Improving feat chains

[Malwing]

After going throught some games and seeing some house rules I'm slowly solidifying my house rule list that applies to all my games. There is one particular set of problems that I wanted to try to pin down and eliminate. That problem is feats.

Now we all know about feat taxes but this has been an increasing problem when I started introducing third party feats. With a ton of new feats I already have a large pool of things to choose from but many general playstyles require a long trail of feats leaving no room to even desire to look past the core rulebook for feats lets alone use some wonderful new options.

A while ago I picked up New Paths Compendium from Kobold Press which presented a list of condensed feats from the core rulebook. Slowly I've been testing them out for appeal and brokenness, and came to a few conclusions.

Firstly, that I don't want to condense every feat in the game. Particularly archery gets broken really fast when condensed but is too long to leave alone, however rewriting each feat in the game forces me to react to each splat book that comes out in the future making the task initially tedious and adds more work later. Just condensing the feats presented in New Path's Compendium allowed for a ton of room for off the wall feats so I think its sufficient to just eliminate trees for common styles rather than mess with everything.

Secondly, Magic and class specific feats don't need help. Its mostly the combat feats responsible for entire playstyles that get bit in the butt.

So here is what I want to do with feats:

Cleave and Great Cleave get mashed together.

All of the Improved/Greater Combat maneuver feats get mashed together.

Combat Expertise is eliminated as a prerequisite from all feats as well as it's accompying 13Int prerequisite. *note: I notice some GMs online giving CE away for free but I have been pouring through some of my third party feats and Combat Expertise has ways to get too good too easily if given for free.*

Penetrating Strike/Greater is mashed together.

Precise Shot/Improved, and Pinpoint Targeting are mashed together.

TWF, Imp TWF, and Greater TWF are mashed together.

Vital strike and friends are mashed together.

Dodge and Mobility are mashed together.

A STR to attack for thrown weapons feat is added.

This is what I have so far, so my question is; what feat trees am I missing? Not really the ones that exist but the feats that are spread out too far while being responsible for entire playstyles that really could be condensed to make room for interesting feats.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

I've done much the same. I've also rewritten a number of basic feats (including CE) but I won't bother listing all of those. Apart from combining the Improved/Greater Combat Maneuver feats (they should never have been split in the transition from 3.5 to PF)

Endurance
Benefit: You gain a +4 bonus on the following checks and saves: Swim checks made to resist nonlethal damage from exhaustion; Constitution checks made to continue running; Constitution checks made to avoid nonlethal damage from a forced march; Constitution checks made to hold your breath; Constitution checks made to avoid nonlethal damage from starvation or thirst; Fortitude saves made to avoid nonlethal damage from hot or cold environments; and Fortitude saves made to resist damage from suffocation.
You may sleep in light or medium armor without becoming fatigued.
Also, when your hit point total is below 0 but above your negative Constitution score you automatically stabilize and may remain conscious. On any round you may choose to act as though disabled. If you act while at negative hit points you lose 1 hp for standard actions, but may continue to act until you die or take other actions than standard actions. Any round you do not take an action, you automatically stabilize.

Great Fortitude
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Fortitude saving throws. Once per day, you may re-roll a failed Fortitude save.

Greater Feint (Combat)
Prerequisites: Improved Feint, base attack bonus +6
Benefit: Whenever you use feint to cause an opponent to lose his Dexterity bonus, he loses that bonus until the beginning of your next turn.
Normal: A creature you feint loses its Dexterity bonus against your next attack.

Greater Two-Weapon Fighting
Prerequisites: Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, BAB +11
Benefit: You suffer no penalties for attack with two weapons. When making a full attack with two weapons or a double weapon you may take a -2 penalty on all attacks that round to gain an additional attack at your highest attack bonus, with either weapon.

Greater Vital Strike (Combat)
Prerequisites: Improved Vital Strike, Vital Strike, base attack bonus +16.
Benefit: When you can make a Vital strike you roll three times normal damage, not including bonus dice from weapon properties, sneak attack, or similar.

Improved Feint (Combat)
Benefit: You can make a Bluff check to feint in combat as a swift action.
Normal: Feinting in combat is a move action.

Improved Two-Weapon Fighting (Combat)
Prerequisites: Two-Weapon Fighting, base attack bonus +6.
Benefit: Penalties for two weapon fighting are reduced by -1, and you add your full Strength modifier to off-hand attacks.

