Most feats are too boring.

[Aquillion]

Characters only get a few feats, comparatively; how you spend them are major, character-defining decisions. There's even an entire central class, Fighter, whose class features are exclusively feats.

...yet most feats are completely boring. There are several kinds of boring feats that shouldn't exist and yet do:

1. Feats that just give you an uninteresting numerical bonus. There's a few numerical bonuses that are interesting (eg. a large bonus to something highly specialized) but for the most part, straightforward bonuses to AC, to-hit, weapon damage, hit points, specific skill checks and so on are uninteresting. Most of the feats that give these bonuses don't even give enough for it to be significant. Worse, these feats are often used as "feat tax" prerequisites, which makes building characters more complex while also making leveling boring due to adding dead levels where your new feats do almost nothing.

2. Feats that do nothing but progressively upgrade the same thing. You shouldn't need five feats to be good at ranged combat or two-weapon fighting or whatever. Especially those things, which already are inherently limited because you can only use one weapon setup at once (and you need another feat if you want to switch between them quickly, anyway.) There's no need to require a massive feat commitment to be good at two-weapon fighting; it's already limited by the fact that, assuming you have only two hands, you can't two-hand a weapon when doing it by its very nature.

3. Feats that represent nothing but a commitment to one specific thing. Weapon focus in particular stands out here. These are almost always uninteresting numerical bonuses, but beyond that, this falls into the same problem as the two-weapon fighting example - you can only wield one weapon at once; there's no benefit to encouraging or rewarding players for continuously doubling down on the same thing. Spell focus is slightly less boring because there's more diversity in spell schools (so devoting yourself to one has some meaning), but wizards already do that and the bonus is boring.

[RNightstalker]

The problem is with the rules: too much leeway or grey area can be abused.

[pabelfly]

I'm going to stand up for numeric bonuses. They're great for players who want to play characters that are not too complex, especially new players, or for people that struggle to keep track of temporary bonuses and modifiers.

The much-maligned Weapon Focus, for example, is still a (roughly) 5% more chance to hit your opponent. Even a low-level two-handed Fighter is likely to get in an extra hit or two for each session, and for a character that has more attacks per round, it's going to make the difference for several hits each session.

The only real problem with numeric bonuses is that so few of them scale with level.

[Mordante]

I think martial classes lack a system casters have in the form of meta-magic feats. Many of these are good from low to high level. While martial skills like dodge are utterly boring and useless after a few levels, but often needed for PrC.

[pabelfly]

I think martial classes lack a system casters have in the form of meta-magic feats. Many of these are good from low to high level. While martial skills like dodge are utterly boring and useless after a few levels, but often needed for PrC.

Semi-relevant aside, I have found precisely one way to make Dodge not completely worthless.

Bansh, Hadozee Truespeak Warrior (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=25523411&postcount=30)

[zlefin]

Yes they are; it's sometimes addressed in the various homebrew feat reworks some people have done. If feats were strong; then classes like fighter might get considerably better.

One common adjustment is to merge tiered feats, like two-handed fighting, into a single feat that scales with your level (or bab or something).

I find that the problem with numerical bonuses is that they're generally too low. If they were higher, they might still be interesting, or really feel like a thing; though I agree they should try to tack on more interesting side abilities in addition to the numerical bonus. Consider the basic plus save feats; at +2 they don't change things that often. But if it were +6, that'd really feel like a big thing, that you char is far more resistant to things that target that save.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

There is a countervailing problem. To do most things, including many cool things, you shouldn't need a feat at all. Thus, if there are feats about those things, they should only modify the ability that everyone has.

The problem tends to be the bonus provided is too small and too niche (as noted). The solution is merging and upgrading bad/boring feats (e.g., merging the TWF chain), and giving some of them away automatically (e.g., Weapon Finesse). Then each feat taken is meaningful and interesting, and some boring stuff is just an automatic part of every character.

[RexDart]

There is a countervailing problem. To do most things, including many cool things, you shouldn't need a feat at all. Thus, if there are feats about those things, they should only modify the ability that everyone has.

The problem tends to be the bonus provided is too small and too niche (as noted). The solution is merging and upgrading bad/boring feats (e.g., merging the TWF chain), and giving some of them away automatically (e.g., Weapon Finesse). Then each feat taken is meaningful and interesting, and some boring stuff is just an automatic part of every character.

