d20: Feat design: Required or Nice?

[Xeviat]

I love working on crunch; it's why my icon is what it is. 4E made it hard for me to design a whole lot; sure, I could design individual components, but making big things like classes took much more work than it did in 3E. Currently, my thought project has been finding a way to marry 3E and 4E, as my group is about evenly split between people who like 4E and people who hate 4E (while everyone seems to like 3E well enough, except me, the DM).

As I was looking over the basic math of 4E, especially early stages before the "patch feats" like "Weapon Expertise" and "Improved Defenses". Originally, I was one who raged over the "math hole". Then I started to question if the hole was partially intended.

Hear me out: Players gain feats (18 of them to be precise), while Monsters/NPCs don't. Just looking at PCs vs. NPCs, you can see this difference. Heck, the NPCs gain a "level bonus" to "represent improvements based on level advancement", spelled out right in the DMG (pg 187 ... eerie number) .

Now, there was no way for PHB1 only characters to gain all of the attack, AC, NAD, and damage bonuses that NPCs were getting; NPCs were strictly numerically superior to PCs initially (not counting combined effects of the larger number of powers that players had). But the concept was there, and it could have been sound if feat design had been better initially.

This made me think on this sort of design. Players are given 18 feats, and they are expected to spend some of them on shoring up their weaknesses. Monsters scale at +29 to everything (attack, damage, and defenses), while players scale much slower without feats: +25 attack (+15 level, +4 ability, +6 enhancement), +27 AC (+15 level, +4 ability, +2 masterwork, +6 enhancement; or +15 level, +6 masterwork, +6 enhancement for heavy), and +25/22 NADs (+15 level, +4 ability, +6 enhancement; or +15 level, +1 ability, +6 enhancement for non-improving stats).

NPCs even start 1 higher than players, and they grow by a bit more; they start at Stat + Equipment (proficiency or AC bonus) + 1. They also gain an additional +4 bonus that players don't get (bringing total growth bonuses up to +29 attack, +29 AC, +29/+26 NADs, and even +4 more damage growth; at least the damage growth is comparable to the weapon focus feats); at least they don't get masterwork bonuses typically, since they don't use magic equipment (which means heavy armored NPCs grow slower ... oops).

There was no way for players to gain all of these through their feats, though maybe they could if they really tried. Either way, conceptually, the idea is sound. Players could choose to shore up their weaknesses constantly, or pick circumstantial feats to make them better sometimes and worse others. But another design concept would be to make it so no feats actually boost your numbers; instead, they grant options.

Now I am wrestling with two feat design concepts: 1) There are a few feats that you have to take, but you get to choose which feats you take to get those bonuses; or 2) Your basic game math is handled by non-feat elements, and all feats grant options.

I am leaning towards the 2nd choice being the better one. This way combative feats don't have to fight for space with exploration or interaction feats as much. If the most combative feats granted options like an extra at-will (nice, but not better than any of the at-wills you already have) or combat trade-offs (like power attack's trade of attack for damage), I believe they could be better balanced against things like Skill Training, Skill bonuses, skill utilities, extra languages, and so forth.

A few feats would stand out, though: proficiency feats, like exotic weapons and better armor than your class grants. At their most simple, exotic weapons are a boost of +1 damage per die (longsword to bastard sword, or axe to waraxe), while going from leather to hide or scale to plate is a +1 AC boost. These could be handled by having exotic weapons grant options rather than power, like the whip and net exotic weapon proficiency feats that granted proficiency with weaker weapons that came with great at-wills. Armors could be actually balanced within their rank, coming with actual counterbalances to their strengths (choosing +1 AC for -1 skill checks is a no brainer to me).

This is just some conceptual thinking, but I wanted to see what the CBGers thought. This is a repost from the WotCommunity boards.

[beejazz]

In my system, feats and powers are one and the same, and almost never touch the math. Math boosts just aren't much fun IMO. Their only advantage is that they are passive and therefore easy to track. They're good things to just have on your sheet and never have to think about... the feat equivalents of pre-4 fighters I guess.

