Elephant in the Room Feat Taxes - Your Opinion

[Jorunkun]

It is a common complaint among Pathfinder players that - especially for fighter builds and for combat maneuvers - there are too many weak feats that are parts of overlong chains, many of which are only taken because they are prerequisites to other feats. The "Elephant in the Room" house-rule document referenced in the title proposes to change this by turning weak feats into weapon features (i.e. making Finesse a property of weapons) and by joining feats (i.e. Dodge and Mobility).

If you have used these rules, or house-rules of similar effect in your game, I'd appreciate hearing your opinion:


What would you say are the dis/advantages of this approach?
Does this help balance the game? Does it help to address martial / caster disparity?
Does it create unforeseen consequences?
Would you recommend these house rules, in part or as a whole?


Thanks in advance.

PS: Couldn't include the link, for lack of posts on this forum. Here's the URL: michaeliantorno.com/feat-taxes-in-pathfinder/

[Kurald Galain]

The "Elephant in the Room" house-rule document referenced in the title proposes to change this by turning weak feats into weapon features (i.e. making Finesse a property of weapons) and by joining feats (i.e. Dodge and Mobility).
First, somehow he has missed several of the biggest feat chains in the game, i.e. style feats. To pick a random one, Brute Style has as prereqs "Str 15, Int 13, Combat Reflexes, Improved Overrun, Improved Trip, Improved Unarmed Strike, Vicious Stomp, base attack bonus +6." Yeah, how about fixing that.

Second, about half of his post is about letting martial characters deal more damage. This is misguided: martial classes have several issues but dealing damage is not one of them. Consequently, feats that are a clear damage boost (such as Point-Blank Shot or Power Attack) are not a "feat tax". You spend a feat, you deal more damage; clear as crystal. Related to this is that archery and two-weapon fighting are the most damaging styles in the game; that is why they require feats. If you give those feats for free, every other fighting style suffers.

Third, weapon finesse is a feat is because dex is a much better stat than str. Dex adds to AC, reflex, initiative, ranged attacks, and several good skills; whereas Str does basically nothing except melee attacks. Therefore, using a different stat for your attack bonuses should cost something, otherwise you might as well drop the str ability score entirely. This is not a feat tax; note that rogues already get it for free, and that this feat already lets you use dex on the most-used combat maneuvers.

Finally, the guy has missed the Dirty Fighting (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/dirty-fighting-combat/) feat which already does most of what he wants.

So yeah, the "elephant" has a couple decent points but misses the solution by a wide mile. A much easier fix would be "any feat that requires dodge, mobility, or combat expertise no longer has this prerequisite".

[ChrisAsmadi]

So yeah, the "elephant" has a couple decent points but misses the solution by a wide mile. A much easier fix would be "any feat that requires dodge, mobility, or combat expertise no longer has this prerequisite".

I think any bare minimum solution should also involve killing off Point-Blank Shot, honestly.

[Castilonium]

My beef with Elephant in the Room Feat Taxes is that it's so vastly much better for dex-based builds than strength-based builds, especially if you play with good 3pp like Path of War and Spheres. Dex builds gets Weapon Finesse, Agile Maneuvers, and Power Attack (normally pre req 13 str) for free, while strength builds only get Power Attack. And dexterity provides far more bonuses than strength does.

The only way a strength build can have an advantage over dex builds with this is if you stack size increases and focus on AoOs or vital strikes. And people don't always like to deal with big creatures clogging up the board and making fights less dynamic with an AoO every time an enemy tries to move. I really wish strength builds could be viable while staying at medium size.

[Boggartbae]

Just to parrot other people, I really don't think that this feat tax fix goes far enough. My favourite fix involves a similar condensing to the above solution, but then giving every character proficient in all martial weapons Power Attack, Expertise, Vital Strike, Weapon Finesse, and Agile Maneuvers for free, combined with allowing everyone two flaws at level 1. I also like to be dynamic, so if one of my players wants to build something, but they cant make it work, I'll condense feats for them so it does, but without breaking anything.

[Psyren]

I'm less interested in quibbling over the specific taxes than I am in agreeing that some consolidation and trimming needs to happen. So to that end, an easily-shareable article on the subject is still a very valuable tool in my mind, even if it's too old to account for things like the newer Style Feat chains or tax reduction like Dirty Fighting. The details can come later.

[Lotheb]

First, somehow he has missed several of the biggest feat chains in the game, i.e. style feats. To pick a random one, Brute Style has as prereqs "Str 15, Int 13, Combat Reflexes, Improved Overrun, Improved Trip, Improved Unarmed Strike, Vicious Stomp, base attack bonus +6." Yeah, how about fixing that.

Finally, the guy has missed the Dirty Fighting (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/dirty-fighting-combat/) feat which already does most of what he wants.


Elephant in the Room was written in september 2012, which is probably why it doesn't account for feats added after that. It definitely means there's a lot of stuff that it doesn't cover, and i wouldn't use it as is.

Regarding caster disparity: it frees up martial feats, which allows martials to either take more martial feats (either going deeper into a combat style than previously possible, or branching out into multiple styles), or it allows them to take more utility feats.

Unfortunately most utility feats are the same sort of low impact trash as most martial feats, giving you minor bonuses to skills or very situational new abilities, or minor situational bonuses to skills, and most of the ones that offer significant abilities are level locked to well after spelllcasters get equivalant abilities. Also note that the automatic bonus options still apply to casters, which wont help wizards much but does mean that clerics, druids, magi, etc. get the same feat savings as purely mundane characters.

Overall its a slight bump to the strength and versatility of everyone who might swing or shoot a weapon, which is most classes, but not enough of one to really change things

[Boggartbae]

I'm less interested in quibbling over the specific taxes than I am in agreeing that some consolidation and trimming needs to happen. So to that end, an easily-shareable article on the subject is still a very valuable tool in my mind, even if it's too old to account for things like the newer Style Feat chains or tax reduction like Dirty Fighting. The details can come later.

