Post/Author/DateTime	Post
tarkin 09-27-07, 03:33 PM	(Revised as per suggestions) Skillfull Rages Pre Req: Trapfinding, Ability to rage, at least 4 ranks in at least 2 Charisma or Dexterity based skills. Benefit: You may use Charisma and Dexterity based skills while Raging. In addition, while raging, you gain a +2 bonus to Reflex saves against traps and also gain a +2 to the following skills: Balance, Escape Artist, Intimidate, Ride, Climbing, Swimming, and Jump. ---------------------------- Distracting Song Pre req: Bardic Music Ability, Sneak Attack 3d6+, Quickdraw. Benefit: You may draw a melee weapon and make a single attack against a single target of your Fascinate ability. This attack occurs before the Fascinate effect ends, and your target is considered flat-footed. Allies who draw weapons or attempt to attack still end the Fascinate effect immediately. Normal: Even drawing a weapon ends the Fascinate immediately. ---------------------------- Easy Money Pre Req: Ability to turn or rebuke undead. Knowledge Religion 6 ranks, Bluff 6 ranks. Benefit: You are skilled at getting donations. In any community where your religion is not outlawed, you may solicate donations. Every day you can make a Relgion check. You earning twice that amount in silver pieces per day of dedicated work. Note, this is significantly more than a Profession normally makes (almost 3 times more) you also know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the profession’s daily tasks, how to supervise helpers, and how to handle common problems. You can not try again for that particular day, but you can try again tomorrow. ---------------------------- Wild Sneak Attack Pre req: Ability to Wild Shape, Knowledge (plants) 5+, Knowledge (the Planes) 5+, Ability to Sneak Attack Benefit: You have begun the research and practice into wildshaping into plants. While you have not yet suceeded (i.e. this feat does not let you do it any earlier than normal), as a side effect, your experience and knowledge have tought you the secrets of sneak attacking plants. In addition, once you have obtained sufficient skill to wildhsape into a tiny creature, you may do the same with elementals. Again, this feat does not enhance your ability to Wild shape in any way, just your ability to sneak attack. Normal: You can not sneak attack plants or elementals. ---------------------------- Improved Evasion Pre Req: Evasion from two seperate classes Benefit: Your extensive seperate studies that let to Evasion now grant Improved Evasion. This only applies when you qualify for both original things that grant Evasion (i.e. monk/Rogues must be wearing light or no armor and can not be helpless). ---------------------------- Swift Trap Dispelling Pre Req: Ability to cast Dispell Magic, Disable Device 8 ranks+ Benefit: To benefit from this feat, you must have Dispell Magic prepared (or a free slot open to cast it). When attempting to disarm a trap, if you fail, you may as an swift action Dispell Magic the trap before it activates. You must make the decision to do this after you roll your Disable Device roll, but before the DM has told you if you activated the trap or not.
ToastedAmphibian 09-27-07, 04:43 PM	Improved evasion is good, and well overdue (Why hasnt WOTC done that yet?) The fascinate and the easy money feats need to be worded a little more percisely. For fascinate, are they always denied their dex when you fascinate them, for you and for everyone else, or are they just denied theri dex for your first attack aginst them? Mabey you could change it so that they get to make a free feint aginst them, at a bonus depending upon their ranks in perform? For the easy money feat, are both your knowledge religion and your bluff checks opposed by their sense motice, or just your bluff? If both, then does it matter which one you fail? Also, is this an evil act, a chaotic act, both, neither, or situation dependent? Swift trap dispelling is rather neat, so why not broaden it a little. I belive their are a few PrC's that get dispelling as a SLA, and some that get dispelling on an attack. Mabey you could include them in the love too.
tarkin 09-27-07, 05:28 PM	Clarified a few things.