[sparkletwist]

Now I am wrestling with two feat design concepts: 1) There are a few feats that you have to take, but you get to choose which feats you take to get those bonuses; or 2) Your basic game math is handled by non-feat elements, and all feats grant options.

I am leaning towards the 2nd choice being the better one. This way combative feats don't have to fight for space with exploration or interaction feats as much. If the most combative feats granted options like an extra at-will (nice, but not better than any of the at-wills you already have) or combat trade-offs (like power attack's trade of attack for damage), I believe they could be better balanced against things like Skill Training, Skill bonuses, skill utilities, extra languages, and so forth.

I like the second choice, as well.

It's possible the design was intentional, but that would just make it willful stupidity instead of incompetence. Anything that is more or less required should simply be introduced as a class feature, otherwise it simply becomes a "feat tax," and, worse, not taking it is more or less a trap option for players who are less familiar with the system. The relatively tight game balance of 4e means that there is a strong concept of what is level appropriate and what it is not, and there is generally an expectation (both in the rules and by most DMs) that players are going to stay roughly within that standard. This is also my argument against option 1. If it's something you have to take, it should just be something that appears, rather than anything with any choice involved, because all that does is introduce the option to do it wrong and screw up your character.

So, I like option 2. It seems like it's closer to what feats are intended to be, anyway-- or at least, were, in 3e. My problem with applying this to 4e is the divide between feats and powers. I'm not nearly as familiar with 4e, but it was always my impression that "adding options" was precisely what powers in 4e were for. Regardless of whether you're a warrior, caster, support class, or whatever, as you acquire powers, you have more options in how you're able to do the job that your character has.

So, what should feats do? Well, they could always provide the opportunity to swap out some of your class features and get class features that belong to another class. This would be kind of how multiclass feats already work, but this would be based on a system where the class features that you're trading around are something resembling balanced, instead of the way they are now. I could also see them providing a situational bonus that would depend on the game but is not essential, but this would be a bit tough to balance, and it's also not particularly interesting. Or, yeah, do what beejazz did and merge feats and powers.

[Seraph]

Having VERY little experience with 4e, I don't think I can be much help.  If I recall, it was one PbP that never made it past the first encounter.  I had to look up what NAD meant, since I'd never seen the acronym before.   

But do feats that provide bonuses on things, as opposed to just options, automatically make them feats you "NEED to take?"

[Xeviat]

Sparkletwist, powers in 4E don't just add options, they add power. At first level, you have 1 encounter attack and 1 daily attack. At 9th level, you have 3 encounter attacks and 3 daily attacks. Not only do you have more options on which attacks to use, you have more attacks that are bigger than your standards. If encounter powers were all pulled from the same pool of points that did not grow as you gained levels, then getting new ones would just be new options.

An example from early editions is a Wizard, their spell slots, and their spell book. A wizard had a number of slots determined by their level and Intelligence (in 3rd); their spell book is filled by their level and also their gold. Spending gold on filling the spell book is good, as it isn't a discrete increase in power, but an increase in options which could situationally prove more powerful.

[sparkletwist]

Well, sure, I get that. That doesn't invalidate anything I'm saying, though. There are plenty of feats that add power, too, and they have prerequisites so that they are not all coming from the same pool-- you can't take them until you've gained some other ability, or reached a certain level, or whatever. There are even feats that grant powers! It still seems like an overlap that doesn't need to be there, to me.

[Xeviat]

Yeah, I'm saying that I don't think feats should grant power slots, or combative numerical bonuses (attack, damage, AC, saves); Instead, I think they should grant combat, exploration, and interaction options. Heck, they probably shouldn't even grant hard and fast skill bonuses, as some of them can be used offensively (and if someone can get a skill bonus, any skill DC system is going to end up accounting for it or be broken by it). But I don't think we're on separate pages here, I just wanted to clarify that the powers that characters gain in 4E aren't "options" in the sense that I'm using the word: they're bonuses.

