Feat Points: The Resurrection

[bekeleven]

Preamble

Back in 2003, WotC Dev Sean K. Reynolds posted a "Feat Points" variant on his personal website. The basic idea was that not all feats were created equal, and they should cost differing character resources to build. This had a lot of reactions, but the three most prominent I saw, from myself and others, were (in order of frequency):

1. This is more complex than it needs to be.
2. This is an interesting idea!
3. These numbers are hilariously bad.

The third reaction was so common it overwhelmed just about all other discussion. "hey, remember that time that one of the writers of the player's handbook said that extend spell is half as good as toughness because toughness applies automatically? That Improved Initiative is worth less than a +2/+2 skill feat because you use it only once per combat? That leadership is less valuable than weapon focus because it has a cap? That Lightning Reflexes is twice as good as Natural Spell because one gives you a TWO point bonus while the other removed only ONE weakness?"

It was so bad, in fact, that in 2014 SKR himself replaced the page on his website with one saying "I get it, the numbers were off. Shut up." And that was the end of feat points.

But what if we solved the problems with it?

A Common Problem
There have been a lot of attempts over the years to rebalance feats. One of the higher-profile stabs at it was Elephant In the Room, which basically says "Martial feats? They're not feats, just do them." Other people's house rules frequently make similar calls. My own just take some of the worst feats in the PHB and throw two, three, or even four together as options.

Everyone sees that feats are imbalanced. How to best solve that is an open question.

Design Goals
All right, here's what I'm trying to do:

1. Make a very light system. Yes, you need more text the more feats you cover, but the basics should be super simple.
2. Because the system is so simple, I won't be modifying any feats themselves, merely repricing them. If a feat is so bad it's worth literally 0 character resources, that will remain the case. If a feat is so good it's an auto-take, then yes, druids will still take natural spell.
3. The system should assume that good feats are worth a feat and bad feats are worth less, not that bad feats are worth a feat and good feats are worth multiple. In other words, it should reward taking more interesting options, rather than punishing obvious picks.
4. The system should ultimately result in characters having a wider variety of feats and character options availble to them, and thus, more diverse characters.

The Power Attack Divide
A lot, and I mean a lot, of feat fixes lower the "price" of power attack. Frequently, like Elephant in the Room, they make it free: It's just a combat option the fighter can do. You know, hit people harder.

However, looking at my design goals above, I don't want to modify the feat itself (2) and the feat is strong enough it's basically an autopick (3). The result is that, in my feat points system, power attack costs as much as a good feat. Far from making it free, it's now worth as much as combat expertise, improved disarm, and dodge combined! So, two attempts to solve the same problem resulted in near-opposite outcomes.

My goal, to reiterate, is to make a simple fix. If people want to layer more fixes on top of it, that's fine. You can fold power attack into your combat options and nothing will break. I just didn't want any feat-by-feat rules in this, so I judged every feat by power as best I could, and power attack? It's powerful. Look right there in the name.

Feat Points Redux
The rules of my feat points system are intended to be simple and easy to understand, but like everything in 3.X, they have a lot of speciality clauses that come up only occasionally. here's the basics:

Feat Points
A first-level character starts play with 4 feat points and gains 1 additional feat point per level. Every time a character is created or levels up, they may spend feat points to purchase a feat whose prerequisites they meet, then repeat this process any number of times. Characters can "bank" up to 2 feat points at a time, but if they then level up and have 3 feat points, they must purchase feats until their banked feat points drop to 2 or lower.

Now, onto a few wrinkles:
Additional Sources of Feat Points
Anything that gives a character access to an arbitrary bonus feat, such as the Human race, grants that character 3 feat points that act normally.

Anything that gives a character access to bonus feats with a specific requirement, such as "Item Creation Feats" or "Fighter Bonus Feats," instead grants the character 3 feat points with that spending restriction. General feat points can be combined with these specialized pools to buy feats from those pools. These are capped separately; a character with 2 fighter feat points who levels up and gains 1 general feat point does not immediately have to buy a feat. However, if they hit 3 feat points in any one of their feat point pools, they must use them or lose them.

A character that gains a specified bonus feat, or a bonus feat from a short list (rather than a whole tag/class), just takes that feat. There's no reason to monkey around with feat points for that.

Retraining
Retraining a feat (PHBII), as well as Psychic Reformation and the DCFS, grant feat points equal to that feat's value. However, DMs should apply their own rules about all of the standard powergamer tricks like Otyugh Hole, Elven proficiencies, and other such tricks. If they want a hint: The easiest fix is to simply disallow all of them.

Design notes
The idea of this system is that feats should be balanced against the highest-powered options. After all, otherwise you'll be constrained to taking the most powerful options you have access to.

Feat taxes are referred to as feat taxes because they're not worth feats on their own. If they make something else too easy to get, that's the other thing's problem.

I chose a 1-3 rating for simplicity's sake, divided roughly into "Trap options," "usable feats" and "the OP ones." Obviously feats like Leadership, Power Attack, Natural Spell and Extend Spell are more than 3 times as powerful as Track. Sadly, for the simplicity of the system, feats such as Track couldn't be fully balanced. It's 33% the cost it was, but 300% of 0 is still 0 and changing the feat itself is beyond the scope of this project.

By far the majority of feats for martial characters are in the 1-2 range, and the majority of feats for magical characters are in the 2-3 range. Turns out buffing magic is better than buffing a longbow, who would've thunken?

The rule about capping banked points is the most complex part of the system. It serves a few purposes. First, players can't get to +6 BAB and immediately take a whole feat chain that requires it. Capping the feat points a character can sit on actually reduces the complexity of character builds, and it's capped at 3 because that's how many are required to buy any feat under this system. So, while it took many of my words to type, I think it's a net simplification.

Thoughts?
I've assigned points to every feat in the SRD. Was this a waste of my time? Are my points all wrong? Is the system fundamentally the wrong approach? Is it all good, except for power attack? (actually, don't post that one, you do your own thing with power attack.) Is the system so great that I need to do more feats from more books? Let me know.

[Berenger]

I'm curious why you rate Run as basically worthless - in my experience it's highly valuable as a reliable way to catch up with or retreat from other humanoids.

[noob]

I'm curious why you rate Run as basically worthless - in my experience it's highly valuable as a reliable way to catch up with or retreat from other humanoids.

It is still less strong than anything that adds a bunch of feet to your base speed because those do help at running away and at charging opponents and will still serve in round where you do not use the run action.

[bekeleven]

I'm curious why you rate Run as basically worthless - in my experience it's highly valuable as a reliable way to catch up with or retreat from other humanoids.

In most of my RP experience, either you're fighting in a battlemap-sized location (in which case run is useless) or you're not moving tactically. And if you do need to get somewhere a few thousand feet away to move tactically, you likely don't want to arrive several rounds before the rest of your party.