Nine simple feat additions

[Angelus_dead]

The following nine feats are taken from D&D books, should be easy to program, and wouldn't harm game balance.

Blind-fight: (PHB)
When attacking a creature with concealment (such as from Blur or Obscuring Mist), you roll twice against concealment-miss chance and use the better result. You suffer only one-half the speed penalty from being blinded. Also, invisible creatures attacking you may be denied certain bonuses.
(Note: this would also be a reasonable feat to allow on some magic jewelery)


Font of Life: (Heros of Horror)
You can negate incoming energy drain / negative level effects with a successful fortitude save. Use the effect's normal save DC, or the generic DC = 10 + HD/2 + cha if unknown. If the effect already offered a saving throw, you get an extra chance to save.
(Note: this would also work well as an effect on some magic armor)


Armor Specialization: (PHB2)
Requires BAB12, Medium Armor Proficiency
You gain DR 2/- in medium or heavy armor.
(Modified from D&D to be more generic)


Shield Specialization: (PHB2)
Requires shield proficiency
The shield bonus you gain from a light or heavy (but not tower) shield increases by +1.
(Modified from D&D to be more generic)


Quick Staff: (PHB2)
You gain a +2 dodge AC bonus when wielding a quarterstaff.
(Simplified and improved from D&D)


Crossbow Sniper: (PHB2)
Requires BAB1, Crossbow prof, Weapon Focus Ranged
Add one-half your dex bonus to ranged damage rolls with a crossbow. The range limit on sneak attacks with a crossbow doubles.
(For game balance, I suggest doubling the damage benefit for Great Crossbows, although the D&D book doesn't support that)


Ranged Pin: (CW)
Requires Dex15, BAB5, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot
Activate this feat to make a trip attempt with a ranged or thrown weapon.
(Note: this ability has the potential to be situationally overpowered, but a sufficient cooldown delay will prevent that)


Zen Archery: (CW)
Requires Wis13, BAB1
You may use wisdom in place of dexerity on ranged attack rolls.


Intuitive Attack: (BoED)
Requires Good alignment.
You may use wisdom in place of strength on melee attack rolls with a simple weapon.


Game balance notes:
Overall, adding more useful feats would increase the power of the fighter class, which needs help at high level.

Blind Fight- mostly attractive to fighters who have more feat slots than they know what to do with.
Font of Life- note that Warforged are immune to energy drain anyhow, so allowing other races to spend a feat for a chance to negate the attack is not overpowered.
Crossbow Sniper- this would restore some viability to crossbow characters, who right now contribute little to combat.
Armor Specialization- this would give high-level fighters to gain much less DR than a barb, and only if they didn't already get it from adamantine armor.
Zen Archery- some clerics / paladins would be able to get good accuracy with bows, which isn't powerful because bows aren't powerful.

Intuitive Attack:
Two effects. First, low-str clerics could choose to spend a feat and become accurate with maces, which isn't powerful because they still don't have much strength damage bonus.
Second, monks would have three ways they can build for attacking:
1. Strength. No feat, applies to all weapons, and adds damage.
2. Dexerity. One feat, applies to fist and kama but not staff, adds AC and reflex.
3. Wisdom. One feat, applies to fist and staff but not kama, adds AC and will.

[Turial]

All feats that would be nice additions to the game.

Font of life maybe high on the power side as many of the energy drain attacks are designed to bypass saves to kill and cripple players as well as the mobs but thats just my opinion.

[Boulderun]

Good, straightforward list. Sniper is sorely needed (actually the sneak attack range in general needs to be increased - thirty feet in this game puts you in a substantially different position than thirty feet on the D&D grid).

My xbow-spec rogue/fighter has every top end heavy repeater AND great xbow (picked up at 15), and still spends the majority of her time in melee (dual wielding treason + bravo's sword, without any of the feats) in order to be halfway effective.

[GlassCannon]

All feats that would be nice additions to the game.

Font of life maybe high on the power side as many of the energy drain attacks are designed to bypass saves to kill and cripple players

Fixed for accuracy.

Enervate should not be as widely used as it is.

Horrid Wilting is used appropriately, except in The Shroud part 3, where it is activated at several points in the area by simply walking by.

Flesh to Stone should be vulnerable to Antimagic and Dispel effects.

As per these feats, I would like them added in as well, but then even less clerics would focus on keeping people alive(Cleric Repeater build... even more gimp than a Bard repeater build...). Our Cleric population is already dwindling.

[Boulderun]

Fixed for accuracy.

Enervate should not be as widely used as it is.

Horrid Wilting is used appropriately, except in The Shroud part 3, where it is activated at several points in the area by simply walking by.

Flesh to Stone should be vulnerable to Antimagic and Dispel effects.

As per these feats, I would like them added in as well, but then even less clerics would focus on keeping people alive(Cleric Repeater build... even more gimp than a Bard repeater build...). Our Cleric population is already dwindling.

[LOUDRampart]

More feats that give more options that don't break the balance of the game = a good thing.

[Mad_Bombardier]

Nice list Angelus_Dead. Though, I'm sad to see no Practiced Spellcaster.

[Angelus_dead]

Nice list Angelus_Dead. Though, I'm sad to see no Practiced Spellcaster.

I'd like to see four separate Practiced caster feats added to DDO, one for each of cleric, wizard, sorcerer, and bard casting (classes which in PnP only have 1/2 CL advancement shouldn't get it). However I was assuming that feat would be a bit more work to program.

