Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Jay_Ibero_911 08-15-07, 04:49 PM	IMPROVED LAY ON HANDS [GENERAL] Prerequisite: Cha 13, lay on hands ability. Benefit: For the purposes of your lay on hands ability, treat your charisma score as 2 points higher than it actually is. Special: A character may gain this feat multiple times. Its effects stack. Not the most outrageous feat in the world, and perhaps not even the most original. If this idea has been posted before, forgive me, but I was just struck with the sudden desire to post this.
DM Zoc 08-15-07, 06:38 PM	That's... not very good. Judging from other feats I've seen, I would change it to be a +4 effective Charisma for Lay on Hands, but you can only take it once. Alternatively, a feat that increases your Charisma by 2 for all paladin abilities would be (in my opinion) balanced. That one is more arguable, given the direct bonus to all saves, but it's less effective than if you'd simply rolled a higher charisma off the bat.
Jay_Ibero_911 08-15-07, 09:44 PM	That's... not very good. Judging from other feats I've seen, I would change it to be a +4 effective Charisma for Lay on Hands, but you can only take it once. Alternatively, a feat that increases your Charisma by 2 for all paladin abilities would be (in my opinion) balanced. That one is more arguable, given the direct bonus to all saves, but it's less effective than if you'd simply rolled a higher charisma off the bat. Well I figured it better to ere on the side of caution, making it weaker and potentially edging it up after some discussion. I had thought of making it apply to all paladin abilities, and did consider the fact that it would be +1 to all saves with a feat, as well as extra healing. I had also considered making it +4 effective charisma, and as I think about it, +4 is actually pretty balanced. Adding 2x your paladin level to your lay on hands ability is a decent ammount without being too crazy, and the higher your charisma is without this feat, the smaller the percentage gain recieved from it...
tarkin 08-16-07, 11:28 AM	DM Doc needs to learn a bit more about the proper power of a feat. He overstimates what it can do. Except for the fact that no, you an not take it multiple times, and the fact that it counts as an Exalted feat, he exactly duplicted the WoTC published feat Hands of the Healer, Book of Exalted Deeds, Page 43. I congratulate on making a good feat. Feats are not Prestige Class powers. They enhance things a bit, that is all.
Jay_Ibero_911 08-16-07, 09:18 PM	DM Doc needs to learn a bit more about the proper power of a feat. He overstimates what it can do. Except for the fact that no, you an not take it multiple times, and the fact that it counts as an Exalted feat, he exactly duplicted the WoTC published feat Hands of the Healer, Book of Exalted Deeds, Page 43. I congratulate on making a good feat. Feats are not Prestige Class powers. They enhance things a bit, that is all. Oh wow...so that's why it felt so familiar, hehe.
aelryinth 08-16-07, 09:55 PM	Oh wow...so that's why it felt so familiar, hehe. Tarkiin also needs to learn the proper value of a feat. Some feats rock at any level, and some absolutely suck. This was one of those that suck. An extra point of healing per level per day doesn't add up to even an extra Cure Moderate Wounds. The paladin is better off taking a feat to get Access to Domain: Healing, he'll get far more healing out of his feat. Feats can be every bit as powerful as PrC abilities, they just have to be level appropriate. ===Aelryinth
tarkin 08-17-07, 02:27 PM	I never claimed to know the value of a feat. I claimed to know what WOTC considers the value of a feat. In a WoTC approved game, +2 is appropriate, cause they said so. In some high magic, power game that is more powerfull than the standard WoTC game, +4 could be correct. Youcompared it to a Cure Moderate wounds. You are correct, this feat is not as good as a single Cure Moderate Wounds wounds. 1. Cure Moderate Wounds is a 2nd level spell. 2. There exists a 2nd level spell called Heroics. 3. The spell Heroics lets you duplicate any fighter feat for a short duration. 4. Fighter feats are particularly strong, as one of the key class abilities of a fighter is the ability to take feats that other classes do not. 5. Conclusion WOTC considers ALL feats to be LESS powerfull than a 2nd level spell. Otherwise allowing Heroics to duplicate any fighter feat would have to be a 3rd level feat. Things we have figured out WOTC considers a single feat to be less than a 2nd level spell. ALL of there feats are designed to be less powerfull than a 2nd level spell. aelryinth believes that a single feat should be MORE powerfull than a 2nd level feat. aelryinth plays in a game that is in all probability significnatly more powerfull than what WoTC expects people to play. This is not an insult, it is not a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with playing in a Power Game. I have done it and enjoy it. In fact recently most of the games I have played were Power Games. But that does not change the facts.
DM Zoc 08-17-07, 03:16 PM	There exists a feat that grants up to 20 additional hit points; there exists a 2nd level spell that grants 10 temporary hit points. There's even a feat the replicates a 3rd level spell permanently (Improved Critical). Clearly, there are situations where a feat is better than a 2nd level spell, especially at high levels. A feat can be every bit as powerful as a 2nd level spell, if the feat is available only at high levels (or if it only becomes more powerful at high levels). Also, and correct me if I'm wrong, but BoED was released in 3.0, right? A lot has changed in the past few years about what is considered an "acceptable" feat, especially when it comes to healing. There's a feat that increases the caster level of all healing spells by 1, in addition to allowing infinite healing (up to half), and the caster level increase alone replicates a class feature (healing domain ability) and heals more than the improved lay on hands would.
aelryinth 08-18-07, 07:41 PM	BoED was 3.5. Everything in it was supposed to be 3.5 compatible. ============================ WoTC considers a single low-level feat less powerful then a second level spell. There exist high level feats that are considerably more powerful then a second level spell. I believe that feats can be more powerful then a second level spell. As a matter of fact, you can now argue that Heroics is broken, because it can grant Improved Critical, which is statistically identical to casting the third level Spell Keen Edge...thus falling into the Polymorph Chain trap of being able to do more then devoted spells of a higher level. Conclusion: WoTC has never seriously tried to establish a really balanced system for balancing feats, esp balancing them vs. spells. And yet somehow Tarkin thinks that they have. ==Aelryinth