It goes towards an article Monte Cook wrote at his brief time back at WotC earlier this year. It was about the concept of representing increased skill through means other than increased numbers. I now think that feats like "Weapon Focus" could grant an at-will option for use with that weapon (I'm focused in swords, so I can do the "Silent Cut" maneuver).

[sparkletwist]

I now think that feats like "Weapon Focus" could grant an at-will option for use with that weapon (I'm focused in swords, so I can do the "Silent Cut" maneuver).

I feel like we're tripping over terminology, here. You call this an "at-will option," but what this really is, at least as I understand it, is a capability that you have that is something other than a basic attack. In the structure of 4e, how is this anything other than a power?

[Xeviat]

It's different from gaining a power slot because it doesn't up your "DPR" or expected damage per combat like getting a new slot does. At 9th level in 4E, a character has 3 encounter and 3 daily slots; if they're conservative and there are no exceptionally hard encounters, they'll probably use 1 daily per fight. If they were to gain a new encounter power, which deals, lets say, 2d8 damage more than their at-will attack, they now potentially deal 2d8 more damage that fight.

Gaining a new at-will, though, if balanced against the other at-wills, does not increase their expected output in a fight. It gives them another choice that may be circumstantially better, but it isn't a real increase.

In 3E terms, it's like the sorcerer gaining a new spell known or a new spell slot; a new slot increases their output in a given day, while a new spell known just increases their options.

So, spending a feat to gain a new at-will is "gaining a power", but it is not actually increasing your output like spending a feat to gain an encounter power would be; spending a feat to gain an encounter power you can use instead of another encounter, though, would be something that would be allowable with the distinction I am desiring.

[sparkletwist]

So, spending a feat to gain a new at-will is "gaining a power", but it is not actually increasing your output like spending a feat to gain an encounter power would be; spending a feat to gain an encounter power you can use instead of another encounter, though, would be something that would be allowable with the distinction I am desiring.

That makes sense now, but it feels like this distinction is a little bit difficult to make exactly because of the way 4e uses its terminology. I do definitely understand how adding an encounter or daily power would be adding actual power where a new at-will (at least if it's balanced) wouldn't. The sorcerer analogy was good; I think that the distinction between a "power slot" (which I was never advocating giving more of) and a "power" is somewhat vague in 4e as written.

As a random tangent, I wonder if disconnecting the concept of "power slots" from "powers" would be a good one. Essentially, it'd take the sorcerer model one step further, adding flexibility-- but, on the other hand, it might just lead to using one encounter power over and over until you run out of slots. (Like if you're playing an MMORPG and just clicking the same button over and over!)

[beejazz]

4e's system where every time you increase the "spells known" equivalent you increase the "spell slot" equivalent. If you're going full homebrew that doesn't have to be the case. In my system, I use a stance system, and the slots for stances are pretty rigid. So players having lots of stances vs lots of at-will powers isn't that big a deal. I also have prep slots for de-facto encounter powers (I typically only use that format to prevent spamming), but players only get one. Same deal.

EDIT: Sparkle's got a good point about spamming until slots run out. Not sure how you'd want to address that.

[Xeviat]

4E Psionics uses points to upgrade at-wills to encounter level effects. You can spam the same one over and over again. Then again, a 3E and previous Wizard could prepare the same spell in each slot of that level anyway (and fill higher level slots with metamagic versions: I am the magic missile king!). I personally don't think it would be that big of a deal if someone used the same encounter over and over again; it would require encounters to be designed against each other and have them upgrade at the same time, let characters of certain levels have one encounter that is clearly better than the others.

Some of the Essentials classes operate with a single encounter power, and they can spend feats to gain other options for that encounter power. I'd call it the same thing. Granted, it would make the Wizard feel more like a Sorcerer.