EjoThims 09-28-07, 02:53 AM	Interesting, but except for Distracting Song they're pretty lackluster, unless perhaps in a gestalt campaign. These are very uncommon archetypes, and not ones that the standard game has room to truly get benefit from these feats. The best thing about Skillful Rage is that you can take another feat to get a +2 bonus after failing a save against a trap. How often do you honestly find characters wanting to use these skills while under the effects of a rage? Keep in mind that a normal rage can be ended voluntarily. I'd remove the skill based prereqs, change it to a Trap Sense based prereq (+4 maybe?), and cause it to be more like Whirling Frenzy from UA, but with a Dex boost instead of a Dodge AC boost, and removing the additional reflex save of the feat, as it's built into Whirling Frenzy. This would give a Rogueish character a reason not only to invest in his rage, but also a reason to use his rage outside of combat, even when attempting to disarm a trap or merely sneak past the guards. Wild Sneak Attack doens't seem very flavorful at all, and can't be taken until 15th level (minimum). For such a late feat, perhaps allowing all crit or sneak attack based abilities would be more appropriate? Improved Evasion is a pretty common houserule, but not something I anticipate many would spend a feat on. Especially with such low requirements, if not simply a change to the way Evasion works in your games, a skill trick would probably be more appropriate. Swift Trap Dispelling seems alright, but logically, if you are capable of simply dispelling the trap anyway, it makes more sense to dispell the spell affect, and then disable any mechanical components, requiring no feats, and can be done with UMD in place of true spellcasting. Perhaps change it to something where the rogue casts Dispell Magic as part of the disable attempt, increasing his/her disable check by an amount equal to, say, 1/2 his CL check against the spell in question? Or perhaps still combine them but Disable Device instead boosts his/her CL check, and a success automatically disables the mechanical aspects of the trap as well? This would simply the mechanics of the action, and reward someone who has both features, instead of simply duplicating the actions of two in a subpar manner. Easy Money is just needlessly complicated, and the results can be duplicated with a Profession(Beggar) check, with some circumstance modifiers tacked on. Come to think of it, changing the feat to simply work in this way, with a chart for specific appropriate modifiers and bonuses would likely streamline it nicely. Distracting Song is slightly powerful, and it is worded a little poorly. "Distracting Song Pre req: Bardic Music Ability, Sneak Attack 3d6+, Quickdraw. Benefit: You may draw a melee weapon and make a single attack against a single target of your Fascinate ability. This attack occurs before the Fascinate effect ends, and your target is considered flat-footed. Allies who draw weapons or attempt to attack still end the Fascinate effect immediately. Normal: Even drawing a weapon ends the Fascinate immediately." This would likely be a better way to set it up, as it now limits it to one attack on one target before the fascinate on all targets ends, specially states allies do not gain the benefit, gives a slightly better offensive position without overwhelming damage or allowing more attack options, and it removes the superflous Quick Draw text. I know we've had our disputes in the past, but dispute the mood with which I often post, helping is my main goal when I do it, and I hope this has been helpful. P.S. My new masters think your brain would be tasty too.:coolcthul ;)
jaelis 09-28-07, 08:38 AM	I pretty much agree with EjoThims. They are mostly a little weak, except for Distracting Song which is a little too good. For Skillful Rage, how about instead of a +2 bonus vs traps, you get a +2 bonus on all Dex and Cha based skills while raging? With the idea that you're using the energy of the rage to make yourself more skillful. That would be way too much for an "always on" feat, but it will be only a limited number of times per day, will often burn up rages out of combat, and you've already gimped yourself a bit by multiclassing non-optimally. At least that would make it a feat I'd be tempted to take. Make the wild sneak attack work for elementals too, at least. But it still suffers from only working at really high levels... I think it would be fine to simply pick a level and let it work there, even if you can't wildshape into the creature yet. For instance: make the prereqs Sneak Attack and Wild Shape, with the benefit that you can SA plants. If you can wild shape 4+ times per day, you can also SA elementals. The flavor text could be "Through your study of natural creatures..."
tarkin 09-28-07, 01:59 PM	Question, If you DM offered, would you take this feat: Improved Evasion Pre req: Evasion. Benefit: You have improved evasion, as long as you qualify for Evasion. (not while wearing heaby armor if you are a rogue) I certainly would. It is WELL worth it. By your own admission, the pre-reqs I gave are low, and clearly people want Improved Evasion. The mere fact that a few people you know house rule to let evasion stack should not in any way change the fact that this is a good feat, with low pre-reqs. People generally do not know what "common" house rules are. They know what house rules they use, and they know what they have seen their friends use. They also know if they have heard other people on the web use. They have no idea what people outside of their city play if they don't travel to cons. Even if you go to cons, you generally don't ask people about their house rules. The web/boards is a 'poor sample' because it is self-selected for power gamers and beginners. Until you have done some kind of study, I don't really think anyone knows what is common and what is not. Annecdotal evidence is pretty worthless when it comes to things like this. Otherwise you get crap like people saying "their are no gays in Iran" simply because no one they know ever told them they were gay. I serioulsy doubt your information is any better than his was. If your DM does not house rule to let evasion stack, this feat is clearly worth while. I prefer my swift dispelling. Rogue spellcasters are not known for having lots of extra spells. The way I wrote it, they can use their Dispell Magic only if they think they screwed up, instead of automatically. This saves them from having to use a spell unless they have a pretty good idea they will need it, which is very helpfull. Your other suggestions have been accepted and I changed the feats accordingly.