The most annoying thing to me is how, unless they take the related feats, even the best fighter is bad at stuff like Grapple and Sunder. Or at least the difference between "I hit him with my axe" and Sunder is great enough that nobody ever bothers. Like once we were fighting a particularly tough opponent who the best combatants could only hit on a very high roll. And it seemed a lot of that was coming from his shield. And not even factoring in the meta issue of not wanting to destroy treasure, I concluded it was better to keep hoping to roll a 19 or 20 than even attempting to sunder his shield.

[Malphegor]

a lot of fighter feats are especially.
Standard problem in 3e: “oh you get to gather a lot of options; that means we have no reason to make any but a few of them minor number increases”

If it was permissible to swear on this forum with the mood I’m in today (irl arguments with people) I’d have a long rant here about how fighter bonus feats were done dirty in the name of balance and how mere number increases are the most boring aspect of rpgs that while can be leveraged into powerful characters can make them really really dull and how it feels like punishing people for playing a game which is the most dumb thing.

it’d be like if you were playing monopoly and you could gain one extra dollar every time you gained any source of money. Sure great that’s an increase and on paper that’s great but I’m not going to be excited about it

[Darg]

I'm going to stand up for numeric bonuses. They're great for players who want to play characters that are not too complex, especially new players, or for people that struggle to keep track of temporary bonuses and modifiers.

The much-maligned Weapon Focus, for example, is still a (roughly) 5% more chance to hit your opponent. Even a low-level two-handed Fighter is likely to get in an extra hit or two for each session, and for a character that has more attacks per round, it's going to make the difference for several hits each session.

The only real problem with numeric bonuses is that so few of them scale with level.

That +1 really needs to be taken in perspective. If you hit on an 11 but the feat makes you hit on 10, you just increased your chance to hit and confirm criticals by 10%. A 19 to 18 is a 50% increase. It's a lot better than people give it credit for. It's the same for dodge and mobility which have an outsized effect especially when combined with spring attack. Many times you want the benefit from flanking and you can't get there. These feats make waltzing in and out a breeze.


There is a countervailing problem. To do most things, including many cool things, you shouldn't need a feat at all. Thus, if there are feats about those things, they should only modify the ability that everyone has.

The problem tends to be the bonus provided is too small and too niche (as noted). The solution is merging and upgrading bad/boring feats (e.g., merging the TWF chain), and giving some of them away automatically (e.g., Weapon Finesse). Then each feat taken is meaningful and interesting, and some boring stuff is just an automatic part of every character.

If you are going to give something freely, weapon finesse is not one of them. Dexterity is the most bang for your buck ability already. Making it more so for free isn't doing anyone favors except for the people who already receive outsized benefit from it.


The most annoying thing to me is how, unless they take the related feats, even the best fighter is bad at stuff like Grapple and Sunder. Or at least the difference between "I hit him with my axe" and Sunder is great enough that nobody ever bothers. Like once we were fighting a particularly tough opponent who the best combatants could only hit on a very high roll. And it seemed a lot of that was coming from his shield. And not even factoring in the meta issue of not wanting to destroy treasure, I concluded it was better to keep hoping to roll a 19 or 20 than even attempting to sunder his shield.

Special attacks are balanced around human sized opponents. If both characters have even bonuses, the attacker has a 52.5% chance of winning while the defender has a 47.5% chance. If one attacker has even a +4 advantage that tips to 62.5% and 37.5%. You usually aren't going to be tripping the big bad, but the henchman are usually just fine to beat on. Hell, I'd argue grappling a balor as a monk is a better option than just attacking it simply because it's much easier to get bonuses to grapple checks than to attacks, even with just the PHB and DMG.

[JNAProductions]

Except you take an AoO just for attempting to Trip/Grapple/etc. unless you have the improved feat.

[Darg]

Except you take an AoO just for attempting to Trip/Grapple/etc. unless you have the improved feat.

And for most creatures that's a single extra attack. Not a huge deal for the most part and if it attacks you with the extra armor, lesser armored allies don't have to fear the AoO. There are also ways around this without the feat too. You can negate the AoO by using cover, catching them flat footed, attacking from out of reach, attacking an opponent who already spent their AoO, etc.r

[JNAProductions]

And for most creatures that's a single extra attack. Not a huge deal for the most part and if it attacks you with the extra armor, lesser armored allies don't have to fear the AoO. There are also ways around this without the feat too. You can negate the AoO by using cover, catching them flat footed, attacking from out of reach, attacking an opponent who already spent their AoO, etc.r

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the attempt to do the special maneuver fails if they hit you, yes?

[NullInternet]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the attempt to do the special maneuver fails if they hit you, yes?
This is sort of true in PF1e, where you take a penalty on your combat maneuver check equal to however much damage you just took. I don't know how it works in 3.5e, though.

