D&D Skills & Feats [Rebalancing 3.5]

[RobbyPants]

Techinically speaking, BAB progression stops at 20th level.  After that, you just get some epic bonus to your attack rolls.

I'll admit I hand't put any thought into epic yet.  It's something I've never been interested in, and I think it would be a bitch to try and keep balanced.

[Kuroimaken]

Techinically speaking, BAB progression stops at 20th level.  After that, you just get some epic bonus to your attack rolls.

I always found that to be a stupid rule, but anyhow. I guess we're not ready to go into epic just yet.

[RobbyPants]

I'd brought up the idea a while back of working on some feats that scale by BAB.  Several people had suggested this, and I'd seen the Combat feats in F&K's tome, so maybe it's time for me to try a few.

Kuroimaken had suggested the idea of setting the increases at BAB +1, +5, +10, +15, and +20.  This helps keep BAB important, as you can only ever hit +20 if you don't take a hit in BAB.  This could be reserved for some truely nice abilities.  So, I'd like any input you have, and if you have any feats you want to add, feel free to make suggestions.  The problem I'm having with some feats is coming up with six separate abilities.

Dodge
Benifit: Per the PHB
+1: Your dodge bonus is applied against all opponents.
+5: This dodge bonus increases to +2.
+10: This dodge bonus increases to +3.
+15: This dodge bonus increases to +4.
+20: This dodge bonus increases to +5.
design notes: This seems a bit bland.  Still, the bonus stacks with other dodge bonuses, so I don't think it's too weak.


Armor Focus
Prerequisite: Armor Proficiency, Light
Benifit: When wearing any armor with which you are proficient, the max Dex bonus of the armor is improved by +1, the armor check penalty is reduced by 1 (to a minimum of 0), and the arcane spell failure is reduced by 5% (to a minimum of 0%).
+1: The armor bonus of your armor increases by +1.
+5: Any medium armor you wear is treated as light armor, and any heavy armor you wear is treated as medium for purposes of your speed limitations imposed by the armor, and class abilities limited by armor (such as a rogue's evasion in light or no armor).
+10: The max Dex bonus of the armor is improved by an additional +1, the armor check penalty is reduced by an additional 1 (to a minimum of 0), and the arcane spell failure is reduced by an additional 5% (to a minimum of 0%).
+15: The armor bonus of your armor increases by an additional +1.
+20: Any medium or heavy armor you wear is treated as light armor for purposes of your speed limitations imposed by the armor, and class abilities limited by armor (such as a rogue's evasion in light or no armor).
design notes: The BAB +20 bonus is a direct increase of the +5 bonus.  Perhaps this could be switched with the +15 bonus?  I wanted to make this into a feat, because I wanted to remove the ability from mithril to reduce the category of the armor.


Great Fortitude
Benifit: You gain a +2 bonus on Fortitude saves.
+1: You do not fail a Fortitude save on a natural 1.
+5: The bonus to your Fortitude saves increases to +3.
+10: Instead of rolling one save, you may roll two dice and pick the higher of the two results.  You may do this one time day plus one for every three character levels (round down)
+15: The bonus to your Fortitude saves increases to +4.
+20: Instead of rolling one save, you may roll two dice and pick the higher of the two results.  You may do this once per saving throw.
design notes: I wasn't sure if I wanted to turn the three "save" feats into combat feats.  Scaling Great Fortitude and Lightning Reflexes sort of makes sense with BAB, but not so much with Iron Will.

I'm still having trouble with making these.  Many of the feats don't seem to lend themselves to this.  I suppose I could also combine some feats into one scaling combat feat.  Point Blank Shot could end up containing several other feats.

[Kuroimaken]

You might want to push the first benefit for Great Fortitude up a little. The fact that you don't autofail on a 1 is nice, but chances are you won't be automatically making the save on a 1 at low levels, either.

I like what you did with armor focus. Light armor needs more love!

[RobbyPants]

I think you might be right with Great Fortitude.  Still, what about Iron Will?  Do these make sense to scale by BAB?  Right now, anything I create seems more like a thought excersize.

I'm glad you like Armor Focus.  I'm debating on making Shield Specialization improved along these lines.  I thought up a few abilities, but not enough to fill it out yet.

[Kuroimaken]

You're right that Iron Will makes relatively little sense to scale with BAB, since it doesn't really look like something you should be able to improve as you learn how to better beat people up (save, of course, to represent the "incredibly focused Fighter" stereotype). Speaking from a mechanic point of view, however, casters and other mid-to-low BAB types typically have other means to counter a relatively low will save (heck, even Rogues do, it's called slippery mind), so I'd say it wouldn't be too far out to scale Iron Will along those lines.