This. If you can agree that there's a problem, then it's generally pretty easy to consolidate feat chains and get rid of taxes, especially when some of the work is done for you.


Elephant in the Room was written in september 2012, which is probably why it doesn't account for feats added after that. It definitely means there's a lot of stuff that it doesn't cover, and i wouldn't use it as is.

Regarding caster disparity: it frees up martial feats, which allows martials to either take more martial feats (either going deeper into a combat style than previously possible, or branching out into multiple styles), or it allows them to take more utility feats.

Unfortunately most utility feats are the same sort of low impact trash as most martial feats, giving you minor bonuses to skills or very situational new abilities, or minor situational bonuses to skills, and most of the ones that offer significant abilities are level locked to well after spelllcasters get equivalant abilities. Also note that the automatic bonus options still apply to casters, which wont help wizards much but does mean that clerics, druids, magi, etc. get the same feat savings as purely mundane characters.

Overall its a slight bump to the strength and versatility of everyone who might swing or shoot a weapon, which is most classes, but not enough of one to really change things

This is why I like giving feats based on BAB or base weapon proficiencies, since if you can cast righteous might then you don't need free power attack too.

[PunBlake]

Instead of deleting and merging things, I have (successfully) used the following variant:

Feat Chains: If you gain one of the following feats, you gain its counterpart as a bonus feat the next time you could gain a feat and meet its prerequisites.
Dodge -> Mobility
Weapon Focus -> Weapon Specialization
Two Weapon Fighting -> Two Weapon Defense
Improved Two Weapon Fighting -> Improved Two Weapon Defense
Combat Expertise -> <Choose one Improved Combat Maneuver Feat>

...and others I'm forgetting. Don't have my books right now.

Example: A Fighter at level 1 takes Dodge. At level 2, he gains Mobility along with his [Fighter] feat of choice.

This keeps the delayed improvement forced by the feat chains themselves without rewriting too many rules.

[AvatarVecna]

The "Feat Tax" rule approaches the existing problem "feat chains take up too many feats" and works to condense a lot of feat chains down, including giving a number of chain-entry feats for free to everybody. This doesn't touch on another problem of feat chains: the vast majority of individual non-caster feat-chains are not equal in value to a single caster feat. The fact that the Feat Taxes rule doesn't touch all feat chains, and the fact that it tries to work towards making some feat chains shorter and more valuable is steps taken in the right direction, but it's weird thinking of them as being on par with certain feat categories. A wizard 5 in PF with Int 18 is looking at 741637881856 different spell combinations prepared at the beginning of the day, but Extend Spell multiples that by ~300k (to 241275302302334976), and it only gets worse the higher level you get; Extend Spell multiples the number of total combos a Wizard 20 could have by ~300 quintillion (instead of ~300 thousand like the Wizard 5 got). Sure that's assuming all 1st+ lvl spells can be Extended (and for that matter, are worth extending), but that kind of option multiplication isn't really matched by any other feats and while that's honestly for the best, that kind of difference leaves a lot of ground that could be made up that base PF feats don't...and quite frankly, this feat tax doesn't either.

If you wanted feats to at least be able to pretend to be on par, every feat needs to do at least one of these three things:
Provide a flat unchanging bonus to a stat that levels very slowly (eg Initiative or negative HP Death threshold)
Provide a leveling bonus to a stat that levels at a decent speed normally (eg Skill Focus, Toughness, etc {although those example don't level fast enough IMO})
Provide a new and useful option for an old stat, so that it will continue leveling with you and remaining relevant (eg Arcane Strike, Whirlwind Attack, Dazzling display)

Feats that don't do this - feats that give lame flat bonuses, feats that give leveling bonuses that are too slow, or feats that give lame new abilities barely worth using - are feats that you have to tailor your build to make work, rather than those feats just working without you having to put in extra work to make them functional and useful.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

This is why I like giving feats based on BAB or base weapon proficiencies, since if you can cast righteous might then you don't need free power attack too.


Feat Chains: If you gain one of the following feats, you gain its counterpart as a bonus feat the next time you could gain a feat and meet its prerequisites.

I've done something like a mix of these two in 3e before. Characters with at least BAB +1 could ignore one feat prerequisite of a [Fighter]/[Weapon Style]/[Tactical] feat, plus one per iterative attack (so two at BAB +6, three at +11, and four at +16), and when they took the feat they gained the ignored feats as well, so a 12th-level fighter could take e.g. Greater Weapon Specialization while only having Weapon Focus and get WS and GWF for free, and a 16th-level one could take it with no feat prereqs and get WF, WS, and GWF for free.

It allowed fighters to easily diversify into more niche feat trees and take entire feat trees at once, and while it didn't make all the piddly little feats more useful or exciting it did allow for some growth in the power of feats at later levels.

[Drakevarg]

I go with the "feat is automatic when conditions are met" approach.

- Weapon Finesse, Power Attack, and Combat Expertise are just default.
- Improved/Greater/Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting are all rolled into the base feat.
- Point-Blank Shot is automatic if you're proficient with any ranged weapon.
- Improved Unarmed Strike is automatic if you have at least a +1 BAB.
- Mobility is just rolled into Dodge.

Oh, and weapon group feats, plus Weapon Focus/Specialization just requires a certain BAB rather than Fighter levels (which is one of those houserules I use so ubiquitously - like ignoring multiclass penalties - that I forget the original rule even exists).

This was partially to reduce tax feats for more interesting powers, and some just because I felt anyone who knows their backside from their broadsword should be capable of such basic techniques.

[Jack_Simth]

First, somehow he has missed several of the biggest feat chains in the game, i.e. style feats. To pick a random one, Brute Style has as prereqs "Str 15, Int 13, Combat Reflexes, Improved Overrun, Improved Trip, Improved Unarmed Strike, Vicious Stomp, base attack bonus +6." Yeah, how about fixing that.First guess as to why? The article is dated 2012, and the first style feats came out in Ultimate Combat (2011). If the author simply hadn't picked up that book yet, then the author wouldn't be aware of them.

