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## Basic Feat Design Rules

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RandomCasualty
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### Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Tue Apr 27, 2004 2:05 am

This was somewhat inspired by Lago's thread about fixing the PHB feats, and I figured I'd spawn another thread based on what exactly makes for a balanced feat.
I've got some basic principles when it comes to feats.
First
A. A feat should never turn a situational penalty into a situational bonus, or vice versa: Being in certain situations, like being flanked, or blinded are bad things. Whatever a feat does, at best it should negate the penalty for being in a bad situation and not give you a bonus for being in that bad situation.
B. Feats should never breach the scope of the action: Whenever you're dealing with any action, an attack of opportunity, a standard attack or whatever, a feat should never allow you to do stuff that goes beyond the scope of that action. In an attack of opportunity, you are allowed to attack only the target who provoked the AoO. Any ability that lets you attack others or move is going beyond that scope and just begging for problems. An ability triggered by an AoO should be able to affect the target that provoked it, and it should only impact him in a negative way only. It should not allow you to swap weapons, make any kind of movement or do other stuff you normally couldn't do if the guy didnt' provoke the AoO.
C. Feats should never punish someone for being successful: This is an extension of rule A. It's ok to screw someone if they fail something against you, but it's not ok to gain a benefit because someone successful hits you, disarms you, trips you or breaks your sword. At most it should alleviate the condition, but you never should be in better shape because you failed to hold off an attack. If you want to gain a bonus of some kind it should never be because someone successfully did something to you.
Now, some feats that break these rules: cleaving off AoOs, Karmic Strike, Elusive target, Sidestep, Spell Opportunity, Opportunity power.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Username17 » Tue Apr 27, 2004 4:44 am

And yet, I don't have any problem at all with Cleave plus Combat Reflexes. It doesn't unbalance play and makes for an entertaining situation in game.
So while I'm hearing you on A, I don't think that B is valid. For one thing, B is incoherent. The "scope" of an action is you making attacks, or being attacked, or whatever.
C is problematic as well. I have no problem with abilities that allow you to take attacks of opportunity against actions which do not normally provoke an attack of opportunity. The "Kick 'em while they're down" feat from 3rd edition was fine (it's gone in 3.5, where mysteriously absolutely everyone has that moderately powerful ability for free). Taking an activity which is normally neutral and turning it to your advantage is certainly fine.
In fact, I think I only provisionally support your conclusion A. And that's only because otherwise people do stupid crap like closing their eyes in order to protect themselves from flanking. Really, the only important thing in here is to prevent people from voluntarily rolling over on the ground, or shutting their eyes, or stabbing themselves in the belly or something before going into battle.
Of course, even that is OK if you have a really weird fighting style. I can think of a Tekken character who fights from the ground preferentially, and I can think of more than one group of flagellants who whipped themselves to get angry enough for battle, and I can even think of more than one character in stories who close their eyes in order to drown out distractions while in combat.
All this is fine, actually. If you sink a little bit of resources (say, the proceeds from a single level), then a disadvantageous situation should at best be reverted back to neutral. But if you invest significantly at all into something (say, the proceeds from two or more levels), that really is your schtick. You are the Blind Archer now - and there's no reason why wearing a blindfold shouldn't be to your advantage now. It adds flavor to people.
And it's game mechanically identical to just negating their vision penalties and then giving them a bonus all the time. It's just way more awesome.
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RandomCasualty
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Tue Apr 27, 2004 6:05 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083041074[/unixtime]]
> So while I'm hearing you on A, I don't think that B is valid. For one thing, B is incoherent. The "scope" of an action is you making attacks, or being attacked, or whatever.

What I mean with the scope of the action is that you shouldn't be able to do something you couldn't do otherwise basically. In other words, someone provoking an attack of opportunity shouldn't allow you to take a move action. It's stupid from a game design point of view. Nor should you be able to cleave someone else for another's AoO. Basically you're modifying something that has nothing to do with an AoO.
The best example for stupid scope defying stuff is the old expert tactician feat from sword and fist that actually gave you a free action everytime someone didn't have their dex bonus against you. So you could actually drink a potion for free cause some moron let his guard down.
As soon as you allow stuff to go beyond the scope and break the rule, you find all sorts of new exploits like having a bunch of summoned rats run by someone provoking AoOs and allowing them to nuke the BBEG or get tons of 5' steps across the battlefield. And it's bad design to allow that.

> C is problematic as well. I have no problem with abilities that allow you to take attacks of opportunity against actions which do not normally provoke an attack of opportunity. The "Kick 'em while they're down" feat from 3rd edition was fine (it's gone in 3.5, where mysteriously absolutely everyone has that moderately powerful ability for free). Taking an activity which is normally neutral and turning it to your advantage is certainly fine.

Provoking AoOs from stuff should only happen when your opponent fails. Something like sidestep charge from the new psiHB is fine, because the guy has to miss you. Something like Karmic strike is bad, because it punishes the enemy for succeeding. In fact he might be better off if he missed you altogether. Either you should be able to Karmic strike anyone who attacks you, or you should only do it to people who miss you. Being able to do it only when you actually get hit is stupid. It's like a spell that deals damage only when you successfully save against it.

> Of course, even that is OK if you have a really weird fighting style. I can think of a Tekken character who fights from the ground preferentially, and I can think of more than one group of flagellants who whipped themselves to get angry enough for battle, and I can even think of more than one character in stories who close their eyes in order to drown out distractions while in combat.