[Troacctid]

Except you take an AoO just for attempting to Trip/Grapple/etc. unless you have the improved feat.
For trip, disarm, and sunder, it's really easy to get around this with a reach weapon. If you have more reach than they do, problem solved. You can also avoid AoOs by catching them flat-footed. If you beat the enemy in initiative, bam, run up and grapple the enemy wizard right away, and they can't retaliate. Actually, in the case of arcane casters, it's pretty common for them to either have no weapon in hand (so they can't even make an AoO) or have only a janky weapon like a staff with no Str to back it up (so their AoO is laughably ineffective).

[Darg]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the attempt to do the special maneuver fails if they hit you, yes?

They don't just have to hit, it has to deal damage too. As Troacctid said, casters are especially piddly and it's very rare they'll hit you. A last resort to get around the AoO is to simply move out of a threatened square.

[RandomPeasant]

The game simply doesn't have a consistent understanding of what a "feat" is supposed to be. If both Weapon Focus and Leadership are the same kind of ability, the category of ability you have defined is not coherent. "Feats are small bonuses that make you better at a specific thing" is a fine model, and it is consistent with feats like Alertness or Spell Focus that grant small numeric bonuses, or ones like Run and Educated that grant small non-numeric bonuses. "Feats are major abilities that define your character" is also a fine model, and it is consistent with feats like DMM: Persistent or Natural Spell that fundamentally change how your character works, and with a baseline progression of one feat every three levels. But those models are not consistent with each other. The later also has a problem in that very few of the high-impact feats are well suited to martial characters.

[ericgrau]

They are boring but you almost have to overhaul the system to fix it without imbalancing things. Splatbooks make it worse by giving power creep and inconsistent feat power level. I'm almost tempted to say go play 5e but you may or may not like other aspects of that system. I think the answer is (1) decide what power level you want to go for. Be it PHB, or X splatbooks. Then (2) figure out how strong 2 feats should be. Then (3) homebrew custom feats with some flavor, costing 2 feats each. This shouldn't be an excuse to go over the top, just the power of 2 feats, not more or less. 5e may have some ideas. What you do when 1 of 2 feats is paid is up to you. Maybe nothing, or maybe figure out some lesser benefit to the "half-feats" without front-loading them so much that people get a bunch of half-feats instead of full-feats. And I'd suggest simply dropping the old feats.

The big risk here is lack of play-testing. But if you don't make the new feats too confusing and reserve the right for take-backsies on huge mistakes, I think even double-feats are small enough that many DMs could make stuff up without breaking the system too badly.

Btw, one thing 5e doesn't really have much of is feat chains and per-requisites. And I think that's a good idea to keep people from over-focusing on the same thing, while still focusing on a broad category.

[Troacctid]

Anyway, sometimes boring feats are good. I mean, big numbers are big. Winning initiative, dealing more damage, not missing attacks, not failing saves, not whiffing skill checks, these are all really important things, even though they may not be flashy.

[Melcar]

Characters only get a few feats, comparatively; how you spend them are major, character-defining decisions. There's even an entire central class, Fighter, whose class features are exclusively feats.

...yet most feats are completely boring. There are several kinds of boring feats that shouldn't exist and yet do:

1. Feats that just give you an uninteresting numerical bonus. There's a few numerical bonuses that are interesting (eg. a large bonus to something highly specialized) but for the most part, straightforward bonuses to AC, to-hit, weapon damage, hit points, specific skill checks and so on are uninteresting. Most of the feats that give these bonuses don't even give enough for it to be significant. Worse, these feats are often used as "feat tax" prerequisites, which makes building characters more complex while also making leveling boring due to adding dead levels where your new feats do almost nothing.

2. Feats that do nothing but progressively upgrade the same thing. You shouldn't need five feats to be good at ranged combat or two-weapon fighting or whatever. Especially those things, which already are inherently limited because you can only use one weapon setup at once (and you need another feat if you want to switch between them quickly, anyway.) There's no need to require a massive feat commitment to be good at two-weapon fighting; it's already limited by the fact that, assuming you have only two hands, you can't two-hand a weapon when doing it by its very nature.

3. Feats that represent nothing but a commitment to one specific thing. Weapon focus in particular stands out here. These are almost always uninteresting numerical bonuses, but beyond that, this falls into the same problem as the two-weapon fighting example - you can only wield one weapon at once; there's no benefit to encouraging or rewarding players for continuously doubling down on the same thing. Spell focus is slightly less boring because there's more diversity in spell schools (so devoting yourself to one has some meaning), but wizards already do that and the bonus is boring.

