Loyalty's Reward - Craft Your Own Feats!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Loyalty's Reward (from the Kingdoms of Kalamar Player's Guide, which is an Official WotC Licensed Product^TM) allows you to craft your own feat that you grant both to yourself and to your followers. They get this feat so long as they follow you.

Now, given this is an official feat, what are the feats you've always wanted in the game but couldn't have?

This feat allows you to actually have those feats, so long as you qualify via Leadership (or by following someone else who has such).

I'd love a feat that converted your spell slot Vancian system into power points, because I hate using spell slots. Basically, make Vancian classes more like psionic classes. Maybe I could actually stomach using them, then.

[Vizzerdrix]

I want a feat that grants the artificer's homunculus ability.


Oooh! Or a feat that makes another person have to (finally!) pay for the pizza!

[Blue Wizard]

Gotta love the Non-Vancian spellcasting feat. So that's a +1.

I think I saw in another thread about Forgotten Realms, that if you were there during 3.x you'd want to use Loyalty's Reward to become immune to the Spallplague.

But I think I'd want, for my first choice, to allow Loyalty's Reward to be taken multiple times.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I like the idea of taking Loyalty's Reward multiple times. Nicely thought.

How about a feat that allows you to choose previous versions of feats, spells, and other effects, such as 3.0's enhancement bonus spells? This does not preclude taking later iterations, but you have to learn them separately.

[Zanos]

I think I saw in another thread about Forgotten Realms, that if you were there during 3.x you'd want to use Loyalty's Reward to become immune to the Spallplague..

On that thought, use it to become immune to Mystras ban on spells above 9th level.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

How about a magical version of Hyperconscious's Durable Construct feat? All summoned creatures last for a flat 10 minutes, except those that would last longer (such as horses summoned via the mount spell). Maybe with the caveat that it only applies to spells of 1/2 your max spell level (round up). So a 17th level caster automatically boosts their 5th level and lower summoned creatures to lasting a minimum of 10 minutes. A 1st level caster would have all their 1st level spells boosted (as summoned creatures suck at level 1, and this makes them viable.)

Gives a lot of utility without being terribly overpowered at any given level, I think.

[Kalkra]

I'll point out that most of the things you're suggesting are way above the power level of the examples. Especially that pizza thing, which I don't think even an epic feat should be able to do. This is why I hate things with no guidelines. For some reason, that tends to come up a lot in Kalamar. I mean, really. Why not just make it +0 Persist Spell or some such?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I'll point out that most of the things you're suggesting are way above the power level of the examples. Especially that pizza thing, which I don't think even an epic feat should be able to do. This is why I hate things with no guidelines. For some reason, that tends to come up a lot in Kalamar. I mean, really. Why not just make it +0 Persist Spell or some such?

3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder all three are notorious for trap options. Most feats are hilariously bad. Sturgeon's Law is in full effect. I'm not surprised that the examples are examples of this, too.

It allows you to craft a feat. The fact that their example feats are horrid has no bearing on the fact that stuff like Shock Trooper and Sanctum Spell exist.

Granted, the pizza feat IS fantastically overpowered and completely unrealistic in what it can do. Pun Pun only wishes he could wield such power.

[edit]

If this were a high-technology game, or if it were RL, I'd want a metamagic/metapsionic feat (+1 spell level or just expend focus) that allows you to cast any [electricity] effect on electrical or electronic devices to give them a full charge for, say, 1 kilowatt hour per 1d6 of damage it would've dealt. It's otherwise harmless to such devices.

[Bphill561]

Hmm, I think I would want a feat that makes rings of sustenance work better. Instead of your caster sleeping for just 2 hours and having to do nothing for 6 to refresh spells (might as well sleep at that point), how about you actually only need to sleep for 2 hours. Though with the caveat you can only prepare spells once every 12 hours or within the normal limitations of your class (like how some clerics prepare spells at dawn). If you set a level requirement of 9 or so, it could give you a free ring as well.

A feat that lets you pick up metamagic feats and treat them as psionic feats with the appropriate pp costs conversion per level adjustment. Okay, this is just wrong but there was a Persistent Meta-psionics feats in a third party book I got to use once. Again wrong.

[Vizzerdrix]

How about a feat that allows you to put ranks into Craft: McGuffin, or one that lets you take Favored enemy: BBEG.


