Include this in 5e or I will FUCK YOUR FACE

[Ektagliaresia]

Having never encountered that before i was like "WTF?" I was genuinely unaware of the existence of furries and the like so I didn't get it. ...
Is a shifter good enough for that? Halfling shifter, or does it have to be an independent familar.

Sentient Cat, Humanoid-Cat Shifter, Cat-Person, and Cat Furry are all distinct desires.

One of the biggest sources of enjoyment from playing a sentient animal is their limitations (Not being able to use normal equipment), hence their implementation in Crawl, and ~50% of Gamma World characters (like the "limbless psychic plant that another PC carries in their backpack").

A cat-shifter falls under item one of the original post.

Catpeople are humans with cat ears and some other minor features; they're a garden variety fantasy race, just like elves and halflings. Actually, they have more of a right to be included than halflings, who's niche is already occupied by dwarves.

Furries are a odd affinity group not closely related to any of the above, and they have their own games. Generally, a character that would be regarded as "furry" is humanoid, but less so than a catperson. Note that while Khajiit meet this requirement, since they have no stated connection to the furry fandom, they can't really be regarded as "furries".

[Stubbazubba]

"Trait" might be too generic, but it fits well. "Aspect" brings up FATE images, but also fits.

[Neurosis]

When K and I were polling people while writing Races of War, we found that people nearly universally wanted feats to be big, character defining things that mattered for their whole career. Having a feat "You're a vampire now, and you get vampire powers as you level up" would be a good example of that.

Unfortunately, I think the word "feat" has been shat upon too much by Pathfailure and 4e. I mean seriously: Pathfinder has a feat that gives you +2 to attempting an optional combat maneuver that still never works and would be objectively inferior to disarm if it ever did. 4rries actually write diatribes about how a feat that gives you +1 to-hit with specific weapons (plus fucking one!) is overpowered because everyone takes it.

The sad fact is that if you say "feats" today to the gaming public they assume you are talking about bullshit bonuses you select that make everyone sad by being so fucking meaningless. I think moving forward that you need to bury the word "feat" for at least an edition so that you can reclaim selectable traits as being something people are supposed to care about. Call them "virtues" or "talents" or "features" or some shit.

-Username17

Would you be willing to look at the possibility that you took things slightly too far in the opposite direction with the Tome feats?

[Korwin]

There might be some.
In the later additions.
(Turn into an Archon-Type at Lvl. 1, Teleport at will)

[Username17]

When K and I were polling people while writing Races of War, we found that people nearly universally wanted feats to be big, character defining things that mattered for their whole career. Having a feat "You're a vampire now, and you get vampire powers as you level up" would be a good example of that.

Would you be willing to look at the possibility that you took things slightly too far in the opposite direction with the Tome feats?

Sure. Indeed, I think that there were a few things that didn't work out well. If I had my druthers, stuff that provoked an attack of opportunity probably shouldn't work on ranged attacks unless the target is airborne or something. And some of the stuff that people wrote in on their own time is simply way overpowered by any standard. But in general, I would say that Tome Feats got things about right in terms of their power level vis a vis you giving a shit that you have them.

Were I to be making everything from scratch, I'd like the feats to scale more smoothly - they were attempting to match the "getting more scaling spell slots and spending them on buffs" paradigm of the Cleric or Druid, but that's not a paradigm I would put into a game I was making from scratch. Similarly, Tome Feats explode into crazy in the mid-teens, because they are trying to match up with the paradigm of the casters who are by that time calling in axiomatic triceratops to ride around on - another paradigm that I would try to lessen somewhat if I had complete control of the game.

What I'd be looking at is a finite number of caster slots for "spells" and another finite number of caster slots for "rituals". Rituals all have casting times that are longer than a few rounds and Spells all don't. The casters can prepare spells and rituals of any level into their slots, and only gain a few extra slots as they level. So the casters know more things and cast more powerful spells as they level, but they don't end up gaining several new slots per level that they "might as well" fill with buffs. And then the Charles Atlas Warriors don't have to ramp up the power of their Perks quite so severely to keep up.

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

Tome Feats are fine when acquired at the usual rate - they are only a problem when you max out on them. There are too many ways to gain additional feats, both in core and in Tome, at their current power and complexity. The human Tome Fighter Feat-monster is a nightmare. Restrict bonus feats and Tome Feats are fine.