It's ok to fight as well as you do without the distraction, but if it suddenly becomes advantageous for you to do something bad, then it screws with the combat system. The best example of that is elusive target's anti-flank ability. In this case, it's better to be flanked. Not only that but you can have your high level rogue buddy flank you and then take sneak attacks through you to hit the enemy flat footed. Not only is he striking a flat footed target, he's also gaining reach from the ability.
And that's what happens when you don't follow the rule. Basically it becomes advantageous for your allies to turn against you and do stupid stuff like declaring an attack on you for the purpose of striking through you.

> All this is fine, actually. If you sink a little bit of resources (say, the proceeds from a single level), then a disadvantageous situation should at best be reverted back to neutral.

Reverting to neutral is absolutely fine. If you fight flanked as well as you do not flanked, that's fine. But if you fight better while flanked, that's stupid.
The main point to all these rules is to prevent a couple things.
1) Stupid stuff where you gain bonuses by your allies turning against you or by introducing minor and inconsequential targets to the battlefield, like rats.
2) Foes are forced to metagame to beat you by employing illogical tactics, like avoiding flanking a person at all costs (which should be an advantageous position).
Because the way I see it, when you break any of the three rules in some way, generally you introduce one of these two problems.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Username17 » Tue Apr 27, 2004 6:56 am

> Provoking AoOs from stuff should only happen when your opponent fails.

How exactly is it a failure on your opponent's part to attempt to initiate a grapple against you?
This sentence essentially makes no sense.
As for the rest of it - your argument that there is any problem with karmic strike makes less sense than an argument that Ash Rats and Fire Mephits shouldn't be healed when subject to fire. I mean, with Karmic Strike you still do damage to them at least.

> It's ok to fight as well as you do without the distraction, but if it suddenly becomes advantageous for you to do something bad, then it screws with the combat system.

Only if it's an ability that lots of people have - such as Uncanny Dodge. If it's an ability you have to voluntarily get, there's no problem. If one guy is the guy who wears a blindfold into battle because he fights better that way - that's cool. If everyone fights better with the blindfolds that's retarded. It's a fine line - not an absolute like you are painting it to be.

> And that's what happens when you don't follow the rule. Basically it becomes advantageous for your allies to turn against you and do stupid stuff like declaring an attack on you for the purpose of striking through you.

Or you could say that it's a completely valid cooperative fighting style in which one character obscures the attack build-up of another character, only to step away at the last minute and leave the enemy with not enough time to prepare a defense before a devastating attack comes through.
It's all presentation. The character isn't attempting to stab his friend in the face, he's cooperating with a very fast and mobile ally to get an advantage in combat - how that's represented in game mechanics doesn't make it stupid.

> Stupid stuff where you gain bonuses by your allies turning against you or by introducing minor and inconsequential targets to the battlefield, like rats.

If that's your fighting style, what's wrong with that? There's room for a Willard-style character who has a lot of rats running around distracting foes. There's room for elaborate combination attacks set up with cues and specific positioning.
I honestly don't see your problem with any of the specific examples you have given.
Now the whole thing "Blindness supercedes flanking" was just retarded, but only because the penalties of blindness are easier to overcome than the penalties of flanking. If the rules were instead that overcoming one problem always necessarily overcame the other, there would be no problem with blindness superceding flanking and you could have a perfectly workable system with that in it.

> Foes are forced to metagame to beat you by employing illogical tactics, like avoiding flanking a person at all costs (which should be an advantageous position).

How is that a metagame or illogical tactic? If some guy is the guy who has a fighting style based on being able to fight forward and backwards simultaneously, why would it be at all weird to want to come at the guy from right angles?
If people have specific fighting styles that make people want to fight them in specifically different ways, that's really fricking cool. It's not a problem.
It only becomes a problem if one or more of these strange battle tactics becomes so widely used that these "different" fighting tactics become standard. If everyone is trying to get in at right angles to enemies instead of coming from two sides - that's weird and kind of dumb. But if it's the way you have to go about fighting Grand Master Shen, that's good for the game.
I can't put enough emphasis on that. Having the occassional character who actively seeks situations that other characters would go out and actively avoid is how character specialization in a cooperative storytelling game works. If you are the guy who flies and has a bow, being 100 feet in the air is pretty much your bag and you try to do it as often as possible. If you are anyone else, that's the place where you are about to pancake and it's a very bad thing for you. Similarly, if you bullrush the first guy off a cliff, that just means he's out of youtr melee range, while bullrushing a normal guy is a decent tactic.
That's good. Not "bad" like you keep trying to make it out to be.
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RandomCasualty
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Tue Apr 27, 2004 3:23 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083049006[/unixtime]]
> How exactly is it a failure on your opponent's part to attempt to initiate a grapple against you?

If you intiate a grapple without improved grapple feat, then you've made a poor tactical choice. This in a manner of speaking, is a failure.

> As for the rest of it - your argument that there is any problem with karmic strike makes less sense than an argument that Ash Rats and Fire Mephits shouldn't be healed when subject to fire. I mean, with Karmic Strike you still do damage to them at least.

Healing from fire is ok, because we expect enemies to have resistances and perhaps even feed on energy sources, and so there's no metagaming from that.
Our characters however do NOT expect someone to gain extra speed from being struck by your weapon and in so doing gain a free attack. It's totally counterintuitive and requires you metagame to fight such an ability. And anyone who doesn't metagame gets hosed.

