The Chaos Shuffle

[HMS Invincible]

I got an elf and a couple not currently useful metamagic feats for my wizard. Should do the chaos shuffle, or just test the waters by getting rid of my poorly chosen feats first? How good are the dark chaos feats by themselves? I wanna ease my DM through the steps before getting all the feats I want.

[Curmudgeon]

The retraining rules (in Player's Handbook II) should let you redo those poor feat choices.

There aren't any "dark chaos" feats; I suppose Abyssal Heritor feats are what you actually mean. Basically these are underwhelming, unless you take a lot of them. That's because most of these feats get better proportionately with the total number of Abyssal Heritor feats you've got. So I'd avoid these feats entirely unless you've got some particular need that would get satisfied by a combination of Abyssal Heritor feats. Possibly if you're going for unarmed combat, the combination of

• Claws of the Beast
• Demonic Skin
• Cloak of the Obyrith
• Primordial Scion

would be useful: your unarmed damage would be boosted by +3, with an extra +2d6 vs. lawful targets; and you'd gain DR 4/lawful and +3 Natural Armor. It's only the combinations that make these effective:

• Claws of the Beast is +1, and another +1 for each 2 total AH feats
• Demonic Skin is +1, and another +1 for each 2 total AH feats
• Cloak of the Obyrith is +1 per AH feat
• Primordial Scion is +1d6, and another +1d6 per 4 total AH feats

So getting 3 of these feats would be only about half as effective as getting to that 4th feat.

Also keep in mind that these feats suck for any skillful character, as each one also imposes a skill use penalty.

[Robs]

The retraining rules (in Player's Handbook II) should let you redo those poor feat choices.

There aren't any "dark chaos" feats; I suppose Abyssal Heritor feats are what you actually mean. Basically these are underwhelming, unless you take a lot of them. That's because most of these feats get better proportionately with the total number of Abyssal Heritor feats you've got. So I'd avoid these feats entirely unless you've got some particular need that would get satisfied by a combination of Abyssal Heritor feats. Possibly if you're going for unarmed combat, the combination of

• Claws of the Beast
• Demonic Skin
• Cloak of the Obyrith
• Primordial Scion

would be useful: your unarmed damage would be boosted by +3, with an extra +2d6 vs. lawful targets; and you'd gain DR 4/lawful and +3 Natural Armor. It's only the combinations that make these effective:

• Claws of the Beast is +1, and another +1 for each 2 total AH feats
• Demonic Skin is +1, and another +1 for each 2 total AH feats
• Cloak of the Obyrith is +1 per AH feat
• Primordial Scion is +1d6, and another +1d6 per 4 total AH feats

So getting 3 of these feats would be only about half as effective as getting to that 4th feat.

Also keep in mind that these feats suck for any skillful character, as each one also imposes a skill use penalty.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119456

But yea, retraining sounds more relevant (Unless OPs reference to being an elf means more than I thought).

[kamikasei]

But yea, retraining sounds more relevant (Unless OPs reference to being an elf means more than I thought).

The idea is that elves get loads of racial proficiencies which can be treated as free feats and replaced with better ones via the Chaos Shuffle. It is unlikely that many DMs would allow this via simple retraining.

I got an elf and a couple not currently useful metamagic feats for my wizard. Should do the chaos shuffle, or just test the waters by getting rid of my poorly chosen feats first? How good are the dark chaos feats by themselves? I wanna ease my DM through the steps before getting all the feats I want.

I'm not sure I understand the question. The way you put it sounds very questionable to me, and maybe I'm reading you too harshly. When you talk about "easing the DM through the steps" it sounds like you want to get the DM to agree to a series of small, seemingly reasonable individual steps which add up to a bonus he'd be unwilling to grant you if asked for it up front. That's bad. If you want extra feats, ask for them. If it's important to you that it be attached to some rules justification, supply that. But don't try to trick your DM.

[Heliomance]

I think he's saying that he wants to try the DCFS on his badly chosen feats first, then if the DM lets that get through, try DCFSing the Martial Proficiency (longbow, longsword, shortbow, rapier) feats.

[kamikasei]

Yes... and that's what I'm saying is bad. "I want to start with this thing that'll seem reasonable, to set a precedent to help me convince her of something that would seem unreasonable as it stands." It feels weaselly and manipulative.

[HMS Invincible]

Well, since the complete chaos shuffle, where you exchange any feat for any other feat, could be deemed abusive. I planned to only exchange my extra proficiency feats into the abyssal feats. It's for a wizard, so only a few of them would actually help. But its not like I actually use heighten spell or longsword proficiency. So instead of doing the complete shuffle, I thought about stopping by replacing my "extra" feats with abyssal feats. Then, I can ask the DM if he lets me get extra feats via the chaos shuffle, or else I'll just stop there. Free feats are free feats.

[Kurald Galain]

The idea is that elves get loads of racial proficiencies which can be treated as free feats and replaced with better ones via the Chaos Shuffle. It is unlikely that many DMs would allow this via simple retraining.

It is unlikely that many DMs would allow this via the Chaos Shuffle, either

[Curmudgeon]

It is unlikely that many DMs would allow this via the Chaos Shuffle, either

I'd allow it as a DM, because it does fit the letter of the RAW (though I'd never do that as a player). I'd just make sure that player learned the full consequences of such actions ─ after all, the NPC spellcaster who did the DCS can make some extra change talking about the fact that the PC is now guaranteed chaotic, and enemies will know that axiomatic weapons will be helpful. And I'd go out of my way to include treasure items that are really only useful to other PCs in the party, repeatedly.

[The Glyphstone]

I'd allow it as a DM, because it does fit the letter of the RAW (though I'd never do that as a player). I'd just make sure that player learned the full consequences of such actions ─ after all, the NPC spellcaster who did the DCS can make some extra change talking about the fact that the PC is now guaranteed chaotic, and enemies will know that axiomatic weapons will be helpful. And I'd go out of my way to include treasure items that are really only useful to other PCs in the party, repeatedly.

Passive-aggressive nastiness isn't any more appropriate or funny from the DM's part than it would be a player. Logical consequences for an action make sense, arbitrarily screwing over a player rather than just telling him 'no, I won't let you do this' do not. Shame on you, shame.

[Curmudgeon]

Passive-aggressive nastiness isn't any more appropriate or funny from the DM's part than it would be a player. Logical consequences for an action make sense, arbitrarily screwing over a player rather than just telling him 'no, I won't let you do this' do not. Shame on you, shame.

I guess I could see how you might read this as "passive-aggressive nastiness", but it's not. I merely want to try to even out the advantage that using Dark Chaos Shuffle with the 4 Elf racial bonus feats gives to this player, so I'm trying to do nice things for the other PCs to bring the party back to a reasonable balance. It's good for the players, and it's good for me as a DM because a party where one PC is much stronger than the others is hard to design challenges for.