[3.5] A thoguht on Armour Proficiency and Feats

[Scorpina]

I was just thinking, armour proficiency can be acquired in two ways: throguh classes and throguh feats. Obviously, taking a feat is a matter of player choice - the class thing, not so much. In light of this, would it be workable to allow players to 'trade in' class-granted proficiencies for feats?

[Marriclay]

all things considered, the question of whether class granted proficiencies are feats really only applies to Chaos Shuffle, and even then it's so vague on that that it's a DM's call as to whether they are considered feats or not. Either way, as long as it's the equivalent of a feat they're trading in, I don't think there'd be a problem

[Snake-Aes]

It does if you play based on the concept of abstract classes, which is the opposite of default d&d, where classes are clearly defined archetypes. Just do it, I say, but judge what the new feats can be to remain in context of whatever it is that made you decide to drop the proficiency.

[Satyr]

Allowing players to pick one to three bonus feats might be bit too much, but allowing some specific combinations as an alternative class features, e.g. Dodge and Mobility, the armor proficiency feats aren't that worthwhile either, and these two are a good example for feats which aren't good enough on their own but are sometimes needed for prestige classes and some better feats like Elusive Target.

[Keld Denar]

Do note also that even if you aren't using X armor, you might still need proficiency with it. Take your typical Sorcadin build: Pal2/Sorc4/Spellsword1/AbjChamp5/SacEx8. Pal gives heavy armor proficiency, but you probably won't wear any armor past level 2ish, or light armor at most. Still, Spellsword requires you have it, and Spellsword is kinda the lynchpin in the build because you need the +1 BAB and CL in order to get into AbjChamp, the real goal, by ECL8.

That said, Armor Proficiency is one of those less desired feats, like Toughness. Nobody really takes it unless its a prereq, and in this case, its easy enough to get just by dipping a level, provided you don't already have it. Being able to trade it for something like Power Attack, a really strong, scalable feat, would be way too valuable.