Fixing Feat (3.5)

[Forbiddenwar]

Basing this conversation on another thread about Endurance.

What Feats are generally considered useless in the 3.5 PHB, and what can be done to fix them

Already suggested:
Combine Endurance with Great Fortitude or DieHard
Combine Lit Reflexes with Dodge and lose the Select target selction of dodge
(Or would that be too powerful?)

What others can you suggest for a Balanced game?

[lsfreak]

Give out bonus feats at 1st level and every 5th level for background stuff. Skill focus, Run, Endurance, that kind of thing. All feat-merging does, when the feats in question are simulationist in a gamist-style game, is shorten the list of feats you need to remember to avoid.

Combat expertise gets a higher bonus when using a shield. Make dodge, weapon focus, weapon specialization, and shield specialization scale with BAB (and the same with TWF/TWD, though that's not because they're useless like this thread is about).

EDIT: I guess I read too fast. Merging something like Endurance with Great Fortitude makes it better, but still hardly an optimal feat choice.

[Zore]

Well there are also

Run-Um... combine it with whatever endurance gets combined with

Individual Weapon proficiency feats- Make them group proficiencies and leave the few weapons worth the feat out of the groups, say

All the +2 to two different skills feats- Not even remotely worth it. Scrap them entirely

Mobility- Roll it in with dodge

Toughness- Use Improved toughness but add 3 hp at first level

Two Weapon Fighting- One feat, effects scale with level

Two Weapon defense- One feat

[Faleldir]

Regular Dodge is needed for good feats like Defensive Throw and Elusive Target. I would increase the bonus to +4.

EDIT: Because I have way too much free time on my hands, I came up with balanced versions of TWF feats.

Spoiler

Show

Two-Weapon Fighting
requirements: DEX 15
The penalty for fighting with two weapons is reduced to -4 for both hands, or -2 if your off-hand weapon is light.
In addition, you may attack with both weapons as a standard action or at the end of a charge, with the same penalties.
if you charge, both attacks must have the same target.

Improved Two-Weapon Fighting
requirements: DEX 17, Two-Weapon Fighting, BAB +6
As part of a full attack action, you may make as many attacks with one off-hand weapon as your Base Attack Bonus will allow.

Greater Two-Weapon Fighting
requirements: DEX 19, Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, BAB +11
When you fight defensively or take a total defense action with two weapons (except natural weapons or unarmed strikes), you can attack normally with your main weapon.

Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting
requirements: DEX 21, Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, Greater Two-Weapon Fighting, BAB +21
You no longer take a penalty for fighting with two weapons. Additional off-hand weapons still incur the normal penalty.
You also add your full Strength modifier to off-hand damage.

Two-Weapon Defense
requirements: DEX 15, Two-Weapon Fighting
When fighting with two weapons (except natural weapons or unarmed strikes), you gain a shield bonus to AC equal to the number of Two-Weapon feats you have.
If your off-hand weapon is a shield, this bonus stacks.
You lose this bonus if you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC.

Two-Weapon Parry
requirements: DEX 17, Two-Weapon Fighting, BAB +2
Once per round, if you are hit by a melee attack, you may make an opposed attack roll with your off-hand weapon to negate the hit.
You must be aware of the attack and it must be tangible.
You take a -2 penalty to off-hand attacks until the end of your next turn.

Two-Weapon Feint
requirements: DEX 15, Two-Weapon Fighting, BAB +2
As part of a full attack action, you may deal no damage with your main weapon.
Instead, every attack you make with your main weapon is a feint.
This ability can only be used once per opponent in a given battle.

Two-Weapon Rend
requirements: DEX 17, Two-Weapon Fighting, BAB +6
If you hit an opponent with two weapons during your turn, your off-hand weapon deals double damage.
An opponent can only take this extra damage once per round.

Natural Two-Weapon Fighting
requirements: DEX 17, Two-Weapon Fighting, at least one natural attack
When you fight with one weapon and a natural attack, you may treat one of your natural attacks as an off-hand weapon.
That weapon may still count as a natural attack whenever it would be beneficial for you.