The real problem imo is that there are too big a discrepancy between good and bad feats, and that prerequisite feats more often than not are bad. Combat Casting and Toughness are excellent examples of just crappy feats…

In my games both are removed and substituted by Skill Focus (Concentration) and Improved Toughness… small but significantly better options!

The feats that only give a numerical skill improvement can be great for certain skill builds like the Diplomancer or stealth rogue builds where magic tend to be restricted!

[Zancloufer]

To be fair most core feats are not exactly terrible in concept, just they lack oomph at higher levels. I have a PDF full of changes I've made to just the SRD core feats and the main thing was either consolidation of similar feats and/or making them scale with BAB.

+1 to hit at level 1 with a Great Sword is solid at level 1, but by level 10+ it's almost useless. Something as simple as changing that to "+1 with two handed blades and an additional +1 per 4 BAB past 1" makes it a bit more interesting. Make toughness add HP/level that scales with potential HP. Skill Focus that adds +1 for every x ranks you have in a skill. Combine pretty much every "Improved" feat into it's base feat but make them SCALE with BAB.

Numerical feats aren't bad because +1 to something sucks, they are bad because they have almost no ceiling. Not every feat needs to be game changing, but at the very least if it's pure numbers it should scale with character power. Now your Fighter can take his feats that make him really good at smashing things with a big sword and still have spare feats left over for the more interesting/tech options.

[Morphic tide]

To be fair most core feats are not exactly terrible in concept, just they lack oomph at higher levels. I have a PDF full of changes I've made to just the SRD core feats and the main thing was either consolidation of similar feats and/or making them scale with BAB.
A +1 is a +1, a probability change from 55% to 60% remains the same no matter how high your level gets.


+1 to hit at level 1 with a Great Sword is solid at level 1, but by level 10+ it's almost useless. Something as simple as changing that to "+1 with two handed blades and an additional +1 per 4 BAB past 1" makes it a bit more interesting.
Weapon Group variant rule (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/weaponGroupFeats.htm), make it a Competence bonus, ignoring the resulting cries of Bards, so that this is not generating game-warping Power Attack value.


Make toughness add HP/level that scales with potential HP.
The reason you take Toughness is because you're initially very squishy, so scaling off the base formula is actually a trap because it's not like the 18 Con Barbarian is getting low without something having gone terribly wrong already. The designers themselves have noted that Toughness was intended to make low-level Elf Wizards stand up to a stiff breeze, not realizing the issues of being stuck with that feat forever until after release. +4 HP then +2/level is A LOT of health, but health "does" very nearly nothing. It's all about the breakpoints of incoming damage, and in this case you're doubling a Wizard's HP.


Skill Focus that adds +1 for every x ranks you have in a skill.
Making this scale off hard ranks ruins the "I need to hit DC X reliably in a cross-class skill" use-case, and skills already scale to utter madness. I'd go with a +3 bonus, giving +1 skill rank every three levels. Again, the +3 is a +3, it's always going to be +15% chance to succeed, while having its further scaling be bonus ranks means that it's doing a lot to fill out a bonus that's used in prerequisites and sees a lot of scarcity trouble. In particular, this saves four skill points per six levels for cross-class skills, so a Fighter-based build with Skill Focus (Heal) to take the edge off the party's HP losses is freeing up quite a lot of points to put in other skills with that feat.

While +1 per 3 levels Competence would do a lot to smooth out Truenamer's issues, it'd mean +10 at 18th where there's currently only a +4, giving a +30% chance of success to every skill focused character's priority over the current, and overall +50% from someone without it. That is not simply "nice to have", that's FORCING extreme specialization to have any chance at all on opposed checks.


Combine pretty much every "Improved" feat into it's base feat but make them SCALE with BAB.
This USUALLY makes sense, as a lot of them are just "use your BAB" permissions or have scaling problems from ability score and size inflation in monsters. In a lot of cases, you can pack down the text to reference existing rules, like giving Two-Weapon Fighting "Whenever you make a Full Attack, you may make an attack with your off-hand weapon for each additional attack you have for a high base attack bonus". Directly references the phrasing of where the attacks for high BAB that Improved/Greater TWF give with a single short line.

