Shoddy Feat Showdown! Round 1.1

[daremetoidareyo]

Welcome one and welcome all!

We are gathered here for one reason:

April Madness

for those who had fun doing brackets

but want more brackets!!!






Round 1:

Aftersight (Races of Faerun p. 160)

VS

Spirit Sense (Heroes of Horror p. 124)


The premise is simple: pick the feat you want to see compete against something else.

Please fill out your vote here: https://forms.gle/ckLYogjVcpoaRUFb6

Please Vote only ONCE

I'll check the responses april 8th and apprise you of the winning feat.

Discuss the merits and flaws of the feats below.
Post weird build stub ideass that the feats inspired into you below.


And gear up, cuz on April 8th, round 2 will feature the next two semi-finalists:

Hero of Battle's Veteran Knowledge
VS
Races of Stone's Trivial Knowledge



Please suggest other contenders below as well.
I am also accepting forum post design advice below as well. See if we can't maximize the fun of this.

Sorry ya'll, apparently comic book profanity isn't allowed. So here is round 1.1


So what is this all about anyway. I Lazily present the following as your guide to discern what's going on here.





Hide


Daremeto
Also, I'm taking suggestions for feats for the next quadrant

Akal-Saris
so is the winning feat the worse one?

Daremetoidareyou
It’s the one that gets to compete again

The Viscount
Are the opening pairs always meant to be related?

daremetoidareyou
This time, the feats are related, as I have like 3600 feats to choose from.
I can theme the pairs this time with that amount of variety.

The Viscount
Are we aiming for feats that are bad in an interesting way
or useless?

daremetoidareyou
Ideally, yes. I’m dodging static bonuses as a rule... unless the flavor text is interesting
Such as it is with these feats for round 1 and 2.

My other ideas up for contention are:
Polar chill vs frosty touch
Judged by aurífer vs mark of hleid
Plus I think the act of putting these thingss together like this is creatively stimulating
Like, the aftersight feat, for example: It gives a vision of the past. Spirit sense allows you to see ghosts
Combine them…can you see ghosts in the past?

And for frosty touch vs polar chill, I want to incentivize the groundwork of building a tricked out frosty touch uldra fighter worthy of the LA handicap and seeing how people would optimize around polar chills cool ability.
Veterans knowledge vs trivial knowledge posits the question: can using strategic advantage rules compete with advantage on gnomish bardic knowledge checks

The Viscount
I want brachiation in there somewhere

daremetoidareyou
Ooh, that one vs sahuagin flip
Or swim by attack




So, the real winners are really chosen by their capacity to inspire creativity. Which, you know, is fun, plus we get an arbitrary winner.

[daremetoidareyo]

What troacctid said

I'm voting based on which I think is more well-made, from a game design perspective.

Spirit Sense is actually pretty solid. It's a completely unique effect—while there exist spells that let you speak with dead people, there's really nothing else like this. The feat doesn't have any combat benefit, but it opens up some potentially very interesting avenues for creative roleplaying. Because of its uniqueness, it's difficult to gauge its power level, and the writers were very conservative, allowing for a very short time limit of 1 minute per point of Wisdom bonus. I personally think tying it to Wisdom is a mistake—this is a fun, roleplay-focused feat that I would prefer to be more accessible to a wide variety of characters. With the Wisdom requirement, it's only reasonably usable by divine casters, many of whom already have access to speak with dead and therefore have little use for this feat. If I were to redesign this feat, I would either make it a flat duration or have it scale with character level. I would also extend the timer, putting it at something like 1 hour, or 10 minutes per level, or thereabouts. The cherry on top of this feat is the bonus to notice incorporeal creatures, which ties in perfectly with the flavor, and really pulls the room together, as it were. Even the prerequisite helps tell the story of what's happening. Mechanically speaking, the writers did a great job of making it clear exactly what it can and can't do. I think this is a wonderful feat that is only slightly undertuned.

Aftersight has kind of similar flavor, but executed much more poorly. You see a vision of the past, which is tied to your current location. But instead of giving you any specific information, it gives you a +4 bonus on a Knowledge check. Which is, honestly, a terrible mechanical implementation of the story. First off, there's no restriction written in that the Knowledge check has to be related to your location—in fact, it even calls out that it applies to all Knowledge (history) and bardic knowledge checks—which makes no sense. Secondly, what does it mean if you fail the Knowledge check? Do you just...learn nothing? You got a vision of the location while nobody was around and nothing interesting happened? Thirdly, it gets even weirder if you're untrained in both skills, which is totally possible, since neither of them is a prerequisite for the feat. Now the only things you can possibly learn from your vision are things that are already common knowledge. That really limits the range of possible visions, doesn't it? This is really sloppy work. I think this feat would require a major mechanical overhaul in order to pass muster for me.