> Only if it's an ability that lots of people have - such as Uncanny Dodge. If it's an ability you have to voluntarily get, there's no problem. If one guy is the guy who wears a blindfold into battle because he fights better that way - that's cool. If everyone fights better with the blindfolds that's retarded. It's a fine line - not an absolute like you are painting it to be.

OK, there are certain disadvantages and bad things that can happen to you in combat, like getting flanked. The moment you make it so that being flanked is a good thing, then you force the opponents to metagame. Monsters now have to actively prevent themselves from flanking someone, and the target of the flank now actively seeks to be flanked. That's retarded.
Flanking should either be a bad condition or a neutral condition, it should never be a favorable one.

> Or you could say that it's a completely valid cooperative
> It's all presentation. The character isn't attempting to stab his friend in the face, he's cooperating with a very fast and mobile ally to get an advantage in combat - how that's represented in game mechanics doesn't make it stupid.

Sure it does. Why you suddenly gain reach and a free sneak attack when your friend happens to be standing there and you take a stab at him... that's very stupid. It's an attack you normally couldn't have ever made if you didn't take an attack on your friend. You couldn't even reach your target!

> If that's your fighting style, what's wrong with that? There's room for a Willard-style character who has a lot of rats running around distracting foes. There's room for elaborate combination attacks set up with cues and specific positioning.

When you derive AoOs from killing your own rats, that's not willard-style, that's munchkin style. You're deriving combat bonuses from nothing more than metagaming. Killing your own allies should NEVER give you bonuses. If you want to have a bunch of rats using the "aid another" action, that's perfectly fine... but having them there so they can be cleave targets and allow you to cheese out some more attacks is totally dumb. It makes no sense in character, and it makes no sense from a game standpoint either.

> Now the whole thing "Blindness supercedes flanking" was just retarded, but only because the penalties of blindness are easier to overcome than the penalties of flanking. If the rules were instead that overcoming one problem always necessarily overcame the other, there would be no problem with blindness superceding flanking and you could have a perfectly workable system with that in it.

Blindness and flanking is another basic example of these principles at work. Basically anything that causes you to do something stupid to try to gain a bonus is bad game design. Stupid stuff being, closing your eyes, attacking one of your allies and wanting to get hit in combat.

> How is that a metagame or illogical tactic? If some guy is the guy who has a fighting style based on being able to fight forward and backwards simultaneously, why would it be at all weird to want to come at the guy from right angles?

Because flanking someone should be an advantage in all cases. Being surrounded is bad no matter who you are. It's basic military tactics to want to flank someone, and while it's ok to have someone whose good at beating flanks, having someone who thrives in flanks screws everything up, because now you have your opponents metagaming to beat the feat.

> If people have specific fighting styles that make people want to fight them in specifically different ways, that's really fricking cool. It's not a problem.

If it turns a disadvantage into an advantage, then it's a problem, especially if it's something you expect your enemies to do, like flank you. When it's something you can trigger yourself, that's OK, when it needs an outside force to trigger, it must follow this rule or it forces metagaming and/or stupid tactics.
Feats shouldnt' be counterintuitive, and feats like elusive target are heavily counter intuitive. If you're flanked, one guy ALWAYS misses his first attack. Always. Doesn't matter if he's got true strike on, doesn't matter if he's a level 500 fighter and you've got 10 AC. He always misses it. So if you've got that feat you want to be flanked, you set yourself up to be flanked, and that forces enemies to metagame to beat you.
Same with cleaving off AoOs. You run a bunch of rats down a corridor, and you AoO them and then use those AoOs to take out a bigger foe. There's no real reason your character should be doing that, as dividing his attention between two combats is a bad thing and should not help him... but mechanically it's better for him to do so.

> It only becomes a problem if one or more of these strange battle tactics becomes so widely used that these "different" fighting tactics become standard. If everyone is trying to get in at right angles to enemies instead of coming from two sides - that's weird and kind of dumb. But if it's the way you have to go about fighting Grand Master Shen, that's good for the game.

I disagree here. It's ok to say "tripping doesn't have any effect on this guy, he fights just as well on the ground." but to say that flanking actually becomes a bad thing. Nobody can know that unless they metagame like a whore and that's not good for the game.
There are basic military tactics that should pretty much always work.
- Outnumbering a defender should be advantageous to the attacker.
- Flanking should be the most advantageous position you can have in combat with regards to offensively attacking an opponent.
There are more but those are the primary ones I'm focusing on right now.

> I can't put enough emphasis on that. Having the occassional character who actively seeks situations that other characters would go out and actively avoid is how character specialization in a cooperative storytelling game works. If you are the guy who flies and has a bow, being 100 feet in the air is pretty much your bag and you try to do it as often as possible. If you are anyone else, that's the place where you are about to pancake and it's a very bad thing for you. Similarly, if you bullrush the first guy off a cliff, that just means he's out of youtr melee range, while bullrushing a normal guy is a decent tactic.

Flying doesn't really turn a disadvantageous situation into an advantageous one, it just eliminates falling as a disadvantage and makes you more mobile. It doesn't really take metagame tactics to fight against a flying opponent, as it does someone with elusive target.
Also, remember that whenever you reward a character for a disadvantageous situation, you're actually rewarding him for being stupid. Someone with elusive target against gains bonuses for allowing the enemy to flank him. Someone with Karmic strike is rewarded for his abysmal AC. Cleaving off AoOs rewards you for killing your allies.
Now, perhaps you feel a bit different about it, but I don't think it's ever a good idea to reward stupidity. And these rules basically present good guidelines to creating feats that don't reward stupidity.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Username17 » Tue Apr 27, 2004 4:19 pm

> Our characters however do NOT expect someone to gain extra speed from being struck by your weapon and in so doing gain a free attack. It's totally counterintuitive and requires you metagame to fight such an ability. And anyone who doesn't metagame gets hosed.