[Florian]

Tried it, also tried folding feat chains into scaling feats, didn't like the various results at all.
- It devalues bonus feats as a class feature
- It devalues specialization
- It actually harms martial classes when generalists (Bard, etc.) have better access to martial combat
- It gets ridiculous with Clerics and Druids

[Castilonium]

Elephant in the Room was written in september 2012, which is probably why it doesn't account for feats added after that.


First guess as to why? The article is dated 2012, and the first style feats came out in Ultimate Combat (2011). If the author simply hadn't picked up that book yet, then the author wouldn't be aware of them.

The author posted about it again in January 2018 (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uuin?The-Elephant-in-the-Room-Feat-Taxes-in). Almost nothing changed. Improved Unarmed Strike got bundled into Improved Grapple, and the author seems to have completely forgotten that dirty tricks existed.

[Psyren]

The author posted about it again in January 2018 (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uuin?The-Elephant-in-the-Room-Feat-Taxes-in). Almost nothing changed. Improved Unarmed Strike got bundled into Improved Grapple, and the author seems to have completely forgotten that dirty tricks existed.

And you're doing the right thing by providing constructive feedback to them. That doesn't mean that the attempt shouldn't be lauded. Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good.


Tried it, also tried folding feat chains into scaling feats, didn't like the various results at all.
- It devalues bonus feats as a class feature
- It devalues specialization
- It actually harms martial classes when generalists (Bard, etc.) have better access to martial combat
- It gets ridiculous with Clerics and Druids

You can configure consolidations to correct for all of these if you're so inclined. For example, collapsing the Vital Strike chain into a single feat that scales with BAB will cause the full BAB classes to benefit faster. You could also add on martial weapon proficiency as a requirement to make it even costlier for any bards and druids that might be trying to pick it up.

[Kurald Galain]

And you're doing the right thing by providing constructive feedback to them. That doesn't mean that the attempt shouldn't be lauded. Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of good.

Considering that pretty much nobody actually agrees with his changes, either here or in the comments on his own blog, it strikes me that "lacklustre to awful" is a better description of that blog post than "good". Perfect can surely be the enemy of awful.

[Boggartbae]

You can configure consolidations to correct for all of these if you're so inclined. For example, collapsing the Vital Strike chain into a single feat that scales with BAB will cause the full BAB classes to benefit faster. You could also add on martial weapon proficiency as a requirement to make it even costlier for any bards and druids that might be trying to pick it up.

Exactly. "Proficient in all martial weapons" should definately be required for free power attack, weapon finesse, etc. Basically anything that people want to be an automatic option in combat. Casters already get more out of their feats than martial characters, so giving them all equal advantage doesn't actually fix anything. The only problem with this is that the rogue then wouldn't get anything, but unchained rogue fixed a lot of that classes problems, and as always you can ask your dm to make a special exception.

Making feat chains into scaling feats based on BAB is good, but it shouldn't be the only thing a feat tax fix does. It needs to give martial characters actual extra stuff.

[Silly Name]

Personally, I never took much issue with feat chains. The idea, IMHO, works, and is what was supposed to make the Fighter's bonus feats worthwhile. You start with a simple skill, and along the way you learn to improve on it, if so you wish. The issue is that most base feats quickly become obsolete or irrelevant. I remember a snippet from an interview where designers defended Toughness, saying that it was a good feat at low levels, and it's true! At very low levels, 3 extra HP can make the difference, but as you go past those low levels, those extra HP become irrelevant.

Furthermore, most feats that lead into a good feat are, by themselves, bad. I think that, theoretically, a better solution would be to actually take those bad feats and make them decent-to-good feats on their own, rather than just serving as a stepping stone towards what a player actually wants. Obviously, bundling feats or making them scale is a faster, more practical decision, and bundling is often one of the best ways to improve them (such as the popular Dodge+Mobility package), so it's not a bad idea in itself.

For example, anybody who wants to Crit-fish is going to have to deal with Weapon Focus, which not only is a bad feat, it is also quite boring. But it's one of the most common prerequisites for many melee combat feats, so everyone who's not an archer or a caster often gets saddled with it. You could solve this by making Weapon Focus improve at certain levels, making the acquisition of most of the feat chain automatic, but as others have said this has the side effect of making classes that grant bonus feats less attractive in that regard, and the Fighter doesn't really need to be made even less appetising than it is. And in any case, even a scaling numeric bonus to your To Hit rolls is boring; compare Metamagic, which lets casters modify their spells, making for a much more interesting and fun mechanic to play with. Plain numerical bonuses, whether static or scaling, don't make for a fun experience.

Regarding the article, it seems to hit many of the points I mentioned, though I don't like all of it. Deft and Powerful Maneuvers actually strike my fancy, since it makes them available to most combatants and not only those who invest in learning how to perform them without getting shish-kebabbed., but I'm not a fan of Finesse as a weapon property, or Power Attack as an option for just anybody.

The document has an interesting idea for the pitiable "+2 to skill" feats, but it doesn't feel like getting an extra +2 at 10 ranks is quite enough to make those feats actually interesting choices. I think the issue here is that often feats (and PrCs) require skill ranks, meaning those bonuses tend to be overlooked in favour of an item that grants you a +5 bonus right out of the door, if you absolutely need a boost to your skill check. I'll take my time to read over the rest of the document properly later, and I think I might actually steal some of the ideas therein.

[martixy]

Exactly. "Proficient in all martial weapons" should definately be required for free power attack, weapon finesse, etc. Basically anything that people want to be an automatic option in combat. Casters already get more out of their feats than martial characters, so giving them all equal advantage doesn't actually fix anything. The only problem with this is that the rogue then wouldn't get anything, but unchained rogue fixed a lot of that classes problems, and as always you can ask your dm to make a special exception.

Making feat chains into scaling feats based on BAB is good, but it shouldn't be the only thing a feat tax fix does. It needs to give martial characters actual extra stuff.

Oh, this is a very good idea.

Me, I like getting rid of feat taxes. My specific approach is, I use BAB as a currency. Every 3 BAB nets you a free feat tax feat.

