Heritage Feats- could they have worked?

[Prak]

Don't want to derail Kaelik's FC review.

Draconic/Fiendish/Celestial/Fae/Infernal Heritage, Aberrant, Abyssal Heritor and who knows what the fuck else... all clearly were shit with a handful of sort of ok, or really awesome for a single build that wasn't actually intended.

But is there a way that such feats could have worked, short of Tome scaling feats?

Fuck, UA had Bloodlines, too. WotC tried repeatedly to give players a way to turn your elf into a draconic or aberrant or fae or whatever elf, but none of them really worked all that well, unless you wanted minor bonuses, or were trying to make "The World's Scariest Paladin With No Ranks In Intimidate*"


*this was a thing that happened with one of my characters, it still amuses me, but I wasn't trying to make it happen, until I realized that he had something like +17 Intimidate with no ranks.

[Username17]

Back in the runup to Races of War, K and I did a lot of polling about what people wanted in their feats. And what they said they wanted - overwhelmingly - was to have small numbers of feats that made a big difference. With years of feedback and playtesting, I can conclusively say that people are full of shit and don't actually want that at all. What people actually want is to get a lot of selections and to have those selections individually be minor enough that they don't miss out by not having any specific one.

Like, one per level isn't enough. People want a feat every session whether they level or not. And they want those feats, need those feats to be small and bullshit enough that failing to get any particular one of them doesn't get them yelled at by the min/maxxer at the table.

So just for starters, feats should do absolutely no Voltroning. The thing where [Subtype] Heritor feats all give you bonuses for how many Heritor feats you have of that subtype? That's fucked, and it needs to not happen. All the feats should stand alone, and all the feats should be shitty enough to be optional.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

Frank, what would be some example feats for this paradigm?

"+2 non-stacking 'Achievement' bonus to balance on tightropes while painted green."?

[Prak]

Voltroning feats or no, I do like what, say, the Aberrant feats were intended to do, which is to make your character progressively more monstrous while not detracting their wizardness or rogue stuff, or whatever they decided to do with their life as a profession.

So, if not feats, is there an acceptable way to do that?

I mean, if we were really tinkering with shit, I could see turning the "1 per 3 levels, plus first" slots into "Infusions" or something, and saving it for "Ooh, me tentacles just grew in!" or "I just blasted my lats so hard it gives me lasers" type stuff, and then giving people a "+[who cares] to [minor thing]" thing called a Trick at the end of the session, which could honestly probably be complete MTP since they're supposed to be tiny and individually non-mandatory anyway.

Any feat that falls in between should either be reduced to a trick (Weapon Specialization) or beefed up to be an infusion (Initiate feats, Arcane Disciple)

[AcidBlades]

Frank. What makes you think that people want a lot of selections? Pathfinder boards or something?

[Username17]

Frank. What makes you think that people want a lot of selections? Pathfinder boards or something?

People complain constantly about not having enough feats to take each new set of options. New books of options sell because people like them. People would like options even more if they were ones they could actually take.

When we were making Races of War, lots of people complained that there were too many feats and asked us to make a paradigm where there were less feats and the feats they got actually did good things. And that turned out badly. It's not really what people want. People do not in fact want to be told that failing to get the single feat that makes you awesome at Archery means that you don't cut it as an archery. And having to wait a couple of levels to get that feat up and running is too long of a slog.

Frank, what would be some example feats for this paradigm?

"+2 non-stacking 'Achievement' bonus to balance on tightropes while painted green."?

No need to go that far. Improved Disarm and Jack of All Trades are plenty bullshit.

-Username17

[virgil]

So Paizo has the right idea?

[Almaz]

So just for starters, feats should do absolutely no Voltroning. The thing where [Subtype] Heritor feats all give you bonuses for how many Heritor feats you have of that subtype? That's fucked, and it needs to not happen. All the feats should stand alone, and all the feats should be shitty enough to be optional.

