Adivce: I thought this was overpowered, not I'm not so sure..

[Mistah J]

Hey,

I've been working lately on some feat design and I thought of this idea:

Imagine a feat that granted a character a +1 growing, or cumulative, inherent bonus for every 4 feats of a certain type the possessed.
Examples: +1 inherent bonus to your Strength score per [Combat] Feat. Or +1 inherent bonus to your Charisma per [Divine] feat.

Crazy right?! Waaaaay over the top broken for sure. That's what I thought when I first thought of it but now I am not so sure.

A character gets a feat at every odd level - that's 10 feats. If your human, it's 11. Divide those by 4 and the best you can do is a +2 to the Stat. and that requires 8 of your feats to match the proper type. That's close to 75% of your character's feats.

Also, since it is an inherent bonus, it won't stack with the various tomes and manuals that grant the same, so it is not like we are adding a new source of stat boosters. (I'm also not saying that there should be six feats - one for each stat, some may not work - what kind of feat would you take to improve your Con for example?).

Now, a big exception here is the fighter. They get 10 extra feats for their even levels and so, if they chose the Strength bonus per Combat feat, feat. They'd end up with a +5. But only if they were Human (they need that bonus to take the feat in question). Even then, it would be like taking the +5 Strength manual, only spread over 20 levels. Well, you could get it all at once by taking it at level 20 but at that point you could just buy the item, conceivably.

Anyway, the more I think about this, the more it seems to be ok. Low-magic games or styles of play that like to favour character abilities over magical gear might well benefit from this type of feat. Or, I might just have thought about it too long and now I can't see the forest through the trees.

So.. am I crazy?

 

[Volaran]

Wasn't there a psionic feat that gave you extra hit points every time you took another psionic feat?

I don't think this is necessarily a bad idea. As you point out, it wouldn't stack with anything else grants an inherent bonus, and would still top out at +5. This might be something I would allow in a low magic game.

Even in higher magic games, excepting cases where a character is _built_ at high level with appropriate wealth, I don't see inherent bonuses come into play very often. They mostly seem to show up in the realm of theoretical characters.

 

[Henry]

Just keep in mind that the most powerful bonus you can give someone is a bonus to attack; second to that, a bonus to damage. If you keep in mind that

a) assume that someone could and would abuse it
b) if they do, the most they'll have is a +3 to attack and damage (starting on an odd-numbered strength or dex)

It sounds pretty reasonable. As for it being [combat] feats, that's not really a hard choice -- a fighter is putting the majority of his feats into [combat] feats, anyway. If you cant to make the choice really interesting, make it a +1 to, say, strength or dex for every x certain type of non-combat feats they have, and make them choose to branch out their focus, rather than simply reward them with more awesomeness for choosing something already awesome that they'd normally choose anyway.