So when the giant demon porcupine gets a chance to poke you with quills every time you hit it with a melee weapn, that requires metagaming on the part of the players?
No wait, you only apply this logic to "people" and not to "monsters". Any class of ability that a monster can have, a character can also have. It's not metagaming, you are applying a senseless double standard to character abilities and not making any sense. People have abilities, sometimes those abilites are visually obvious, sometimes they are not obvious until they are used.
Is it metagaming to stop using fire attacks on someone once you found out that they feed on fire? Is it metagaming to switch off of melee attacks when you discover that an enemy has some kind of damage shield (whether it be karmic strike or a Mimic's glue)? Of course not. Characters have abilities, and responding to those abilities is part of the game.

> Flanking should either be a bad condition or a neutral condition, it should never be a favorable one.

Not even when you are armed with a bazooka? Some weapons really do go forward and backward at the same time.
Thus, your argument is retarded. It is entirely possible to envision a fighting style or a weapon which would be strictly superior if your enemies obliged you by lining up relative to you - because those are real.
There are real circumstances which can turn just about any "disadvantageous situation" into an advantageous one - if only because it makes your opponents underestimate your capabilities. In stories this is exemplified by the way James Bond gets captured all the time. That's good for him.

> Sure it does. Why you suddenly gain reach and a free sneak attack when your friend happens to be standing there and you take a stab at him... that's very stupid. It's an attack you normally couldn't have ever made if you didn't take an attack on your friend. You couldn't even reach your target!

And then you got help from your friend, allowing you to reach your enemy and sneak attack them. How is that even difficult to visualize? Just watch any episode of tag team wrestling ever to watch this technique in action at least once.

> Killing your own allies should NEVER give you bonuses.

What are Evil Clerics supposed to do then?

> Stupid stuff being, closing your eyes, attacking one of your allies and wanting to get hit in combat.

Again, none of this is stupid if that's your schtick! Really. You don't have a leg to stand on. Zen Archers can blindfold themselves for bonuses - that's awesome, not stupid. Combining attacks with ally abilities is smart, not stupid (if one of your allies is healed by fire, throwing a fire "attack" on them is completely sensible). There are real people who fight better after they have been hit a few times. This is a real ability that real people really have - so I can't see as how putting that in the game makes it in any way stupid.
Your primary point - that only monsters should be puzzle monsters - is completely rejected by me. You are totally wrong, and just about everything you have been complaining about is conceptually the most entertaining stuff in the whole game.

> - Outnumbering a defender should be advantageous to the attacker.

Unless the defender is the founder of Aikido or something and has a specific ability to turn that advantage against them.

> - Flanking should be the most advantageous position you can have in combat with regards to offensively attacking an opponent.

Unless that means that your opponent can turn both ends of his fire thrower on you at the same time - interfering with both of your attacks instead of just one. Or whatever.
Nothing is good all the time. If it was, the game wouldn't be any fun because there would be nothing to think about.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Tue Apr 27, 2004 5:09 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083082746[/unixtime]]
> No wait, you only apply this logic to "people" and not to "monsters". Any class of ability that a monster can have, a character can also have. It's not metagaming, you are applying a senseless double standard to character abilities and not making any sense. People have abilities, sometimes those abilites are visually obvious, sometimes they are not obvious until they are used.

WHen you're dealing with a spell or monster ability, it's ok. When its a feat that's doing it, it's completely stupid. If a creature has acid for blood, it's ok for it to possibly do something bad if you damage it. But the ability to attack someone simply because they hurt you is stupid. It actually benefits you to have bad AC, and has no real game basis beyond "gee it'd be cool if I could get more extra attacks."
It's not that I'm against feats giving you extra attacks, just those extra attacks should be something that punishes the enemy for failing, or is even. So as I said before, it'd be ok from a design point of view to AoO anyone who missed you, or AoO anyone who attacks you, but to selectively target those who actually succeed is bad.

> Is it metagaming to switch off of melee attacks when you discover that an enemy has some kind of damage shield (whether it be karmic strike or a Mimic's glue)? Of course not. Characters have abilities, and responding to those abilities is part of the game.

Against karmic strike... yeah it is. Basically your character has to come to the in character conclusion that his enemy is at his strongest when a sword is being driven into his gut, and to do that you've gotta metagame, because no sane person would come to that conclusion.

> Not even when you are armed with a bazooka? Some weapons really do go forward and backward at the same time.

Uhh... for one thing this has nothing to do with D&D... but speaking realistically, if you're using a bazooka in melee you're gonna get owned... badly.

> Thus, your argument is retarded. It is entirely possible to envision a fighting style or a weapon which would be strictly superior if your enemies obliged you by lining up relative to you - because those are real.

Not really, no. I can't think of anything that actually turns a disadvantage into an advantage.

> There are real circumstances which can turn just about any "disadvantageous situation" into an advantageous one - if only because it makes your opponents underestimate your capabilities.

If they underestimate you, that's different, but to gain an actual mechanical bonus for it, it's dumb.

> Killing your own allies should NEVER give you bonuses.