Regarding the name, Feats should stay. As 4e has shown people are not willing to accept too much change in an edition of D&D. You need to choose where to use your innovations, and changing the name of Feats to Perks or whatever makes it feel different for no appreciable benefit. It isn't important enough. Plus, I'm not sure the majority of people are burnt out on Feats. They give your character a bonus, I don't think most players think further than that. Even if some players see them for what they are, you get to play up "Feats done how you always wanted them!" on your promotions. Losing the name recognition is a mistake.

[Seerow]

Regarding Feats: I've noticed a lot in the opposite direction. There's a lot of people who really want and expect the level of power from the tome feats in every feat ever. Of course on the other hand there's a lot of people who like the 4e style feats that are generally meh. Basically everyone out there has their own idea on what they expect a feat to be, and want the game system to conform to their idea of it.

I do think this is a good reason for feats to be renamed in a new game. Simply because a new name means a blank slate of expectations. Yes, it is a level dependent resource to customize your character, but no it's not a feat. Why? Because a feat was never really defined, ever, and that caused a lot of problems.

[hogarth]

I do think this is a good reason for feats to be renamed in a new game. Simply because a new name means a blank slate of expectations. Yes, it is a level dependent resource to customize your character, but no it's not a feat. Why? Because a feat was never really defined, ever, and that caused a lot of problems.

I definitely agree that if you want feats to be awesome (compared to mostly-shitty 3E feats and extremely-shitty 4E feats), then you should probably use a different term.

[Seerow]

I do think this is a good reason for feats to be renamed in a new game. Simply because a new name means a blank slate of expectations. Yes, it is a level dependent resource to customize your character, but no it's not a feat. Why? Because a feat was never really defined, ever, and that caused a lot of problems.

I definitely agree that if you want feats to be awesome (compared to mostly-shitty 3E feats and extremely-shitty 4E feats), then you should probably use a different term.

I think even if you want 4e style shitty feats they should get a rename. Feats got defined initially in 3e, where they ranged from things were awesome to +3 to gather information checks. Everyone has a different idea of what they're supposed to do. I mean, if 4e hadn't called their shitty things feats, do you think so many 4e players would have gotten so upset with them? What if they instead had feats as the name for fighter powers, so fighter still got lots of feats as their main schtick, even though they worked differently?

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Whatever cachet the word feat has in games is completely squandered on how it's rarely applied to actual acts. Having some quality like being undead might be a fait accompli, depending on backstory, but need not necesssarily be the case, and Toughness is right out. All of that shit should be called traits, or perks. Feats should specifically refer to combat maneuvers, that I guess the Fighter could be awesome at.

[Neurosis]

AXIOMATIC TRICERATOPS.

[Prak]

I'll put in a seventh: something arachnoid. sure, I can pull aranea, ettercap or drider from the monster manual if the game is high enough level and I have an indulgent MC, but it'd be nice to have such an option playable from first level without GM permissioncock sucking privileges.

[JonSetanta]

Having a feat that says "You are undead!" or "You are a construct!" is about on the mark. Granted those creature types need an overhaul but you can certainly make them into something playable without losing their appeal.

I did this for the old Feybook project and it wasn't well received.

EDIT: By "this" I mean a feat for fey goblins, fey elves, fey merfolk, fey trolls, pixies/sprites, and so on.

I think the reasoning was "It's too powerful because a spellcaster can take it and that breaks the game"

[Lokathor]

Actually, given that most of the tome scaling feats are things that you do, it'd be easy to shift things around a bit and keep "feat" meaning "special action":

A Feat is a level scaled collection of new abilities and numeric boosts relating to the theme of the feat. You get 1 feat at first level and +1 feat for every 3 full levels you have. No other source give you feats. Any old material that mentions granting a "bonus feat" instead gives you a Perk selection (see below).

A Perk is any other passive bonus (eg: +4 Init) or modification (eg: you're undead now!) that you might pick up for your character. You can spend a feat selection to select a Perk if you really want (this is generally not recommended). You can also get perks from class levels, Moderate or Major magical items (depending on the perk, MC's discretion), and even as a special reward for quests completed (special NPC training, the wizard gives you a unique magical brew that you drink, etc).

[erik]

I think the reasoning was "It's too powerful because a spellcaster can take it and that breaks the game"

Those people are always going to be out there, and I'm pretty sure they're wrong, unless it was doing something like giving stackable spellcasting attribute bumps or somesuch, in which case I'd suggest their argument hinged against the execution rather than concept.

I'm thinking that for the [Arachnoid, Lycanthrope, Vampire, Construct, Fey Touched, Ooze, Elemental, etc.] modifications you only get one, and it prevents you from being able to get another (unless you first use a magic ritual to amend you to your natural state mayhaps). It tamps down the zaniness factor just a bit, and the niche crowd that wants to combine these things is a heckuvalot smaller than any who just want to play a particular one.