And I've given a ton of other feats similar treatment. So I'm all in on that philosophy.

[Unavenger]

Exactly. "Proficient in all martial weapons" should definately be required for free power attack, weapon finesse, etc. Basically anything that people want to be an automatic option in combat. Casters already get more out of their feats than martial characters, so giving them all equal advantage doesn't actually fix anything.

Fighters get more benefit out of power attack than wizards, though. If you could power-shocking grasp, it might be a slightly different story, mind, but you can't.

5e has its flaws, but making finesse just a thing you could do (with dex-to-damage, no less) wasn't one of them; spellcasters didn't suddenly become more amazing because they could stab people with DEX for their daggers.

I'm like 99% sure that fighters would be happier than wizards with free power attack for all, just like spellcasters would love bonus spell focus more than paladins would love bonus spell focus, even though paladins technically can cast spells that require a save.

[Psyren]

Considering that pretty much nobody actually agrees with his changes, either here or in the comments on his own blog, it strikes me that "lacklustre to awful" is a better description of that blog post than "good". Perfect can surely be the enemy of awful.

Yeah yeah, whatever.


Fighters get more benefit out of power attack than wizards, though. If you could power-shocking grasp, it might be a slightly different story, mind, but you can't.

5e has its flaws, but making finesse just a thing you could do (with dex-to-damage, no less) wasn't one of them; spellcasters didn't suddenly become more amazing because they could stab people with DEX for their daggers.

I'm a big fan of baselining certain abilities into just being things you can do (or try to do); Power Attack, Awesome Blow, Deadly Aim etc are all examples.

I also don't see why maneuvers need to provoke without a feat. Starfinder did away with that and I liked the simplicity (though it has other problems.)

[Jack_Simth]

The author posted about it again in January 2018 (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2uuin?The-Elephant-in-the-Room-Feat-Taxes-in). Almost nothing changed. Improved Unarmed Strike got bundled into Improved Grapple, and the author seems to have completely forgotten that dirty tricks existed.
Oh, that's just basic human laziness. "Almost nothing changed" -> Copy / Paste and a few minor edits.

[Darth Ultron]

I don't think ''feat taxes'' are such a bad thing, I see it as more an Optimizer complaint then anything. The basic complaint is that a character can't take the ''awesome powerful and interesting" feats at low level. They want their 2nd level fighter to be able to do take Awesome Charge, without ''wasting three feat slots".




What would you say are the dis/advantages of this approach?

Well, the advantage is you get some happy payers that like having all the best powerful feats at 1st level. The disadvantage is that it unbalances the game and makes only optimizers happy.



Does this help balance the game? Does it help to address martial / caster disparity?

No. Neither one. It just makes some players happy. And it's never enough, even if you remove the 'tax', most feats are not ''cool" enough. Like they only give a +2....they need to be +10 to be really cool.



Does it create unforeseen consequences?

A big one is such players don't have anything to gain by going up levels. When they take all the feats they like...well then there is nothing else to take.

Also, many find that having ''all the awesome feats they like" is not all that much fun. They either find combat too easy ("oh, my second level fighter does an Awesome Trip on the goblin automatically") or combat just gets silly(''so my 2nd level guy cleave trips the whole goblin tribe into the volcano").



Would you recommend these house rules, in part or as a whole?


No.

[BassoonHero]

I subscribe to the idea that feats should be useful in their own right. Bad feats shouldn't be used to balance good ones.

I think it's useful to distinguish between:

1. Feats that are merely very, very bad.
2. Mandatory "enabler" feats that remove unnecessary restrictions.
3. Feats that are so good that everyone takes them.

The first category includes a lot of feats that provide numeric bonuses: Skill Focus, the +2/+2 skill bonus feats, Weapon Focus (and company), Toughness, Dodge and Mobility, Endurance, and so on. These feats are quite poor on their own, but they're often used as prerequisites for useful feats (or prestige classes). These feats aren't just bad, they're boring -- a +1 or +2 that vanishes into a larger composite score. In most cases, simply eliminating these feats would improve the game.

If another feat is too powerful with the prerequisites gone, then that feat can be tweaked or even split into two. For instance, if you eliminate all of the feat prerequisites to Whirlwind Attack, then you might cap the number of attacks at twice the character's usual number of iterative attacks. (This suggestion is off the top of my head and may not be a good example.)

The second category includes the AoO-negating feature of the "Improved" feats. Without these feats, those maneuvers are very bad, and players who don't specialize in those maneuvers will almost never employ them. This is a problem, because those are the core alternatives to "stand still and make a regular melee attack". These feat taxes tend to turn martial characters into one-trick ponies; it's rarely worth paying the tax unless you're going to use that particular maneuver frequently.

Pathfinder introduced Dirty Fighting as a patch for this. Characters can spend one feat instead of many to make combat maneuvers a viable option for occasional use. Myself, I'd rather cut the Gordian knot and just eliminate the AoOs for everyone. (The "Improved" feats can lose the useless Combat Expertise prerequisite, keep the +4 bonuses, and possibly add some minor ability or perk.) There's no need to have an annoying penalty just so that anyone likely to be affected can spend a feat to negate it. This does mean that the flanking requirement is removed, but as the chief beneficiaries will be mundane martial characters who want to add a little diversity to their attack routines, I don't see a problem. This also means that characters who wouldn't ever take the feat will gain the benefit, but it's doubtful that they'd ever use it anyway.

The second category also includes Weapon Finesse and Brutal Throw. 5e was right to make this a base mechanic. Weapon Finesse is a feat tax for any Dex-based combatant and a cruel joke on 3/4 BAB classes. Brutal Throw just means that everyone uses longbows instead of javelins.

Finally, the second category arguably also includes Spring Attack, Shot on the Run, and Flyby Attack. Frankly, I think that 5e had the right idea letting characters move as they like and still use all of their attacks. In 3.5, martial characters are screwed by the action economy starting at level 6 and every decent martial build must include a workaround of some sort. I'd just as soon fix the core mechanic so that characters can walk and chew gum by default. This would eliminate a double handful of feats and hopefully add some diversity to martial builds. This suggestion is certainly controversial and possibly out of scope of this discussion, but I think it's worth mentioning.