jaelis 09-28-07, 02:31 PM	Yeah, the Imp Evasion thing is tough. It's not that the benefit isn't worth a feat, its more that being able to take the feat doesn't feel like enough to take the sting out of "wasting" your second evasion. If you're someone who doesn't have any sympathy for a character with evasion twice, this is a great feat. If you're someone who feels like getting evasion twice should automatically grant Imp Evasion, then this is a pointless feat.
EjoThims 09-28-07, 03:22 PM	Question, If you DM offered, would you take this feat: Improved Evasion Pre req: Evasion. Benefit: You have improved evasion, as long as you qualify for Evasion. (not while wearing heaby armor if you are a rogue) Honestly, I wouldn't. The benefits of Improved Evasion are actually rather small for the majority of characters who have evasion anyway, especially if they have multiple classes that grant it. These are the characters that are likely focused on dexterity as well as having a good reflex save (or a superb one if you go by the actual PHB multi-classing rules instead of the UA saves/BAB variant). This is why I suggested making it a skill trick instead. And the 'common houserule' line comes not just from my own experience in games, but from what I see on these boards consistently, not just once or twice. And honestly... I'd think that after our squabbles I'd have earned at least a Hitler reference instead of just Ahmadinejad. ;) The rest is looking good, though I still think my idea on Swift Dispell would benefit a true multi-classer more.
tarkin 09-28-07, 03:53 PM	The boards are a really bad place to get a fair sample for things like "what is most common". It is a good place to find out how other people interpret it, what the Sage/FAQ/errata say, or just to check your logic. First, the boards do not have a lot of 'role-players', but do have a lot of "roll" players. The more of a 'role' player you are, the less you care about game mechanics, and the more you care about the fluff stuff that are innate skills not true/false answers that you can get on the boards. That is, the boards are full of questions and answers about rules, with nary a mention of the kind of 'acting' questions a role-player would ask. No "How do you play a stupid person when you are smart" instead it is "how much of a benefit can I get with X feat and Y feat combined. Second, human beings have a HUGE mental block that overestimates the number of people that agree with you and the number that disagree with you. So if you like a house rule and you see 10 people talking about it, 3 of which like it, 3 of which hate it and 4 people that don't give a crap, you remember it as SEVEN people liking it and 3 people disliking it. That is just the way human memory works. Third, you have no idea who is behind the board quotes. It could be 90% kids, or the same guy posting under different ID's. I suspect that certain troublemakers (i.e. Sarge) may have multiple Ids. For all you know, I haven't played a D20 game in 3 years but just like to chat about it on the boards. At the very least, you don't know who is a player and who is a DM. That is a major issue, because if all the players think one way, but the DM's think another, then the player way looks like it is in the majority, but in truth most games do it the OTHER way. P.S. I used an Iranian references because you made the same mistake he did. He had NO way of knowing the answer to that quesion, besides his anecodatal personal experience, which I am sure he thought was sufficeint. It was not. It was not meant as an insult, and was not aimed at you inparticular. I still make that same mistake sometimes myself. I like to think I know certain things, when sometimes I find out that hey, I really don't know it quite as much as I thought I did.
EjoThims 09-28-07, 04:06 PM	P.S. I used an Iranian references because you made the same mistake he did. He had NO way of knowing the answer to that quesion, besides his anecodatal personal experience, which I am sure he thought was sufficeint. It was not. It was not meant as an insult, and was not aimed at you inparticular. I still make that same mistake sometimes myself. I like to think I know certain things, when sometimes I find out that hey, I really don't know it quite as much as I thought I did. I know, I was just poking fun at you. And you're right, I did generalize it more than I should have.
dman11235 09-28-07, 04:19 PM	Um, knowledge (plants)? Try nature instead. Change the dispelling trap thing to an immediate action, fits flavor more.