But honestly, I have always liked the ruin chanter's ability to make a ruin elemental. I would want a feat that allows you to do the same, but you would make one that scales in power by your level. Maybe another feat that would allow you to buff your elemental if a bard was performing while you danced or something.

[Bphill561]

I just thought of another one that I wish I had in my last campaign. If you already have DM approval to take the Leadership Feat (which is sort of required with this feat anyway) and are playing a race with a level adjustment, how about an effect that runs leadership off of your ECL instead of your HD. There are already feats in the game that raise your cohort's difference in level from 2 to 1, gives bonuses to your leadership score, and raise the number of followers. That does not seem too out of place, just a feat tax to make leadership work the same way as it does for all the +0 LA races.

[Skysaber]

One we're fond of, so fond of we often give it as a bonus feat to those who need it, is called "Secure Bond". What it does is very simple, all of those things like familiars and homunculus that you share a bond with that gives you backlash when they get destroyed? Now you've got a mystical surge protector on that. No backlash gets through.

Allows people to actually use their familiars, instead of hiding them in a pocket all of the time. And people can own homunculi without fear they're going to get killed by someone targeting their minions. It really adds to the atmosphere of a magic shop to have these, effectively flying monkeys, all around busy restocking, or dusting shelves, or holding a light to focus on what the shopkeeper is looking at.

A magic shop practically crawling with literal creatures of magic just feels more magical. But it would never happen when any big, ugly fighter can just lift one by the neck and hold a sword to its heart and threaten the wizard, "Ok, give it to me free or your homunculus gets it!"

[Psyren]

Now, given this is an official feat,

Eh. licensed third party is still third party, and this feat is a great illustration why that distinction should matter.

Anyway, at best I would use it to pull some useful PF things like Coaxing Spell or Threnodic Spell into a 3.5 game, or maybe Hyperconscious stuff like Permanent Construct or Subconscious Power - but given that such a game would need to allow third-party anyway I probably wouldn't need this to begin with.

[Asmotherion]

Perhaps Regeneration as a feat. Or something cool like the ability to recharge items using spell slots.

But realistically I'd probably waste it into something for story-like purposes, like the ability to grand SLAs or the ability to travel between Crystal Spheres.

[Malphegor]

So you get to invent your own feats? Cool.

Grant Spellcasting: You sacrifice a spell slot permamently to grant another being the ability to cast a spell from your spell list from now on. They must prepare the spell as you would, and use the same resources you would, but do not need to meet the requisite class levels or feats you had to to achieve the spell slot in the first place, as it’s a direct transfer. They do not gain any other feats of yours, merely the spell slot and capability to cast the spell.

Now, why would anyone want this? To meet prerequisites of course!, and create some funky plotty stuff like a dying wizard granting their spell slots to their apprentice.

[Blue Wizard]

How about a feat, we could call it Merry Men or something, after Robin Hood, whose followers did not suck, that allows all of your followers to gain experience normally until they are the maximum level your leadership score allows?

Say, if you had a leadership score of 15, you normally get 20 1st level, 2 2nd level, and one 3rd level follower. Well, this feat would make it possible to take some time off, train them by hunting goblins or something while they do all the work, and get all 23 followers to 3rd level!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

How about a feat, we could call it Merry Men or something, after Robin Hood, whose followers did not suck, that allows all of your followers to gain experience normally until they are the maximum level your leadership score allows?

Say, if you had a leadership score of 15, you normally get 20 1st level, 2 2nd level, and one 3rd level follower. Well, this feat would make it possible to take some time off, train them by hunting goblins or something while they do all the work, and get all 23 followers to 3rd level!

Time to hand out an at will item of ray of stupidity and start summoning individual elephants for them to fight until they hit 14th level or so? Then start with the fiendish elephants, and then the herds...

[Skysaber]

Time to hand out an at will item of ray of stupidity and start summoning individual elephants for them to fight until they hit 14th level or so? Then start with the fiendish elephants, and then the herds...

Sadly, pre-Epic Leadership tops out at having level 6 followers, whereas Epic lets them go up to 10th.

I don't think he was proposing that mere followers could reach cohort levels, nice though that would be.

[Endarire]

"This feat gives the holder 2 general feats of his choice for which he meets all prereqs."

[MaxiDuRaritry]

"This feat gives the holder 2 general feats of his choice for which he meets all prereqs."