Multi-Weapon Fighting
requirements: DEX 15, Two-Weapon Fighting, three or more arms, BAB +3
Instead of a normal off-hand attack, you may attack once with as many off-hand weapons as you are capable of wielding.
When you use this feat, each additional off-hand weapon incurs an additional penalty to all of your attacks.
For example, you can use a longsword and three shortswords at a -6 penalty, or two longswords and two shortswords at a -8 penalty.

[AstralFire]

'Fixing' them gives power creep in more places we don't need it. Sort out all the weak feats that give a nice amount of flavor (hint: they're mostly in core), give players two to start with, and award the rest for story/roleplaying rewards.

If you ran a game with just ToB/Psionics/Spells and cut out the obvious abuses, I think most players would find enough mechanical widgets in their straight 20 class abilities that you could request them to restrict most of their feats to low power stuff.

[Telonius]

Useless and/or underpowered feats in Core:

Acrobatic
Agile
...etc. on the "+2 to two skills" feats.
To fix it: gain an additional +2 for every four levels you gain after taking the feat. (ie take it at first, and you get +10 by 20. Take it at 18, you get +2 by 20).

Greater Weapon Focus
Greater Weapon Specialization
To fix it: Gain a bonus equal to 2 + (BAB/4) to attack/damage.

Run
To fix it: Endurance kills it and takes its stuff.

Improved Counterspell
To fix it: Remove it. Has anyone in the history of D&D regularly used counterspelling?

Great Cleave
To fix it: Cleave kills it and takes its stuff. Unlimited attacks operative at +4 BAB onwards.

Two-Weapon Defense
To fix it: Adds either +1, or the magic bonus of either/both weapons (whichever is bigger) to the shield bonus. (i.e. +4 rapier and +1 dagger give +5 shield bonus; two MW daggers give +1 bonus)

Two-Weapon Fighting
To fix it: Allows an extra attack for all normally-allowed attack rolls. Improved and Greater TWF decrease penalties by 1 each (cumulative).

Whirlwind Attack
To fix it: Beats me. I love the "death blossom" idea of it, but it's so situational that it's rarely useful.

Weapon Finesse
To fix it: Remove that idiotic +1BAB requirement. Honestly, this is a feat that practically screams "Rogue!" Rogues should have it from first level on.

[Faleldir]

Great Cleave
To fix it: Cleave kills it and takes its stuff. Unlimited attacks operative at +4 BAB onwards.

If Cleave has unlimited use per round, then Great Cleave lets you take a 5-foot step before using Cleave. If you drop an opponent with a charge attack, you may continue charging in the same direction at the same speed and make ONE attack.

Whirlwind Attack
To fix it: Beats me. I love the "death blossom" idea of it, but it's so situational that it's rarely useful.

As a full-round action, move up to your speed while making a full attack. You must move at least 5 feet before, after and between all attacks. Now the prerequisites make sense.

Weapon Finesse
To fix it: Remove that idiotic +1BAB requirement. Honestly, this is a feat that practically screams "Rogue!" Rogues should have it from first level on.

IMHO, this shouldn't even be a feat, it should be a weapon keyword. Weapon Finesse adds DEX to damage with finesse weapons and stacks with Shadow Blade.

[Forbiddenwar]

Whirlwind Attack
To fix it: Beats me. I love the "death blossom" idea of it, but it's so situational that it's rarely useful.
.

good for solo missions or reach weapons. Perhaps add as bonus for a melee solo mission? But cleave does kind of kill its usefulness.

Edit: sorry, thought you had to be stationary, (maybe that's in 3.0?) it's better moving

[Leewei]

Any of the various +3 or +2/+2 bonus to skill feats aren't worth it, save for very specific builds. I'd suggest a flat +2 to all skills based on a stat for a feat. Alternately, create some decent magic items or spells with X skill ranks as a requirement to use with a very nice effect unlocked by Skill Focus. The various lorecall spells are a good example of this.

Improved Sunder is widely considered less than worthless. Allowing spell components and holy symbols to be sundered changes this into something desirable.