Magic can sometimes give bonuses through life drain and similar stuff, but even that has to be watched very carefully.

> Unless the defender is the founder of Aikido or something and has a specific ability to turn that advantage against them.

The goal of that is to neutralize the disadvantage of being outnumered, not to encourage you to get outnumbered. You will not find a single fighter in the world who is going to prefer fighting 10 men to one, assuming all are equally trained. You also won't find a fighter who would rather be flanked than fighting two opponents side by side. These things are basically base logical situations. Getting attacked in the back (aka flanked) is a bad thing. Getting outnumbered is a bad thing.
Depending on fighting style, you may be alright with being in one of these bad situations and be able to compensate, but you will never ever seek them out over a fair one on one battle, nor should you.

> Unless that means that your opponent can turn both ends of his fire thrower on you at the same time - interfering with both of your attacks instead of just one. Or whatever.

I can't think of a good example of such a case. A bazooka is rather not a good example because you can't use a bazooka in melee anyway without blowing yourself up, and the exhaust from the back is nothing compared to the explosion anyway.
If you're carrying a bazooka you dont' want to be in melee... period.

> Nothing is good all the time. If it was, the game wouldn't be any fun because there would be nothing to think about.

No, it may not always be good, but it shouldn't be bad either. It's ok for you to fight a barbarian where flanking does nothing against him. That's ok. It's also ok to realize that trip attacks won't work against something, that's OK too.
But things need to make sense too. If I hit an opponent in melee, I don't expect to be giving him free attacks on me. If the karmic strike feat was unknown, and suddenly the PCs encountered an NPC with that feat, just about every player would be whining about it when they figured out what it does.
There are exceptions to these rules which can exist, but they are so few and far between that for the most part the rules are pretty hard and fast.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Username17 » Tue Apr 27, 2004 5:24 pm

> WHen you're dealing with a spell or monster ability, it's ok. When its a feat that's doing it, it's completely stupid.

Are you high?
Feats are abilities, Gnomes are monsters. If it's OK for a monster ability to do it, it is definitionally OK for a feat to do it, because a feat is a monster ability.
There is nothing more to discuss, your whining all amounts to: you have a contradictory double standard which you attempting to inflict on the world. Please stop doing that.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Desdan_Mervolam » Tue Apr 27, 2004 6:20 pm

You know... I was watching Army of Darkness again last night. Not the best gem of the silver screen, but it's a good (cheesy) movie that's inspired many a gamer. There's one scene during the climactic battle near the end where Ash has a spear and he's using it like a quarterstaff against two deadites who are flanking him. He'd turn one way and smack a deadite with the head of the spear and the other with the butt, and then turn the otherway and hit them with the opposite ends. This tactic wouldn't have been nearly as effective if the deadites had been at noon and three, instead of noon and six. The point is that Ash was being flanked, and he turned it to his advantage.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Tue Apr 27, 2004 6:26 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083086697[/unixtime]]
> Feats are abilities, Gnomes are monsters. If it's OK for a monster ability to do it, it is definitionally OK for a feat to do it, because a feat is a monster ability.

Eh... you know what I meant... when i said "ability" I mean racial quality or special attack or whatever. So I see no point to nitpick this.

> There is nothing more to discuss, your whining all amounts to: you have a contradictory double standard which you attempting to inflict on the world. Please stop doing that.

A double standard perhaps yes. Do I think magical stuff and racial abilities should be able to do stuff feats cannot? Yeah sure, that's the point of magic and racial abiltiies.
Now, I don't need to tell you special abilities monsters have are better than feats. Unless you allow a PC fighter to pick up a gorgon's petrifying breath weapon or a great wyrm's breath as feats, then you already agree with me on this, as much as you hate to admit it, you too acknowledge the double standard in this fashion.
And really, everyone acknowledges this double standard, even the game designers. Why do you think monsters get at will abilities that no sane DM would ever give to a PC? This double standard is the reason LA exists in the first place, because we all can pretty much acknowledge monsters get cooler stuff than PCs do. Natural weapons and monster attack routines work differently than PC iterative attacks.
So please, do not make claims that somehow this double standard isn't what D&D balance is all about. The fact is that the game doesn't just have this double standard, it's drowning in it.
And honestly, I think the double standard is a good thing, because not all monsters are intelligent or capable of adapting. It's ok if PCs have to adapt to monster abilities, because we know 100% that they can. For monsters, any ability that requires adaptation to beat basically means that any non-intelligent or low intelligence monster gets hosed. We can't assume that monsters are necessarily going to be able to adapt and think like adventurers, so the double standard should be there.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Essence » Tue Apr 27, 2004 6:33 pm

In ninjitsu, there is an entire class of maneuvers called Yubi-Jitsu. Some of these maneuvers can be used during a stand-up fight, but the vast majority of them require you to be grappling -- and, in fact, require your opponent to be (apparently) winning the grapple. If your arms are busy attempting to dominate the grapple, they can't be busy planting nerve strikes into his armpits, between his ribs, or under his nose.
Just a random, real-life example of something that turns a situation that, in the attacker's mind, should be purely to his advantage (grappling a martial artist to prevent him from punching/kicking you), and turns it into a horrible disadvantage (pain enough to blind, cause muscles to lock up, and cause massive hypoventilation if it's maintained for any significant period of time).
Sorry, R.C. I gotta throw in my lot with Frank on this one.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by The_Hanged_Man » Tue Apr 27, 2004 6:46 pm

> Desdan_Mervolam at [unixtime wrote:1083090010[/unixtime]]You know... I was watching Army of Darkness again last night. Not the best gem of the silver screen, but it's a good (cheesy) movie that's inspired many a gamer.

