Quote Originally Posted by Randuir View Post
I agree that there are scenarios in which it is useful. However, it's not always useful, nor is it useful in every game. I'd consider something a generally worthwhile class feature if it'll be useful at least once per session in any given campaign. Things like evasion, or 'hide in plain sight' qualify for this, but something like trackless step won't come up much in most games. It's useful in games build entirely around outdoors survival and stealth, but it won't help you much in a standard dungeon crawl.

It's like a feature that sais '+5 to diplomacy when dealing with Fey'. That's not a useless feature, but unlikely to come up much unless you're playing a campaign focused around the fair folk, so for a general rating of the feature, I wouldn't mind of people dismissed it as 'mostly flavor', because it is indeed just flavor if you're playing a city-intrigue or dungeon crawl in the underdark campaign.

Edit: and then I read your last sentence again properly. It seems we're basically saying the same thing, just slightly disagreeing about the kind of rating such a feature should get.
I feel like LA needs to be an adjustment on a reasonable representation of the best case, not on the average case.


As an example of why: in the average case, getting +4 Intelligence is mildly decent. You get +2 skill points, that's nice. You get +2 to Knowledge checks (which many classes don't have), so that's not great. Rogues get +2 to Search, I guess that's okay.

But an intelligent player won't pick a +4 Int race for a class where that benefit is only mildly decent. An intelligent player will choose +4 Int on a class that uses Int for casting, such as a Wizard. In this non-average case, the benefit of +4 Int is not merely decent.


Similarly, for class abilities which are campaign-dependent, I think it's reasonable to talk about the benefits in those campaigns, not across the average of all campaigns. The core Dwarf gets a bonus to dodging giants -- how often are giants an antagonist? Not that often on average, but if you're playing Against The Giants, then it's worth something.


So, what sort of campaign would showcase Trackless Step? Off the top of my head, the first game which I played in -- Keep on the Borderlands -- would have benefited from the ability to use strategic misdirection, pointing the humanoids at each other's throats instead of leaving a trail back to the keep. That wasn't strictly wilderness exploration, nor was it strictly a dungeon crawl.