-Username17

More importantly -- even if you find people that focus group differently than Frank did (entirely possible), this basically makes it so these feats suck if you have less than N of them but rock if you have more than N of them. While this might seem great, if you want to reinforce specialization (and just say, set N at 1), it then punishes people who step outside of specialization harshly. They fall behind and possibly never catch up. This is the kind of false choice that rewards deckbuilding skills but makes gameplay terrible. Unless specialization tops out, except bullshit like "Aberrant" or "Demonic" never fucking will.

[Lurky Lurkpants]

So Paizo has the right idea?

Not really. Like most things they only barely tweaked the existing paradigm of "medium feats." So you still have bullshit tiny feats that let you use a spear as a quarterstaff because you think spears are cooler, but you aren't getting anywhere near enough that using a feat to do that is a good trade. If you dare to want to do something like "feint and full attack" you are probably looking at level 7+ to even get online, so that is going to be the one martial thing you get to do. This is pretty thoroughly different from giving out a trick a session or more, especially when you still have to climb horrible feat trees (using a spear as a quarterstaff? 4 feats). Although I think directly applying that idea to Pathfinder would probably make a lot of the incredibly specific material much more interesting.

Their latest book, Weapon Master's Handbook, pushes a little against this by having "Divine Fighting Techniques" you can trade certain class features for (1st level domain ability or a proficiency, generally) and that level up when you hit certain requirements, but they are generally terrible regardless so it doesn't matter. Similarly they've had "Combat Tricks" for a long time (a feat that opens up various options based on your other feats), but the requirements mean you aren't going to care most of the time (Improved Vital Strike for the ability to attack with two weapons as a standard action? Ugh.).

[Ancient History]

What people want, basically is horizontal character development within a level instead of vertical development. d20 has so many fucking feats that you can't catch them all, and most of those feats are actually bullshit that you wouldn't want anyway, but it irks people that they can't get all of the feats they do want.

As I pointed out in Kaelik's thread, the shit with Bloodlines in UA is that it was trying to present an alternative to playing a monster as a PC. A lot of the racial feats are basically expansions on your character race that you would very much like to not have to pay for, but you have to pay for them one way or another because if they just gave them to you for free the LA would be too high for you to adventure with your friends. Abyssal Heritor feats aren't quite "build your own half-fiend," but it's a similar mindset behind it.

[Kaelik]

Abyssal Heritor feats aren't quite "build your own half-fiend," but it's a similar mindset behind it.

Except for that whole thing where it totally isn't at all.

[Ancient History]

Abyssal Heritor feats aren't quite "build your own half-fiend," but it's a similar mindset behind it.

Except for that whole thing where it totally isn't at all.

It's not "build your own half-fiend," because you're not picking and choosing which demon traits to manifest, but its based off crap like the Aberrant feats in Lords of Madness so yes, it is like that after all.

[Kaelik]

Being corrupted by evil is not the same thing as being another race at all.

[Wiseman]

What about something like Major and Minor feats? Major feats are scaling feats as usual, and minor feats are more like the achievement feats that we already have at least one thread about. At the end of each session (or the beginning of the next), you earn one achievement base on what you did in the session.

[Username17]

What about something like Major and Minor feats? Major feats are scaling feats as usual, and minor feats are more like the achievement feats that we already have at least one thread about. At the end of each session (or the beginning of the next), you earn one achievement base on what you did in the session.

Scaling feats were just a bad idea. I'm sorry I wrote them.

They were created to address the specific problem of feat chains requiring you to continually invest your small and precious number of feats into the same thing or fall behind. Scaling feats address that, but the problem of "Take feat X or be forever behind" is even worse than it is in 4th edition with its feat tax "math fix feats." What's wanted is to get rid of feat trees and big feats. And that needle can only be threaded by large numbers of small, non-stacking feats.

Consider the latest turd polishing by Chris Perkins. He notes correctly that people complain and complain a lot about there being so much content they can't use. Now, we all know that 5th edition's "solution" to that of having basically no content in the game (and bizarrely, of making people get even less feats so that the proportion of that content you can use is still small) is total bullshit. No one likes it, and 5e doesn't sell and no one cares. But it's an established and real problem.

