Quote from: Orphan81;863006Savage Worlds is a game that was created entirely around the concept of Feats and how they help customize a character...

Only Savage Worlds gives the option of taking a new Feat (Called "Edges" in their system) every level in lieu of Skill Points..It's an either or thing as you level up... You either get more competent in your skills, or open up new options in combat (and outside as well)

Examples: "Marksman" gives you a bonus with ranged attacks when you don't move in a round. "Improved First Strike" allows you to make a melee attack against any opponent who comes with range.."Clear Headed" allows you to take the best of two Initiative Totals every round, while "Fleet of Foot" increases your movement speed..

The system is a lot of fun, and very quick and easy. While you do get some synergy from Edges very rarely do you get stacking bonuses...it's more "This particular Edge is very awesome when paired with this other Edge".

I think Feat style systems can work and can be very cool, it's just all about execution.

Its a good system (my go-to game, though we houserule it hard).
IIRC from 'the making of' document, SW actually inherits a lot of its feat system from 3.0.

Quote from: tenbones;863033Very much this. When I have new players, I keep with the classic notion of what a Fighter represents. They're not JUST a guy with sword/armor. They're a medieval Navy Seal. They're good with all weapons and armor. They are highly trained and dangerous. BEING a Fighter implies a lot about that person beyond just a guy with a sword.

The concept of the 'everyman' class has been the Fighter for as long as I can remember, when in reality, it should have been the Thief/Rogue.

If the Rogue is Batman, then the Fighter is Captain America.  And I mean the personal and mass combat master, the strategist and tactician that he is.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;863144The concept of the 'everyman' class has been the Fighter for as long as I can remember, when in reality, it should have been the Thief/Rogue.

If the Rogue is Batman, then the Fighter is Captain America.  And I mean the personal and mass combat master, the strategist and tactician that he is.

What are you talking about? The thief wasn't even a part of D&D until the Greyhawk supplement, and he was designed for exactly one thing: thieving. All his skills were about breaking and entering. How the class got turned into the damage-dealing thing it is today is beyond me.

Quote from: aspiringlich;863154What are you talking about? The thief wasn't even a part of D&D until the Greyhawk supplement, and he was designed for exactly one thing: thieving. All his skills were about breaking and entering. How the class got turned into the damage-dealing thing it is today is beyond me.

Class balancing and shared xp chart.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;863144The concept of the 'everyman' class has been the Fighter for as long as I can remember, when in reality, it should have been the Thief/Rogue.

If the Rogue is Batman, then the Fighter is Captain America.  And I mean the personal and mass combat master, the strategist and tactician that he is.

Yeah that's a good analogy.

Ultimately the failure of the 3.x Feat system lands squarely on the Fighter class. It irks me because the class turned into the lowest-common denominator for non-casters.

The problem during most of the 3.x/PF era has almost called into question the validity of the class itself, since other classes can/do outperform it both mechanically, and even in terms of it's roleplaying presence. You don't *need* to be a Fighter to be a knight etc.

So the Fighter is the king of Feats... but the Feats suck ass.

In more positive news - 5e definitely upped the Feat system in terms of power. I wish it was nudged a little higher. Hell I say go all the way to FC level. One of the things that I wish they did in 5e was numerically balance all their sub-systems and SHOW it (like FC does on their website). This will allow new GM's to create new races, skills, classes, backgrounds, spells etc. with far less guesswork.

Quote from: tenbones;863189Yeah that's a good analogy.

Ultimately the failure of the 3.x Feat system lands squarely on the Fighter class. It irks me because the class turned into the lowest-common denominator for non-casters.

The problem during most of the 3.x/PF era has almost called into question the validity of the class itself, since other classes can/do outperform it both mechanically, and even in terms of it's roleplaying presence. You don't *need* to be a Fighter to be a knight etc.

So the Fighter is the king of Feats... but the Feats suck ass.

In more positive news - 5e definitely upped the Feat system in terms of power. I wish it was nudged a little higher. Hell I say go all the way to FC level. One of the things that I wish they did in 5e was numerically balance all their sub-systems and SHOW it (like FC does on their website). This will allow new GM's to create new races, skills, classes, backgrounds, spells etc. with far less guesswork.

true though there is an argument to be made that the 3.5 samurai was worse

Quote from: tenbones;863189Yeah that's a good analogy.

Ultimately the failure of the 3.x Feat system lands squarely on the Fighter class. It irks me because the class turned into the lowest-common denominator for non-casters.

The problem during most of the 3.x/PF era has almost called into question the validity of the class itself, since other classes can/do outperform it both mechanically, and even in terms of it's roleplaying presence. You don't *need* to be a Fighter to be a knight etc.

So the Fighter is the king of Feats... but the Feats suck ass.

In more positive news - 5e definitely upped the Feat system in terms of power. I wish it was nudged a little higher. Hell I say go all the way to FC level. One of the things that I wish they did in 5e was numerically balance all their sub-systems and SHOW it (like FC does on their website). This will allow new GM's to create new races, skills, classes, backgrounds, spells etc. with far less guesswork.