There's still room for a Greater Two-Weapon Fighting (assuming the base gets renamed "Improved Two-Weapon Fighting) with the phrasing of "Whenever you make an attack with your main-hand weapon not part of a Full Attack or effect specific to that weapon, you may make an additional attack with your off-hand weapon", while removing the remaining -2. Would directly eat Double Hit from Miniature's Handbook (two attacks on Attacks of Opportunity) and Dual Strike from Complete Adventurer (two on Standard Actions at -4 for "proper" One-Handed/Light+Light pair and -10 otherwise), while applying to loads more attack triggers. There may be a few main-hand specific attack triggers, but that exception clause is really about Lighting Mace and the Speed quality sticking to the appropriate weapon.

Very important to keep the individual feats functionally simple, even as you're trying to make them good, so that high-level Fighters can be parsed quickly and run easily and Psychic Warriors do not pick up complete nightmare builds.

[Aquillion]

I think martial classes lack a system casters have in the form of meta-magic feats. Many of these are good from low to high level. While martial skills like dodge are utterly boring and useless after a few levels, but often needed for PrC.The issue is not metamagic feats.

Contrary to what charop boards would make you think, metamagic feats are mostly pretty weak when not coupled with ways to reduce their costs - there are a few that are genuinely worth it, but even then, largely in the late game and they're largely just garnish on the raw power that full casters get inherently. A wizard with no feats - not just no bonus feats, but a wizard who is never permitted to ever gain even a single feat via any means - would still be T1 and would effortlessly be more powerful than most classes outside the early game.

The issue is that spells scale exponentially in power and even low-level spells often scale up in power. There are a few exceptions, but since wizards can easily switch their spell loadout, there's no problem with using Sleep early on, Grease in the midgame when Sleep no longer works, and Protection from Alignment or the like in the late game as a counter to specific enemy strategies - and this is just out of their lowest-level slot!

So a 17th level Wizard is both getting access to Shapechange and is casting the best-scaling spells out of all their lower level slots.

Feats are the opposite. Few of them scale up dramatically in power; late-game feats don't really offer a ton more than early-game feats. There's a few feats that synergize well with extra attacks, but even that is nowhere near the massive difference for spells - spells become quantitatively different as you go up in spell level, whereas even the best feats only scale numerically, and usually just linearly at that.

On top of this, you can't easily switch out your early-game feats. Even if retraining is allowed, they're usually prerequisites for the late-game ones... but the original feats don't scale. They remain weak or are entirely obsoleted by their upgrades. If you want to pursue two-weapon combat, you need a big pile of feats to continuously get better at it, whereas the wizard's level 1 spells upgrade automatically and they get better spells for free and they can switch to more applicable low-level spells while still getting their high-level ones.

The end result is that at high levels, wizards do a bunch of things really well and fighters... at best do one thing well, if they devote their entire character to it.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

If you are going to give something freely, weapon finesse is not one of them. Dexterity is the most bang for your buck ability already. Making it more so for free isn't doing anyone favors except for the people who already receive outsized benefit from it.Dex-based meleers aren't overpowered just because their main stat is tied to better skills, initiative, reflex saves, and (low-armor) AC. They're still dex-based meleers. They still need a feat to add their key modifier to damage, and they don't get the benefits of THF (1.5 stat to damage, relevant power attack, easy access to reach weapons). And that's just compared to strength-based meleers, who also need help and would also receive it in such a system.

[pabelfly]

If you are going to give something freely, weapon finesse is not one of them. Dexterity is the most bang for your buck ability already. Making it more so for free isn't doing anyone favors except for the people who already receive outsized benefit from it

Our table uses the following homebrew:
Weapon Finesse is free,
People that choose to use Weapon Finesse can also add dex to damage instead of STR (1/2 DEX for offhand attacks)
People that pick up TWF get it upgraded to Improved TWF, etc for free.

Here's a few observations of how this pans out in play:

- People are more willing to play DEX builds and TWF than before but in terms of damage output STR-based melee characters are still doing more damage and are the most popular build type. You just feel less crippled if you want the character flavour of a DEX build.
- Dex to damage is a nice stat boost at low level but at higher levels you need to be sorting out other ways to do damage so this quickly becomes irrelevant.
- STR builds get Power Attack, and it's very hard to find an equivalent for DEX melee builds.
- Damage reduction is a bigger problem for DEX builds than STR builds.
- Dex fighter is likely going first. Reflex saves are nice but less important.
- AC is largely identical between DEX and STR melee. Dex fighter has better touch AC while STR fighter has better flat-footed. Both have similar AC totals when adding up armor and DEX modifier, excepting builds which get over roughly 24-26 DEX.
- Barbarian is still a popular dip. Dex fighters get Pounce, an extra 10ft movement, and Ferocity instead of Rage to boost damage and attack rolls. STR fighters get better and more powerful rage variants though.