Improved Vital Strike (Combat)
Prerequisites: Vital Strike, base attack bonus +11.
Benefit: When making a Vital strike you may deal double normal damage, before adding bonus dice.

Iron Will
Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus on all Will saves. Once per day, you may re-roll a failed Will save.

Lightning Reflexes
Benefit: You get a +2 bonus on all Reflex saving throws. Once per day, you may re-roll a failed Reflex save.

Run
Benefit: Your base speed increases by 10. When running, you move five times your normal speed (if wearing medium, light, or no armor and carrying no more than a medium load) or four times your speed (if wearing heavy armor or carrying a heavy load). If you make a jump after a running start (see the Acrobatics skill description), you gain a +4 bonus on your Acrobatics check. While running, you retain your Dexterity bonus to your Armor Class.
Normal: You move four times your speed while running (if wearing medium, light, or no armor and carrying no more than a medium load) or three times your speed (if wearing heavy armor or carrying a heavy load), and you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC.

Spring Attack (Combat)
Prerequisites: Dex 13, Dodge, base attack bonus +4.
Benefit: You can move both before and after taking a standard action, so long as the total movement is not greater than your speed.
Normal: You cannot move before and after an action.

Two-Weapon Defense (Combat)
Prerequisites: Dex 15, Two-Weapon Fighting.
Benefit: When wielding a double weapon or two weapons (not including natural weapons or unarmed strikes), you gain a +1 shield bonus to your AC.
When you are fighting defensively this shield bonus increases to +2. When in total defense,the bonus is +4.

Two-Weapon Fighting (Combat)
Prerequisite: Dex 13.
Benefit: Your penalties on attack rolls for fighting with two weapons are reduced. The penalty for your primary hand lessens by 2 and the one for your off hand lessens by 6. See Two-Weapon Fighting in Combat. If your off-hand weapon is light, the penalties are reduced by 2 each. An unarmed strike is always considered light. Additionally, when your BAB gives you iterative attacks, you gain these extra attacks on your off-hand weapon as well, at the appropriate penalties.
Normal: If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon. When fighting in this way you suffer a –6 penalty with your regular attack or attacks with your primary hand and a –10 penalty to the attack with your off hand. You gain only a single extra attack with off-hand weapons.

Vital Strike (Combat)
Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +6.
Benefit: When you only make a single attack on your turn you deal additional damage. Roll the weapon's damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total.

Weapon Focus (Combat)
Prerequisites: Proficiency with selected weapon, base attack bonus +1.
Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus on all attack rolls you make using the selected weapon. At BAB +4 the bonus increases to dealing +2 damage. At BAB +8 the bonus to attack increases to +2. At BAB +12 the damage bonus increases to +4
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take the feat, it applies to a new type of weapon. Fighters can apply the bonus to all weapons in a category he has Weapon Training in.

[christos gurd]

i gave weapon specialization a series of select-able options in alternate paths: martial characters. Perhaps that could help

[necromental]

Malwing wrote:

Precise Shot/Improved, and Pinpoint Targeting are mashed together.

When ranger/slayer whatever takes archery style at what lvl do they gain Improved version? A one to think about.

I'm doing feat consolidation also, and in this case I made this line not have Point Blank Shot as a prerequisite, and gainable at lvls usually gained by rangers (as in Improved Precise requires BAB +6, not +11).

Also, I added some numerical scaling to the mix, so Dodge gains additional +1 AC at BAB +8 and BAB +15, and the bonus triples for movement related AoOs (for including mobility into it).

Still thinking what to do about C.Expertise. What you did is a no-brainer and it applies, but I want to make the feat itself useful. I thought about making it universal feat for one-down-two-up feats (meaning it could function as Power Attack, Combat Expertise, Deadly Aim, barbarians Reckless Abandon or nonexistent bonus-attack-for-lesser-damage feat).

I'm surprised you didn't add W.Focus and W.Specialization?

This looks good BTW.

[Malwing]

necromental wrote:

Malwing wrote:

Precise Shot/Improved, and Pinpoint Targeting are mashed together.

When ranger/slayer whatever takes archery style at what lvl do they gain Improved version? A one to think about.

I'm doing feat consolidation also, and in this case I made this line not have Point Blank Shot as a prerequisite, and gainable at lvls usually gained by rangers (as in Improved Precise requires BAB +6, not +11).

