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## Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Essence
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### Re: Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Post by Essence » Wed May 12, 2004 2:52 am

Because of the number of times I've seen Fighters get stuck using the same type of weapon their entire carreers, while every other character around them grabs whatever's best from the loot pile and runs with it. Having 2-5 of your feats be useless because the +5 keen speed ruin souldrinker blade is a Falchion instead of a Battleaxe is just plain sucky.
And I don't want, as the DM, to have to ask the Fighter what he has Weapon Focus in every time I make a damn loot chart, either.
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I_mongo
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### Re: Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Post by I_mongo » Thu May 13, 2004 5:16 am

A feat’s power could expand based on a character’s level, much like a spell’s damage and range increases per level.
For example, the Dodge feat would give you a +1 bonus initially, then another +1 per 5 character levels. So a 1st level character taking Dodge would gain +1 to AC. This would increase to +2 at 5th level, then to +3 at 10th level, etc.
It doesn’t matter when you gain the feat, the bonus is always based on your character level. So a 10th level character can take the Dodge feat as his fighter bonus feat and immediately gain +3 to AC.
Actually, since feats are the fighter’s primary class ability, most feats should increase their power based on BAB, not character level.
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Username17
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### Re: Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Post by Username17 » Thu May 13, 2004 6:40 am

> Actually, since feats are the fighter’s primary class ability, most feats should increase their power based on BAB, not character level.

If we were attempting to accept and reinforce the current paradigm where multiclassing Warriors was decent and multiclassing Warriors with spellcasters was like replacing your blood with benzene, yes.
However, the ultimate goal, I believe, is to make taking any level as your next level game balanced - to make any possible combination of classes non-sucky.
If that's going to happen, wizard levels and fighter levels are going to have to synergize. And that means that taking levels of Wizard shouldn't shut off any of your Fighter class features and vice versa (so Arcane Spellfailure has to be replaced with non-proficiency spell failure). It also means that the whole concept of Fighter levels not counting for spell power and Wizard levels not counting for weapon power also has to go.
I'm not even sure the game can sustain different base saves and BAB, but it certainly can't sustain Fighter or Wizard levels counting 50% or not at all towards the level based scaling of abilities you've already paid for.
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Essence
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### Re: Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Post by Essence » Thu May 13, 2004 5:44 pm

I entirely disagree. It's perfectly viable for Wizards to retain a low BAB and Fighters to retain no spell advancement -- if the aquisition of a 3/4 BAB and a 1/2 spell advancement can be made as powerful as a 1 BAB or a 1 spell advancement individually.
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Username17
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### Re: Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Post by Username17 » Thu May 13, 2004 7:53 pm

> Essence at [unixtime wrote:1084470294[/unixtime]]I entirely disagree. It's perfectly viable for Wizards to retain a low BAB and Fighters to retain no spell advancement -- if the aquisition of a 3/4 BAB and a 1/2 spell advancement can be made as powerful as a 1 BAB or a 1 spell advancement individually.

