That being said, I am very interested in examining whether the idea of prerequisites of any kind are worth preserving.FrankTrollman wrote: Feat chains as defined rob people, plain and simple.
There is no reason why should be able to get Improved Precise Shot without Precise Shot, however, so the concept of the feat chain is not necessarily devoid of utility.
It's a difficult line to walk. The ability to take an ability later in life that is superior to an ability you had access to earlier in life without first taking that early ability screws people. It screws people who invest in the early ability. But the requirement to invest a lot of feats into a direction before it turns into anything good screws people who even pretend to attempt to diversify.
This is the modern era, one with free multiclassing. Every single god damned time you take a new level you have the option of multiclassing - you have the option of deciding to take new abilities. And those abilities really do have to be good or the game is screwing people. This means that if we are wedded to the feat standard, a feat has to be a viable complete ability all by itself.
If we are really going to give Fighters "a feat" for getting a level, this needs to be game mechanically comparable to getting "a new spell level, two spells known, and four spells per day" like a Wizard gets just for getting to level nine in their class.
And that means that those feats should provide more abilities. Getting "Dodge" isn't enough for a feat. Getting "Dodge and Mobility" is not enough for a feat unless we start handing out more feats at each level.
The chain relations of feats need to be cut back, and if we just lump feats together that will somewhat take care of itself. But that's not all - feats need to scale with level the way that spells do. If your bonus for Greater Magic Weapon goes up when your level does - your bonus from Weapon Focus should go up when your level does.
I think that there's a lot of thematic value to prerequisites - it's fun to progress from Impressive Fire-themed Ability to More Impressive Fire-themed Ability, and it builds a certain amount of character identity that goes beyond fluff.
But people have also made the worthwhile observation that it tremendously complicates building a character higher than 1st-level, as well as forcing people to get abilities they might not want to get an ability they do want. You also have potential balance concerns if an ability without prerequisites is stronger than an ability with prerequisites.
The negatives seem to outweigh the positives numerically, but I'm not convinced they're of equal value - prerequisites seem to have potential as a gating mechanism to get better abilities (provided the endpoint abilities actually are better).
Comments, suggestions, or observations?
echo