I was making a character for Jason's pirate campaign and was thinking that there was not all that many Feats available and how many times you have to choose one aspect of a character over another. I realize this is to make it so your character is not too powerful too fast, but sometimes it is frustrating. I have not played a character to 20th level in... well, a long fucking time.
I thought to myself how awesome Flaws are and how they can really help in character creation and actually building a character and its roleplaying capabilities. Really, I choose Flaws based on what I could play that character as, helping determine character personality.
Anyway, I thought that if you met certain prerequisites and roleplayed your character like you needed to, determined by the GM, you could have up to two more Flaws called Development Flaws. These Flaws would come at certain intervals, like 5th and 10th level and only if that character met the reques. Each of these D.F. would allow you to choose one more Feat as a sort of "compensation" that your character would have for being inadequate in another area, kinda like a Red Corvette for a 40 year old man.
I would even say that existing Flaws from character creation could be used. Jargon Conversationalist comes to mind, but with a twist. If you have 5 or more ranks in a Profession, Knowledge or Craft skill, you could take that D.F. and gain something else, like Skill Focus on Intimidate, or Iron Will.
I am not really sure how to implement this well, just that I think you could do it. I think I could flesh it out a bit better, but the rules are pretty simple anyway. Maybe it would just be a matter of coming up with a list of Development Flaws by modifying existing ones.
Any thoughts on this, peoples?
Edit After the Fact: Steve fixed some stuff.
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. Are you saying you should gain bonus feats for role-playing or bonus feats based on flaws you take at character creation? Or do you mean a third option I didn't pick up on?
ReplyDeleteThe feat progression is not there to keep you from being powerful. In fact the opposite, you become more powerful as you level, which is why you gain more feats and hit points and stuff. Each character ends up with at least ten feats by 20th level, usually plus a few bonus feats, plus all kinds of other abilities. The only class that really needs a shit ton of feats is the Fighter, because they have very little else to their progression, and they only get twenty feats I believe. When you consider that most of those will be prerequisites for higher end feats during mid and high level play, it isn't such a huge number.
Also, I vaguely recollect reading something that allows higher level characters in Pathfinder to trade in lower tier feats for higher level ones when they level, but not if they are prerequisites for other feats they have.
Feats are there to help determine your focus in my mind, you have a limited amount to help keep every character from being good at every single little thing. It also forces you to make important decisions about your character's progression, playstyle, and possibly their background. If you could willy nilly take every single feat you thought you wanted, what would be the point? There'd be no focus to any characters if every character could take all the "good" feats they wanted, every character would be a carbon copy of other characters with the same class.
I dunno, my two cents.