Overall, free Weapon Finesse, DEX to damage and progressive improvement of TWF are good homebrew rules for our group and have had minimal negative impact. I'd recommend trying it.

[St Fan]

Dex-based meleers aren't overpowered just because their main stat is tied to better skills, initiative, reflex saves, and (low-armor) AC. They're still dex-based meleers. They still need a feat to add their key modifier to damage, and they don't get the benefits of THF (1.5 stat to damage, relevant power attack, easy access to reach weapons). And that's just compared to strength-based meleers, who also need help and would also receive it in such a system.

I assume you mean "a feat to add their key modifier to attack rolls", speaking about Weapon Finess here, and not to damage.

If not, just curious, what feat would that be? I personally know of two ways to add the Dex modifier to damage:

The "Hits-and-Run Tactics" ACF for Fighters from Drow of the Underdark (competence bonus, only works on flat-footed foes).
The Shadow Blade feat from Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords (untyped bonus, only works with Shadow Hand weapons and while in a Shadow Hand stance).


Is there any other feat, ACF, etc., that could be added to the list?

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I meant even with free Weapon Finesse they would need to expend build resources to add Dex to damage. There is also the Champion of Corellon Larethian's Elegant Strike class feature (precision damage, limited weapons) as well as dragon and 3.0 content, but indeed I was thinking of Shadow Blade.

[Rebel7284]

According to X stat to Y value, there is also:

Corsair 9 Dragon #321 p86 (3.5) Damage rolls with limited weapons (Replaces Strength)

But back on topic, as other folks have alluded to, there are two dimensions here:
- Power discrepancy with some feats being MAJOR changes to power level while others are barely blips at level 1.
- Big discrepancy with how interesting feats are.

I do think that the second is actually less of an issue since sometimes folks do just want to add +1 or +3 to a thing and forget about it. Simplicity can be nice.
However, due to the game scaling in a non-linear way, the simplicity often (but not always) DOES lead to weaker effects in higher levels.

Some of the ideas presented here have been suggested over and over again as target fixes, but the system overall has so many imbalances built-in that I think trying to re-balance ALL feats just leads to having to re-balance everything and at that point.... you made another game? But hey, if fixing a few specific feats improves your game/player experience, you should totally do it!

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I agree it would be highly burdensome to fix all bad feats in 3.5. This is in large part due to the massive pile of bad or situational feats. There are just too many to fix.

My suggestion for almost all of these bad feats is to simply acknowledge that they exist and don't take them. Focus instead on the much smaller group of bad or annoying feats that people need to take to realize their concepts. These are generally either annoying prerequisites or abilities you should be able to do without a feat. These feats are very often in core, including the SRD. Fixing these feats solves most of the problem with a fraction of the work.

[King of Nowhere]

I'm going to stand up for numeric bonuses. They're great for players who want to play characters that are not too complex, especially new players, or for people that struggle to keep track of temporary bonuses and modifiers.

The much-maligned Weapon Focus, for example, is still a (roughly) 5% more chance to hit your opponent. Even a low-level two-handed Fighter is likely to get in an extra hit or two for each session, and for a character that has more attacks per round, it's going to make the difference for several hits each session.

The only real problem with numeric bonuses is that so few of them scale with level.

seconded; in addition to that, if you want your character shtich to be really good at something, numerical bonuses are the way to go, and you'll like them.

furthermore, those feats are great for a dm, because i don't want my npcs to have a dozen special abilities that I'll forget. when it's the round of mr big bad npc fighter guy, i want him to make an attack sequence and be done with it. and i want him to have a chance to hit the pcs and do something significant despite the crapton of protective items pcs wear, so i want this npc guy to get flat boosts.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I hate feats that grant extremely small, conditional bonuses to stuff you never remember to add when they finally do come up. The first time I tried to make a PF character, the number of feats that granted tiny conditional and pointless bonuses was staggering, and it took a long time for me to bother looking again; it was that bad.

Dodge is the most well-known and most in-your-face, and I always forget about it. I could see Dodge granting a +10 bonus to a single enemy being something to remember, but a +1? It's not even worth adding it in 95% of the time -- significantly more often if you're fighting against more than one single, solitary opponent...or if the difference between its attack and your AC is either too high or too low to matter much.

[Darg]

I hate feats that grant extremely small, conditional bonuses to stuff you never remember to add when they finally do come up. The first time I tried to make a PF character, the number of feats that granted tiny conditional and pointless bonuses was staggering, and it took a long time for me to bother looking again; it was that bad.