So... Take the "you can take Loyalty's Reward multiple times," followed by this?

You can see where I'm going with this, da?

[SirNibbles]

Loyalty's Reward (from the Kingdoms of Kalamar Player's Guide, which is an Official WotC Licensed Product^TM) allows you to craft your own feat that you grant both to yourself and to your followers. They get this feat so long as they follow you.

Now, given this is an official feat, what are the feats you've always wanted in the game but couldn't have?

This feat allows you to actually have those feats, so long as you qualify via Leadership (or by following someone else who has such).

You seem to misunderstand how the feat works: the leader must have the feat, and he decides the benefits his followers get. Each follower who desires the benefit must take the feat in order to get that benefit. The leader receives no benefit from the feat except being required to take it in order for your followers to be able to gain anything from it.

The feat description, and especially the flavour text, seems to make this quite plain:

Loyalty's Reward [General] Your loyalty to liege or lord grants you a benefit. Prerequisite: Leadership feat or a follower of a character with the Leadership feat. Benefit: Taking this feat as the leader of an organization allows you to use the feat and grant others the benefit of a custom feat. Taking this feat as a member of the organization gives you the specific special ability granted by that organization.
Kingdoms of Kalamar, page 88

As has been pointed out earlier, your ideas of custom feats are far removed from the examples provided in terms of power.

__

Eh. licensed third party is still third party, and this feat is a great illustration why that distinction should matter.

Anyway, at best I would use it to pull some useful PF things like Coaxing Spell or Threnodic Spell into a 3.5 game, or maybe Hyperconscious stuff like Permanent Construct or Subconscious Power - but given that such a game would need to allow third-party anyway I probably wouldn't need this to begin with.

Despite all the flaws of Kingdoms of Kalamar, it isn't just licensed third party- it bears the official Dungeons and Dragons and WoTC logos.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

You seem to misunderstand how the feat works: the leader must have the feat, and he decides the benefits his followers get. Each follower who desires the benefit must take the feat in order to get that benefit. The leader receives no benefit from the feat except being required to take it in order for your followers to be able to gain anything from it.

Err... No? You quoted it yourself:

Loyalty's Reward [General] Your loyalty to liege or lord grants you a benefit. Prerequisite: Leadership feat or a follower of a character with the Leadership feat. Benefit: Taking this feat as the leader of an organization allows you to use the feat and grant others the benefit of a custom feat. Taking this feat as a member of the organization gives you the specific special ability granted by that organization.
Kingdoms of Kalamar, page 88

As has been pointed out earlier, your ideas of custom feats are far removed from the examples provided in terms of power.

Weapon Focus is also an example of a feat, which is about on par with the crappy examples given. Meanwhile, Leadership, Linked Power, and Ancestral Relic say hello, as additional examples of feats.

[SirNibbles]

Err... No? You quoted it yourself:
Weapon Focus is also an example of a feat, which is about on par with the crappy examples given. Meanwhile, Leadership, Linked Power, and Ancestral Relic say hello, as additional examples of feats.

'Allows you to use the feat' meaning it allows you to use the Loyalty's Reward feat to provide a bonus to your followers, not gain that bonus as well. Like I said, the intent seems pretty clear from the flavour text.

Also, the ideas the creators had for that feat are quite clear, and pointing to a few well-known broken feats in the game and saying 'those exist too so I should be able to create custom feats on par with those' is silly.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

'Allows you to use the feat' meaning it allows you to use the Loyalty's Reward feat to provide a bonus to your followers, not gain that bonus as well. Like I said, the intent seems pretty clear from the flavour text.

So you...don't gain the use of the feat? Even though you just said you do get it. As does the feat itself.

Remember, you are part of the organization as well.

[Rebel7284]

I think both are valid readings since the English Language is a dumpster fire.

... allows you to use the feat and grant others the benefit of a custom feat...

It's unclear if "the feat" refers to Loyalty's reward itself or the feat you homebrew with it.

I can read this as "use <this> feat to grant others" as using the word and instead of to is pretty common vernacular.

OR

I can read it as "use the custom feat" AND "grant others the benefit of a custom feat."

It's also not clear if the benefit is granted automatically or if the follower also needs to take Loyalty's reward.

This thing might be worded more poorly than Battle Jump!