Other than just being generally disagreeable, why even post that?
Do you have some method by which fighter levels and wizard levels can synergize while still having all of your wizard levels stop advancing if you take a fighter level and have all of your fighter abilties stop advancing if you take a wizard level?
I'm just thinking of basic power dynamics.
If you start at level 1 with a level of Fighter or a level of Wizard, you have some amount of power. Let's assume for the sake of argument that we've figured out some killer app by which they are perfectly balanced.
Now, if you take another level of the same class, you get some amount of bonus power from the second level, the abilities you got from the first level, however, also improve. If you take a level of the other class, you get the same benefit as taking the first level, but your other level doesn't improve.
This is doable, each level could improve the other levels somewhat an give diminishing returns for itself. That is, the first level could provide power of X + y, and the second level could improve the first level's abilities by y and add only X power itself, for a total power of 2X + 2y. Then if you multiclassed, neither level would be improved by the other, but you'd be getting X + y power off of both, for a total power level of 2X + 2y either way.
But imagine if you took a third level... it's going to improve both of your similar levels if you have them, and only one of your similar levels if you multiclassed.
To keep things balanced over 20 levels, each first level would have to provide as much benefit all by itself as a 20th level in a class provides to all 19 previous levels in the same class. That is, level 1 Fighter would have to provide as much benefit as adding a 20th caster level does to all 19 caster levels worth of spell slots for a 20th level character.
And yet, if that were the case, a triple classed character of 18/1/1 would end up larger than a 20th level character of a single class.
I don't think it's doable. If you can come up with some incredibly weird power growth pattern in which you can add dicontinuous beginnings of the progression or continue to stack legos on to the end - then you are the mack daddy of math and I bow to you.
As is, the only progressions I can come up with which are fiar are:
True Linear. No abilities in class synergize at all, and each character is just 20 separate abilties which are each valued at face value.
True Stacking. All abilities synergize, and each character is 20 abilities all scaled up to 20th level in either quadratic or exponential form.
Neither of these allows for taking a Wizard level to improve your previous Wizard abilities if taking a Fighter level doesn't. It has to be neither or both, I can't see it working any other way.
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Essence
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### Re: Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Post by Essence » Thu May 13, 2004 10:58 pm

> Frank wrote:Do you have some method by which fighter levels and wizard levels can synergize while still having all of your wizard levels stop advancing if you take a fighter level and have all of your fighter abilties stop advancing if you take a wizard level?

Sure. Add spells to the Wizard spell list that are more powerful than normal Wizard spells, more combat-oriented than normal Wizard spells, and require a BAB of 11 or higher to cast.
Or create some Wizard spells that require normal attack rolls, but have devestating effects if they hit, thereby making a Fighter's BAB and Weapon Focus: Ray or whatever very useful if not deadly in the hands of the right Wizard.
Or, provide for bonus Fighter feats that dramatically improve the combat-related spells that already exist within the Wizard spell list.
Or, create a selection of moderately uber Fighter feats that have "ability to cast [randomjspell]" as prerequisites.
There's lots and lots of ways to provide for a Fighter 10/Wizard 10 to retain equivalent power to a Fighter 20 or a Wizard 20. They just don't exist yet. I don't percieve that as much of a problem. Why do you?
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Username17
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### Re: Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Post by Username17 » Fri May 14, 2004 12:24 am

> Sure. Add spells to the Wizard spell list that are more powerful than normal Wizard spells, more combat-oriented than normal Wizard spells, and require a BAB of 11 or higher to cast.

So your solution is to have Fighter Levels add to your wizard level power, but only if you first give up absolutely everything you were doing before and learn a whole new spellbook of spells.
:thumbs down:

> There's lots and lots of ways to provide for a Fighter 10/Wizard 10 to retain equivalent power to a Fighter 20 or a Wizard 20.

And they all include taking levels of Fighter imply an improvement to the abilities you got with your Wizard levels.
All of them. Every single god damned one of them. Without exception.
You can come up with extremely complictaed methods of having special BAB-mediated progression to spellcasting which is over and above the progression that they get from spellcaster levels (note that it would have to be at least twice as big as the benefits you get from spellcaster levels because you get BAB at 1/2 even when you take spellcaster levels), but that's still just having your Fighter levels progress your spellcasting.
You can have it wear a funny hat, but you still have to do it.
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Desdan_Mervolam
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### Re: Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Post by Desdan_Mervolam » Fri May 14, 2004 12:41 am

I don't know exactly what needs to be done to make spellcasting classes stack properly with other classes, but I do know that the first step is to standardize saves by character level and to change everything that relies on caster level to rely on character level instead.
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MrWaeseL
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### Re: Fixing some of the sorrier feats in the PHB.

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Post by MrWaeseL » Mon May 24, 2004 9:40 am

Maybe a point system in which you spend a certain amount of points each level on abilities, and an amount at the start to determine BAB/HD regardless of build?
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