The third category includes Power Attack and Natural Spell. These feats take something that already works and make it much better. Nearly all martial characters wielding heavy weapons should take Power Attack. But unlike (say) Weapon Finesse, Power Attack isn't a hard requirement. Martial characters can function without it. This is one reason I'm hesitant to give it out for free: it really is a value-add, not a true must-have.

As a mechanic, Power Attack has its problems. It's extremely crunchy, encouraging players to take longer turns. It's swingy -- it increases both the odds that you'll one-shot the enemy and the odds that your attack will do nothing. In extreme cases, it contributes to the rocket tag of combat. Rocket tag is a fact of the system, but it's an unfortunate fact I'd rather mitigate than encourage. All that said, Power Attack is so important to the characters that use it that taking it away or nerfing it would be an even bigger problem. Ideally, I'd fix combat so that we don't need Power Attack, then eliminate or rewrite it. I don't pretend to have a solution, though.


I don't think ''feat taxes'' are such a bad thing, I see it as more an Optimizer complaint then anything. The basic complaint is that a character can't take the ''awesome powerful and interesting" feats at low level.
That's not quite correct. The complaint is that in order to take powerful and interesting feats later, the character is forced to take weak and boring feats at low levels. You're focusing on the "powerful and interesting", but the real problem is the "weak and boring".


They want their 2nd level fighter to be able to do take Awesome Charge, without ''wasting three feat slots".
You've combined two things. I agree that fighters should be able to take Awesome Charge without wasting feat slots. But that doesn't mean that Awesome Charge is level-appropriate for a second-level character! It just means that, if Awesome Charge should be restricted to higher levels (as I think most of us would agree), then the proper method of restriction is not simply clogging it up with useless feat prerequisites.

Awesome Charge is a particularly strange feat for you to bring up because two of its three feat prerequisites are far from useless and because it has other serious prerequisites that would be difficult for a second-level PC to attain. Second-level PCs aren't passing on Awesome Charge because they don't want to be saddled with Power Attack and Awesome Blow. So your example seems a bit disingenuous.


A big one is such players don't have anything to gain by going up levels. When they take all the feats they like...well then there is nothing else to take.
This is indeed a problem. There are a lot of feats, but most of them just aren't very likeable. The solution isn't to require that likeable feats be spread thinly across a pile of boring feats but to make more feats likeable.

[Boggartbae]

Oh, this is a very good idea.

Me, I like getting rid of feat taxes. My specific approach is, I use BAB as a currency. Every 3 BAB nets you a free feat tax feat.

And I've given a ton of other feats similar treatment. So I'm all in on that philosophy.

Oh this is cool. So you get more feats based on your BAB, but the feats have to be stuff like combat expertise. Am I getting that right?


Fighters get more benefit out of power attack than wizards, though. If you could power-shocking grasp, it might be a slightly different story, mind, but you can't.

5e has its flaws, but making finesse just a thing you could do (with dex-to-damage, no less) wasn't one of them; spellcasters didn't suddenly become more amazing because they could stab people with DEX for their daggers.

I'm like 99% sure that fighters would be happier than wizards with free power attack for all, just like spellcasters would love bonus spell focus more than paladins would love bonus spell focus, even though paladins technically can cast spells that require a save.

5e did other things to balance martials and casters, so the fact that they aren't op doesn't say that this change would work in 3.P. Also, I'm more worried about clerics and druids with power attack and weapon finesse. 3/4 BAB full caster classes are already better melee combatants than Full BAB classes are; they don't need free things to stay attractive, and making them choose between power attack and a metamagic feat is important to making sure that they aren't just passively good at everything.

[Unavenger]

5e did other things to balance martials and casters, so the fact that they aren't op doesn't say that this change would work in 3.P. Also, I'm more worried about clerics and druids with power attack and weapon finesse. 3/4 BAB full caster classes are already better melee combatants than Full BAB classes are; they don't need free things to stay attractive, and making them choose between power attack and a metamagic feat is important to making sure that they aren't just passively good at everything.

I still far prefer a world where the fighter, rogue and cleric get weapon finesse to one where the fighter does but the rogue doesn't, in terms of inter-class balance. Plus, I don't see many clerics and their spells granting +lots to strength using weapon finesse any time soon.

Of course, rather than the bodged hot-fix of "If you have all martial weapon proficiency, you get such-and-such" you could actually give individual classes such-and-such at certain levels - just giving the fighter a bonus feat at EVERY level, and the rogue a few, and the monk a bunch, would go some way to making them a lot better, even.

[BassoonHero]

I'm more worried about clerics and druids with power attack and weapon finesse. 3/4 BAB full caster classes are already better melee combatants than Full BAB classes are; they don't need free things to stay attractive, and making them choose between power attack and a metamagic feat is important to making sure that they aren't just passively good at everything.
I suspect that at those power levels, the marginal benefit of one or two feats is negligible. One metamagic feat more or less won't mean much next to the existing power disparity.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

It’s alright, and I definitely use their Risky Strike and Defensive Stance mechanics from Hearth and Blade, but just using Spheres of Might plus feats automatically scaling to their Improved/Greater/Superior versions is so much simpler and better imo

[unseenmage]

I allow the Feats in Magic Items sidebar from Arms and Equipment and viola, gp suddenly just buys feats.

Mind that I also require the creator of the item to track down an NPC who actually has the feat and they must remain present for the duration of the crafting of the item.

Also, retraining is as thing. So PCs who've invested in a feat chain and later put it into a magic item can retrain the feats they're now wearing.

[Caedes]

And you're doing the right thing by providing constructive feedback to them. That doesn't mean that the attempt shouldn't be lauded. Perfect shouldn't be the enemy of the good.


#agreed

My group decided to put these to the practical test and have been using them for the past 9ish months. And the overall feeling from our martial players has been positive. We have made a couple tweaks here and there. Overall it has been a success.