Also, I added some numerical scaling to the mix, so Dodge gains additional +1 AC at BAB +8 and BAB +15, and the bonus triples for movement related AoOs (for including mobility into it).

Still thinking what to do about C.Expertise. What you did is a no-brainer and it applies, but I want to make the feat itself useful. I thought about making it universal feat for one-down-two-up feats (meaning it could function as Power Attack, Combat Expertise, Deadly Aim, barbarians Reckless Abandon or nonexistent bonus-attack-for-lesser-damage feat).

I'm surprised you didn't add W.Focus and W.Specialization?

This looks good BTW.

They get the feat whenever they'd take Precise Shot and it just scales automatically. They just have to live with having fewer options when the time comes to take more feats with Archery style but I don't think they'll complain since they're getting free feats out of it.

With Dodge, Weapon Focus, I found that there are a lot of powerful feats that need them so I left them alone for the most part. I use A fistful of Denarii so dodge leads into a feat that changes the dodge bonus based on BAB making it go up to +6. Considering that I'm mashing it with Mobility that bonus can go to +10. In two feats and I've added a ton of ammunition to dex builds so I didn't feel the need to add more. With Weapon focus there is a bit of a design argument I had with myself. At first I thought I should make it apply to weapon groups instead of one weapon, however from my sample builds I found that it either takes a lot of rewriting or a general statement that causes questions. Additionally there are a number of feats, particularly third party feats that need it and are more powerful for it. I came to the logic that I'm offering a lot of house rules that favor versatility and I wanted to leave in options that reward locking one'self into single weapon types, despite hating doing that myself.

I hate Combat expertise as a prerequisite but I think its still a useful feat, especially in conjunction with third party feats. The above mentioned Dodge and extra dodge feats make for a potential +16 dodge bonus to AC with Combat Expertise, so three feats in and you can potentially do away with armor altogether. (assuming you also get third party Monk Tatoos which allow you to add armor bonuses without wearing armor, so by the end game a 20 lvl 20 dex monk can have upwards to 36 AC before including other sources of AC.) Basically Combat Expertise still gets to exist relatively unmolested because I could build Hyper AC Monks using all the feats I allow. Its just too handy of a feat. Not to mention I found a few feats in third party things I allow that only work when you're using Combat Expertise that would be too powerful if I buffed Combat Expertise.

[necromental]

Malwing wrote:

They get the feat whenever they'd take Precise Shot and it just scales automatically. They just have to live with having fewer options when the time comes to take more feats with Archery style but I don't think they'll complain since they're getting free feats out of it.

You misunderstood me. Rangers/slayers/zen archers can get Improved Precise shot at 6th lvl while everyone else needs to fulfill BAB +11 requirement. So under these rules do rangers still get their advantage or is it negated? To put it another way does the Precise Shot improve at 6th or 11th lvl for those classes?

Ok, I understand about your other choices. My preference would be deleting extraneous feats if combos seem too powerful, so I can have a base feat that is more useful, but to each his own.

[Malwing]

necromental wrote:

Malwing wrote:

They get the feat whenever they'd take Precise Shot and it just scales automatically. They just have to live with having fewer options when the time comes to take more feats with Archery style but I don't think they'll complain since they're getting free feats out of it.

You misunderstood me. Rangers/slayers/zen archers can get Improved Precise shot at 6th lvl while everyone else needs to fulfill BAB +11 requirement. So under these rules do rangers still get their advantage or is it negated? To put it another way does the Precise Shot improve at 6th or 11th lvl for those classes?

Ok, I understand about your other choices. My preference would be deleting extraneous feats if combos seem too powerful, so I can have a base feat that is more useful, but to each his own.

Ah, yes they would lose that advantage due to it being one feat that scales, however my policy is that the normal versions of those feats still exist so its still possible to gain that advantage but they'd have to use two feats to get both instead of one. Sucks but Archery doesn't need help.

With Combat Expertise and Reckless Abandon I think that even without other feats they still have their uses and don't need to be buffed. Combat Expertise is more annoying as a prerequisite than it is a bad feat. Reckless Abandon is probably one of my favorite rage powers by eliminating the Power Attack penalty, doing that alone is really really good so I'm less inclined to buff that. Also overall I'm trying to find excuses to keep my deletions and changes to an absolute minimum, just enough to smooth over feat chains that are required for broad playstyles.

BTW; anything I'm missing? What are the primary playstyles that need long dedicated feat chains?