Great Cleave is generally disliked, since the odds of a PC dropping two opponents in a round is far less than dropping one bad guy. I personally don't consider this to be that bad, since a PC fighting an opponent with mirror image gets to cleave through images.

[Set]

All of the +2/+2 feats. Combat Casting. Skill Focus.

Removing the 'caps' from feats like Combat Expertise and Power Attack would also make sense, rather than introducing feats like 'Improved Combat Expertise' which allows one to subtract more than 5 from one's BAB to add to AC. (Lame.)

Exotic Weapon Proficiency. If it's Spiked Chain, it's arguably worth it, because that weapon's just stupid. If it's Net, or Hand Crossbow, or Shuriken, or, heaven forfend, Whip, what the heck were you thinking, when you could have taken a Scythe or something and saved a feat?

Metamagic in general. Unless you have a way to avoid the crazy overpriced spell level increases (say, via Incantatrix, or Divine Metamagic, or Metamagic Rod, or some other feat or class ability), the mechanic is junk. Monte Cook went on in Book of Eldritch Might to introduce 'Eldritch' and 'Lace' feats that allowed the spellcaster to enhance a spell without a spell level increase, correctly noting that there was already a cost of an entire feat to learn these techniques, and in Arcana Unearthed, went a step further and created Templated spells, which, again, enhanced spells without burning higher level spell slots (although often requiring some sort of additional material component).

Acrobatic, Agile, etc. on the "+2 to two skills" feats.
To fix it: gain an additional +2 for every four levels you gain after taking the feat. (ie take it at first, and you get +10 by 20. Take it at 18, you get +2 by 20).

Another option I've seen is to have each of the +2/+2 feats also give the user both of those skills as class skills in whatever classes they take.

I'd make the same ruling for Skill Focus, make it automatically a class skill, and perhaps add a scaling bonus (perhaps an extra +3) once you have 10 ranks in the skill?

Scaling works well for lots of feats. Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Toughness (treat as Improved Toughness), even Two-Weapon Fighting (instead of scaling up the numbers, just allow the Improved and Greater Two-Weapon Fighting benefits for any TWFer who gets enough BAB to attempt iterative off-hand attacks).

Improved Counterspell
To fix it: Remove it. Has anyone in the history of D&D regularly used counterspelling?

Yeah, that option is pretty dire. I'd keep it as is for normal play (i.e. used once in a blue moon by a Sorcerer with Dispel Magic on his spells known list, if at all), but allow Specialist Abjurers to counterspell *any* spell with an Abjuration spell of equal or higher level. And, if they choose to use a spell of higher level, they get a bonus on the check.

An Abjurer shouldn't need to have Web or Ray of Enfeeblement prepared to have a chance to shut down the casting of those spells.

[Saph]

'Fixing' them gives power creep in more places we don't need it. Sort out all the weak feats that give a nice amount of flavor (hint: they're mostly in core), give players two to start with, and award the rest for story/roleplaying rewards.

I'd go with this. If something's really underpowered, don't do all the work of trying to balance it, just give it to players for free. Same with stuff like Craft and Profession - just give PCs free skill points to spend on them.

[AstralFire]

Yeah, that option is pretty dire. I'd keep it as is for normal play (i.e. used once in a blue moon by a Sorcerer with Dispel Magic on his spells known list, if at all), but allow Specialist Abjurers to counterspell *any* spell with an Abjuration spell of equal or higher level. And, if they choose to use a spell of higher level, they get a bonus on the check.

An Abjurer shouldn't need to have Web or Ray of Enfeeblement prepared to have a chance to shut down the casting of those spells.

No.

Wizards get enough tricks, and with two feats, a Sorcerer is actually a pretty good dispeller.

[Forbiddenwar]

Improved Sunder is widely considered less than worthless. Allowing spell components and holy symbols to be sundered changes this into something desirable.

Agreed. In general though, improved sunder is only good when fighting a Hydra. And fighting a Hydra is only good if you have improved sunder.
They both can disappear forever for all I care.

Although, the hydra as a CONCEPT is cool, trying to think how to make it better, but thats a different thread.