So if anything I would say, give it a go and make changes that make sense for your group. It is better than saying it is rubbish. The author took the time to write all that down and offer a solution.

If it's not right for your group, don't use it. If it is almost a good fit, change what you want. etc. etc. etc.

:D

[Darth Ultron]

That's not quite correct. The complaint is that in order to take powerful and interesting feats later, the character is forced to take weak and boring feats at low levels. You're focusing on the "powerful and interesting", but the real problem is the "weak and boring".

But that is Pathfinder (and D&D). All low level stuff is ''weak and boring", and things scale up with levels.



This is indeed a problem. There are a lot of feats, but most of them just aren't very likeable. The solution isn't to require that likeable feats be spread thinly across a pile of boring feats but to make more feats likeable.

If that is the problem, you are better off using Spheres of War or whatever the Pathfinder maneuver rules are so the warrior types can cast spells(called ''maneuvers").

[Khosan]

Oh this is cool. So you get more feats based on your BAB, but the feats have to be stuff like combat expertise. Am I getting that right?

In that kind of line, I think it's worth mentioning Spheres of Might (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/). Essentially, higher BaB sphere practitioners get more talents which allows them to pick up more Cool Melee Things™ to do. So instead of Improved Trip, you have stuff like High-Low Combination (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/dual-wielding#toc16) or Leg Cutter (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/duelist#toc17) which you could combine with, say, Dual Opportunity (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/dual-wielding#toc13) or ...And Stay Down! (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/duelist#toc2). Functionally they're not that different, but the talents, I feel, are thematically cooler, synergize pretty well with other talents and come at a relatively smaller cost than a feat. It gets around the issue of feat taxes mostly by just working independently of feats. Not that it's not without its own issues, I just find it to be a fun system to play around with that dodges feat taxes pretty well.

[Boggartbae]

#agreed

My group decided to put these to the practical test and have been using them for the past 9ish months. And the overall feeling from our martial players has been positive. We have made a couple tweaks here and there. Overall it has been a success.

So if anything I would say, give it a go and make changes that make sense for your group. It is better than saying it is rubbish. The author took the time to write all that down and offer a solution.

If it's not right for your group, don't use it. If it is almost a good fit, change what you want. etc. etc. etc.

:D

3rded. Understanding that your DM is not a robot and that you can all do whatever you want is critical to the DnD experience, both when playing and when deciding on homebrew rules.

On a related tangent, the fact that they're are so many niche and useless feats for things that characters should just be able to do is probably a symptom of people treating 3.P more like a computer game than a TTRPG.

[Silly Name]

But that is Pathfinder (and D&D). All low level stuff is ''weak and boring", and things scale up with levels.

I think I disagree. A feat accessible at level 1 isn't necessarily boring. For me, the boring feats are the ones that give +X to a certain roll, because they are simply an extra modifier which soon gets lost amid the rest of everything else. I mean, have you ever thought "phew, good think I too Weapon Focus, because I could never hit that monster otherwise"?

The fun, entertaining feats are the one that give you options, like Power Attack or Combat Expertise. Metamagic feats, Natural Spells, etc. Feats that can change how you do things and modify the flow of your actions; even luck feats, as underpowered as they are, give a more interesting mechanic than "+X to thing".

[EldritchWeaver]

If that is the problem, you are better off using Spheres of War or whatever the Pathfinder maneuver rules are so the warrior types can cast spells(called ''maneuvers").

It's "Path of War" for the maneuver stuff, "Spheres of Might" is the one with talents trees.

[BassoonHero]

But that is Pathfinder (and D&D). All low level stuff is ''weak and boring", and things scale up with levels.
I don't think that's necessarily true as-is, and I certainly don't think that it needs to be true.

For one thing, there are many feats in 3.5 that are useful, interesting, and accessible at low levels. For another, even feats with useless "tax" prerequisites are still often available at low levels. As I said before, I think you're conflating having useless prerequisites with being unavailable at low levels. If a particular feat is too powerful for low-level characters, then adding useless taxes is neither necessary nor sufficient to restrict it to higher levels.

But more to the point, players shouldn't be forced to make weak, boring choices. Why bother? Choosing useless feats feels bad and makes players unhappy. There's no such thing as conservation of fun; you're not going to have more fun with Spring Attack because you had less fun with Dodge and Mobility. If useless prerequisites are needed to keep players from accumulating too many useful feats, then why not eliminate the taxes and simply reduce the number of feats that characters get? If that idea doesn't appeal to you, then why not? It doesn't appeal to me because as a player, I like getting useful, interesting abilities. Dodge is neither useful nor interesting.


If that is the problem, you are better off using Spheres of War or whatever the Pathfinder maneuver rules are so the warrior types can cast spells(called ''maneuvers").
That's a fair description of the status quo, but then this whole thread is about fixing the status quo. Martial maneuvers provide useful, interesting abilities on a regular basis. This is absolutely a good thing and the reason that I recommend them to new players. But while I have nothing against the maneuver model, I also think that the traditional feat-based model is capable of providing the same.

I love subsystems. One of the reasons I love them is that different subsystems can be used to model different concepts, even when those concepts have similar roles. Martial maneuvers feel very different from other types of nonmagical melee combat. This is good. The problem is that the alternatives are clearly worse, so there's very little mechanical diversity at that power level. Martial maneuvers are themselves a fix for the broken status quo; Spheres of Might are another. Neither one is a complete substitute for a fixed base system.

[Silly Name]

One of the most efficient ways to level-gate feats is to make them dependent on BAB, ability ranks, or even character levels themselves.

Seriously, if you don't want people to get, I don't know, Spring Attack before level 6, then just make the requisite "BaB +6", rather than putting Dodge and Mobility in front of it. If you want Fighters to be able to still take it sooner, lower the BaB requirements, or insert special conditions for Fighters when they take the feat as a Fighter Bonus Feat.

Or, if really want there to be a feat chain, make the whole chain appealing. Not everything has to be as powerful as the ending point of the chain, but make it worthwhile to take the lesser feats.

