The Gaming Den

If there's a feat specifically designed for a single class, it's a waste of time, energy, and printing paper to write it up. In general, these feats fall into two category.

The first is "wow, this is awesome," in which case every member of that class is going to take the feat. (An example: Natural Spell. No druid will go without it.) At that point, you might as well just give the feat to the class for free because it's a feat tax.

The second category is "wow, this is terrible," in which case no member of the class is going to take the feat. (An example: Weapon Focus and its feat chain. No competent fighter is going to waste his feats on that.) At that point, you might as well just give the feat to the class for free because the benefits are so minimal.

If the feat happens to fall in mythological "this is useful, but there are other useful feats to take, so I'm not sure that I'll buy it" category, then I'm still going to ask why you printed it instead of offering whatever options it gives as an alternate class feature. No reason to make players bite their nails over what they're choosing.

Psychic Robot wrote:If there's a feat specifically designed for a single class, it's a waste of time, energy, and printing paper to write it up. In general, these feats fall into two category.

The first is "wow, this is awesome," in which case every member of that class is going to take the feat. (An example: Natural Spell. No druid will go without it.) At that point, you might as well just give the feat to the class for free because it's a feat tax.

The second category is "wow, this is terrible," in which case no member of the class is going to take the feat. (An example: Weapon Focus and its feat chain. No competent fighter is going to waste his feats on that.) At that point, you might as well just give the feat to the class for free because the benefits are so minimal.

If the feat happens to fall in mythological "this is useful, but there are other useful feats to take, so I'm not sure that I'll buy it" category, then I'm still going to ask why you printed it instead of offering whatever options it gives as an alternate class feature. No reason to make players bite their nails over what they're choosing.

I basically agree with all this. It's another reason why 4e is terrible - half the feats you WANT to take are feats that no member of your class should ever be without, and I feel it's just silly.

Psychic Robot wrote:If the feat happens to fall in mythological "this is useful, but there are other useful feats to take, so I'm not sure that I'll buy it" category, then I'm still going to ask why you printed it instead of offering whatever options it gives as an alternate class feature. No reason to make players bite their nails over what they're choosing.

And how would offering it as an ACF reduce this "nail biting"? It seems that if a choice is well balanced, then that means there could be nail biting involved.

MS wrote: I basically agree with all this. It's another reason why 4e is terrible - half the feats you WANT to take are feats that no member of your class should ever be without, and I feel it's just silly.

I thought the reason 4E feats were so terrible was because the best feats in the game are shit like 'use a weapon with an upgraded die' or 'gain a +1/tier bonus to damage rolls'.

I think class-specific feats are fine.

Those specific feats have other things wrong with them.

But there's no reason a feat cannot be tied to jiggering around a class ability and be useful or melding two abilities together, like for multiclassing.

Certainly how they were used in print was stupid, of course.

-Crissa

Lago PARANOIA wrote:

MS wrote: I basically agree with all this. It's another reason why 4e is terrible - half the feats you WANT to take are feats that no member of your class should ever be without, and I feel it's just silly.

I thought the reason 4E feats were so terrible was because the best feats in the game are shit like 'use a weapon with an upgraded die' or 'gain a +1/tier bonus to damage rolls'.

Emphasis mine. I don't disagree with you there - that's a major pet peeve of mine with 4E as well.

Gotta go with Crissa here. A "feat" is just a selectable class feature. There's no special reason that a selectable class feature couldn't interact directly with an ability you only had if you were some class or other.

The fact that feats like "Extra Turning" blow is because they blow. The fact that feats like Natural Spell are so absurdly powerful that everyone who qualifies for them is required by law to take them is just the opposite problem. Extra Turning or Divine Resistance aren't trap fats because they are Cleric only - they are trap feats because the benefit they give you fucking sucks. Natural Spell isn't broken into must-have status because it's Druid-only, it's broken because it's broken.

If anything, those feats would be a bigger problem if they weren't class specific. Because then they'd be traps for more characters. It's bad enough having just Rogues tempted with those asstastic [Ambush] Feats. Imagine if they were just as worthless and showing up in Fighter Builds somehow!

-Username17

I have no problem with class-restricted feats if they aren't bullshit (either good or bad bullshit). If I can take a feat that gives me good and interesting alternatives to sneak attack or turn undead uses or bardic music, then bring it on!

If the ambush feats weren't such crap, then they could be useful. That was probably the appeal of them in the first place. Most are simply over priced considering they are universally inferior options *and* you have to burn a feat to get them.

I would in some cases happily trade 1 die of sneak attack for their effects, but usually the trade was so bad that it was never worth it. 1 die per 3 ongoing damage would be alright as an interesting combat option. Trading dice for inflicting an ability penalty would be desirable. Hell, I'd likely trade a die for improved tripping someone (with perhaps a bonus to the trip attack check equal to 1d6 per SA die sacrificed).

