[3.5][feat] Adrenal buildup

[Ninjalitude]

Adrenal Buildup
Benefits: When you enter combat you gain +1 to saves, attack bonus, attack damage, and skill checks. Every four rounds thereafter you gain an additional +1 to aforementioned scores. These bonuses cap at half of your Hit dice, minimum 3.

this my first post in awhile and I'm still grounded in 3.5 but oh well. Comments appreciated

[Frosty]

That's...a pretty powerful feat. Not as good as Power Attack or Natural Spell, mind you, but very good.

[Edge of Dreams]

First off, this should be in the homebrew forum. Anyway,

Adrenal Buildup
Benefits: When you enter combat you gain +1 to saves, attack bonus, attack damage, and skill checks.

This would be worth taking even for just this benefit alone, without the per-4-rounds buildup. Yeah, it's not combo-able with other feats in any broken way, but it'd be great for pretty much any build that has one available feat. Consider that for any non-caster, the benefits of this feat pretty much equate to gaining a level (or better in the case of bad saves and/or not-full-BAB) except for HP.

If you're dead set on having the increase over time as well, four rounds and the half-level limit are pretty well-adjusted, but the overall benefit of the feat in a long fight is just going to be too numerically powerful. I would definitely give this feat heavy prerequisites or some sort of drawback such as the crash penalties that come after a barbarian's rage.

EDIT: For the sake of comparison, to show how good this feat is, look at the following feats: Weapon Focus and Greater Weapon Focus (+1 to attack rolls each), Weapon Specialization and Greater Wep. Spec. (+2 to damage each), Great Fortitude, Lightening Reflexes, and Iron Will (+2 to a particular save each), and Skill Focus (+3 to one skill). Consider that the feat you just wrote is almost as good as having 5 or 6 of the feats above in the first round of combat, every combat. After 8 rounds, it is strictly better than having seven of the above feats (all except Grtr. Wep. Spec.).

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Yeah, it needs a drawback. Either fatigued at the end, or a penalty to mentals/will saves, or something. It's too good.

[Chronos]

Oh, it's not too overpowered. I mean, it's so situational: It only gives you a bonus to all of those things when you're in combat. When one of those situations comes up where you need to make attack and damage rolls outside of combat (as they so often do), you're going to wish you had taken Weapon Focus, instead.

[Severedevil]

If you have buffing time, just start combat a few minutes before you actually attack. Unstoppable bonus to all my everything? Yes, please.

Spar for a few minutes before you enter the Cavern of the Leopard Demon so you've got a plus equal to half your HD. Then just take the place by storm without ever ending combat. (Keep sparring in the lulls, if you have to.) +10 to all my awesome, or +1 if I'm taken totally unprepared, from one feat? This is at least competitive with Leadership (buffer cohort).

Also, why can the rogue pick locks better than ever after a few minutes of heart-thumping action? (It's even weirder for bluff, since it's much easier to spot a liar who's worked up.)

[Person_Man]

Perhaps you should consider making it part of the Combat Focus line of feats (PHBII). It works off of the same mechanism that you propose, and could be tweaked to your purpose. And that way you could add a pre-req, which would balance it somewhat.

[JackMage666]

I have a suggestion - Have it build up to a max equal to your Con Mod, last for 1 Round, then slowly drop back down to +0 at the same rate...

So, if you had a 16 Constitution...
Round 1 - +1 Bonus
Round 2 - +2 Bonus
Round 3 - +3 Bonus
Round 4 - +3 Bonus
Round 5 - +2 Bonus
Round 6 - +1 Bonus
Round 7+ - 0 Bonus

That seems like it'd be fair enough, as it drops back down over time, and is based off something that's slightly more static than Character level.

[Jack Zander]

Oh, it's not too overpowered. I mean, it's so situational: It only gives you a bonus to all of those things when you're in combat. When one of those situations comes up where you need to make attack and damage rolls outside of combat (as they so often do), you're going to wish you had taken Weapon Focus, instead.

Do I sense sarcasm here?

The bonus to skills should only be for Str and Dex based skills. I would make it based on taking damage from an attack (not stepping on caltrops or some such), and give it the barbarian's fatigue at the end.

Also, it should probably work just like this:

I have a suggestion - Have it build up to a max equal to your Con Mod, last for 1 Round, then slowly drop back down to +0 at the same rate...

So, if you had a 16 Constitution...
Round 1 - +1 Bonus
Round 2 - +2 Bonus
Round 3 - +3 Bonus
Round 4 - +3 Bonus
Round 5 - +2 Bonus
Round 6 - +1 Bonus
Round 7+ - 0 Bonus

That seems like it'd be fair enough, as it drops back down over time, and is based off something that's slightly more static than Character level.

[adanedhel9]

You should probably specify that the bonus resets to 0 when combat ends.

My fix for the power issue would be to simply push the starting point back. Start with +0, 4 rounds of combat, it's +1, 8 rounds +2, etc. 4 rounds might be a little long in this case (depending on the players and DM, a combat that takes longer than 3 rounds could be a rarity). Perhaps make the first delay 2 rounds, then 4 rounds for each increment thereafter?

You might also want to consider adding some sort of qualifier onto the round count, otherwise you could end up with nonsense like the assassin who looks at you angrily for 4 rounds before attacking, or the guy who gets hit by a sleep spell and wakes up with more adrenaline than he had before. Maybe indicate that if the character doens't take any significant physical actions in a round, (the effect ends|the bonus decreases|the round doesn't count)?

[Fizban]

I agree. Start with +0, give it +1 every 3 or 4 rounds. Every round you don't move or make at least one attack (weather or not it hits) the bonus falls by 1. Cap it at +1/3-4 levels. I'd do +/3 rounds and cap at +/4HD myself

I had been thinking move action, but "rummaging in your pack angrily" doesn't make sense. Loading a weapon maybe, but that's a specific action, so movement in general is easier.