[Darth Ultron]

I mean, have you ever thought "phew, good think I too Weapon Focus, because I could never hit that monster otherwise"?

It's a typical thing for a low level character to say....



The fun, entertaining feats are the one that give you options, like Power Attack or Combat Expertise. Metamagic feats, Natural Spells, etc. Feats that can change how you do things and modify the flow of your actions; even luck feats, as underpowered as they are, give a more interesting mechanic than "+X to thing".

Yea, but it's a bit much to say every feat must be ''fun and entertaining".

[BassoonHero]

Yea, but it's a bit much to say every feat must be ''fun and entertaining".
Who said any such thing? You're quoting the words, but I couldn't find them in this thread.

[Silly Name]

Yea, but it's a bit much to say every feat must be ''fun and entertaining".

Well, it's a game. It's supposed to be fun and entertaining. Mind you, I realise it's pretty much impossible for every single feat ever printed to provide actually interesting mechanical effects, but the "+X to Thing" types of feats are ridiculously unfun. And they are really abundant and often crop up in feat taxes, which is what makes them taxes in the first place.

As I said, Power Attack is a good feat, and when it is present in a feat chain very few people complain about it. It's not revolutionary, but by letting the player decide how they want to use it, it offers more than a static, easily forgotten bonus. The reason Power Attack is such a staple for any STR-based melee build is because it works. And the best part is that Power Attack tends to lead into some of the best feats for melee characters.

Weapon Focus (and its chain), on the other hand, is usually seen as a tax because of how little a +1 to hit accomplishes on the long run, and how boring it is. It doesn't give you a fancy new tool in battle, and honestly even fails at conveying the idea that by taking this feat you start the path to mastering your weapon, rather than simply being proficient with it.

Metamagic feats work because, in general, they let casters modify their spells, and everyone likes the possibility to make bigger fireballs, or double the duration of their summons, or to deliver touch attacks as rays. Spell Focus, however, increases your DC by 1 (which is just marginally better than increasing your Attack Bonus by 1), but exists mostly as a requisite for PrCs and other, more interesting feats.

[BassoonHero]

Yeah, even though I'm skeptical of Power Attack for the reasons I mentioned before, it's a good feat in that it gives your character a new useful option. Even though it's "only" numbers, it doesn't vanish into a large bonus like Weapon Focus does; it's something you use, not merely something you have.

[Krazzman]

I like the idea of reducing feat taxes.

As such in my games I have the following house rules:
Weapon Finesse is an automatic "feat" as it is part of both the Finesse weapon ability and the light weapon category.
Improved Two-Weapon fighting is now scaling. ITWF gives you a bonus off-hand attack every time you do a main-hand attack [insert main and off-hand definitions].
Adding Ambidexterity as a Feat that allows full str bonus on off-hand attacks as well as giving the benefit of Two Weapon Rend and Two Weapon Defense (in the case of TWDefense each attack forgone adds +1).
Vital Strike automatically gains the improved versions and such. But in case of a +2 Flaming Greatsword using Vital Strike you get 4d6 + 2d6 (fire) + 4 instead of only the base weapon damage.
Weapon Profiency Feats are traits for a singular weapon or a feat for weapon groups (except exotic).

Maneuvers... are more or less look at Dirty Trick, so far none of my players wanted to focus on them or any specific style featchain for that matter and I have yet to think about them because of that.

[upho]

What would you say are the dis/advantages of this approach?Advantages:

less numerous trap feats
more noob friendly game (especially in terms of building martial PCs)
less "boring passive numerical bonus" options (see further below)
more numerous viable tactical non-caster combat options
helps decrease C/MD issues

Disadvantages:

requires some slight tweaking/additions to suit a game including more than CRB options
requires more tweaking to suit a game with 3PP options also more or less designed to address the same or closely related underlying issues (notably PoW and SoM)
requires quite a lot of additional minimum GM work due to the large impact the approach has on many opponents from official sources (though rules/guidelines for quickly doing so are included in the "Elephant" PDF, and the work increase is barely noticeable for a GM who already tweaks such opponents)
house rules (they make OGL site content slightly less useful, and potentially make a lot of class guides and otherwise helpful recommendations less applicable)


Does this help balance the game? Does it help to address martial / caster disparity?Yes. Although the impact should not be overstated; you won't fix the problem simply by using this approach alone. But it does most help improve combat versatility/adaptability disparity issues quite notably during most levels.


Does it create unforeseen consequences?If used strictly as written while simultaneously choosing to ignore what the authors say in the introduction, it definitely may (such as the often unwanted potential boost to casters also using combat feats, or dirty trick and style feats prereq impacts not being specifically spelled out, as mentioned by previous posters in this thread). Otherwise, it does what it says on the tin. Which is specifically to reduce combat feat taxes.


Would you recommend these house rules, in part or as a whole?Yes, and I have done so several times. Although never as a complete package to be expected to just work flawlessly in every game, more as very good inspiration for own house rules and as a big pile of stuff which can usually be implemented as-is to help improve the game.

Overall, while the Elephant is definitely not perfect, I believe it's certainly still an improvement for most games with just a little bit of work.



First, somehow he has missed several of the biggest feat chains in the game, i.e. style feats. To pick a random one, Brute Style has as prereqs "Str 15, Int 13, Combat Reflexes, Improved Overrun, Improved Trip, Improved Unarmed Strike, Vicious Stomp, base attack bonus +6." Yeah, how about fixing that.From the introduction of the PDF:

"Certain elements of the revised feat tree, such as the simplified treatment of combat maneuvers and weapon groups, could easily be appended to a campaign using the full suite of Pathfinder rulebooks. However, we do not officially support or reference these books in this version of the document."

And really, how difficult is it to include related stuff from later books? I mean, it's simply a matter of adding something like "this feat replaces any mentions of found in any rules supplements" to a "Special" line of the Deft/Powerful Maneuvers feats, add Improved Dirty Trick (of course copying the duration increase to Deft Maneuvers), Drag, Reposition and Steal to the list of feats they replace, and add a general rule stating "all characters are treated as having Int 13 and Combat Expertise for the purpose of meeting prerequisites of combat feats". Done!


