D&D 4E 4e, Non-Martial Characters, and Limited Feat Choices

[Rystil Arden]

So, I've been playing Keep on the Shadowfell for a while now, and I noticed something--people were talking about the lack of a variety of feats at the highest tiers, but there's actually a surprisingly low number of feats at the Heroic Tier depending on your stats and class. I couldn't see this at all until I actually made my character and started playing. Now, there's plenty if you're a martial character, but I'd like to use my character as a case study. I honestly had incredible trouble selecting a 2nd-level feat for my character because there was very little available. I basically had no viable options except Skill Focus, Skill Training, Improved Init, and Toughness.

She's a Dwarven Cleric with high Wis, Con, and Cha (all 13 or above) and low Str, Dex, and Int (all lower). She is focused on healing and Wis-based powers. The concept is a Cleric with strong holy powers but slow reflexes and little competence with weapons. It's easy to find at least a few useful powers for her at any given level. But the trouble came with selecting feats. For certain character classes, 4e has deceptively few feats that you can take.

You start with a little over 80 feats. Remove 14 for racial feats for other races. Remove 10 for Channel Divinity feats of a god you don't worship (if you're not a Cleric, remove one more). Remove the three Ranger feats, the three Warlock feats, one for Paladin, two for Rogue, two for Warlord, one for Wizard, three for Fighters. That's nearly half that you simply can't take. It leaves around 40.

Now for some specifics related to Clerics. First off, you already get Hide, Chain, and Leather proficiency plus Ritual Casting, so those 4 feats are irrelevant.

Now for my Cleric. Any higher armour proficiency (or shields, which clerics don't get this time) requires more strength than she has, knocking off 4 more feats. For the +Energy Damage feats, 3 of them require high Dex or Int, and the other one (Dark Fury) only works for evil priests who do Necrotic Damage, so that's 4 more. Blade Opportunist requires high Str and Dex is generally irrelevant for a Warhammer-wielding Dwarf. Combat Reflexes requires high Dex. Far Shot and Throw require high Dex and Str respectively. Jack of all Trades and Linguist require high Int. Power Attack and Powerful Charge require high Str (in Power Attack's case, very high Str). Nimble Blade and Quick Draw requires high Dex, as do the two TWF feats.

There are now 18 feats left. I will add in Sure Climber, Long Jumper, and Escape Artist--they require training in Athletics or Acrobatics, which she doesn't have but could get. Still, they aren't choices for her right now and they don't fit the character concept (the latter a secondary concern, but still there).

That leaves 15 feats.

The Dwarf feats first. Getting more damage on her weapon attacks is worthless--they don't hit and she almost-never tries them. Dodge Giants is not useful in Keep on the Shadowfell, though she would obviously be able to retrain for that feat if we ever actually fight an extended campaign against giants. Still, it isn't at all a helpful pick for this adventure, so it's out. Now, the Paragon Dwarf feat is pretty awesome, but these Heroic ones are rather terrible. Okay, that leaves us with 13.

Alertness--we've rarely been surprised, and if so, not me. The Elf Ranger and I have very high perception, and the Ranger tends to scout ahead. She's the only one who ever really gets surprised. As such, it is less useful by far to me than just getting training in Perception.

Defensive Mobility--I almost-never provoke opportunity attacks. This would not help appreciably.

Durable--Thanks to my powerful healing abilities, we get a lot out of each surge. Also, I have a lot. I've never even used half before we had to stop for the day.

Fast Runner--Doesn't really help at all. This could be useful for a character who already has 6 or better speed for chasing enemies, but I'm a Dwarf. Actually, it would be awesome for an Orc Charge-monkey, considering the Orc racials.

Mounted Combat--We have no mount and couldn't bring them into the keep without penalties anyway

Sehanine's Reversal--My character's goddess's divinity feat. I made a thread about this before. Unless you exploit it for death saves, it is basically worthless.

Weapon Focus--Worthless for her, since she rarely hits with melee attacks anyway.

Weapon Prof--She already has Warhammers, which are good enough, particularly since she hardly uses weapons.

Wintertouched--Pretty much useless except for Rogues or Ice Mages using the combo with Lasting Frost (or when you know you're going to fight tons and tons of Ice Vulnerable things)

That leaves us with 4 feats.

Improved Init--Remains an option, but it doesn't fit my character concept and high Init is less important in 4e when you expect to exhaust your main abilities each encounter anyway and capacity is more linear and less nova.

Toughness--Has been nerfed greatly since the preview. I mean, it's still an option, I guess, but it's only one level worth of HP until Paragon tier. I really don't want to take it

Skill Focus and Skill Training--Other than the two above, these seem to me like the only real options. And of course, Skill Training+ (otherwise known as multiclassing).

At level 1, I multiclassed into Warlock with my feat because there was so little else to do.

Has anyone else made a character and found the feat system so constraining? By the time I finish the Heroic Tier, even if I bite the bullet and take Improved Init and Toughness, I'm guaranteed to have taken Training and/or Focus in a bunch of skills for lack of anything interesting to take, and I find that rather boring.