Not the best gem? Them's fightin' words!
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Tue Apr 27, 2004 6:50 pm

> Essence at [unixtime wrote:1083090827[/unixtime]]In ninjitsu, there is an entire class of maneuvers called Yubi-Jitsu. Some of these maneuvers can be used during a stand-up fight, but the vast majority of them require you to be grappling -- and, in fact, require your opponent to be (apparently) winning the grapple. If your arms are busy attempting to dominate the grapple, they can't be busy planting nerve strikes into his armpits, between his ribs, or under his nose.

Well, this in D&D terms would be nothing more than a bonus to grapple checks. To "win" a grapple you pin someone and if you're pinned you can't do anything. Essentially this is a way to gain an advantage in a grapple, and it's part of the grapple check.
Taking advantage of an opponent's openings is certainly something combatants do, and you can make a fighting style about it, but it's still a contest. A skilled fighter may pin you without opening himself up in this manner, and once your pinned, you're screwed.
Essentially to take advantage of this fighting style your opponent has to fail his grapple check. Basicalyl he tries to establish a pin, but fails and then you screw him up for failing, which is perfectly ok. I have nothing against feats that punish failure more severely, such as sidestep charge from the new PsiHB. Those are good feats and perfectly fine, and a feat based off this style that gave an AoO everytime someone failed a grapple check against you would be okay too (at least as far as my rule guidelines are concerned).

> Just a random, real-life example of something that turns a situation that, in the attacker's mind, should be purely to his advantage (grappling a martial artist to prevent him from punching/kicking you), and turns it into a horrible disadvantage (pain enough to blind, cause muscles to lock up, and cause massive hypoventilation if it's maintained for any significant period of time).

Well, a grapple against a fighter type is never necessarily a tactical advantage. It can be but I don't consider it a basic principle. Grappling is only a good option if you're a better grappler than the guy you're grappling, which is really all subjective.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Maj » Tue Apr 27, 2004 7:12 pm

> Random Casualty wrote:Basically your character has to come to the in character conclusion that his enemy is at his strongest when a sword is being driven into his gut, and to do that you've gotta metagame, because no sane person would come to that conclusion.

I recommend you increase the Intelligence of your characters. To predetermine that your character would never think of such a thing is as much metagaming as knowing to use acid against your first troll. D&D is a world of magic and gods, where a lot of things that don't happen in the real world happen on a daily basis. There are a thousand reasons why being stabbed with a sword could make you stronger - maybe the magic on the sword is being absorbed and fed to the creature, maybe the creature gets really pissed off, maybe the creature has an illusion covering him and you only think he's been hit. If your characters are incapable of making something up to explain the bizarre, then it's because you know what's actually happening and won't let them think outside that box.
To extroplate that into the design of feats will do nothing but limit your fantasy world to what you can imagine in the real one, and that's a travesty.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Tue Apr 27, 2004 7:32 pm

> Maj at [unixtime wrote:1083093152[/unixtime]]If your characters are incapable of making something up to explain the bizarre, then it's because you know what's actually happening and won't let them think outside that box.

Well, this is why I think it's important that you limit such effects to magic only and not feats, because otherwise you're forced to have them reach stupid conclusions.

> To extroplate that into the design of feats will do nothing but limit your fantasy world to what you can imagine in the real one, and that's a travesty.

Which is generally a good idea. Imagination is what this game is all about, if you can't imagine something then why have it in the game at all? A real person doesnt' actually have to be able to do the stuff you're imagining, but it should generally be able to make sense.
From a game design point of view, karmic strike sucks. It penalizes your opponent for succeeding in breaching your defenses. Your defenses failed, why should you get a reward for it? That's bad design.
From a logical standpoint it's stupid too. You get a bonus attack when the sword is sticking in your gut, but not when the guy attacks your ally and leaves himself open, or when he attacks you and misses, which should also create an opening. The last place you should be gaining a bonus attack is the point after you just got stabbed.
I'm not sure what the point of having a feat which rewards you for failure, yet leaves success unrewarded. If I've got awesome AC, karmic strike gives me nothing. If I've got piss poor AC which I never bothered to ever improve, then karmic strike totally owns for me and gives me a bonus the guy with awesome AC can't get.
I always assumed that high numbers should always be a good thing, or at the very least a neutral thing. You shouldn't gain something for sucking in a certain area. It's like a feat rewarding you for having a low base attack bonus or rewarding you for not putting ranks in diplomacy. It makes no sense.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Joy_Division » Tue Apr 27, 2004 8:18 pm

I don't get this. If it's ok to turn a disadvantageous situation into a neutral one. And it's ok to turn a neutral situation to a advantageous one, each for the price of one feat. Then two feats should turn a disadvantageous situation into an advantageous one.
How hard is it to think of karmic strike as your opponent hitting you when you let your guard down as you hit him. Seriously it should only happen once, then your character adapts by fighting defensively or using expertise. All those other abilities can be feats too in fact the same person can have all of them.
I think it's really dumb to hose feats (and skills) because they're seen as mundane abilities but allow magic to do all the crazy ass shit. You're putting wizards and fighters in completely different worlds.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Maj » Tue Apr 27, 2004 8:27 pm

> RC wrote:Well, this is why I think it's important that you limit such effects to magic only and not feats, because otherwise you're forced to have them reach stupid conclusions.