I do think these modification thingies should scale with you as you level, so not like the Perks as you grouped them Lokathor. And you really shouldn't even offer the option of sabotaging yourself by spending a more powerful Feat to acquire a weaker Perk.

That keeps them as character shaping options that remain relevant as you progress. An 10th level Vampire might gain a Dominate Person ability as they have strengthened their willpower over the course of their adventures, for example (couching this in 3e terms only, not actually predictive of what the level track or power track will actually be like).

It would be a good notion to hammer out how many character defining selectable Feats you should get for your character, and roughly when in the course of their career they should come about. If they're significant then they should be on some sort of rails, as Lokathor suggests. I'm thinking 2 starting out for their first adventuring tier, and one more at each new tier.

[Kaelik]

I think the reasoning was "It's too powerful because a spellcaster can take it and that breaks the game"

If I had to guess, the reasoning was probably that you almost universally make terrible feats that are more powerful than any Tome Combat Feat, just like every other person that makes Community Tome feats without wasting even a single second considering power level.

[Parthenon]

I'd split it into Traits and Perks. You can gain the Vampire Trait at any point, but it replaces one of your existing Perks or Traits.

You could then try to balance it by making Traits cost more than Perks- getting either two Perks or one Trait at 1st level, then at later levels gaining Lycanthropy replaces two existing Perks with the Werewolf Trait.

[John Magnum]

That seems dissociative to the point of nuttery. "When I turned into a Werewolf, I somehow forgot how to do metamagic"?

[erik]

That seems dissociative to the point of nuttery. "When I turned into a Werewolf, I somehow forgot how to do metamagic"?

"Now that I've given myself over to this magical disease, I have lost the focus that I once was able to maintain in order to modify magics."

I don't think that's too nutty at all. Heck I didn't think your original sentence was nutty either from certain contexts.

Hell, I became a far worse chess player when I started doing other things instead. The notion is that you are sacrificing your attention to one thing in order to focus upon another. Maintaining the will and concentration to control the beast might not allow you time to also maintain your spell mastery. As you level up and get another Trait or whatever, then you have developed some extra mojo which can once again be reapplied to your old pursuit mayhaps.

Now, I think characters could be afflicted by lycanthropy or vampire plague or whatever and have it be as a negative condition until you either make it your own, sacrificing some portion of yourself to adapt, or you get cured.

[JonSetanta]

I'm thinking that for the [Arachnoid, Lycanthrope, Vampire, Construct, Fey Touched, Ooze, Elemental, etc.] modifications you only get one, and it prevents you from being able to get another (unless you first use a magic ritual to amend you to your natural state mayhaps). It tamps down the zaniness factor just a bit, and the niche crowd that wants to combine these things is a heckuvalot smaller than any who just want to play a particular one.

I do think these modification thingies should scale with you as you level, so not like the Perks as you grouped them Lokathor. And you really shouldn't even offer the option of sabotaging yourself by spending a more powerful Feat to acquire a weaker Perk.

That keeps them as character shaping options that remain relevant as you progress. An 10th level Vampire might gain a Dominate Person ability as they have strengthened their willpower over the course of their adventures, for example (couching this in 3e terms only, not actually predictive of what the level track or power track will actually be like).

All good design goals.

Ignoring Kaelik's weak snipe, what I did years ago was something like a tiny skill bonus at first along with a per-hour utility spell (nothing major) that upgraded every 5 levels. It should have been enough to change how an entire race/culture of beings with the same feat would sculpt their surrounds and function as a society, but Feybook was never playtested, so fuck that.

As for why I don't give a shit about making spellcasters more powerful; when you give all characters an equal opportunity to grab a utility spell or few, it doesn't affect combat in a way that actually matters.
The problem is with the class, not the universal feat.

Flight, for instance, granted by an [Angel] feat or something similar, would greatly benefit a Fighter, but mean jack shit to a Wizard that memorized fly.
But what about a Wizard that didn't learn fly? They're essentially getting an "extra spell".
Not my problem.

[John Magnum]

I suppose you could write all your feats so that they basically need active training and concentration to keep combat-ready, to have a feat slot system.

[ModelCitizen]

You could also cost stuff like lycanthropy and lichdom against item slots. Just treat acquiring a "template" during play as acquiring a magic item. You could still offer them as feats to make them available at char gen if feats and item slots were comparable in value.

