reformation your Open Minded into a 'new' Open Minded to get 5 more skill points. 50 xp/5 skill points is a pretty good rate of exchange.)

The text for Dragonborn very specifically says that you lose the bonus skill points that Human (or other races that give bonus skill points) gives you... very specifically indicating that your skill ranks would go down.

[Crake]

You may consider the following ones as good candidates (but of course, have a look to their description to assess if they would work at your table):
...
Martial stance
...
Obtain familiar / Dragon familiar
...
Wild cohort, leadership, undead leadership, dragon cohort

Most of these I agree with, but the ones above, Martial stance, anything that renders you helpless will end the stance, so this is quite easily lost, and quite arguably losing the familiar feats would result in the loss of the benefit of having a familiar, much the same as losing a class level that granted you a familiar would.

Leadership is an iffy topic, but similiarly, without the leadership feat you would no longer have a cohort or followers. The npcs are still there, but presumably they become less loyal to you, perhaps diverging and taking on their own path, but definitely losing the leadership feat does have a significant impact on the function of those NPCs.