What is the value of a feat?

[afroakuma]

Alright, here are a couple of questions for the class:

• What, in your opinion, is the GP value of a fighter bonus feat? Not a specific feat, mind you, but the ability to select one as a fighter would.

• What, in your opinion, is the GP value of a feat for purposes of qualifying for additional feats only? As in, you could use it as your prerequisite but not actually gain the benefits of the feat itself?

[nightwyrm]

The same as casting the heroic spell? I'd start from there.

[Melamoto]

Feats would be a hard thing to put a monetary value on, because they scale with level and are meant to be limited.

For instance, say you had them cost 60,000 gp. Nobody at low levels can get any bonus feats at all that way. But then, people at high or epic levels could get loads of feats without suffering that much. And the people at epic levels would benefit just as much from it as somebody at level 1 would.

I don't know what you want this for, but perhaps a cost that scaled with level somehow?

[Nohwl]

it would be much easier to set prices individually. power attack is worth a lot more than improved feint.

[Schism]

If you're starting at something higher than level 1 going by WBL, make each bonus feat cost X percent of their level's wealth, with the understanding that they'll be getting less treasure per level than the others to compensate for the feat. If it costs a flat amount, it would be nigh-impossible for a low level character to get, or else ridiculously easy for a high level one.

[Yuki Akuma]

x gp times (y times the number of times you've bought a feat).

Where x and y are whatever numbers make this method balanced.

Minimum x gp, obviously. No 0gp feats.

[afroakuma]

Feats would be a hard thing to put a monetary value on, because they scale with level and are meant to be limited.

Very true. Fighter bonus feats, however, are a more limited field.

I don't know what you want this for, but perhaps a cost that scaled with level somehow?

Okay, scenario: suppose that you have a few levels behind you and some sweet sweet disposable income. At what price point would a run-of-the-mill magic item be preferable to a fighter bonus feat?

[Yuki Akuma]

Depends what feats you already have.

[afroakuma]

Depends what feats you already have.

You're a fighter. Assume you're high enough level to have any important feat.

[Milskidasith]

Well magic items can range from absurdly useless (+1 Bane of Objects club), to absurdly cheap (at will item of Truestrike).

With that in mind, an item that gives you +2 more to strength than your current item is worth more than any of the Weapon feats (besides prereqs) and a flat +2 inherent bonus to strength is probably about as good as most feats except for very specific builds.

[Doc Roc]

It varies monstrously:

Imperious command versus Weapon Focus?

Natural spell?
Overchannel?
Standstill versus improved sunder?

[Doc Roc]

You're a fighter. Assume you're high enough level to have any important feat.

It... does not work like that.

[afroakuma]

It... does not work like that.

*sigh* under what phrasing would it work like that?

Look, I'll boil this down even simpler: you're a 10th level human fighter. You've already hadthe human feat, the 1st level feat, three feats for being a character, and six fighter bonus feats. Given only the SRD, and therefore the SRD list of fighter bonus feats, and assuming you did the logical thing and took the best ones for your build as soon as you could, what would you be willing to pay for an additional fighter bonus feat as opposed to spending that GP on magic items or the like? Knowing what you already have, knowing that the price is fixed, just as the bonus feat slot is fixed, regardless of what you decide to fill it with?

[Schism]

I self-destruct and play something non-fighter.

In all seriousness? No more than, say, a +2 stat magic item. Core feats are so limited that by now, you've more than exhausted the good ones and have gone through the mediocre ones. Maybe there's a niche one that you really want, so you're willing to pay for it. A couple thousand GP, no more.

[Grynning]

I think you'd have to set a "price" for each feat based loosely on the magic item creation rules, like from this table.

For instance, a skill focus feat would be worth about 900 gp according to those rules (bonus ^2, x100), whereas say, Improved Initiative you'd have to estimate...I'd say init is about in the same category as a skill bonus, so I'd price it at 1600 GP. Feat bonuses to saves are non-stacking so you'd use the cheaper save value, so say Great Fortitude would be 4000 gp. Power Attack and similar feats are harder to do, but I guess you could base it on spells, with BAB substituted for caster level, as a use activated/continuous item or something like that. So if your BAB is +10, Power Attack is worth 20,000 GP or so, by my estimation.

[afroakuma]

I think you'd have to set a "price" for each feat based loosely on the magic item creation rules, like from this table.

You're not buying a feat, you're buying a feat slot.

[Grynning]

Ah. But only fighter bonus Feats?

I'd just set a flat price at maybe 500-1000 gp per character level, to account for your ability to select better feats because you're higher level and will have pre-reqs and such. Can't find my 3.5 DMG to check that against WBL but you get the idea.

[afroakuma]

Ah. But only fighter bonus Feats?

Well, you're buying a fighter bonus feat slot.

The concept of paying based on level is just silly, though, since as many people here have pointed out, Power Attack is one of the most valuable fighter bonus feats and you can get that at 1st.

[Tehnar]

I would put the price somewhere in the 5,000-15,000 range. This seems like a fair tradeoff with regards to magic items one could buy with that price; and the benefit they confer to the fighter.