So, all in all, an easy choice. Spirit Sense wins.

[AvatarVecna]

Given that what we're even voting on is explicitly arbitrary, I'm not really seeing the point of participation? It doesn't help that if this were a proper bracket, we'd already...you know...have the bracket filled out, and people could vote on each existing pairing before it moves to the next round.

[nedz]

(meh, meh)

These are both role-play feats.

[daremetoidareyo]

You mechanically get a vision for aftersight. That's in the feat description part. Your DM must supply you with a vision. That's crunch. It's delicious crunch too!

aftersight player: "Yo, DM, Lore drop me!"
DM: "Heck yeah, dog. LORE DROOOOOOOOOOOOP"

*Later

other party members (to each other): "Why is the stupid aftersight bard 5/paragnostic apostle the DM's favorite?"
- "I know, right?"


I know some people put a feat wishlist up on the previous, more saucily named version of this thread. If they don't mind repeating that effort here, I can make sure some of those golden nuggets get included.

[Troacctid]

Eberron division:
Action Boost
Dragonmark Battlestrike
Eldritch Mark
Friend of the Tribes
Galifaran Scholar
Manifest Flight
Research
Right of Counsel

[daremetoidareyo]

There is something in aftersight that i would like to call the "dormant bardic knowledge clause."

"This feat does not grant bardic knowledge if it is not already possessed"

If you invert that sentence, this feat does grant bardic knowledge if it is already possessed.

I have absolutely zero idea what you can do by invoking the dormant bardic knowledge clause, but I wanted to point that out as a thing.

[Seward]

You mechanically get a vision for aftersight. That's in the feat description part. Your DM must supply you with a vision. That's crunch. It's delicious crunch too!

aftersight player: "Yo, DM, Lore drop me!"
DM: "Heck yeah, dog. LORE DROOOOOOOOOOOOP"



I did that with Brain Drain (pathfinder 1e oracle ability). When I ran out of questions I asked things like "so how did you become a cultist of an entity that wants to destroy the universe anyway" or "what do succubi do for fun when off duty?" (yes, I brain drained a succubus once....sometimes I just did the effect for the damage and had to come up with questions in the middle of combat. If interesting enough it might take me out of action for a few rounds, you have to keep asking 1 question/round)

The answers always entertained the table if the GM was in the mood, and I always let the GM back out with "you get an answer that distracts you for a while" sort of thing if he wanted to move the game forward. But sometimes those answers were the highlight of the evening. Very rarely, we even got in some plot backstory or other thing that helped clarify the adventure.

That said though, Spirit Sense gives you a solid +4 to notice incorporeals beyond a kind of speak with dead ability that could also be handy. No need to be careful with taking prisoners or saving prisoners, just ask them afterwards but be quick about it. I could see that feat being useful for some kinds of characters, and the flavor is the sort one of mine would have loved (who skinned high kn bonuses after deep concentration from his class as talking to expert librarian spirits that were friends of his and tagged along on his adventures). So Spirit Sense is the better feat in my vote.

[Akal Saris]

I like spirit sense, because after I kill the big bad guy we can exchange a few more taunts before he passes on.

[Kurald Galain]

Nominating,
Dodge, because it eats up so much playtime for a negligible bonus.
Combat expertise, that nobody wants to use ever but it's a prereq so often
That feat that lets you use turn undead on rhinos

[Maat Mons]

See, this is why I suggested "Shabby Feat Showdown." I mean, probably no one ever noticed I suggested it. I just edited the "Re:" field of my reply with my own version of what I thought the thread title should be, and entrusted people to both actually read that and then catch my meaning.

I'll also revisit my less obscure (but still not obvious) suggestion of alliteration. My original went with the overly-literal definition "covered in filth." But now I'll go the other direction on synonyms: "Feeble Feat Feud," or "Fe3" for short.

Oh, and to repeat my suggestions for future showdowns:


Exotic Armor Proficiency vs Exotic Shield Proficiency
Sacred Vow vs Willing Deformity
Disciple of Darkness vs Thrall to Demon
Favored of the Companions vs Servant of the Heavens vs Knight of Stars



Edit: And I guess I'll also repeat this:

You're thinking of Blessed by Tem-Et-Nu

[pabelfly]

Nominating,
That feat that lets you use turn undead on rhinos


One day you'll be playing a Cleric that encounters a Rhino and you won't have that feat, and where will you be then?