I guess the new books will be vastly expanding feat options--pity the Martial book comes out first; those characters already had enough feat options to get along.

 

[Knightlord]

You could design your own feats. Should be pretty easy to do with 4E, based upon its design philosophy of being easier to work with. Of course, such feats would probably require your DM's consent.

 

[small pumpkin man]

I realized there was a problem, but not that it was quite that bad. A large part of the problem seems to be the restrictive feat prereques. Feats like Armour prof(scale) or Astral Fire having prereques of 13 doesn't seem to high untill you actually start making characters, or worse, just give yourself the stats you want without putting thought into feats.

Irritating.

 

[Rystil Arden]

You could design your own feats. Should be pretty easy to do with 4E, based upon its design philosophy of being easier to work with. Of course, such feats would probably require your DM's consent.

That's actually sort of my thought for level 2--Since Dark Fury is takable for evil Clerics, I would think that a Radiant Fury feat that gave Radiant and Psychic would be fine as well (if I promised never to take Astral Fire, of course, not that I ever could).

However, it's pretty egregious that I have to resort to designing my own feats right from the launch. I mean, it isn't like I'm a grizzled veteran who is looking for something new.

Compare to 3.5e PH, where the PC got fewer feats, and you'll see that 4e limits options drastically while giving the character more feat picks. In 3.5, I would have had a variety of choices that were directly useful. Sure, some were better than others, but nearly all of them were at least as useful as Skill Focus.

I'm sure that 4e will eventually have enough feats, and this isn't a condemnation of the 4e system, just the way they chose to launch it. It's frustrating how barebones the PH is compared to the 3e PH. It just gets the feel of a grab for $$ in buying the splats. I mean, in 3e, the splats did have fun and interesting feats, but I could play for years with the core if I wanted, with different choices each time. In 4e, on character #1 I basically ran out feat choices.

I know they were running out of space, but they could have started off with fewer armour and weapon special abilities and put in more pages of feats. 10 pages more of feats would have been a massive boost to choices.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I realized there was a problem, but not that it was quite that bad. A large part of the problem seems to be the restrictive feat prereques. Feats like Armour prof(scale) or Astral Fire having prereques of 13 doesn't seem to high untill you actually start making characters, or worse, just give yourself the stats you want without putting thought into feats.

Irritating.

Yeah, I totally didn't see it either until actually making a character.

Prereqs are some of the problem, but it only ameliorates it slightly if you decide to eliminate all prereqs of 13 or lower. Of my three non-high stats, giving myself a free a 13 in any stat wouldn't give many other options.

13 Int would give Linguist (which is rather pointless in most cases) and Jack of All Trades (A rather nifty feat, but quite similar to the other skill feats that I can actually take--still, I would take it, I guess). So maybe one feat pick is covered.

13 Dex would give a bunch of things useless to me and then Astral Fire, so that's really only one feat pick is covered.

13 Str would have given access to Scale and Light Shields. I would have definitely taken Light Shields (I need more Reflex Defense!), but probably not Scale yet because we found a Magic Chainmail. Unfortunately, you actually need 15 Str for Plate and Heavy Shields, which is ridiculously high. If I magically gave myself a free 15 to Str, I would basically have been set. It's just another reason why Martial classes have plenty of options.

 

[Thasmodious]

While I agree the feat selection is a bit short currently (it will change soon enough with all the avenues WotC has to plug any such holes), I disagree Sehanine's Reversal is worthless. You spend powers just to drop conditions on your enemies, a free encounter power to pop any of the nasty things monsters can do to you back on them or their allies? I hardly think thats worthless, and it seems well in line with the general power level of other feats.

 

[Victim]

Maybe you should have looked at what feats you wanted and assigned stats accordingly.

If you're going with mostly ranged powers (as per the WIS focus), then Defensive Mobility doesn't seem like a bad choice anyway.

Also, since you can only retrain one thing each level, you still might want to pick something that doesn't seem immediately useful.

 

[Rystil Arden]

While I agree the feat selection is a bit short currently (it will change soon enough with all the avenues WotC has to plug any such holes), I disagree Sehanine's Reversal is worthless. You spend powers just to drop conditions on your enemies, a free encounter power to pop any of the nasty things monsters can do to you back on them or their allies? I hardly think thats worthless, and it seems well in line with the general power level of other feats.

It's quite worthless (assuming you don't let it apply to death saves), but that's the topic of another thread (one I already started). Perhaps you're thinking that it applies any time you succeed at a save? You need a Natural 20. I actually proposed a variant that required an attack against the enemy's Will defense but worked on any successful save.

Also remember, it isn't a unique encounter power; it uses up Channel Divinity--you'll probably have already used Channel Divinity in that encounter, and if you hold out on using it until you finally get a natural 20 on a save, you've lost a lot from holding out, spending a large number of encounters never using anything.

So far in KotS, I have made one non-death save in five encounters. That means on average, Sehanine's Reversal would help me every 100 encounters (not counting encounters versus enemies that are immune to their own conditions, which a decent number of them seem to be). No thanks.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Dodge Giants is not useful in Keep on the Shadowfell, though she would obviously be able to retrain for that feat if we ever actually fight an extended campaign against giants. Still, it isn't at all a helpful pick for this adventure, so it's out.