[Aesop]

I give a thumbs up to all listed feats... though I am a little hesitant on Font of Life

I'd also like a Disarm Feat that reduced damage by a percentage (say 20%) for a short (15 sec) duration

Improved Disarm could give a -40% for 15 sec... number may need fudging

Aesop

[Angelus_dead]

I'd also like a Disarm Feat that reduced damage by a percentage (say 20%) for a short (15 sec) duration
Improved Disarm could give a -40% for 15 sec... number may need fudging

That would be hard to implement; it would imply animation things happening to really have the sword fly off the monster.

Instead, the existing "Sunder" feat should be given some variant uses to be more fun, and to more closely follow the idea of the Sunder PnP feat. Instead of one active icon for the feat, you have 3 choices (like how some spells or enhancements have multiple ways to use them).
One is Sunder Shield, which works like normal and reduces AC.
One is Sunder Armor, which gives the victim a penalty to DR and a small AC penalty.
And finally Sunder weapon, which gives the victim a penalty on attack and damage rolls.

[Gornin]

All good ideas, and I agree that they should be relatively easy to apply.

[Xithos]

Nice list of ideas for the devs Angelus. Variety is the spice of life and these look like things some would consider taking without being overly powerful.

[MysticTheurge]

I like this list.

Question though, do you think Crossbow Sniper should apply to Repeating Crossbows, or just regular Crossbows?

[Sem34]

New Feats are great... really like this list

Think all crossbows should work with Sniper Feat

[Angelus_dead]

Question though, do you think Crossbow Sniper should apply to Repeating Crossbows, or just regular Crossbows?

The PHB2 text is not 100% clear on whether it considers Repeating Crossbows to count as a kind of Crossbow for the purpose of this feat (there is strong suggestion it doesn't). But if it does treat them as a subset, then it has a screwy result: you can use Crossbow Sniper with a repeating crossbow only if you have Weapon Focus in that specific weapon, but also Weapon Focus in a non-repeating crossbow as well.

Anyhow, for DDO purposes it's clear the benefit of half-dex damage bonus is a lot more powerful on a repeating crossbow, since the bonus kicks in so much faster. You'd have to either accept Crossbow Sniper will only be trained by characters who already have a repeater feat, or find a way to change that. One reasonable compromise would be to make the DDO Crossbow Sniper feat full dex mod damage if you make a stationary attack with a regular crossbow, or half dex mod if you are either in-motion, or using a repeating crossbow. (This would simulate that the elaborate machinery makes the repeater less steady than simpler weapons)

Peak DDO dex is about 34, so we're looking at +12 damage with full bonus or +6 with half. +12 damage from one feat sounds overpowered, but considering the slooow attack rate of non-repeater crossbows, maybe it isn't (especially since a crossbow user standing still can be dead meat unless the enemy has no way to reach him).

[Mad_Bombardier]

I'd like to see four separate Practiced caster feats added to DDO, one for each of cleric, wizard, sorcerer, and bard casting (classes which in PnP only have 1/2 CL advancement shouldn't get it).

100% agreed. We'd need PS: Bard, PS: Cleric, PS:Sorcerer, & PS:Wizard. Rangers and Paladins in DDO are already practiced spellcasters.

[EspyLacopa]

In addition to those, how about the Combat Form feats? Gives more options to the fighter builds, and makes Wisdom even less of a dump stat.

Combat Focus (req 13 Wis):

Passive feat that activates on successful attack, lasts 20 seconds + 2 seconds per additional Combat Form feat. Cannot activate again until 60 seconds have passed. While active, the character gains a +2 bonus on Will Saves, and improves to +4 if you have three Combat Form feats.

Combat Defense (req 13 Wis, Combat Focus, Dodge, BAB +6)

While Combat Focus is active, gain an additional +1 Dodge AC. With three or more Combat Form Feats, this increases to +2 Dodge AC. (This is instead of how it works in PnP, since we already get +1 dodge ac against everything with the Dodge feat.)

Combat Stability (req 13 Wis, Combat Focus, BAB +3)

While Combat Focus is active, gain +4 bonus to resist Trip, Stunning Blow, Sunder, Overrun, and such. Increases to +8 with three or more Combat Form feats.

Combat Vigor (req 13 Wis, Combat Focus, BAB +9)

While Combat Focus is active, you gain Fast Healing 2. This improves to Fast Healing 4 with three or more Combat Form feats.

Not sure how to handle Combat Strike, which lets you immediately end the Focus and attack with a bonus to attack and damage equal to the number of Combat Form feats for 1 round of attacks.

[Muppethero]

Tactile Trapsmith: Use your Dex instead of Int for Disable device.

Double Wand Wielder: You can activate two wands at the same time.

Energy Substitution: You can modify a spell that uses one type of energy to use another type of energy.

Extra Spell Slot: Self Explanatory, this can be combined for Wizards and Sor (learn extra spell feat)

Practiced Spell Caster: increases the caster lvl of spells cast by muliticlassed Casters. (Wizard 2 Rog 2 would make your spells cast by a 4th lvl wizard, you would not have access to higher lvl spells just would last longer or do more dmg)

[Boulderun]

Energy Substitution: You can modify a spell that uses one type of energy to use another type of energy.

You think Wall of Fire is the dominant spell now? Ha!

It's a nice thought; never gonna happen.

[winsom]

Good List.

I'll add:

Practiced Spell-Caster: add 3 to caster level up to total character level

Ability Focus: add +2 DC to a combat ability of your choice, such as Stunning Blow or Trip

Extra Rage or Smite: use barbarian rage or paladin smite extra times per rest

Improved Combat Expertise: gain additional armor class for additional attack penalty