So long as your feats are on the same baseline as the rest then you aren't vertically powering up any classes so much as just giving them alternatives. We can be happy then that nobody is coerced into taking a class to get bigger numbers.

The major problem with class feats was that they were written by the same dopes who wrote the rest of the feats. They had no idea what sort of baseline was worth using, or even what baseline they were using.

So it seems that the problem with most class-specific feats is that they are badly-designed feats, not that they are class-specific, but it's undeniable that most class-specific feats are terribly designed.

What is it about class-specific feats that invites or attracts bad design?

A Man In Black wrote: What is it about class-specific feats that invites or attracts bad design?

A lot of things, but probably the biggest one is that class-specific feats are (as written) limited to enhancing features of the class. There's no reason why rogues can't pick up a feat that lets them sneak attack with bolts of lightning from their arse, but there's a prejudice against that kind of horizontal advancement. But no one is going to get offended by the idea of a feat that lets a rogue do an extra die of sneak attack, especially if there is already bullshit like Ultra Rage and Weapon Specialization. So feats tend to focus towards vertical advancement.

The problem is, as 3E/4E so clearly shows us, is that vertical advancement easily overshadows the game as it gets out of hand. The Frenzied Berserker is just a flat-out less interesting character than a Watch Detective. But they're also way more powerful because instead of getting a variety of flavorful abilities FBs keep getting abilities that advance one schtick.

People who design feats are not completely blind to this so instead of publishing crazy vertical advancement feats like Echoes of Thunder and Weapon Expertise they tend to focus on shit like Battle Healer. Occasionally you get a feat that was designed as lame and boring like Weapon Proficiency: Zuulat but it unexpectedly interacts with other options to cause problems. So here comes the nerf hammer.

A Man In Black wrote:So it seems that the problem with most class-specific feats is that they are badly-designed feats, not that they are class-specific, but it's undeniable that most class-specific feats are terribly designed.

What is it about class-specific feats that invites or attracts bad design?

Honestly, the majority of feats in general are badly designed. That hasn't changed since 3E. 4E, like 3E before it, is a big ocean of crappy feats. If you want the good shit, you have to go dumpster diving.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:Honestly, the majority of feats in general are badly designed. That hasn't changed since 3E. 4E, like 3E before it, is a big ocean of crappy feats. If you want the good shit, you have to go dumpster diving.

If it's an ocean of crap, a better terminology would be deep-sea plumbing, I think.

Class Specific Feats are a bad idea, and it has nothing to do with their power level.

Opening up the closest D&D book, I come across the Fey Preserver feat. It's for Eladrin Invokers with the Covenant of Protection. To my slightly out-of-date 4e knowledge, there are about 17 classes in 4e, about 16 races and 3 choices for covenants on invokers. If we go with those numbers and further assume an even distribution among player characters, that makes this a feat that only one out of about 816 player characters is even going to be eligible for.

So even if it is made of so much awesome that all eligible characters always take it, most gamers will go years without seeing a character with it.

Shit that obscure is a waste of my game session time to glance over.

Josh, that's more a flavor issue than a feat-class issue. I noticed you multiplied by races without stating a preference against racial feats. (Which I agree are stupid in 4e). But 4e is a straw-man. It's stupid by design. Should we dislike wands because only one type of one class in 4e uses them?

The covenants are basically feats for the invoker class, specializing it. Is that bad or good?

-Crissa

Josh_Kablack wrote:Class Specific Feats are a bad idea, and it has nothing to do with their power level.

Opening up the closest D&D book, I come across the Fey Preserver feat. It's for Eladrin Invokers with the Covenant of Protection. To my slightly out-of-date 4e knowledge, there are about 17 classes in 4e, about 16 races and 3 choices for covenants on invokers. If we go with those numbers and further assume an even distribution among player characters, that makes this a feat that only one out of about 816 player characters is even going to be eligible for.

So even if it is made of so much awesome that all eligible characters always take it, most gamers will go years without seeing a character with it.

Shit that obscure is a waste of my game session time to glance over.

Sounds like that is more of a problem with race specific feats, since that is a class and race specific feat.

If it was just for invokers of a particular covenant that would be applicable to about 1/51 character types... very reasonable.

I do have a beef with racial feats since that tend to push one race or another into being the uber optimal choice for a particular class, and making all the other options even less desirable for no damned good reason. I really wish that races were all about horizontal abilities and not damned vertical bonuses. It ruins everything.

I had a lengthier post that got eaten by my browser, so yeah I ended up just skipping to the core of the rant - sorry

But if a feat is only available for 1 out of like 20 classes, that's really pushing the boundary where it should even be in the feat section* of the book - and that's a matter of conceptual space and system comprehension

But then a disturbing number of class-specific feats also have added prereqs, and we get stuff like "Greater Weapon Specialization" (3e) or Polearm Momentum (4e) where even a lot of the members of the intended class are not going to be eligible for the feat due to class level, ability score and/or racial prereqs.