To determine a fixed price I would need more a bit more info:

- would this work for fighters only, or could any class select it? Being fighter only would drive the price down

- are only bonus feats from the SRD allowed? if so the price would go down

Even with those restrictions I would set the price at no less then 5,000 gp, as a fighter could use this to fill out his feat needs from the core list, and use his normal feats to select those from the non core list. Another factor I would consider are magic items available to the fighter. Better magic items mean that purchasing a feat has less value.

[afroakuma]

To determine a fixed price I would need more a bit more info:

- would this work for fighters only, or could any class select it? Being fighter only would drive the price down

Fighter only.

- are only bonus feats from the SRD allowed? if so the price would go down

Yes.

Even with those restrictions I would set the price at no less then 5,000 gp, as a fighter could use this to fill out his feat needs from the core list, and use his normal feats to select those from the non core list. Another factor I would consider are magic items available to the fighter. Better magic items mean that purchasing a feat has less value.

True. However, in this fashion a fighter with some extra gold could expand his combat repertoire beyond "selections for my one-trick pony build."

The other question, by the by, was "what would the prerequisite qualification ability of a feat be worth?"

[woodenbandman]

500gp x Character level ^2

And you have to pay it at each level up.

EDIT: Perhaps slightly less than this.

[Tehnar]

With the restrictions as defined above I would price it at 2,500 gp per feat. Im guessing it would be used mostly for dodge/mobility and other such crappy feats.

Normally I would lower the price to around 1k, but the fact is that this will be used only to bypass the crappy feats to get to the better ones. 2,500 is not much to pay for a simulation of dodge when it nets you elusive target.

Also another hurdle to overcome would be what happens when one wishes for a bonus fighter feat. Limiting it to one feat per wish would be reasonable.

[Seffbasilisk]

Really depends.

I mean, it's 15K for Deflect Arrows and a +2 to Initiative, and that takes up an item slot.

So assuming a base of 10K for a feat WITH an item slot, double it for slotless, and that's 20k for an ITEM that gives you a feat, not an inherant one.

This 2.5K nonsense is rediculous. Almost every build is starved for feats, and 2.5K is a drop in the bucket after a few levels.

[Godskook]

Perhaps scale based on prerequisites? For instance, Improved Initiative has none, so should be set as a 'baseline' price. Power Attack requires 3 strength above average, so decide how much that's worth. Feats with other feats as prerequisites should cost more too(ignore redundant prerequisites).

And paying to count as having a feat should cost ~1/4 - 1/2 of what a hypothetical feat you'd grab would be worth.

[Tehnar]

2,500 gp is the price for a quasi feat, only used to meet prerequisites for other feats. And only from a list of core fighter feats, and available only to the fighter. That was the basis of my calculation.

However additional requirements should be made, such as only X such feat per Y fighter levels, to prevent multiclassing abuse.

[Curmudgeon]

Arms and Equipment Guide set a rough guideline of 10,000 gp for the cost of adding a feat to a magic item, plus 5,000 - 10,000 gp for each prerequisite feat. For a feat that only satisfies a prerequisite I'd use the 5,000 gp figure.

[Roderick_BR]

Things to account for:

Minimum level needed to get the feat (something similar to spell level): meaning that a Weapon Focus (BAB+1) is cheap, and a Weapon Supremacy (level 18) is more expensive.

Requisites: Weapon Focus requires nothing (maybe only proficiency), while Weapon Supremacy needs a crapload of feats.

Enhancement: Weapon Focus doesn't change with level, but Power Attack does.

"Slots": A higher level character is still limited on how many magic itens he can wear, althoug he have enough money to buy dozens of low-level itens. In case of feats, however, without limit to how many feats you can get, a high level character can buy lots and lots of lower level feats, "just in case".

I think it can cause troubles similar to the ones Wish had in AD&D: Since there had no limit to enchance ability scores (although it got progressivelly more expensive), you could eventually meet an NPC rich enough to increase all his stats to 25 (maximun in core, and nearly god-like stats back then), without any restriction (except maybe, for the cheesy response "he got the money for it").

[ericgrau]

The benefits given by feats are hard to measure, since they tend to stack with anything given by an item. i.e., just like giving out an item that gives a +1 untyped bonus is bad news. It'll suck at low levels b/c it'll be cheaper to get +1's elsewhere, but at high levels it'll be OP b/c it'll be way cheaper than boosting your other items. Kinda like what Melamoto said.

I'd use a scabbard of keen edges as a baseline. It's 16,000gp for 3/day. Maybe 5/3 of that for unlimited use, around 25k. Fighters may not want to pay so much for feats but others will eventually. And for reasons of the first paragraph and what Melamoto said, only allow this for feats that add versatility but not power. Or non-stackable power is okay too.

As for the 2nd question, that's hard to say. Often people take pre-requisite feats only b/c they want pre-requisites, not b/c they'll use the feat at all. So by that model you'd charge almost full price. Or, as a guess, knock of 30%. So 18,000 gp maybe.

[Sliver]

I don't remember where I fount it, but I do remember some kind of potion that allowed you to choose an extra feat from a feat list you had.. So say.. A.. Monk could drink the potion later to get the grapple or stunning fist that he didn't take before, or a fighter could take an extra feat from his fighter bonus feat list, while classes without lists can only get the potion's benefit once to get any feat they can take at the time, a fighter can have that and use the potion for another fighter bonus feat.. more feats for the fighter!