Feat "serenity" from drag-mag

[gallagher]

The feat Serenity page Dragon 306 says: use wisdom bonus in place of your charisma for purposes of divine grace, lay on hands, smite evil and turn undead

my question is: is this broken at all? My DM and i will be talking later this afternoon, and have a game tomorrow with this feat in play. dont bother suggesting a different class, we are midway through this campaign. he just wants to see what it all does and if he wants to allow me to continue to use this feat.

also, do any of you see a problem with this applying to... say... a paladin of tyranny?

anyway, please give your collective opinions on this, as it may help the argument along peacefully and prevent any fallout between player and dm, as that would be devastating to the party

thanks!

[Greenish]

It'd be nice way to reduce paladin MAD, which is hardly overpowering. DMM cleric would be better off with Extra Turning anyway.

[Sinfire Titan]

Not really. It reduces MAD for one of the most MAD classes there is (and the class isn't really all that good).

[The Glyphstone]

Why wouldn't it work for an evil paladin? It's simply using your intuition and insight to fuel your supernatural powers instead of sheer force of will. If it doesn't have an Alignment requirement to use, it should be fine.

Also, it's far from broken, as noted.

[Tyndmyr]

There's a wide variety of X stat to Y bonus feats out there. There's an entire thread dedicated to them.

It's handy for reducing MAD in classes, and thus, making subpar classes more equal to SAD classes, but in general, they're not broken so long as they are "in place of", like this one is.

The fun ones are the one that allow you to simply add the second bonus. So, you get to do things like wisdom to AC twice.

This one's pretty balanced, I wouldn't worry about it at all.

[gallagher]

well where there might be problems is due to an accidental omission. this is a partial gestalt game, where any class of tier 5 or 6 may gestalt with another of 5th or 6th tier (3rd and 4th can gestalt with an NPC class, 1st and 2nd no gestalt)

i am gestalting a paladin of tyranny with a monk. this makes my 24 wisdom (level 9) an incredible advantage, as it pumps my AC up very high, and gives my already high saves an even bigger advantage. i went through and found that my fort and will saves are in the 20s, and my reflex save is a modest 18. you can see why my DM might be wary, but i still think that this is all fair as i am investing a feat in this selection to try and give me some sort of relevence in the party

[Swooper]

Why wouldn't it work for an evil paladin? It's simply using your intuition and insight to fuel your supernatural powers instead of sheer force of will.

Except wisdom represents willpower, too. Will saves, remember?

@OP: Yes, Serenity is a good feat for a paladin, but it is far from broken. In particular because it only works for paladins, which have a rather hard time doing anything broken at all.

[Tyndmyr]

well where there might be problems is due to an accidental omission. this is a partial gestalt game, where any class of tier 5 or 6 may gestalt with another of 5th or 6th tier (3rd and 4th can gestalt with an NPC class, 1st and 2nd no gestalt)

i am gestalting a paladin of tyranny with a monk. this makes my 24 wisdom (level 9) an incredible advantage, as it pumps my AC up very high, and gives my already high saves an even bigger advantage. i went through and found that my fort and will saves are in the 20s, and my reflex save is a modest 18. you can see why my DM might be wary, but i still think that this is all fair as i am investing a feat in this selection to try and give me some sort of relevence in the party

You're a monk/pally. Your DM is getting fixated on big numbers, which is a common DM issue.

Partially fixing the MAD issues you have will not make you overpowered.

For comparison, my level 9, non gestalt wizard was capable of essentially ignoring physical damage from anything without true seeing, and was basically untouchable by anything without flight. For starters.

[Draz74]

Yes, a Paladin//Monk with Serenity is very powerful defensively. Who cares? His offense will be ... unimpressive.

[gallagher]

You're a monk/pally. Your DM is getting fixated on big numbers, which is a common DM issue.

Partially fixing the MAD issues you have will not make you overpowered.

For comparison, my level 9, non gestalt wizard was capable of essentially ignoring physical damage from anything without true seeing, and was basically untouchable by anything without flight. For starters.

...ouch... well, i think that one will sell it...

[Sinfire Titan]

You're a monk/pally. Your DM is getting fixated on big numbers, which is a common DM issue.

Partially fixing the MAD issues you have will not make you overpowered.

For comparison, my level 9, non gestalt wizard was capable of essentially ignoring physical damage from anything without true seeing, and was basically untouchable by anything without flight. For starters.

Emphasis added. Because it needed it.

[dspeyer]

There are builds (gestalt builds at least) where serenity can be a very powerful feat. They tend to look something like cleric // paladin 4 / swordsage with lots of divine metamagic (and divine power to deal with the BAB issue). Or druid // paladin 4 / crusader with Aura of Perfect Order and serious awaken abuse.

As you can see, these tend to involve tier 1 classes on the other side of the gestalt.

[Otodetu]

The feat Serenity page Dragon 306 says: use wisdom bonus in place of your charisma for purposes of divine grace, lay on hands, smite evil and turn undead

my question is: is this broken at all? My DM and i will be talking later this afternoon, and have a game tomorrow with this feat in play. dont bother suggesting a different class, we are midway through this campaign. he just wants to see what it all does and if he wants to allow me to continue to use this feat.

also, do any of you see a problem with this applying to... say... a paladin of tyranny?

anyway, please give your collective opinions on this, as it may help the argument along peacefully and prevent any fallout between player and dm, as that would be devastating to the party

thanks!

If your dm is afraid your paladin will turn into a some broken beast needs to, well come to his senses, paladin is a sub-pair class to the point that I hardly allow my players to play it, I just point toward the crusader instead.

I see no problem with that feat.