They're stupid because... they're not right?
So long as there is a world where magic seems to infuse everything that exists in it, the ability of feats to allow for amazing feats of endurance or agility or intellect or whatever is completely understandable.
On the other hand, you may not play in a world like this, in which case, feats that don't allow amazing feats of whatever is perfectly fine.

> RC wrote:You get a bonus attack when the sword is sticking in your gut,

By your own flavor text, sure it makes sense. If his sword is stuck in your stomach, than that's one less hand and sharp pokey to defend himself with. If you're fast enough, just jab at him while his sword is stuck. It's like readying an action to attack when someone attacks you - only cheesier.
Quite honestly, your issues seem to revolve around your inability to justify something. If I want to look at the total defense action as a bonus of +4 to my AC so long as I give up the ability to attack, then I'm constantly running around with -4 AC anytime I want to attack. That's very similar to Karmic Strike, only it happens all the time and no one has a problem with it because they can make it make sense.
Just because it makes sense to you, doesn't mean that something it a good idea, though. Mechanical issues with special abilities ought to be taken into consideration, too, but special abilities shouldn't be discarded because a person can't find a way to justify them.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by The_Hanged_Man » Tue Apr 27, 2004 11:15 pm

RC, look at feats another way than as magic v. non-magic. Just pretend things work differently for lots of different reasons. Magic justifies some of them, and the laws of physics/biology/chemistry just being slightly different justify others (like flying dragons, suprafast monks, 6 arrows a round, and so on).
But really, you can justify it however you want from a RP perspective. You can justify Karmic Strike as working b/c monkeys fly out of some god's butt up on Mt. Olympus, or as some super-tricky ultra-feint. To the character's POV, it doesn't matter. There is nothing to justify to the character - stuff just happens.
Look at it another way. Say tomorrow you discover you can turn into a T Rex at will. Do you care if it's magic, a feat, a supernatural ability, or the whim of the gods? No. You don't need a justification - you just turn into a T Rex.
What I'm trying to say is that all justifications for rules are metagame thinking. To the characters, the rules are the world, and don't need justification.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Wed Apr 28, 2004 1:42 am

OK, the whole descriptive element is really secondary, I'm aware you can justify anything potentially and my main objections are from a game design point of view, not necessarily from a descriptive point of view.

> Joy_Division at [unixtime wrote:1083097122[/unixtime]]I don't get this. If it's ok to turn a disadvantageous situation into a neutral one. And it's ok to turn a neutral situation to a advantageous one, each for the price of one feat. Then two feats should turn a disadvantageous situation into an advantageous one.

A disadvantageous situation should never be better than a more advantageous one, because players and NPCs rely on those advantageous situations to determine their tactics. Sneak attacking your opponent for instance is a favorable situation. Now you can design something that helps you survive a sneak attack situation, but you should never be gaining ground when you get sneak attacked. That is the follow should always be true for any given rogue.
sneak attack >= a normal attack
Why? Because PC rogues are going to try to sneak attack, it's what they do. PC rogues will be really pissed if they sneak attack someone and it does worse than if they just used a normal attack, and they'd be perfectly within their rights to be angry. You've just turned an advantageous situation for them into a disadvantageous one, and that hoses them badly. It's bad enough you took away the advantage they derived from sneak attack, to hose them any further than that is completely bad design.
And the same goes with all other types of tactics. If your PC is currently meleeing the black knight and decides to have his cohort join the fight, the cohort should improve his chances of winning or not change them. They should never improve the black knight's chances.
When you throw in another combatant, at worst the black knight should just take him out in one swing and not be hindered in the least. If there's any way that outnumbering can favor the side that has fewer numbers, you can be sure that people will find a way to exploit it with stuff like the bag of rats trick. Now if you don't see a problem with the bag of rats, then there's nothing I can say to convince you, because you play a drastically different game than I do.

> I think it's really dumb to hose feats (and skills) because they're seen as mundane abilities but allow magic to do all the crazy ass shit. You're putting wizards and fighters in completely different worlds.

Just because feats shouldn't do stuff that breaks the rules or doesn't make sense doesn't mean they suck.
Sidestep charge from the XPsiHB is how an extra attack should have been handled, and it's really powerful.
+4 AC against charges, and if someone misses you after a charge attack you get an AoO on them.
Powerful, rewards you for having a high AC instead of punishing you like Karmic strike does, and makes a nice counter charge feat.
Feats don't need to use bad mechanics to be good, and they certainly don't need to reward you for failing.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Username17 » Wed Apr 28, 2004 2:08 am

> I'm aware you can justify anything potentially and my main objections are from a game design point of view, not necessarily from a descriptive point of view.

Which means that they make no sense.
From a game design standpoint, it makes no difference what the special effect of an ability is. So if it's OK for the flying archer to benefit from an enemy bullrushing them off a cliff - any other similar turnaround is likewise OK from a mechanic standpoint for anything else to do basically that - turn a normally reasonable tactic of an opponent into an advantage for you.
From a flavor standpoint, you don't have a leg to stand on. From mock retreats to splash weaponry, people have used ingenious tactics and strange situations to transform seemingly good positions into bad positions for longer than recorded history.
From both a flavor and a mechanic standpoint your complaint makes no sense.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Wed Apr 28, 2004 2:32 am

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083118099[/unixtime]]
> From a game design standpoint, it makes no difference what the special effect of an ability is. So if it's OK for the flying archer to benefit from an enemy bullrushing them off a cliff - any other similar turnaround is likewise OK from a mechanic standpoint for anything else to do basically that - turn a normally reasonable tactic of an opponent into an advantage for you.

