Scaling feats

[jjpickar]

Basically I want to make some feats more useful in a way that scales appropriately for power level. Origninally this was intended to make the fighter better but that seemed to ambitious.

Scaling Weapon Focus
You are continually training and fighting with the same weapon and gradually gain more skill with it.
Prerequisites: Proficiency with the particular weapon. Fighter level 1
Benefit: Upon gaining this feat, the Fighter gains the benefit of weapon focus for the weapon he selects. Once he reaches his fighter level reaches 4 he gains the weapon specialization benefit for the weapon. When his fighter level reaches 8 he gains the benefit of Greater weapon focus for his chosen weapon. When his fighter level reaches 12 he gains the benefit of Greater weapon specialization.
Special: This feat replaces the normal weapon focus and specialization feats and does not stack with them.

Scaling Dodge
Your training involves avoiding blows from a single enemy, as you increase in experience you become more skilled at it.
Prerequisites: Fighter level 5.
Benefit: As the feat Dodge except without the normal dexterity requirement. At Fighter level 10 the dodge bonus increases to +2, at Fighter level 15 +3, and at Level 20 +4.

[Necromas]

Sure is an interesting way to keep fighters up to par. I think it works.

[Matthew]

Yeah, this is a commonly recognised problem now in D&D, it seems. I think Fax was doing something along the same lines with his Perfected Feat System, Golthur took a more extreme approach and redesigned all the Base Classes around Feats and Sub Feats (similar to TOB's Feats and Manoeuvres), Gorbash recently discussed the idea of buying Feats with Skill Points and ThoughtBot posted a short article about the possibility of buying training for Feats and Skills with Gold.
This seems like a good idea to me, but the problem isn't one that can simply be patched up, it needs to be systemically and consistantly handled.

[jjpickar]

Yeah I realized that so I didn't call this a full blown fighter fix. But I still had these nifty feats and while they don't fix the problem they do help a little.

[Akennedy]

Interesting... I agree with matt, this could potentially make fighters just that much better to be a better class... Jj, I applaud thee, sir. :P
Would you extend the "Scaling" to the improved [fient, sunder, trip, disarm, etc] feats? Start with a +2 to trip and move up to 4, 6, maybe some level allow tripping with all weapons? I dunno, maybe I'm taking it too far? *shrug*

[Telonius]

Sounds good; three less feats that a Fighter has to take. Maybe put in a scaling "Cleave" feat?

[jjpickar]

Thank you all. Here are some more:

Scaling Cleave
Prerequisites: Power Attack, Fighter level 1
Benefit: As cleave, except that the number of cleave attempts per round is equal to the fighter's level, At fighter level 10 he may make a single five foot step between a cleave, this counts as his five foot step for this round and cannot be used if he has already made a five foot step.

Scaling Two Weapon Fighting
Prerequisites: Dex 15, Fighter level 1
Benefit: As two weapon fighting, at fighter level 6 he gets a second off hand attack at a -5 penalty, at fighter level 11 he gains a third off hand attack at a -10 penalty, and at fighter level 16 he gains a fourth off hand attack at a -15 penalty.

Scaling Two Weapon Defense
Prerequisites: Dex 17, Fighter level 5, Scaling Two Weapon Fighting
Benefit: When wielding a double weapon or two weapons, a fighter gains a +1 "weapon" bonus to A.C. At fighter level 10 the bonus increases to +2, at fighter level 15 the bonus increases to +3, and at fighter level 20 the bonus increases to +4. When fighting defensively or using total defense, the shield bonus doubles.

[Matthew]

Scaling Cleave is probably a bit too powerful. Consider lowering the number of Cleaves per Level (one every two, three, four or five levels) and allowing for only one 5' Step in a given Round [i.e. you may make one 5' Step].

Scaling Two Weapon Defence should probably scale at Levels 1, 6, 11 and 16, same as Scaling Two Weapon Fighting. Some people feel that folding these two Feats into one path would be an even better idea. I would also make it a 'Parry Bonus', so that it stacks with 'Shield Bonuses'.

[jjpickar]

Great cleave allows unlimited cleaves per round so didn't want to make taking it more attractive since were trying to spend less feats. An extra five foot step between cleaves is part of another feat that I cannot recall but it seems like it belongs in the scaling progression.

As far as two weapon fighting goes, Putting them into one path is a bit too much for me but if you like to that's okay. Since I made 5 levels of fighter a prerequisite for Scaling Two Weapon Defense I didn't want it to be as good as fighting with a shield and I also didn't want it to stack with using a shield either since the original two weapon defense feat granted a shield bonus.

[Matthew]

Yeah, Great Cleave allows Unlimited Cleaves, but how often do you get to use even 7? Pretty much never. 5' Step thing is widely considered broken and was a Class Feature of [some Base Class I can't remember - Samurai, maybe?]

Yeah, the idea of allowing them to stack with Shield Bonuses is to make it worthwhile using a Weapon and Shield.

[jjpickar]

How broken can an extra five foot step that can only be used between a cleave attempt be compared to anything a wizard can do. Actually I see your point on the A.C. bonus. I'll change that.

[Matthew]

I think it was the ability to wipe out small armies that was particularly cited - cleave, 5' step, cleave, 5' step, cleave... It's true that it doesn't compare to what High Level Spell Casters can do, but do you really want to raise the bar to their level?

[jjpickar]

No you can only 5 foot step once during any number of cleaves. You can't do it over and over again. Example of what I mean: Fighter kills a goblin than cleaves the goblin next to him then he uses his ability to 5 foot step and cleave another goblin there are other goblins about after this but he's already used up his 5 foot step.

[Matthew]

You need to make that clearer in the text. As it currently stands it appears you can take a single 5' step between any and all Cleaves.

[jjpickar]

I changed it, thank you for pointing that out.

[Matthew]

No problem, so any further Scaling Feat suggestions?

[jlousivy]

Spring Attack (bounded assault---etc)
Spell Penetration
Spell Focus
I don't know how it'd work.. but Spell Mastery

[Magnor Criol]

This may open up a whole new can of worms, but what if the scaling was related not to the Fighter lever, but to the character's BAB in some way?

This way, a person who's a high-level fighter can branch out into a prestige class and continue to benefit. If these feats scale to represent the fact that a fighter is constantly training with their weapon which increases their proficiency with it, then having it based solely on Fighter levels means that as soon as they take another class they stop training - and if they take a level in a martial class, that doesn't make much sense. Connecting it to BAB would then allow the character to keep improving their bonus because they keep training with the weapon.

Then again, if the point of these was more to encourage Fighter loyalty, then something like that that allows someone to branch out without penalty is counterproductive.

[jlousivy]

If it were completely based off of BAB it would effectively make fighter a 2 level class /=

edit: assuming it already isn't

[jjpickar]

Yeah this was intended to improve the fighter. On the other hand, this does make these feats (like weapon focus) actually worth getting so if you wanted to make them BAB based it wouldn't hurt anyone else except the fighter, who still isn't that good even with these feats.

[jjpickar]

Spell Mastery

Prequisites: Wizard lv. 1

Benefit: Upon taking this feat, the wizard may select a number of spells equal to half his level. He may prepare these without the use of a spell book. As he levels up the wizard may add new spells to his list but only if the number does not exceed half his level.

Special (DM's discretion on this one, this is kind of stepping on the sorcerer's toes) : A wizard of 10th level or higher may select this feat a second time. He may elect a number of spells to prepare without his spell book. These extra when combined with his list from the previous feat may not exceed his level.