You want to put out 12-40 books of the biggest fantasy game every year. And it is the crunch in those books that sells, because people want crunch. And if that's going to be crunch that anyone is ever going to be able to use, they have to be getting something every single session.

You still won't use most of the crunch content, but it won't feel so stultifying and you won't see so many books where 100% of the feats are things you will never take.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

Being corrupted by evil is not the same thing as being another race at all.

You're getting caught up in the thematic explanation. Look at the mechanics. Abyssal Heritor feats are obviously based on feat-chains like the Deformity feats in Libert Mortis and the Aberrant feats in Tome of Madness. Those ultimately echo back to the Bloodline stuff in UA and all that nonsense with Bloodline feats they tried back in Dragon and whatnot.

[DrPraetor]

I think the solution is to handle feats exactly the way Wizards handle spells. You can only "equip" (actualize, incorporate, whatever) 2 fighter abilities of your highest level plus however many of lower levels, but you can go on training journeys and write as many feats as you want on your feat-sheet.

[shlominus]

I think the solution is to handle feats exactly the way Wizards handle spells. You can only "equip" (actualize, incorporate, whatever) 2 fighter abilities of your highest level plus however many of lower levels, but you can go on training journeys and write as many feats as you want on your feat-sheet.

this sounds interesting. what would be the pros and cons of such a system?

[Kaelik]

Being corrupted by evil is not the same thing as being another race at all.

You're getting caught up in the thematic explanation. Look at the mechanics. Abyssal Heritor feats are obviously based on feat-chains like the Deformity feats in Libert Mortis and the Aberrant feats in Tome of Madness. Those ultimately echo back to the Bloodline stuff in UA and all that nonsense with Bloodline feats they tried back in Dragon and whatnot.

No, I'm getting caught up in the wrongness of your claim. You claimed Heritor feats don't work because it's hard to make "You are Demon" work with 0 LA. I just finished reading every single fucking Heritor feat. They are not feats that turn you into a 0 LA demon, they are not feats that even try to turn you into a zero LA demon. They are just feats. Literally zero part of their failure has anything to with actually being UA bloodlines which are hard, because they aren't UA bloodlines at all. It can be hard to make zero LA powerful races, mostly because that is a contradiction in terms, but that has nothing to do with Heritor feats. Literally nothing. At all. There isn't even a feat that gives you claws.

[Ancient History]

Mechanics, dumbass. It's the design chain. Heritor feats are the way they are because they're based on shit like the Aberrant feats in Tome of Madness; the Aberrant feats are the way they are because they're based on the bloodline feats, the bloodline feats are an alt-rule variant of Bloodlines in Unearthed Arcana. The whole fucking reason that Abyssal Heritor feats do the Voltron thing is because that's their mechanical inheritance.

[Kaelik]

Mechanics, dumbass. It's the design chain. Heritor feats are the way they are because they're based on shit like the Aberrant feats in Tome of Madness; the Aberrant feats are the way they are because they're based on the bloodline feats, the bloodline feats are an alt-rule variant of Bloodlines in Unearthed Arcana. The whole fucking reason that Abyssal Heritor feats do the Voltron thing is because that's their mechanical inheritance.

Yeah no, your belief in this chain is super hardcore, but is also complete nonsense. You decided in advance that heritor feats must be about being a Demon, so you created a fake chain to bloodlines in your head.

1) There is no bloodline feats alt-rule variant in Unearthed Arcana, you made that up in your own head.
2) Aberrant feats are not based on any such thing even if it existed, they are based on Draconic Heritage feats, the feats that literally require Sorcerer levels to even take. It was a Sorcerer's are like Dragons thing that got expanded to Aberrations because they were writing an Aberration book that needed PC options, not because it was part of their master plan to make feat bloodlines using the alt rules that don't exist.
3) The reason the feats voltron together is because they made an entire fucking book full of feats that voltron together. They did it for all the none AH feats too.

