Letting people take Epic feats before Epic? [3.5]

[Flickerdart]

I was thinking. Everyone knows that Epic feats are, by and large, useless, right? The stuff that's worth taking (Epic Spellcasting, Multispell, Improved Spell capacity) all has prerequisites that you can't meet until lategame anyway. Most of the feats have been remade into pre-Epic feats. While Kobolds can cheese access to Epic feats, that's not a boost to their power anywhere near as much as Loredrake and such.

So, what sort of shenanigans would become available if Epic feats stopped being Epic? From what I can see, it throws melee a huge bone with a slew of nice feats, but nothing would really be exceptionally broken by it.

[Godskook]

Question: Are you altering the pre-requisites to allow pre-epic use?

If so, I'd probably pick up immunity to arrows.(Aka, infinite deflection)

[Eurus]

Well, you might have to spot-ban a few things (the same tricks to qualify for PrCs early could let you get Multispell by 15th level or earlier), but most of them are fine. Actually, you might want to lower the prereqs for a bunch of them.

[arguskos]

Enhance Spell and Intensify Spell would make some of the metareducing mages stupidly happy (mostly cause if you can cheap out Intensify Spell, it'd get really deeply entertaining).

But yeah, most epic feats could be retooled with no real issue. Spell Stowaway in particular should be a non-epic feat, I feel, with melee happy prereqs.

[Flickerdart]

Question: Are you altering the pre-requisites to allow pre-epic use?

If so, I'd probably pick up immunity to arrows.(Aka, infinite deflection)

Nope. Just wondering whether or not taking off the "21+ only" would break much.

[lesser_minion]

Well, there's the notorious "Epic toughness at 1st level" issue.

[Runestar]

Generally, I don't see a problem.

A few feats do stand out though. I am not sure if everyone would be okay with someone getting permanent fast healing. Epic toughness means a PC can be getting +30 hp at 1st lv. Devastating critical might be a tad strong.

Other than that, don't really see an issue.

[Flickerdart]

No prerequisites, huh. Well, it'd give melee more endurance when the wizard runs out of Colour Sprays, but still, problematic.

Anything else?

[RelentlessImp]

A couple of Epic feats would be really great at lower levels; such as the one that lets you wear an extra magic item over what you'd normally be able to wear (three rings, two headbands, two cloaks, etc). Overall, though, most Epic feats aren't that great in comparison to their non-epic counterparts - except for Epic Spellcasting, which is just beyond broken as-written.

[Gralamin]

No prerequisites, huh. Well, it'd give melee more endurance when the wizard runs out of Colour Sprays, but still, problematic.

Anything else?

Depending what you are going for, Spellcasting Harrier might be broken.

[Godskook]

Depending what you are going for, Spellcasting Harrier might be broken.

They reprinted that as a pre-epic feat or ToB stance, iirc.

[The Glyphstone]

It's called Mage Slayer now. Exactly the same, except it applies a -4 CL penalty on any spellcasting the user tries to do.

[CockroachTeaParty]

In my relatively short-lived all mind flayer game, I was going to allow access to any epic feats the characters qualified for by the time they reached epic ECL (before 21 HD/class levels). Never got far enough to see what that would have done, but I don't think it would have changed much (considering everyone was already gestalt illithids... can't get much more powerful).

[BenTheJester]

Depending what you are going for, Spellcasting Harrier might be broken.

As others said, it's been reprinted and is mostly a useless feat thanks to the 5ft step.

[Rixx]

As others said, it's been reprinted and is mostly a useless feat thanks to the 5ft step.

Hrm! It looks like the fighter will have to step up his game.

[PersonMan]

Hrm! It looks like the fighter will have to step up his game.

Where's that from? Is it homebrew, or...?

[Zyborg22]

It looks like it's from Pathfinder. Pathfinder is pretty similar to D&D 3.5, but it has some rule tweaks and extra things. This may be a feat that Pathfinder has that 3.5 doesn't.

[lesser_minion]

Where's that from? Is it homebrew, or...?

It's from Pathfinder.

One of the places where they spotted a problem and tried to fix it, basically.

[Godskook]

As others said, it's been reprinted and is mostly a useless feat thanks to the 5ft step.

If using the non-ToB version, reach is your friend. Move next to your opponent, and a 5' step can't get him far enough away to be safe.

In ToB, Thicket of Blades is readily available to Crusaders at 5th level without spending a feat, single class Warblades and Swordsages at 6th, and literally anyone at 10th. Also, reach is still your friend.

5' steps aren't really a big issue.

[Runestar]

In ToB, Thicket of Blades is readily available to Crusaders at 5th level without spending a feat

Except that thanks to their faulty stance progression, you need to either waste a feat at 6th lv to acquire thicket of blades, or wait until 8th lv.

[Godskook]

Except that thanks to their faulty stance progression, you need to either waste a feat at 6th lv to acquire thicket of blades, or wait until 8th lv.

I always forget that Crusaders have the wonky stance progression.