Otherwise, what WILL you scale it with? The Will saves themselves?

EDIT: Obviously not. People with low Will saves should be picking Iron Will, not people with high saves. We enter a conundrum, however, when we realize classes with high BAB typically have high Fortitude or Reflex, however.

Maybe scale the save feats with character level, rather than BAB?

[RobbyPants]

Otherwise, what WILL you scale it with? The Will saves themselves?

That was the hardest part.  I'd toyed with character level, but, that seems kind of boring.

[Kuroimaken]

Well, the only characteristics common to every character are attributes, skill points, HD, Class/Character Level, Saves and BAB. Not a lot of measures to scale them with there.

Fighter levels could seem obvious, but I'm iffy about making the scaling exclusive to them. The bummer is that after that there isn't really much to compare due to the conundrum posted in my edit above.

[veekie]

Question about Armor Focus though, should it be specific to an armor type?
The +5 and +20 features kinda leaves light armors out in the cold. Would have preferred it to grant something special for each armor type rather than just mitigate(the +1->+10 being mitigation of flaws is fine, but above that it ought to improve the armor, rather than overcome flaws) the armor's drawback.

Dodge seems kind of bland, perhaps add some evasive related combat manuevers instead of yet another + at the higher end?

[RobbyPants]

Fighter levels could seem obvious, but I'm iffy about making the scaling exclusive to them.

That was my first attempt, but no one liked it.  I was going to use fighter levels, and have non-fighter levels count for half.

Question about Armor Focus though, should it be specific to an armor type?
The +5 and +20 features kinda leaves light armors out in the cold. Would have preferred it to grant something special for each armor type rather than just mitigate(the +1->+10 being mitigation of flaws is fine, but above that it ought to improve the armor, rather than overcome flaws) the armor's drawback.

It could be armor specific.  You do have a point about light armor.  Still, you need BAB 20 to get heavy all the way down to light.

Dodge seems kind of bland, perhaps add some evasive related combat manuevers instead of yet another + at the higher end?

It is bland.  I was debating to just scale a dodge bonus or to try and think up some other abilities.

[veekie]

By unique, I meant Light/Medium/Heavy Armor Focus feats, which grant different benefits to each category. E.g. granting DR to heavy, evasive bonuses to light, etc

[RobbyPants]

Interesting idea.  I'll give it some thought.

[Kuroimaken]

Well, there isn't really much one CAN do with Light Armor. It has, by far, two upsides to one down (weighs less, doesn't have mobility issues, but doesn't offer that great a protection) against two downsides versus one up for heavy armor (weighs more, gets in the way but grants better protection), which means there is more room for heavy armor to "grow" against light armor.

Question: do we want heavy and light armor to be roughly equivalent to one another (meaning, putting two guys side by side, which armor he's wearing is mostly fluff) or do we want them to be different but on the same scale (meaning guy in light gets hit less often, but guy in heavy can take more hits)?

[veekie]

The latter is my preference, since next to weapons, armor is what defines the melee types. One archetype involves acrobatics and evasion, the other involves Clank Clank Clank.

[Kuroimaken]

The latter is my preference, since next to weapons, armor is what defines the melee types. One archetype involves acrobatics and evasion, the other involves Clank Clank Clank.

Archery typically involves light armor by virtue of mobility, but not necessarily acrobatics. I see what you mean, though.

[RobbyPants]

What are you thinking?  Like adding DR to the heavier armors?

I still like the idea of reducing the mobility, but maybe I can cap it at one category, so heavy armors will never drop below medium.  That actually wouldn't be too bad, because I switched the pelanties medium and heavy armor impose on mobility (medium slows your run speed from x4 to x3, you don't take the hit to base speed until wearing heavy armor).

[veekie]

Adding DR would be good, keeping the DR relevant might be tricky though.

[RobbyPants]

Adding DR would be good, keeping the DR relevant might be tricky though.

Among other things, it could scale with BAB.

[Kuroimaken]

Among other things, it could scale with BAB.

Well, to be frank, scaling DR with BAB feels a bit weird. "I can fight better so my armor absorbs damage better."

Huh?

Dodge bonuses for light armor, reducing armor penalties, etc. kinda makes sense. DR is a quality of craftsmanship, not training, so it feels weird (for me, at least).

Also, let's not go crazy with giving people DR here. Remember that the Fighter and the Barbarian are already getting decent DR.

[veekie]

It's more of "I know how to use my armor to defeat blows better" but you have a point there. How about some degree of Fortification then?