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I think both are valid readings since the English Language is a dumpster fire.

It's unclear if "the feat" refers to Loyalty's reward itself or the feat you homebrew with it.

I can read this as "use <this> feat to grant others" as using the word and instead of to is pretty common vernacular.

OR

I can read it as "use the custom feat" AND "grant others the benefit of a custom feat."

It's also not clear if the benefit is granted automatically or if the follower also needs to take Loyalty's reward.

This thing might be worded more poorly than Battle Jump!

If Loyalty's Reward didn't allow you to use its benefits, it would probably say something to the effect of, "Loyalty's Reward does not allow you to gain the benefits of this feat," as opposed to outright saying you gain its benefits.

[Skysaber]

You know what I want?

Bit of backstory: My characters keep getting stuck running kingdoms, once we get high level. It doesn't hurt that we're good at it. But authority is meant to be enjoyed, not endured, so I do what any self-respecting wizard would do. I do the same thing that Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy are so obviously doing when *they* spread duplicates through every town in all of the land - I make a bunch of simulacra and make them handle the boring stuff so that I don't drown in a sea of bureaucracy.

Unfortunately, my DM is just as creative with problems as I am with solutions. So he delights in tormenting me with having things like my daughter's arranged wedding surprise me. "Oh, one of your simulacra arranged this years ago. How else do you think you got such a sweet trade deal?"

Worse, is when you discover that you have one child and three separate simulacra have arranged different marriages for her.

Or when you are caught by some lawyer not knowing what laws you've passed for your own kingdom, because it was the simulacra that did it.

Now I take levels in wizard, not bureaucrat. My time is spent on magic item creation and spellcasting, and I delight in building stuff that makes the lives of my people better, but the 'boring' stuff just keeps coming back to bite me.

The lack of communication between my copies is a killer. So I need a feat that, once I have created simulacra of myself, allows me to learn what they've been doing. Perhaps every night once I go to sleep I can 'recall' all of it in dreams, then update the rest of the simulacra through me so they don't cross each other, like when one promises Neighbor A my help in his war against Neighbor B, while another promises Neighbor B the same thing against Neighbor A.

Since the only alternative is to do all of the paperwork myself, I could really use that feat. And using Loyalty's Reward to get it, my followers would have it too. Hmm, perhaps I could spread simulacra of them around too?

[Saint-Just]

The lack of communication between my copies is a killer. So I need a feat that, once I have created simulacra of myself, allows me to learn what they've been doing. Perhaps every night once I go to sleep I can 'recall' all of it in dreams, then update the rest of the simulacra through me so they don't cross each other, like when one promises Neighbor A my help in his war against Neighbor B, while another promises Neighbor B the same thing against Neighbor A.

Since the only alternative is to do all of the paperwork myself, I could really use that feat. And using Loyalty's Reward to get it, my followers would have it too. Hmm, perhaps I could spread simulacra of them around too?

Sorry but unless your DM was pulling a literal genie it seems like you shot yourself in the foot. Wizards should have a plenty of instantaneous communication means, and if you let your simulacra make decisions without knowing what others know then simulacra making contrary decisions was inevitable. Same about you being informed - unless you've set up means of being informed (which you consider "the same as bureaucracy") then you would inevitably end up uninformed. Wishing for new magical means to solve the problem instead of trying to solve it with slightly less magical means nay be in-character for CHA-based casters, but the wizards are supposed to have a high INT.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

<Snip>

I think your character needs to invest in a higher Wis. Why didn't he place restrictions on what they were allowed to do, or tell them they needed to keep in touch with him regarding what they're doing?

[edit]

How about this?

Strong of Spirit [Ex]: You count as being 5 HD higher than normal for effects based on HD when it benefits you to do so. You do not actually gain HD [and thus do not gain HP, feats, skill points, etc]. However, when exposed to effects such as dictum or holy word, you would count as 5 HD higher. Other effects based on HD, such as any psi-like abilities you have, are also increased. Multiple instances of this feat stack.

[Vizzerdrix]

Oooh. New idea.

Once every 10 - Cha modifier sessions, you can choose to be counted as a DMGF for up to 20 minutes. You may not use this ability to counter the actions of any other DMGF in any other way, but can receive a copy of any boon gained during the session in which you choose to activate this feat.


Oh hey and I remembered how to turn my posts blue on me tablet