We don't need no stinkin feats!!

Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:21 am

This has been posted elsewhere on the boards, but I thought the rules section could use it too.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v318/ ... ivator.png
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Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:03 am

My thoughts exactly!
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concobar · Post by **concobar** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:08 am

I thought you liked and played 3e Dynel.
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gideon_thorne · Post by **gideon_thorne** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:12 am

Doesn't mean he can't laugh at the aptness of a funny cartoon.
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Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:29 am

gideon_thorne wrote:
Doesn't mean he can't laugh at the aptness of a funny cartoon.

No, Conc is actually teasing LD. Irony, I think.
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serleran · Post by **serleran** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:43 am

Stinking Feat
By smelling, you amaze the world.
Prequisites: Charisma 12 or less, Ability to cast stinking cloud
Benefit: If you are threatened, any intelligent creature within 100 yards (60 squares) must make a successful Will save or be affected as per a charm person spell. Half your level is the effective caster level.
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concobar · Post by **concobar** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:55 am

Treebore wrote:
No, Conc is actually teasing LD. Irony, I think.

All in good fun I assure you.
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CharlieRock · Post by **CharlieRock** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:32 pm

I liked the idea of feats when I first played D&D3. They seemed like the D&D equivalent of Advantages in GURPS. "Finally, they figured it out!" I said to myself.

Then it became apparent that every single feat had to have a mechanical portion. And everything had to have a feat. Used to be an athlete in the colisseum? Take Athletics or Bravado which provided +2 to this and an extra plusta to that. Then they made feats the main balancing game mechanic between classes. Underpowered? Have some fancy feats! More plustas will fix anything.

This led my team to abstract hell. Somebody would make a backstory about being This but somebody else will have the feats that made sense for it.

"You picked Bravado and Athletics? Were you in the colisseum or something?"

"No, I needed it so my Concentration would be +12."

" ... Oh ... er, well who is the other character?"

"This one used to be in a Colisseum. I picked Alertness and Adroit Trapfinding because he has the highest hit points and will be in the front."

And then after several hundred featses it became so hard to help new players learn the game.

"It's easy. Just roll the die, add this modifier for your base ability modifier here, look at all your feats, oh you must have picked a good class you only have a dozen, and these two will add these modifiers but this one would except that your flatfooted and then, oops I forgot to tell you about your racial modifiers so we'll add that and remember so-and-so cast that spell so that adds another plusta and ... why are you looking confused? Here! Just roll the dice and we'll tell you how it went. Okay?"

Blech!

Edit: I noticed while reading my own post that C&C/SIEGE applies the same mechanic of "roll, add this, match result to that". It just does so without all the accounting that D&D3 seemed to come with. Which, when your newest player is somebody's ten-year-old son makes the game fun. I really dont mind stacking up all kinds of modifiers and am pretty sure a good GM can run a good D&D3 game. It was just too "new player unfriendly" and if I really felt like number crunching I'd have prefered Car Wars or BattleTech.
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Frost · Post by **Frost** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:11 pm

Well, I have to say I actually miss feats in C&C. I'm looking forward to the Adjuncts bit in the CKG. I like how they give the players options to customize their PCs. That being said, I think I will like the C&C version of feats more than the 3.X version (a lot of which are tied to AoO and other such clutter).

On the other hand, I always scratch my head when I hear about C&C fans adding in a skill system. I do not miss that one bit.
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Omote · Post by **Omote** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:43 pm

As is probably already known, I use feats in mt C&C games. I like feats for the initial reason CharlieRock stated; they are advantages that diversify the character from one another mechanically. But as CharlieRock also stated, feats in 3E got WAY out of hand. Feats were no longer about roleplaying mechanical diversity, but getting uber pluses. Feats are in no way needed in the C&C game, but some players like a tweek to their character that might make them have a certain advantage to a dice roll from time to time. Feats are really no different then your traditional GURPS advantage. It's just that 3E took the great idea of the feat and turned it into absolute monstrosity of utter nonsense.

~O
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Steerpike · Post by **Steerpike** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:27 pm

Feats can diversify, but they can also limit. I guess it depends on how you look at it. Like the Bill of Rights 'granting' a set of rights if you look at it one way, but limiting rights if viewed another.

One thing I like about C&C is the removal of feats and using the SIEGE engine. Want to do something you needed a feat for in 3.x? Ok, go ahead. We'll use the SIEGE engine. What's that, your backstory reveals that you were trained in the Colosseum? Ok, we'll add a +2 situational modifier.

And so on.

But the other great thing about C&C is that it is so easy to customize. By not having feats in the game, you can play without them if you like. But the system is open enough you can put them in if you want
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CharlieRock · Post by **CharlieRock** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 3:13 pm

I didnt miss the skill system of D&D3 either. A skill based system just doesnt mesh with my idea of a fun dungeon crawling rpg. I like skill based systems, dont get me wrong. Hang out on these forums long enough and you'll see a post from me eventually about my love of GURPS.

What I like the most about the SIEGE system is it is so easy for new players to 'master' and feel like they are contributing to the actual game. My team has had a line-up change so major over this past year that myself and one other player are all that remains from our first D&D3 team. So introducing new players to a system that they are not overwhelmed with is a major advantage of C&C.

Another serious advantage is that you can customise and diversify quite a bit just by the book (not to mention the ease of add-on rules). We currently have an assassin played by a ten year old as our "trap-finder, lock-picker" because he took his primes in INT (and Dex of course) and has a mastery of poisons (needle traps, heh). We dont for a second think of a Rogue as a necessary class. Or a fighter. We could have made the Cleric our trap-finder. (Of course a Rogue would have been mechanically superior to these tasks but with a high enough attribute and a Prime we can coast by without).