[Telonius]

One way of fixing it would be to change this rule:

Damaged Objects

A damaged object remains fully functional until the item’s hit points are reduced to 0, at which point it is destroyed.

Damaged (but not destroyed) objects can be repaired with the Craft skill.

To fix it, change to:

Damaged Objects

A damaged object remains fully functional until the item’s hit points are reduced to 0, at which point it is nonfunctional.

Damaged objects can be repaired with the Craft skill.

There. Now, if you sunder the Black Knight's shield, you've taken it out of the equation for the duration of the combat, but you haven't cheated yourself out of the loot. You also don't get the mental image of a magical weapon somehow entirely disappearing from this plane of existence just because somebody hit it with an adamantine greataxe hard enough.

[Keld Denar]

Metamagic in general. Unless you have a way to avoid the crazy overpriced spell level increases (say, via Incantatrix, or Divine Metamagic, or Metamagic Rod, or some other feat or class ability), the mechanic is junk. Monte Cook went on in Book of Eldritch Might to introduce 'Eldritch' and 'Lace' feats that allowed the spellcaster to enhance a spell without a spell level increase, correctly noting that there was already a cost of an entire feat to learn these techniques, and in Arcana Unearthed, went a step further and created Templated spells, which, again, enhanced spells without burning higher level spell slots (although often requiring some sort of additional material component).

IMO, Metamagic is fine. I have a level 12 Conjourer whos standard daily spell list consists of aprox 1/3 metamagic'ed spells, and he only has 1 rather limited MM reducer (Metamagic School Focus - Complete Mage, 3 per day reduce metamagic cost on 1 spell of the given school by 1 level). This is mostly there to be able to Quicken a couple of 3rd level spells. He still has plenty of Quickened 1st and 2nd level spells, and a few Split Rayed spells, and a few Extended spells. Split Ray of Enfeeblement is TOTALLY worth a 3rd level slot. Split Ray Enervation is TOTALLY worth a 6th level slot. Some metamagic isn't worth it, but IMO, a goodly portion of it is.

[woodenbandman]

Widen and stuff like it aren't worth it though. The main good ones are quicken, split, extend, and, of course, persist. Sculpted is also wicked cool, basically stomping on Widen's colon.

The main problem with metamagic is that they're either good or... really really not.

[Indon]

Hmm. Divide feats into two tiers, every time a character gets a feat (from leveling, not class feature, though that might offer an interesting supplimentary rule), they get one feat from both tiers.

Put all the feats your group can generally agree aren't worth spending a rare feat slot on in the free-feat tier - Skill Focus and such.

[Deepblue706]

Improved Sunder is widely considered less than worthless. Allowing spell components and holy symbols to be sundered changes this into something desirable.

It's considered 'less than worthless' for people who don't know how to use it, and in games where all of the party's wealth comes from collecting mass-produced magical longswords.

The MM1 alone provides a great amount of humanoid monsters who, by standard rules, use weapons that are not magical up to CR 14. Also, 30% of all magical weapons glow, so you don't have to worry about breaking those. And, Flaming/Shocking/Frost weapons tends to be wreathed in whatever elemental type it is, Dancing weapons obviously Dance, Brilliant Energy weapons shine like a torch, and a Vicious weapon creates a flash of disruptive energy with each strike. Others may be more difficult to identify, but then your party Wizard, played smartly, will be able to identify magical items through divinations (of the sort he'd likely have active wherever he could anyway), and can easily say "Don't break that guy's thing. It's magical."

And if you've really upset about the coins you lose out on when you break mundane weapons too, consider how much more you'd have to spend to replenish your healing potions or a charge in that Wand of Vigor your Cleric carries around. Most monsters who wield weapons lose half their damage-dealing ability or more if they cannot use those weapons, which translates to fewer resources spent recovering for the cost of, perhaps, a large-sized greatsword.

The only fix I would support is allowing for repairs on any broken weapon with proper crafting, as Telonius suggests.

[ericgrau]

Basing this conversation on another thread about Endurance.