[AvatarVecna]

I've not looked at them in detail, but I bet basically all those multiclass feats suck, when you dig into them mechanically. You know, Ascetic Hunter, Devoted Performer. There's like two that are worth anything that I can recall (Swift Hunter being one of them), and the rest are garbage.

[pabelfly]

As I said last time, Aftersight is a regional feat and a racial feat for humans, so it's locking you out of better regional feats and more interesting races, and only temporarily boosts two checks, one of which is for a specific class you may well not have. Spirit Sense is the much better feat.

[Troacctid]

One day you'll be playing a Cleric that encounters a Rhino and you won't have that feat, and where will you be then?
Targeting its Will save like a schmuck. :smallfrown:

[nedz]

Targeting its Will save like a schmuck. :smallfrown:

No True Rhino ever failed a will save, also since Tem-Et-Nu likes Hippos the feat wouldn't help anyway.

[daremetoidareyo]

https://i.imgur.com/vGpkr6B.png

[daremetoidareyo]

Spirit Sense

|



Aftersight|



Aftersight
|





Next up:





Hero of Battle's Veteran Knowledge

|




??????????????????|




Races of Stone's Trivial Knowledge
|

[Troacctid]

So, as before, judging based on how well-written the feat is, from a game design perspective.

Veteran Knowledge is tied into the victory points system, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is a mess. It's a system used by Heroes of Battle to measure the PCs' effect on a large-scale battle by abstracting the impact of every helpful action they took into a certain number of points. There's a fairly long list of ways to earn victory points, and it's immediately clear to me that, while this system could work great for one big, epic, Lord of the Rings-style battle, using it too many times in the same campaign is going to result in it becoming a checklist. "Did we cast a divination spell? Okay, check. Did we make a Knowledge check? Cool. What about bardic knowledge? Oh, we don't have that, since Fflewdur is off this session. Alright, then, fortifications..." And on top of potentially becoming rote, this system also places a lot of burden on the DM. Every battle, you have to plot out all the possible outcomes in order to determine how many victory points the party needs, and what happens if they get there, and what happens if they fall short. It's a lot of heavy lifting and math.

So, Veteran Knowledge requires the campaign to A. have big epic battles that B. use the victory point system and C. provide an opportunity to gain a strategic advantage beforehand, and also D. this has to happen frequently enough over the course of the campaign to justify spending a feat slot that E. only gives 10 victory points, the same as defeating a single 1st-level enemy fighter, oh, and F. the check is only a flat DC 20, which, do you really need to spend a feat to hit that?

On the other hand, we have Trivial Knowledge! And you know what, this is not a shoddy feat. Trivial Knowledge gives you advantage on all Knowledge checks and bardic knowledge checks (roll twice and take the higher result). That's really good! It's a huge boost to your Knowledge checks, maybe the largest boost given by any feat in the game. This isn't a luck feat that can only be used once a day—it's all Knowledge checks, all the time. It's not your Skill Focus where you have to pick just one Knowledge—it's every Knowledge in just one feat. Trivial Knowledge is pushed in power level to the point where it's exciting, and the player who takes it feels like they're getting away with something; at the same time, because Knowledge checks have a limited impact on combat, there's no meaningful risk of it ever breaking the game. I think this is a really well designed feat. My only quibble with it is that the racial requirement feels arbitrary. Why are gnomes the only ones who can know trivia? What's the story justification for that? Gnomes don't have any racial abilities that would provide them with obscure knowledge (except in Dragonlance, but this isn't a Dragonlance book). I guess I could understand if it were a rilkan feat, but gnome? Gno way.

This makes it another easy choice. Veteran Knowledge is an atrocious trap feat that no one would ever want, and Trivial Knowledge is actually good. The winner by a mile: Trivial Knowledge.

[Seward]

Yeah, trivial knowledge no question. Now if you take Jack of all Trades and the Bard ACF Bardic Knack you're really cooking with gas for a single class gnome bard. (who can contribute in combat just fine with just bardsongs and spells, thanks, assuming the party has some martials to buff)

[Akal Saris]

I think you need to update the survey somehow for the new feats?

[daremetoidareyo]

I think you need to update the survey somehow for the new feats?

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?644612-Shoddy-Feat-Showdown!-Round-2-0