You are wrong about the mechanical basis for Voltroning, you are wrong about the mechanical basis in zero LA races, you are just wrong, You can totally just admit and move on to say anything else at all about any even remotely related subject.

[Ancient History]

1) There is no bloodline feats alt-rule variant in Unearthed Arcana, you made that up in your own head.

Bloodline feats were in an issue in Dragon, and were very blatantly based on UA's bloodlines.

[/edit]I don't know why I argue with Kaelik. It's like winning the Special Olympics.

[Prak]

I originated the UA Bloodline feat error, I forgot they were shitty levels you had to take every so often to get continuing benefits, not shitty feats you had to take every so often to get continuing benefits like Weapons of Legacy feats.

There were Bloodline feats in Dragon, but they were more like normal feat chains, where one would give you some extra spells known (because they were for sorcerers), and another would give you some kind of crappy thematic ability because grandpappy was a Yuan Ti, or a tree, or whatever.

[Kaelik]

1) There is no bloodline feats alt-rule variant in Unearthed Arcana, you made that up in your own head.

Bloodline feats were in an issue in Dragon, and were very blatantly based on UA's bloodlines.

Are you in some kind of competition to be the maximum amount of wrong?

Bloodline feats in Dragon Mag even more like Draconic Heritage even less like Bloodlines than Draconic Heritage. They are not variant bloodline rules, they are variant Sorcerer fucking buff rules.

1) You must be a Spontaneous Arcane Caster to take them at all.
2) Their in game effect is to give you an added spell known of each level.
3) They do not voltron together, each bloodline has between one and two feats associated with it, and zero of them get more powerful with more bloodline feats taken. There are 23 bloodline feats and 13 of them are feats that give spells known to sorcerers. The other ten are minor buffs that can't possible scale with your total bloodline feats, because you can only have one bloodline feat, and that feat.

The tome equivalent of these is not Fiend Feats, it is Attune Domain/Sphere.

For fucks sake, it's okay that you are forever butthurt, that doesn't mean you have to take a stupid obviously wrong position and grind it into dust to "spite" me.

Bloodline feats do not voltron, they are obviously, super obviously, colossally obviously, not a bloodline variant since they are Sorcerer only and give spells known to Sorcerers. You are just wrong in your commitment to the idea that Heritor feats must have developed out of a desire to make LA 0 Powerful races. You were wrong when you first said it offhandedly, and your offhand comment made in ignorance isn't going to become more right by referencing Dragon Mag Sorcerer Buff feats.

[Kaelik]

You are an idiot that can't see a chain of development.

You are an idiot who can't see that Bloodline feats are literally nothing like Bloodlines at all. They are not a chain of development between Bloodlines and Aberrant feats, because they are nothing like either of those things, and in fact, are much further on the complete opposite side of Aberrant feats than they are between the two.

Your argument would have been better relying on Draconic Heritage as a spin off of Bloodlines, but you rejected that because it was so obviously stupid and wrong, and so instead relied on nebulous bloodline feats that you knew nothing about but the name, and you hoped would be between bloodlines and Abberant feats.

Here is the continuum of all these things in how much they are or are not related to modeling zero LA powerful races:

Bloodlines>>>>>>>>Aberrant Feats>Heritor Fears>>>Draconic Heritage>>>>Bloodline feats.

Now, chronologically, Bloodlines came first, then Bloodline feats and Draconic Heritage at the same times, then Aberrant feats, then Heritor feats.

Heritor feats are modeled on Aberrant feats, which are modeled on Draconic Heritage, which was not at all modeled on Bloodlines. None of those things except Bloodlines are designed to model 0 LA powerful races. None of those things where alternative bloodline rules. Sorcerer's getting magic powers from dragon blood was written into the 3.0 PHB. Draconic Heritage, and the Bloodline feats that grant spells to Sorcerers are not about modelling powerful races, they are about sorcerer's modeling sorcerer fluff (and buffing sorcerers because they suck compared to wizards).