Thinking of making fighting styles into a feat. How to balance?

[KingWhipsy]

As the title states I'm interested in creating a feat that allows anyone to gain a fighting style of their choice. From my research it seems the consensus is this alone is a bit weak and adding +1 STR or DEX balances it out. However this seems a bit boring to me. What could be added as another bullet to the feat to make it more interesting while also maintaining balance? If anyone knows of something similar and could direct me to it that works too, as my searches only came up with the +1 STR or DEX and a fighting style variant. Thanks!

[Hugh Mann]

What system/edition?

[Gr7mm Bobb]

STYLIZED COMBATANT
Prerequisites: Strength or Dexterity 13 or higher
You've trained in a specific style of combat, gaining the following benefits:

Either increase your Strength or Dexterity score by 1 to a maximum of 20.
You learn one fighting style of your choice from among those available to the fighter class. You can’t take a Fighting Style option more than once, even if you later get to choose again.
You gain proficiency with two simple or one martial weapon of your choice.


If you are feeling particularly generous, you could even add a special tag that lets them take the feat multiple times. But the stat bump has me thinking that that is not the best plan.

Other idea is to allow them to take 2 styles with one feat and be done, prereq would be 13 dex or str. Our group has so many fighting styles tucked away that the choice of a style is the main fluff of the feat for us.

[brian 333]

Why not create a five level PrC which spreads the special feats across each career?

Supposing a zodiac style system, twelve martial style as might be represented, offering twelve distinct styles with distinct benefits.

[Lalliman]

Why not create a five level PrC which spreads the special feats across each career?

Supposing a zodiac style system, twelve martial style as might be represented, offering twelve distinct styles with distinct benefits.
He's talking about 5th edition, where 'fighting style' is a specific class feature of the fighter, not just the common meaning of 'a specialised way to fight'. (Though if I still played 3rd edition, your idea would sound pretty appealing.)

Anyways, this is kind of a hard question. I would say that getting a fighting style with a +1 to Str or Dex is still kind of meh. Most fighting styles grant a benefit that is clearly less than half the value of a stat increase. Getting +2 damage or +1 AC isn't even half as good as getting +1 to attack, damage, AC (if Dex), the relevant saving throw and all relevant skills. On top of that, a fighting style is hugely easy to acquire with just a one-level dip in fighter.

Gr7mm Bobb's solution is something, but it should be noted that it does nothing to help the classes that are most likely to take this feat, only the bare few that are expanding into martial combat from a class that doesn't normally support it.

Honestly, I don't really have a solution for this. I think a fighting style and a +1 are fine if you can expect your players to be smart about taking it. Anyone who thinks "I have big weapon, therefor I use this feat to get great weapon fighting style" is cutting himself a lukewarm deal no matter what. But if you're smart about it, you can use it to make rarely-used builds viable, like a dual-wielding or sword-and-board barbarian. In that context it seems worthwhile.