The issue sadly, is that because of the misconception the Fighter can last forever (hit points, the class only has so much) it's should not be allowed to get anywhere close to what other classes can do in terms of raw damage.

Often completely forgetting that damage is all that the Non-Casters have.  Let's ignore the fact that Hit Points are a constantly diminishing resource in a fight.  And let's ignore the real 'fire power' in D&D, the Save or Die effects (and I want point out by 'die' I don't mean 'death', I mean fight enders.)  The other issue is that their damage potential is hampered by the ability to miss on just about every attack at every stage of their growth.  An Evocation Wizard who takes only Blasting Spells (Again, ignoring the really effective spells) will always be doing damage with a spell.  Outside of Cantrips (in 5e), and in early editions, the most direct damage Spells have always hit half effect.

And even worse, at least since 2e (remember this is MY point of reference, if it started earlier, or it started right there, I won't know as I don't have access to anything earlier.  Well, I have 1e books, but I'm too sore to dig them out) Spell Damage scales, rapidly and significantly.

The Thief and the Rogues have a scaling Damage system, but even then, it's not as impressive or noteworthy as a Spell.

To add to that mess, a lot of spells are also area of effect.  Almost all of the Non-Caster attacks are not.

The supposed balancing factor of the Magic System is that they're very limited in how many times they can be used.  Even at high levels, you have to worry about how many you use per incident/encounter.

Except that by the time most Casters are low on spells, a lot of the time the Non-Casters are low in Hit Points.  Meaning that the limit of spells per day is an artificial wall that looks good on paper, but in practice, often ends up not being much of a limiting factor ever.  The team will stop at that point, rest, recover, continue.

Once more, that's ignoring spells like Sleep, Grease, Tasha's Hideous Laughter and other spells that will shut an encounter down without spending much energy.

Quote from: kosmos1214;863216true though there is an argument to be made that the 3.5 samurai was worse

The Samurai was the Fighter, without half the weapons.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;863230And even worse, at least since 2e (remember this is MY point of reference, if it started earlier, or it started right there, I won't know as I don't have access to anything earlier.

If its any older than 2E, there's going to be a retro-clone of it somewhere. If you can be bothered, anyway.
1e = Osric, Holmes basic - Blueholme, 0D&D - Swords & Wizardry? I think BECMI has a clone too though I don't know about B/X.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;863231The Samurai was the Fighter, without half the weapons.

and bad class ability and no bonus feats that leave it unable to get to the few builds that could make the fighter almost use able

Quote from: kosmos1214;863240and bad class ability and no bonus feats that leave it unable to get to the few builds that could make the fighter almost use able

That's what I meant.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;863241That's what I meant.

ah sorry then

All of this become the impetus for, assuming one likes the concept of Feats (I do) - as to what the game should look like if they were properly used.

For me - Fantasy Craft is it. But I think FC needs to be... better organized. It's really dense for the uninitiated. It could be steamlined a lot better.

Savage World's is probably the lightest touch that really works for me. 5e comes up close but misses just because they don't really codify the math behind their Feats/Backgrounds and Classes like FC does. It's not mandatory that they do, but it would help keep the potential future bloat down.

If you are determined to have feats as a class feature I'd agree a general an up-powering of feats is a good idea. Basically, a big swathe of the really shitty feats, or really specific circumstance feats, need to go.

Comparing 3.x to 2E, as you say, you didn't need a lot of specific investment to pull off a character concept. The issue was, I think, that people wanted their horse-archer to be differentiated from their swashbuckler from their net-and-trident guy, and so having the fighter actually be master of all weapons is something people bitched about in the late-2E era: that you could put your swashbuckler in heavy armour on a horse and he's fine...
Then of course you write a bunch of feats, and the feats to do anything have to operate as an 'exception' to the ordinary rules. Consequently you need a shipload of feats to actually do anything. The actual fighter-wizard game balance benefit of limiting, say, TWF or Ride-by Attack to fighters is very marginal since a wizard would be using their action to cast a spell, not stab you with two weapons or charge on horseback with a lance- you actually could give TWF for free to wizards just randomly and it'd have a very marginal effect on game balance.

Meanwhile, most fighter 'fixes' in 3.x end up being 1-2 pages of lots of detailed, miscellaneous stuff because they're an attempt to add in a diverse bunch of powers  -  just due to the fiddly nature of 3.5 rules. In a sense I think 5E got this bit right; the rules are looser so don't need as much messing around. Though I guess people are still arguing about how good the 5E fighter actually is.

I agree with most of your statement, except this.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;863351...and so having the fighter actually be master of all weapons is something people bitched about in the late-2E era: that you could put your swashbuckler in heavy armour on a horse and he's fine...

That's a problem with heavy armour being an AC bonus (and because of Magic a scaling bonus) as opposed to what it really does, and that's block, rather than avoid, damage.