Second, about half of his post is about letting martial characters deal more [i]damage. This is misguided: martial classes have several issues but dealing damage is not one of them. Consequently, feats that are a clear damage boost (such as Point-Blank Shot or Power Attack) are not a "feat tax". You spend a feat, you deal more damage; clear as crystal. Related to this is that archery and two-weapon fighting are the most damaging styles in the game; that is why they require feats. If you give those feats for free, every other fighting style suffers.While I generally fully agree with the problem of the damage myopia of martial options in the game, there's also a few very important other related things to keep in mind:

The greatest weakness of non-casters is the lack of low cost viable mechanical options to overcome challenges. Making Power Attack free (and Point-Blank Shot to a very small degree) does help mitigate this weakness.
You already pay for the damage boost added by Power Attack in the form of decreased accuracy.
Point-Blank Shot and Power Attack are not even remotely close to equal, and the former should just be removed completely from the game IMO, as ranged attacks already come with ranged dependent accuracy adjustments and the minor static non-scaling bonuses are boring, not needed for making a non-caster ranged damage role viable and after the first levels also barely nothing but a pointless additional fiddly bit to remember in combat.


Third, weapon finesse is a feat is because dex is a much better stat than str. Dex adds to AC, reflex, initiative, ranged attacks, and several good skills; whereas Str does basically nothing except melee attacks. Therefore, using a different stat for your attack bonuses should cost something, otherwise you might as well drop the str ability score entirely. This is not a feat tax; note that rogues already get it for free, and that this feat already lets you use dex on the most-used combat maneuvers.Considering that for example PoW grants Dex to damage for the cost of a feat and that doesn't make melee Dex builds no-brainers, I'm not sure this is as big an issue as you seem to believe. However, how much of an issue this is in a specific game is also very highly dependent on the players' general level of system mastery and the game's expected power level; if those levels are sufficiently low it won't really matter, and if they're sufficiently high Dex based melee will simply become a bit less inferior in combat.

Basically, it's worth keeping in mind you do actually still pay for Dex melee even if Finesse is free, even though the costs are primarily in the form of opportunity costs due to increased limitations which may not be sufficient to balance the much greater general usefulness of a high Dex in most games played according to guidelines.


Finally, the guy has missed the Dirty Fighting (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/dirty-fighting-combat/) feat which already does most of what he wants.Dirty Fighting is great, but that's frankly only because of how crappy the alternative is, and it certainly would've been considered a feat tax had it been in the original 3e PHB instead of Combat Expertise and Int 13. More importantly, it typically doesn't help nearly as much as simply removing the prerequisites and pile the related Improved feats together in two feats with only low Str or Dex prereqs does.


So yeah, the "elephant" has a couple decent points but misses the solution by a wide mile. A much easier fix would be "any feat that requires dodge, mobility, or combat expertise no longer has this prerequisite".Well, that would certainly be easier, but it also won't accomplish nearly as much in terms of offering non-casters low cost viable mechanical options in combat.



My beef with Elephant in the Room Feat Taxes is that it's so vastly much better for dex-based builds than strength-based builds, especially if you play with good 3pp like Path of War and Spheres. Dex builds gets Weapon Finesse, Agile Maneuvers, and Power Attack (normally pre req 13 str) for free, while strength builds only get Power Attack. And dexterity provides far more bonuses than strength does.I agree about the 3PP point, but it's worth noting the "Elephant" also never claims to work in games with such material without tweaks. And in this case, it's really simple IMO: reintroduce Finesse! (Agile Maneuvers is automatically or quite easily bypassed in most cases regardless.)


The only way a strength build can have an advantage over dex builds with this is if you stack size increases and focus on AoOs or vital strikes. And people don't always like to deal with big creatures clogging up the board and making fights less dynamic with an AoO every time an enemy tries to move. I really wish strength builds could be viable while staying at medium size.I think if you play in a Paizo-only game where the players believe that this would be the only Str advantage, it's highly likely they'd already consider maximizing the size of Str melee a no-brainer (regardless of combat focus/style/role). It's also worth noting that it isn't quite true, since there are still so many more numerous and more significant combat boosts and options limited to Str. I mean, simply the fact that the theoretical max Str score a PC can achieve is at least 30 points higher than the max Dex score is kinda telling, not to mention that a Dex build can still not become as effective in melee combat during a majority of levels, regardless of role.

Now whether this potential combat advantage is more valuable than that of the pretty significantly greater utility potential of a high Dex score is of course a very different and much more difficult question, to which there's also much less of a generally applicable answer IME/O.


I still far prefer a world where the fighter, rogue and cleric get weapon finesse to one where the fighter does but the rogue doesn't, in terms of inter-class balance. Plus, I don't see many clerics and their spells granting +lots to strength using weapon finesse any time soon.

Of course, rather than the bodged hot-fix of "If you have all martial weapon proficiency, you get such-and-such" you could actually give individual classes such-and-such at certain levels - just giving the fighter a bonus feat at EVERY level, and the rogue a few, and the monk a bunch, would go some way to making them a lot better, even.I agree here. But it's actually much easier to address this than people seem to believe. I mean, to differentiate between classes like rogues and druids, you simply need combat feat prerequisites/scaling thresholds based on "inverted" casting capacity (up to max X spell level access), replacing or complementing other prereqs/thresholds depending on preferences and the feat in question.


Yeah, even though I'm skeptical of Power Attack for the reasons I mentioned before, it's a good feat in that it gives your character a new useful option. Even though it's "only" numbers, it doesn't vanish into a large bonus like Weapon Focus does; it's something you use, not merely something you have.Agreed, but it's also not bad if that option is granted as a baseline, and that a higher bab makes you better at it. I think the Elephant would be much better if it also included a "reverse" Power Attack baseline option for improving your CMB, trading damage during a round instead. (Which is why I have included such a baseline option in my games.)