[PhoneLobster]

Having played several small campaigns with tome feats and tome style feats I have this to say about them.

Never again.

They are certainly an improvement in respect to balance, but accounting wise on level up etc... I am not especially impressed. The idea that they should scale was correct, the manner in which they did scale, discrete additional abilities at specific levels, was a big fat mess.

There was something about it that made the accounting for both character creation and advancement WORSE than if you were receiving similar numbers of discrete abilities from entirely separate sources. It turned character sheets, custom ones mind you, into a mess, players seemed much more likely to forget their later levels of abilities from older feat selections, everything about it was just... not good in game play.

Well. Everything except the actual functionality of the abilities granted (when players could manage to remember they had them). That was good. Everything else?

Everything else leads me to the conclusion that offering large numbers of selectable abilities in random conglomerate masses is a generally bad idea. You can only really get away with so many things that effectively function in the manner of a character class or template that advances with level and just as there is a concern about having 12 different racial templates having 12 different feats that function like templates turns out to be kinda crap in actual practice.

[tussock]

"When I became a Werewolf, I somehow forgot how to be human during a full moon?" You don't really get more WTF than that.


But seriously, whole thread, I know D&D's a game that basically stole from everything and it's not 1974 any more, but there is a D&D genre now, and it deserves some respect in the game still baring that name.

So: i) shapeshifting can be a minor fiend-blood like the Cambion. D&D shapeshifters are normally Evil, and thus hated by townsfolk in a firebrands and pitchforks kind of way. Fortunately, you can shapeshift. Playable Wererats in a Necrofuckery book. Werewolves are not angsty, they'll eat your children for fun.

ii) a golem in D&D is an elemental spirit trapped by a spellcaster in a magic box, and they fucking hate it in there. Free golems are are constant rage and murder. Could we just be small Earth Elementals? Could make them a dwarf sub-race. Or we could do that to Dwarves.

iii) a vampire in D&D is Evil. Period. They do not fall in love with young women and save them from the nasty wolfies, they charm, rape, and murder young women (in random order). Literal Necrofuckery.

iv) a summoner should summon and control Fiends, not goo-blobs, not happy space hamsters, not loving angels. More like Necrofuckery than core then.

v) a necromancer should be an Evil Cleric as a chain-control horde-maker, or a Wizard as a loner Lich-in-the-making. Also Necrofuckery.

vi) some kind of fucking cat that can open door handles using telekinesis is the Elven Cat, give or take. Elf Cats and Cooshees should be in the MM. Especially Elf Cooshees. Which is what they call their dogs, rather than their kitties. Intelligent Halfling fairy-Ponies could deal with the newer fad.

[Username17]

If you're going to make the argument that D&D needs to stick to its roots, you need to accept those roots as they actually exist.

ii) a golem in D&D is an elemental spirit trapped by a spellcaster in a magic box, and they fucking hate it in there. Free golems are are constant rage and murder.

In classic D&D, only Flesh Golems and Clay Golems are constant rage and murder. And they are like that in an explicit reference to Frankenstein and Rabbi Loeb. All other golems are mindless and follow the last orders until the end of time. Other constructs are all over the place.

But beyond that: Dude, Warforged. Playable golems at first level is not only part of D&D, it's a well liked part of D&D.

iii) a vampire in D&D is Evil. Period. They do not fall in love with young women and save them from the nasty wolfies, they charm, rape, and murder young women (in random order).

D&D has always tried to play it both ways with Vampires. Vampires in D&D are both feral monsters who smell like the grave and charming Eurotrash in poofy shirts who have adventures involving bodices. One of the very first named characters in AD&D is Strahd von Zarovich. Ripping bodices and being a tragic figure since 1983.

a summoner should summon and control Fiends, not goo-blobs, not happy space hamsters, not loving angels.

The original AD&D conjurer summoned Kobolds. I am not kidding. Only at higher levels were they able to summon what we would recognize as "outsiders". But when that came online, they could conjure from any spoke of the great wheel. Angel summoning has been on the table as long as there have been conjurers at all.

a necromancer should be an Evil Cleric as a chain-control horde-maker, or a Wizard as a loner Lich-in-the-making.

Why? The Complete Book of Necromancers is almost old enough to Vote. Animate Dead was a standard Magic User spell back in the day. "Necromancer" was straight up a title that the original Magic User PC class acquired automatically just by going up in level.

While the idea of "level 1 Necromancers" had to wait for 2nd edition, there has literally never been a time when a Player Character D&D Magic User could not become a Necromancer.

-Username17