And thus do we end up with books which contain feats for blind left-handed dentists without tonsils instead of containing generally useful things like timing interaction rules for when multiple interrupts trigger off the same action (and in last night's game one of those interrupts was itself the trigger for something else) or advice on how to track durations and remind other players of bonuses your powers grant.





* Of course the other option of listing the class specific feats with the class itself (instead of in the general feats section) makes individual characters a bit quicker for newer players to build and reduces the time such players waste looking over irrelevant feat text when making characters of differing classes. But this approach of decentralized feats tends to lead to stealth combos and more confusion for players who have middle-level system mastery, so I can't say I'm fond of it.

Okay, that's far more clear, Josh.

And I think we're on the same side there. I rather liked the idea of having class options like in PHB2.

I don't know that anyone here really liked most feat chains.

-Crissa

I think a lot of the problems with class feats could be solved by making them Tactical feats but then only letting people use one benefit from the feat per time interval.

For example, let's take the Elusive Target feat. Now remove the prerequisites. Every encounter you get to use any benefit from the feat but only up to a finite amount of times per whatever. So you can use Dodge Power Attack twice and Cause Overreach or use Cause Overreach three times.

This makes class feats a lot more versatile AND it also opens it up to a wider variety of people. Elusive Target is just as useful to melee people in general as it is to tumble rogues.

Bookkeeping is probably a little too much, though. This could probably be solved by making feats more powerful/versatile but giving people fewer of them.

clikml wrote: I do have a beef with racial feats since that tend to push one race or another into being the uber optimal choice for a particular class, and making all the other options even less desirable for no damned good reason. I really wish that races were all about horizontal abilities and not damned vertical bonuses. It ruins everything.

Yeah, 4E is awful for that.

clikml wrote:Sounds like that is more of a problem with race specific feats, since that is a class and race specific feat.

If you've read the PHB2 and the class books, you'll find that most feats at heroic tier are specifically designed to wank to a specific race/class combination. Why's that?

Because it is complete design intent for the first 10 levels of your life to have your character be heavily defined by your race. I'm not kidding at all. Andy Collins wanted that to happen. If you press me I can find the article where he wanks off to racial shit.

Long story short, Josh isn't cherry picking examples when he talks about how stupid class feats are. He's going with the game that most clearly expresses Collins' design intent.

Lord in heaven, when is that fucking rat bastard getting fired?

It wouldn't be so bad if the racial feats supported race/class combos that were uncommon and suboptimal, but it's just cliche bullshit like dwarven fighters and Eladrin mages. And the game already gives you plenty of reason to make those characters anyway.

Because it is complete design intent for the first 10 levels of your life to have your character be heavily defined by your race. I'm not kidding at all. Andy Collins wanted that to happen. If you press me I can find the article where he wanks off to racial shit.

I would love for race to impact how your character plays more than it does in 3e, but to force players to spend feats to have this happen is pure laziness. Instead, the various races should have powers/abilities that change the way they fight.

However, 4e then decided to do bad things like Dragonborn Frenzy (+2 on damage rolls when blodded), Dragonborn Senses (low-light vision, +1 bonus on Perception), and Dwarven Weapon Training (+2 damage on wielding axes or hammers).

Why not just do things differently? Why can't Dragonborn automatically get low-light vision and a +2 bonus on damage rolls when bloodied? Why can't Eladrin get automatic proficiency with spears? It's like they thought that low-light vision might break the game.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If you've read the PHB2 and the class books, you'll find that most feats at heroic tier are specifically designed to wank to a specific race/class combination. Why's that?

Because it is complete design intent for the first 10 levels of your life to have your character be heavily defined by your race. I'm not kidding at all. Andy Collins wanted that to happen. If you press me I can find the article where he wanks off to racial shit.

Long story short, Josh isn't cherry picking examples when he talks about how stupid class feats are. He's going with the game that most clearly expresses Collins' design intent

That pisses me off so much! It always looked to me that certain races were married to certain classes, leading to endless, boring, cookie-cutter characters, but I always brushed it off as the writers thinly-veiled LotR fixation. I never thought that it was a result of orders from on high.

Lord in heaven, when is that fucking rat bastard getting fired?

Not soon enough for me. Goddman you, Andy Collins.

PsychicRobot wrote: I would love for race to impact how your character plays more than it does in 3e,

Great! Now we can have it so that Kalashar are the master race for clerics and bugbears are the master race for rangers and gnomes the master race for illusionist wizards again!

OOOH YOUR RACE IS SO FUCKING IMPORTANT IT MEANS MORE TO YOUR CLASS SUCCESS THAN ANYTHING ELSE

Fix your tags. Also, I have no idea why you're yelling.