Dodge is the most well-known and most in-your-face, and I always forget about it. I could see Dodge granting a +10 bonus to a single enemy being something to remember, but a +1? It's not even worth adding it in 95% of the time -- significantly more often if you're fighting against more than one single, solitary opponent...or if the difference between its attack and your AC is either too high or too low to matter much.

If you are grabbing dodge, it's usually on the way to spring attack or something else that requires it. Combined with mobility you are able to get a +5 to AC while moving passed opponents (use those free actions), +9 when used with total defense to bait AoOs or pretty freely reposition, or combine it with a charge.


Dex-based meleers aren't overpowered just because their main stat is tied to better skills, initiative, reflex saves, and (low-armor) AC. They're still dex-based meleers. They still need a feat to add their key modifier to damage, and they don't get the benefits of THF (1.5 stat to damage, relevant power attack, easy access to reach weapons). And that's just compared to strength-based meleers, who also need help and would also receive it in such a system.

I said nothing about it being overpowered, just that the characters that want it receive outsized benefit as you so eloquently presented. It's probably fine in game. What I dislike is the way it removes an RPG aspect. It would be like if wizards got Int to hit. Not overpowered, but it does diminish character building.

[Maat Mons]

Fun fact, in 5e, Wizards do get Int to hit, albeit only with spells that require attack rolls. Actually, in 5e, every caster uses their casting stat for attack rolls made as part of spells.

Anyway, I’d argue that numeric bonuses should be kept completely separate from other things. I don’t want to have to pick between having level-appropriate numbers or having interesting abilities. And I feel that’s what tends to result from giving a single pool of resources that can be spend either on numeric bonuses or something else. Magic items are notorious for this.

[Morphic tide]

I hate feats that grant extremely small, conditional bonuses to stuff you never remember to add when they finally do come up. The first time I tried to make a PF character, the number of feats that granted tiny conditional and pointless bonuses was staggering, and it took a long time for me to bother looking again; it was that bad.
Oh I can agree with that hard, but there's very much room for them to right very specific horribly costly builds, like two-weapon fighting with heavy crossbows. It's allowed by the rules, but you take -4 for +3 over Hand Crossbows, in a niche that is absolutely awful in practice to begin with. Taking -14 to make an off-hand attack with a Heavy Crossbow is intensely punitive, because it's a completely ridiculous thing to do, but being incapable of avoiding a -8 unless you're abusing dubious readings of 3.0 feats that possess updates is bad.


If you are grabbing dodge, it's usually on the way to spring attack or something else that requires it. Combined with mobility you are able to get a +5 to AC while moving passed opponents (use those free actions), +9 when used with total defense to bait AoOs or pretty freely reposition, or combine it with a charge.
The annoyance being that this is three separate decisions involving three separate feats to assemble a decent option-set, rather than anything resembling a unified mechanic. If Mobility directly improved Dodge and expanded its applicability, to barely distinguishable end result, then the game would work significantly better because people would actually remember to apply their Dodge bonus properly and the overall set would be significantly better to take.

Such designs of adding functions by modifying previous ones also works to give scaling potential to Bonus Feat based characters, as links between trees turn into a web that improves both much more dramatically. Improved Trip is one of the few feats prone to working this way when you shovel enough support into it, as anything that gives an attack-independent Trip turns into an attack, and anything that gives an attack a Trip turns into a multi-attack. Jack B. Quick was all about that particular interaction set.


Anyway, I’d argue that numeric bonuses should be kept completely separate from other things. I don’t want to have to pick between having level-appropriate numbers or having interesting abilities. And I feel that’s what tends to result from giving a single pool of resources that can be spend either on numeric bonuses or something else. Magic items are notorious for this.
Weird thing is that there is in fact a whole bunch of interesting stuff to do off of conditional numeric bonuses, because there's also conditional penalties in the way of stupid like the above TWF-crossbows and various rules-operable but bad because poor numbers strategies like Duskblades trying to use Armored Mage (Heavy Shield).

[Aquillion]

Anyway, I’d argue that numeric bonuses should be kept completely separate from other things. I don’t want to have to pick between having level-appropriate numbers or having interesting abilities. And I feel that’s what tends to result from giving a single pool of resources that can be spend either on numeric bonuses or something else. Magic items are notorious for this.Yes, this. I get what people are saying about sometimes just wanting simple numeric bonuses from feats, but it's very hard to offer that without ending up with either:

1. Underpowered trap feats,

2. Boring feats that you are *forced* to take because they're prerequisites, or,

3. Boring feats that you're forced to take because the numbers are big and significant enough that the game is actually balanced around them, making them obligatory.

