Feats as Rewards

A while ago I posted an article entitled "Featless" which seemed to get a lot of attention. Some ideas were bandied about, and I thought more on the feat issue. I suppose part of the reason I was thinking about getting rid of feats was to take some of the thought out of character planning so that players can focus more attention on the in-character play rather than the meta-game. For groups who prefer a quick-and-dirty style with simple character creation and a simpler game, I still think cutting feats out of the game wholecloth (forgive the analogy) is a capital idea. But what about those who still want to use feats, but, like me, feel that the regular interval of feats and the necessity of planning for prerequisites either stresses players out too much or at the very least makes them feel shoe-horned into paying feat taxes (which is a bigger problem in 4e, but persisted in 3.5, which is my chief area of interest)?

Let's look at some other ways in which feats, a mechanic which is admittedly cool and fun to play around with, might be utilized in the game without being earned every third level. Because we are working off of the assumption that players will not be able to expect to earn feats at regular intervals, we will first have to do away with the notion of feat prerequisites for things. That is easy enough. If you use prestige classes (as I imagine most 3.5 DMs do), then I highly recommend the Test-Based Prerequisites variant from Unearthed Arcana. I have used this variant rule for many years and both my players and I agree that it is a much better approach to prestige classes than the core rules. Second, we need to make sure that feats are not given out in too great a quantity. At the very most, a player should not be able to earn more feats than he might otherwise earn through the core rules. This is partially for balance and partially to keep complexity of the game at a moderate level. Personally, I recommend no more than one feat per five levels, but as the DM, you can make that judgment as you choose. And if you are going to do this, I highly recommend you take my advice from the Featless article and ignore monster feats as well. Just pretend monsters and NPCs in written adventures or monster manuals do not have the feats listed in order to keep things more on an even keel with the player characters.

With our ground rules established, what are these other ways in which we can introduce feats into our games, keeping them interesting, but not automatic or based on (sometimes arbitrary) prerequisites? One idea which I particularly like is the idea of a feat as a reward. It can be a reward from an NPC for completing a quest, a reward for accomplishing some heroic deed, or just about anything the DM likes. The key is that the feat is a reward, a bonus, a boon, not something that is expected. I suppose some examples might be in order to give you an idea of what I am talking about.

The player characters have been charged by the Wizards of Eindore to retrieve a magical orb from the den of the dragon, Mitzcatla. Without the orb, the Wizards of Eindore are powerless to defend their citadel and so the heroic player characters seek out Mitzcatla, slay him and his monstrous minions, retrieve the orb, and in exchange the Wizards of Eindore offer to teach the player characters one metamagic feat. It could be any metamagic feat or it could be a selection of metamagic feats of the DM's choosing. Of course, training to learn this feat ought to take some amount of time (a couple weeks at the least); I recommend seeing the Dungeon Master's Guide for recommendations on training times and costs. What about the fighters, barbarians, and rogues who gain nothing from this? Well, the Wizards of Eindore would reward those characters in the traditional way, with gold or a specially-crafted magic item. In a future adventure, the player characters might assist the army of the Kingdom of Macea in driving back the goblins from the evil Johaki Empire. This time it would be the turn of the non-casting classes to have the option of learning a combat-oriented feat in exchange for their service while the spell-casters receive a more traditional monetary or magic item reward.

An entirely different way of going about things could be to make specific conditions for players to earn feats by accomplishing some great deed or displaying phenomenal skill. I will present a few examples below.

In order to learn the Maximize feat, a spellcaster must roll the maximum roll on at least five dice worth of damage when casting a spell. Such a task is difficult, and may in fact never happen, but when it does, it will be all the more special. It is also more likely to happen the higher level the caster (it is more likely to get five maximum dice on a 15d6 cone of cold than a 5d6 shocking grasp for example).

A character may learn the Power Attack feat after dealing the killing blow to an opponent with a roll of maximum damage on the damage dice (and it must be a true killing blow which knocks the opponent to -10 hit points or the destruction of a construct, undead, etc.). This is also an unlikely event, but the longer the campaign, the more likely it is to happen. It is also not as unlikely as the Maximize Spell feat, representing the fact that Power Attack ought to be theoretically available earlier.

The Improved Initiative feat may be learned any time after the character has rolled a natural 20 for initiative and also won initiative over all other participants in the combat. This is a fairly simple thing to do. When someone rolls a natural 20 for initiative, he usually ends up going first. And this represents the fact that Improved Initiative has no prerequisites in the core rules and thus is theoretically available to anyone at any time.

These types of "accomplishments" could be secrets of the DM or they could be freely available knowledge to all players, depending on how the DM wishes to run his campaign. And the player would have the choice of taking the feat at that time, or waiting for the opportunity to later take another feat which might interest him instead (remember there still ought to be a limit on the number of feats a character may have). The point is to add a little more excitement and special nature to feats, something that is truly earned through perseverance (and some luck; after all some of the greatest accomplishments in history have happened due to luck). Obviously, this method puts quite a bit more work upon the DM. But if the DM likes this idea and is pressed for time, he could easily do it a little more free-form, deciding on the fly that some awesome stroke of brilliance, luck, or perseverance which fits the nature of the feat has been done which earns the character the feat. A DM in this case need only be wary of not showing too much favoritism to one character over another. I would suggest allowing each character no more than one more feat than the other characters in the party to keep things fair in the eyes of the players.

So there you have some ideas on how to integrate feats into the campaign on a more limited level and make them a bit more exciting and special at the same time.