Post/Author/DateTime	Post
calvinNhobbes 01-16-07, 04:30 PM	Hey everyone, In terms of feats or skills, what value would you put on the ability score increase you recieve every 4 HD? 1 Feat? 2 Feats? 4/3 Feats? 5 skills? 10 Skills? More? Worth 1 feat but can be taken a max of every 2 levels? or 3 levels? or 4 levels? Worth 1 feat, but no score can be raised more than 5 points? I'm trying to develop a generic character generation and level progression system and would like to allow variation in this aspect. Thanks for any thoughts or ideas!
Arcade 01-18-07, 09:30 AM	Well, the Epic handbook puts it on par with an epic level feat. So you need to consider what an epic level feat is worth. For a few stats, you can compare the stat increase to a feat equivalence. Like Con. A 2 point in increase in CON is like buying the following feats: 1/2 of Great Fortitude (fort. save bonus) Improved Toughness (hp bonus) 1/4 Endurance (bonus on Con checks) 1/3 skill focus concentration (concentration and other CON related skills) So buying 2 points of Con is worth just over 2 feats. Take Dex: 1/4 Improved Initiative (initiative bonus) Dodge (AC bonus) +9 points in skill increase (about 2 feats) 3 feats worth of weapon focus (ranged attack bonus) So buying 2 points in Dex is worth just over 6 feats. Now people wouldn't buy all of these increases normally either. Except for a rogue, few classes use all of those skills. And most people canget away with using one ranged weapon all the time. So probably, 2 points in dex is closer to 3 feats. EDIT- made some incorrect calculations here and fixed them. Just make sure you look at both sides of the equation. Is it too cheap to buy ability increases that my wizard is going to pump all his feats into stat increases? Are ability increases too expensive so rogues are going to trade them in for a bunch of feats? I believe Everquest d20 or Wheel of Time d20 had something similar to what you want as well. They gave you points and you used those to buy feats, skills, and ability increases. You could see what their ratio was. Don't know if any of this helped, but I thought it might give you a different view on the process.
calvinNhobbes 01-18-07, 09:48 AM	Thanks Arcade, Very helpful. I was thinking somewhere around the 2-3 feat range for a +1 stat increase so that is around the same range as your calculations, but as you pointed out some stats are better than others. Also, thanks for the heads up on EQ and Wheel of Time d20. Haven't looked at them, I"ll head to the bookstore and see if I can check them out. cNh