What Feats are generally considered useless in the 3.5 PHB, and what can be done to fix them

Already suggested:
Combine Endurance with Great Fortitude or DieHard
Combine Lit Reflexes with Dodge and lose the Select target selction of dodge
(Or would that be too powerful?)

What others can you suggest for a Balanced game?

Just cross endurance off of your feat list if your campaigns don't involve any applications for it. Likewise cross off any other feats you don't plan on using as a DM, to avoid confusing your new players. If your DM likes to focus on one and only one tactical like dominating you every combat, buy some cheap potions of protection from evil or magic circle against evil, quaff them constantly, then laugh. Heck, dump wisdom while you're at it. Then you and your DM should learn a bunch more interesting tactics and counters instead of just that one... preferably after you make a new character with higher saves across the board. If you don't like dodge, then go back to basics and learn how to optimize AC for cheap. If you still can't manage to maintain a good AC, then just cross dodge and anything AC related off of the feat list and spell list. If you can maintain a good AC, then you'll soon find every last +1 beyond what's normally available is extremely powerful and should be strictly regulated. Just +5 beyond what's expected can become OP b/c that's how narrow the gulf is between "well optimized core melee (overall, not AC focused)" and "virtually invulnerable to physical damage".

[Dienekes]

Yeah feats are out of whack.

I actually recently tried to make a fix here
Shameless but on topic plug

I tried to scale most feats with mixed results.

At the very least to fix some weaker feats such as Dodge, make it last all the time and scale, and so forth.

I'd also suggest following the suit of improved trip and allowing all of the improved bull rush, overrun, ect. make an attack upon a success.

[Kaiyanwang]

It's considered 'less than worthless' for people who don't know how to use it

This. Definitively this. In our last session, if my player's Fighter//Knight knew when sunder and when deal damage, there were at least one PC less dropped.

She has sundering cleave from charge feats, but she uses combat brute and the other things only for charge. She's not a one trick pony, but sometimes behaves like she's one.


I agree as a general rule, anyway, that feats should scale. Even improved sunder

[Sstoopidtallkid]

This. Definitively this. In our last session, if my player's Fighter//Knight knew when sunder and when deal damage, there were at least one PC less dropped.

She has sundering cleave from charge feats, but she uses combat brute and the other things only for charge. She's not a one trick pony, but sometimes behaves like she's one.


I agree as a general rule, anyway, that feats should scale. Even improved sunder

The problem with Sunder isn't ease of use. It's that you're destroying loot to do it. Either you're fighting something without weapons, in which case Sunder doesn't work, or you're fighting something with magic weapons, in which case you're blowing 2000 GP+ per use. You could use a 6th level scroll for that much. And if the DM is building enemies realistically, they'll have a backup weapon. So you just blew an action(probably the better part of a full-attack) and a good chunk of loot to give the enemy -1 to attacks and damage. In the rare instance that an enemy is wielding weapons and doesn't have magic ones(and isn't a mook who you'd be better off hitting in the face) you just blew an action to force them to use an action to draw a backup. Trading actions is good when you have them outnumbered, but the number of enemies who you can outnumber and still be CR-appropriate without magic or natural weapons is vanishingly small.

[Kaiyanwang]

The problem with Sunder isn't ease of use. It's that you're destroying loot to do it. Either you're fighting something without weapons, in which case Sunder doesn't work, or you're fighting something with magic weapons, in which case you're blowing 2000 GP+ per use. You could use a 6th level scroll for that much. And if the DM is building enemies realistically, they'll have a backup weapon. So you just blew an action(probably the better part of a full-attack) and a good chunk of loot to give the enemy -1 to attacks and damage. In the rare instance that an enemy is wielding weapons and doesn't have magic ones(and isn't a mook who you'd be better off hitting in the face) you just blew an action to force them to use an action to draw a backup. Trading actions is good when you have them outnumbered, but the number of enemies who you can outnumber and still be CR-appropriate without magic or natural weapons is vanishingly small.

A lot of your points are valid, but I think that a good attack or a charge, you can avoid to sacrifice them through Combat Brute's Sundering Cleave (the girl of my example has it, so she cannot be justified ).