I think that there is room for "simple" feats that still define you in some more interesting way than just giving a flat always-on +x to your core combat mechanic.

[pabelfly]

So Paizo came up with their own possible solution on feat balance and the sheer contrast of what a feat could entail in Pathfinder 2e. They decided that feats would have a specific feat type, and you would be told what feat type/s you could pick at each particular level. To put this in 3.5 dnd terms, no longer would you choose between Leadership, Weapon Focus, Skill Focus, and a feat directly relevant to your class abilities. These would all be different types of feats.

The upside of this system was that when levelling a character, you weren't forced to pick between combat, noncombat and flavour feats. The downside of this is that player choice is largely taken away with feat selection, and after the flexibility of 3e and PF1, it was easy to make the argument that this was dumbed-down so you wouldn't make the wrong choice with your feats (I personally disagree with that but it's an understandable sentiment).

I kinda liked the solution that PF2e came up with, even though most feats were situational and weak choices.

Just thought I'd share one attempt at solving the problem.

[Darg]

D&D 3.5 can easily be played featless with negligible difference in a majority of cases (other than fighter or other bonus feat classes). What really happens is that certain tactics become prevalent because particular DMs just aren't capable of handling particular feat interactions so that the shocktrooper barbarian is capable of safely dropping AC to 0 100% of the time.

What's more important than feats is player access to magic, in particular the right kinda of magic at the right times. +1 attack/AC isn't going to be a huge immediate gain, but over the course of an entire campaign it's going to add up to significant amounts.

[NichG]

I feel like Feats should each individually be able to enable some kind of alternate path of either playing or building a character. I'd also generally prefer for feats to be more about 'how something the character is doing gets resolved' rather than being prerequisites for doing things, though care should be taken not to make the feat an obvious tax to actually be able to do those things. For example, a feat to make it so you can bull rush someone without a bunch of downsides that essentially make it never worth trying to do isn't good, but a feat that makes it so that every 5ft you bullrush someone their AC drops by 1 for the remainder of the round could be good.

Meanwhile a lot of the active 'enable this move' sorts of feats should instead be skill checks I think, though it would make sense to add a few skills and combine a few others to make that work out - like Jump/Swim/Tumble/Climb -> Athletics, then have things like 'spend a swift action and make an Athletics check to add a Bull Rush to your standard attack' as just things any character can do.

[Kitsuneymg]

Most of the bad feats people mention are combat feats. Personally, I think WotC and Paizo felt ok making bad combat feats since a fighter gets so many. That’s not an endorsement, that’s my suspicion as to their erroneous thought process.

Anyway. There’s a third party supplement for pathfinder called Spheres of Might that sort of/kind of fixes the problem. It’s a talent based martial combat system. Included within it are a number of talents with “associated feats.” These talents can be taken any time you’d receive the mentioned feat, and count as that feat and all its prerequisites for anything that has that feat as a prerequisite. The only one where this really breaks is dual wielding/twf. Since SoM is based around the standard action attack, dual wielding doesn’t give you the off hand attack on a full attack, meaning your high level character probably can’t use twf for full attacks.

Anyway, it may not solve the power issue of “feats” for martials, but it can easily solve the “interesting” issue. Even the boring numerical bonus talents scale, but mostly, you get so many talents that you’ll tend to have a number of options and some cool abilities, with many being character defining.

It’s not a replacement or fix for feats, but it does make playing a martial character much more fun without the problematic damage issues Path of War tends to bring.

[RexDart]

Fun fact, in 5e, Wizards do get Int to hit, albeit only with spells that require attack rolls. Actually, in 5e, every caster uses their casting stat for attack rolls made as part of spells.

Anyway, I’d argue that numeric bonuses should be kept completely separate from other things. I don’t want to have to pick between having level-appropriate numbers or having interesting abilities. And I feel that’s what tends to result from giving a single pool of resources that can be spend either on numeric bonuses or something else. Magic items are notorious for this.

Do they also still distinguish between AC and Touch AC? That tends to level things out a bit in 3.5, since (for many creatures) the difference between your casting stat and your not-great DEX is approximately equal to or less than the difference between the opponent's AC and Touch AC.

[Maat Mons]

There's no such thing as touch AC in 5e. But my issue isn't with the resultant numbers. It's that having accuracy keyed to Str, Dex, Int, Wis, or Cha, depending on the circumstances, undermines the meaning of ability scores. I'd say accuracy should always be Dex.

[vasilidor]

I use feats reforged for the pathfinder game I run.