Wait - are you discounting this because you've read the adventure or something? Is the feat a minor bonus vs giants and giants alone?

Alertness--we've rarely been surprised, and if so, not me. The Elf Ranger and I have very high perception, and the Ranger tends to scout ahead. She's the only one who ever really gets surprised. As such, it is less useful by far to me than just getting training in Perception.

This seems like a consequence of the adventure and possibly your DMs tactics rather than anything else.

Also - how do you have such high perception if you've not got skill training in it?

Defensive Mobility--I almost-never provoke opportunity attacks. This would not help appreciably.

So take it and then DO provoke attacks. Soaking up those attacks can be beneficial, especially if you've got a very high AC against them.

Durable--Thanks to my powerful healing abilities, we get a lot out of each surge. Also, I have a lot. I've never even used half before we had to stop for the day.

? Why have you had to stop for the day if you're not out of surges?

Fast Runner--Doesn't really help at all. This could be useful for a character who already has 6 or better speed for chasing enemies, but I'm a Dwarf. Actually, it would be awesome for an Orc Charge-monkey, considering the Orc racials.

I assume this improves your movement rate somehow. To quote any number of roleplaying and other references "I don't have to run faster than you, I just have to run faster than our dwarf cleric". If you're the slowest party member, improving your movement rate improves the movement rate of the party as a whole.

Mounted Combat--We have no mount and couldn't bring them into the keep without penalties anyway

Sehanine's Reversal--My character's goddess's divinity feat. I made a thread about this before. Unless you exploit it for death saves, it is basically worthless.

From the sounds of things, it's a "channel divinity to roll a save", right? Frankly that sounds great.

Weapon Focus--Worthless for her, since she rarely hits with melee attacks anyway.

Weapon Prof--She already has Warhammers, which are good enough, particularly since she hardly uses weapons.

Wintertouched--Pretty much useless except for Rogues or Ice Mages using the combo with Lasting Frost (or when you know you're going to fight tons and tons of Ice Vulnerable things)

That leaves us with 4 feats.

Improved Init--Remains an option, but it doesn't fit my character concept and high Init is less important in 4e when you expect to exhaust your main abilities each encounter anyway and capacity is more linear and less nova.

This works a lot better if you see it as foresight instead of quick reflexes. Your cleric is wise enough that she's already thought a situation through before it occurs, and when a combat starts, she acts instead of reacting.

Toughness--Has been nerfed greatly since the preview. I mean, it's still an option, I guess, but it's only one level worth of HP until Paragon tier. I really don't want to take it

Skill Focus and Skill Training--Other than the two above, these seem to me like the only real options. And of course, Skill Training+ (otherwise known as multiclassing).

At level 1, I multiclassed into Warlock with my feat because there was so little else to do.

Has anyone else made a character and found the feat system so constraining? By the time I finish the Heroic Tier, even if I bite the bullet and take Improved Init and Toughness, I'm guaranteed to have taken Training and/or Focus in a bunch of skills for lack of anything interesting to take, and I find that rather boring.

I guess the new books will be vastly expanding feat options--pity the Martial book comes out first; those characters already had enough feat options to get along.

It sounds like you're more dissatisfied with the power of feats in general. I mean most of the other feats aren't all that much better than what you've listed - the various +1 to damage feats take 5 rounds to do enough damage to overcome toughness for instance.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Maybe you should have looked at what feats you wanted and assigned stats accordingly.

If you're going with mostly ranged powers (as per the WIS focus), then Defensive Mobility doesn't seem like a bad choice anyway.

Also, since you can only retrain one thing each level, you still might want to pick something that doesn't seem immediately useful.

Hmm, interesting ideas, but I don't agree that it would help.

Not most importantly but most practically, you can see from my earlier post that having 13+ would not have opened up very many useful choices. (15 would have given a reasonable number of new armour profs, but that would have been wasting 9 of my 22 points for nothing other than to open up viable feat choices).

More importantly, I consider myself a pretty rules-focused guy in many cases--I make builds and such, though I also like having strong RP aspects and I always choose things that are consistent for my character. And even I am put back by the idea of assigning stats on a meta-level only for feats. With the relatively-low number of points to buy vis-a-vis the feat requirements, you'd really have to be a cookie-cutter to qualify for the 15 Str feats if you weren't using Str for your class at all. I read the descriptions of the two Cleric classes and said "Cool! I can make a Cloistered Cleric with low Str who isn't a battle Cleric." So I wanted to do that. It's supposed to be one of the builds, and it's disappointing that the feats try to push you away from that.

@Defensive Mobility, perhaps you might think so, but I've only had one opportunity attack against me so far in six battles.

As for retraining, I have almost-no powers I would want to retrain (at many levels, there weren't any other viable choices than the ones I took that used Wisdom), so really the only thing I'm looking at for retraining would be to take the Dodge Giants feat if we go to a new adventure against Giants. At least, I didn't retrain anything when leveling to 2, and don't plan on it when leveling to 3 (which will happen early next session).