A lot of Giants have just stick to beat you efficently. After a while, a Fighter or a Barbarian can beat a giant with the first of the iterative (of course, this happens when the giant is not "Da Boss" but something more than a mook. Like happened to the girl of my example

"CR appropriate" is quite an Utopia.

Remember that you can sunder worn objects too. Understand what part of the iterative is good for what action (and this is valid for disarm, Touch attack Trip and/or Knockdown, in my experience, makes the good Fighter.


Again, I would anyway merge a lot of feats.

Combat Expertise: Merge with ICE, Allied Defense, and improve the AC bonus with shields.

TWDefense: Merged.

MAge Slayer and Supernatural Instincts: merged.

TWF line: merged.

Hold The line and Standstill: Merged.

All the 6 relevalnt shiled fighting feats, merged in 2 tactical. One more feat to make shield count as IUS for stunning fist.


All of this, could be streamlined in two possible ways:

- There are base feats, that brings an additional effect whan the BAB raises (+1, +6, + 11, +1, or more to discourage CoDzillas.).

Of course, If you take one feat at high level you gain like 3-4 benefits at once.
Since the Wiz learned 7-9 level spells at the moment, this is only good.

- There are base feats, and other that bring more on the table, more base you have.

So, the feat "Really Good Reflexes brings +2 on reflexes saves. If you have Combat Reflexes, brings Standstill too. If you have TWF, brings Hold the line. If you have Mageslayer, brings Supernatural Opportunist.

And so on.

[Telonius]

- There are base feats, that brings an additional effect whan the BAB raises (+1, +6, + 11, +1, or more to discourage CoDzillas.).

One other item I'd put in (and probably should have mentioned in my other post) - make the feat explicitly say that it's based on non-enhanced BAB. Otherwise you just have the Cleric casting Divine Power and qualifying for the bigger bonus.

[Kaiyanwang]

One other item I'd put in (and probably should have mentioned in my other post) - make the feat explicitly say that it's based on non-enhanced BAB. Otherwise you just have the Cleric casting Divine Power and qualifying for the bigger bonus.

Good point. or just ban BAB enhancements

[aje8]

This has been done, and quite well too.

See: here and scroll down to the feats section.

[Doc Roc]

Improved Counterspell
To fix it: Remove it. Has anyone in the history of D&D regularly used counterspelling?

Extensively. You lose a cookie. With things like Battlemagic Perception flying around, counterspelling can be a very elegant way of handling somethings, if you know for a fact you can outrun your opponent when it comes to action economy, or if you have two full casters.

Improved Counterspell is still considered fairly weak, but is the linchpin in a couple of builds.

Re: Aj
I don't like the Tomes very much, but they are one of the definitive works in a very narrow field, so a failure to be familiar with them is probably bad.

[quick_comment]

Improved Counterspell
To fix it: Remove it. Has anyone in the history of D&D regularly used counterspelling?

Counterspelling is awesome if you know you are going to be fighting a shadowcraft mage. You just get a ton of silent image scrolls and use them to counterspell.

Of course, improved counterspell doesnt help with that.

[Telonius]

Extensively. You lose a cookie. With things like Battlemagic Perception flying around, counterspelling can be a very elegant way of handling somethings, if you know for a fact you can outrun your opponent when it comes to action economy, or if you have two full casters.

Improved Counterspell is still considered fairly weak, but is the linchpin in a couple of builds.

It's an interesting little gimmick, but worth two feats (BP and Improved Counterspell)? I'm not sure of that. It would also require you to have a spell prepared that's in the same school as the spell being cast (or is Dispel Magic). Way too situational, IMO.

[Eldariel]

Battlemagic Perception is a spell that allows immediate action counterspelling. Duelward is another one, although much worse with shorter duration and all that. Then there are items that enable counterspelling. It's a great tactic, just not the "ready an action to counterspell"-shtick. Which is why Improved Counterspell is poor too (well, until you gain an access to Epic Counterspell and infinite countering at any rate).