I fail to see how it turns it into an advantage for you. You could have just as easily walked off the cliff yourself, so you aren't really gaining anything by having your opponent push you off of it.
Your bullrush example says nothing about the design concepts I'm talking about.. because it fully works into my system. All your example is doing is turning an unfavorable situation (taking falling damage) into a neutral one (taking no damage), and that's perfectly acceptable. You've just negated any advantage the other guy got from the bull rush, and my feat design rules totally say that is OK.
Unless your objective for posting this was to agree with me, which I doubt, then your example makes no sense.
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Essence
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Essence » Wed Apr 28, 2004 2:49 am

> RandomCasualty wrote:A disadvantageous situation should never be better than a more advantageous one, because players and NPCs rely on those advantageous situations to determine their tactics.

If your normal tactics don't work, and you don't have any other tactics to fall back on, you're losing D&D. I've seen what happens to a high-level Rogue when she encounters an opponent who heals from Sneak Attack dice but takes damage from regular attacks. Yeah, she gets pissed...but then, she changes tactics and beats the hell out of the opponent anyway. (In this case, by Sundering a Staff of the Magi right next to the bloke and using Improved Evasion to not really care. )
There are no classes which are so dependent on one shtick that they cannot survive when that shtick is taken away. There are characters who suffer from that problem, but that's a character design flaw, and entirely the player's fault. Nothing in the design of the classes or the inherent balance of the game makes anyone so dependent on a tactic that removing that tactic as a valid option during a single encounter ruins the game for that person. Thus, your argument is not valid.
Being not valid doesn't make your argument entirely false, mind you -- just significantly less persuasive.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Username17 » Wed Apr 28, 2004 4:10 pm

> I fail to see how it turns it into an advantage for you. You could have just as easily walked off the cliff yourself, so you aren't really gaining anything by having your opponent push you off of it.

But it wasn't your turn. And while you could have moved to a spot where you could not be attacked in melee on your turn, the fact was that you were within enemy melee range right now. You are gaining extra movement into an advantageous position by your opponent taking a "reasonable tactic".
Now you can perform a full round action from safety without having to move and perhaps suffer an AoO on your turn. Now you can rest assured that all the other enemies who also go before your next turn can't attack you.
Very simply, your enemy took an entirely reasonable attack action against you, which succeeded, and they gained nothing and you got an extra action out of the deal. That's exactly what you are talking about being "bad" in Karmic Strike, except you don't even take damage.
So, since you've admitted that the situation "having flying ability that your opponents don't know about" is OK - you have no valid mechanical complaint at all.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by RandomCasualty » Wed Apr 28, 2004 4:29 pm

> FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1083168656[/unixtime]]
> But it wasn't your turn. And while you could have moved to a spot where you could not be attacked in melee on your turn, the fact was that you were within enemy melee range right now. You are gaining extra movement into an advantageous position by your opponent taking a "reasonable tactic".

Yes, but the feat didn't do that, your enemy did. He chose to bull rush you. And he took the consequences for doing such, in hopes the falling damage would be worth it. Your enemy made a bad call bull rushing you, because you were immune to falling damage.
If you do something like bullrush you accept your opponent moving as a consequence. The flying ability isn't letting you do that, that's the whole point of bull rush, that's what the enemy is trying to do. If the enemy is pushing you to a more favorable position, then he's just being stupid.

> Very simply, your enemy took an entirely reasonable attack action against you, which succeeded, and they gained nothing and you got an extra action out of the deal. That's exactly what you are talking about being "bad" in Karmic Strike, except you don't even take damage.

The difference however is that he knew what you'd be gaining by it. He was accepting by taking a bull rush action, that his success would place you out of melee range. The ability merely removed the damage you would take from the bull rush, it didn't create the advantageous situation. The advantageous situation was basically inherent to the bull rush action itself.
With karmic strike you're blindsided. You have no idea you're provoking an AoO by hitting the enemy. That's a huge difference.

> So, since you've admitted that the situation "having flying ability that your opponents don't know about" is OK - you have no valid mechanical complaint at all.

Sure I do. Again, flying isn't an advantage against bull rush. It just negates the falling damage. Every other advantage you gain from the feat is gained from the bull rush manuever itself, not from the ability. The enemy already knew that his move, if successful, would push his target out of range. By doing it anyway, he accepted the consequences. So when his target is suddenly out of range, he has only himself to blame if that's a bad situation for him, since he KNEW it would happen by making a bullrush. He was trying to make it happen.
Essence:
If you think it's ok to create an opponent who heals from sneak attack dice but takes normal damage from regular attacks, then I don't even know how to begin to respond to that.
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### Re: Basic Feat Design Rules

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Post by Username17 » Wed Apr 28, 2004 4:33 pm

> Yes, but the feat didn't do that, your enemy did. He chose to bull rush you.

Just like your opponent chose to make a melee attack from within your reach when you had Karmic Strike.
The two are the same. If you have abilities which change which tactics are good against you, your opponent can end up making a choice which seems good but is in fact bad.
That's the only thing going on here, and the fact that you get your panties all tied up about it sometimes and seem perfectly OK with it the rest of the time indicates that you are applying double standards and making no sense.
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