The XP system makes everyone feel unique. We gotten lazy with D&D3 and just had one person keeping track and tell the rest when we leveled. Now sometimes we get surprised by a sudden "I made level 6!"

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Frost · Post by **Frost** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 4:37 pm

The thing I've come to realize, due to C&C, is that skills in a class-based RPG are sort of unnecessary. I like that the primary attribute mechanic of C&C is in a sense a very high-level skill system... rather that sweat what your PC can do well on a skill-to-skill, you simply say, e.g., my agile character (i.e., one with a DEX primary attribute), does anything that requires agility better than most folks.

The forthcoming Adjuncts seem to be a neat way to diversify PCs without getting too crazy.
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moriarty777 · Post by **moriarty777** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:21 pm

I don't fear the feats.

I had no problem when I first picked up the 3.0 books and I didn't mind the few additions in the softcover splat books for 3.0 (though the names of most of them escape me right now).

However, with the OGL came a flood of this sort of material and entire books devoted to them. Then came 3.5 and even more yet revised feats with no ones in every Complete 'whatever' books.

I drowned on feats.

I'm happy with the idea of adjuncts which seem to be lesser powered and more character oriented than a min/max solution. I don't think TLG will push books with new ones either. So I'm certainly curious and they are likely going to be adapted in my games.

M
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Omote · Post by **Omote** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:28 pm

At the very least, the adjunts in the CKG will be a baseline of what you can do with adjunts in your own C&C games. The few adjunt previews that have been released seem to make them less impactful on the core C&C mechanic then 3E feats did for that game. And I am looking forward to seeing them so that I can adjust my game to fit.

~O
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Treebore · Post by **Treebore** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:38 pm

C&C has feats, it has all of the feats, and anyone can attempt to perform one at any time at the CK's discretion.

No prereqs.

No lists.

Simple CK discretion and player desire and creativity.

Just roll the dice.

I used to have a big problem with the C&C skill system, now I consider it a little problem. 90% of the time it works just fine as it is. For the other 10% there are back ground write ups and training/education during down time periods.

The SIEGE system, simplicity at its best.
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Maliki · Post by **Maliki** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:25 pm

Omote wrote:
As is probably already known, I use feats in mt C&C games. I like feats for the initial reason CharlieRock stated; they are advantages that diversify the character from one another mechanically. But as CharlieRock also stated, feats in 3E got WAY out of hand. Feats were no longer about roleplaying mechanical diversity, but getting uber pluses. Feats are in no way needed in the C&C game, but some players like a tweek to their character that might make them have a certain advantage to a dice roll from time to time. Feats are really no different then your traditional GURPS advantage. It's just that 3E took the great idea of the feat and turned it into absolute monstrosity of utter nonsense.

~O

+1

I liked the idea of feats in 3E, but wow did they take a good idea and mess it up. Currently I do not use any type of feats in my game, but I am looking forward to the Adjuncts in the CKG. The preview they had in the Crusader made them look promising.
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Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 12:16 am

concobar wrote:
All in good fun I assure you.

Oh yeah, no worries. I know it's all in jest.
And yeah, conc, I do like and play 3.x. But for C&C, no feats are necessary.

It's like, sometimes I like playing chess...but sometimes I like playing checkers, too.
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Lord Dynel · Post by **Lord Dynel** » Wed Jul 29, 2009 12:21 am

Maliki wrote:
+1

I liked the idea of feats in 3E, but wow did they take a good idea and mess it up. Currently I do not use any type of feats in my game, but I am looking forward to the Adjuncts in the CKG. The preview they had in the Crusader made them look promising.

You guys are reading my mind!

I love feats, and I wish sometimes my players would stick to the PHB for feats. But yeah, I have a few in my group who really like the "mechanical advantages" that some of the feats give. I agree that they give little edges and advantages to characters and that's what makes them cool. But then they messed up a good thing.

It wasn't until after I moved on to C&C that I began to seen feats as limitations on a characters rather than defining points. But within the framework of D&D, they're great.
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lobocastle · Post by **lobocastle** » Thu Jul 30, 2009 10:45 pm

When I first bought C&C I was playing D&D 3rd edition and I wanted to add both skills and feats. I felt at the time that this had to be done to make the game better. I have to admit I did not understand the SIEGE mechanic very well at the time.

The way I finally was able to apply the SIEGE mechanic to skills was to take the skills from D&D 3E and list them by ability, (Str, Con, Dex, Int, Wis, & Cha), and use that as a skill reference for characters.

Feats had me stumped for a long time, but now I do three adjustments for feats in C&C. One I incorporate the feat as a class ability. I allow characters to make one SIEGE check and one attack per round (fighter and monk may get more attacks). The spell casters can make adjustments to their spells with a SIEGE check. A Bard with Cha as prime can use there SIEGE check to bluff or feint in combat for instance. A fighter with a prime of Str could just use power attack without a SIEGE check as far as I am concerned.

If in character background a player says I am a Rogue and I depend on finesse for combat not brute force and I would like weapon finesse or to use my Dex rather than Str for attack roles. As long as the rogue uses light weapons I would be fine with that. A Ranger character wants to make a herbalism role to heal an injury, no problem use a SIEGE check under the survival ability as far as I am concerned. A 17th level Ranger wants to make a hide an plain sight SIEGE check in a wilderness setting. I would allow this for a high level Ranger ( at least 14th level) in a natural environment, but I would set the challenge class high for the attempt.

Anyway I believe that both skills and feats are not needed to play a good game of C&C.

Joe