How would these buffs to underpowered prerequisite feats affect game balance?

Question

Like many people who enjoy 3.5, I find that the issue of "feat tax" is incredibly pervasive - which is to say, there are a lot of feats that just feel like dead weight on a character sheet. As a result, classes like the Fighter are held back tremendously because the capstones of their grand feat chains cannot possibly hope to offset the massive amounts of wasted potential needed to get to them.

Rather than directing players towards magic-using classes or to the Tome of Battle, I've been running my recent games with a few adjustments to the problem feats. So far, my low-level parties seem to be doing just fine for themselves; that said, I don't have any big-time powergamers trying to break the system, nor do I have that much time under my belt with these changes.

The goal of these changes is not just to empower these feats, but to make them more interesting. There is also a secondary goal of empowering less-used or weaker combat styles, mainly archery, two-weapon fighting, and defense.

So my question is thus: with these changes, what kind of issues should I expect to run into? Which classes might become unexpected runaway successes with these buffs? How meaningful would these changes be to feat-reliant classes (Fighter, Psychic Warrior, etc.) in the long-term?

Adjusted Feats

All feats retain their usual prerequisites unless specified.

Dodge

You gain a +1 dodge bonus to Armor Class.

You may designate a single creature as your dodge target as a free action on your turn. If you do not designate a dodge target, the first creature that makes an attack against you after your turn becomes your dodge target. This gives no bonus on its own, but it may interact with other feats and abilities.

This feat may be taken multiple times. Each time this feat is taken, the dodge bonuses stack and an extra dodge target may be designated on your turn. Dodge targets beyond the first are not designated automatically against creatures who attack you.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Psionic Dodge

While psionically focused, you gain a +1 dodge bonus to Armor Class. As an immediate action, you may expend your psionic focus to increase this bonus to +4 against the next attack made against you.

This feat no longer requires Dex 13 or the Dodge feat. This feat counts as Dodge for the purposes of meeting prerequisites, and it includes the ability to select dodge targets as the Dodge feat does.

Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes

These feats grant a +2 bonus to Fortitude saves, Will saves, and Reflex saves respectively. Each feat allows you to reroll its respective saving throw once per day, though you must take the new result, even if it is lower.

A fighter may select Great Fortitude, Iron Will, or Lightning Reflexes as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Toughness

You gain +1 hit point per hit die, as if from having a high Constitution score.

You may take this feat multiple times. Its effects stack.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Weapon Focus

Choose one type of weapon. You can also choose unarmed strike or grapple (or ray, if you are a spellcaster) as your weapon for the purposes of this feat. You gain a +1 bonus on all attack rolls made using the selected weapon. Additionally, you may re-roll an attack roll made with the chosen weapon once per combat. You must take the result of the new roll, even if it is lower.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Weapon Specialization

Choose a weapon type that you have applied Weapon Focus to. You gain a bonus equal to one-half your Base Attack Bonus to all damage rolls made with the selected weapon.

This feat no longer requires Fighter levels, just a BAB of +4. Later feats in this line do still require fighter levels, however.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Greater Weapon Focus

Choose a weapon that you have applied Weapon Focus to. Your bonus to attack rolls from Weapon Focus with that weapon increases from +1 to +3. Additionally, any time you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll with that weapon, you may re-roll it. You must take the new result, even if it is a 1. This does not count as a use of the re-roll granted by Weapon Focus.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Greater Weapon Specialization

Choose a weapon type that you have applied Greater Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization to. Your bonus to damage rolls from Weapon Specialization with that weapon increases from one-half your BAB to your full BAB. Additionally, you may re-roll a damage roll with your selected weapon once per combat. You must re-roll all dice rolled, and you must take the result of the new roll, even if it is lower.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Mobility

You gain a +4 dodge bonus to Armor Class against attacks of opportunity and against attacks made as part of a readied action.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Point Blank Shot

You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet.

Your accuracy allows you to target an opponent's vitals at close range. Before making a ranged weapon attack against an opponent within 30 feet, you may choose to forego your Dexterity bonus (if any) to your attack roll. If the attack hits, you may add your Dexterity bonus to the damage roll. This extra damage is precision damage and is not multiplied on a critical hit.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Precise Shot

You may attack with ranged weapons against an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard -4 penalty on your attack roll.

Your aim can instead allow you to distract enemies with your shots, creating openings for your allies. If you choose to take the regular -4 penalty, a successful hit against an opponent engaged in melee grants a +2 circumstance bonus to melee attack rolls against that opponent for any creatures currently threatening the opponent in melee. This bonus lasts until the beginning of your next turn.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Minor Changes

Weapon Finesse and Quick Draw lose their Base Attack Bonus prerequisites. This allows Rogues to take these playstyle-defining feats at 1st level.

Answer 1

Individual Feat Changes

Dodge

You gain a +1 dodge bonus to Armor Class.

You may designate a single creature as your dodge target as a free action on your turn. If you do not designate a dodge target, the first creature that makes an attack against you after your turn becomes your dodge target. This gives no bonus on its own, but it may interact with other feats and abilities.

This feat may be taken multiple times. Each time this feat is taken, the dodge bonuses stack and an extra dodge target may be designated on your turn. Dodge targets beyond the first are not designated automatically against creatures who attack you.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Still a bad feat. A better feat, but still a bad one. AC isn’t that valuable, +1 isn’t much of it, and few things key off of Dodge in this manner that the multi-targeting bit makes much difference—Defensive Throw is the only option that’s actually good, though I suppose if you were already loading up on Dodge feats for that you’d probably take a few others, Elusive Target maybe.

Honestly, you should just remove Dodge (and Mobility) from the game entirely. I have done this and found it much superior. I have never regretted anything being easier to take as a result.

Psionic Dodge

While psionically focused, you gain a +1 dodge bonus to Armor Class. As an immediate action, you may expend your psionic focus to increase this bonus to +4 against the next attack made against you.

This feat no longer requires Dex 13 or the Dodge feat. This feat counts as Dodge for the purposes of meeting prerequisites, and it includes the ability to select dodge targets as the Dodge feat does.

Counting as Dodge is still the most valuable thing here. Still, +4 is a big enough bonus to matter more often, so if I was required to take Dodge, I’d probably want this version. I’d still prefer neither.

Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes

These feats grant a +2 bonus to Fortitude saves, Will saves, and Reflex saves respectively. Each feat allows you to reroll its respective saving throw once per day, though you must take the new result, even if it is lower.

A fighter may select Great Fortitude, Iron Will, or Lightning Reflexes as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Rerolls are nice, that’s not a bad idea. It’s unlikely that I have a feat to spare to take one of these for its own sake, but I won’t mind having one nearly so much with this feature.

For what it’s worth, my preferred fix is to remove the starting +2 from “good” saving throw progressions, and say that every class that has a good saving throw progression gets the corresponding feat for that save. This maintains the same +2 bonus that those saving throw progressions already start with, eliminates the option of stacking multiple of those (since these feats don’t self-stack), and gets most characters out of the stupidest feat taxes.

Toughness

You gain +1 hit point per hit die, as if from having a high Constitution score.

You may take this feat multiple times. Its effects stack.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

This already exists; it’s called Improved Toughness (even though it doesn’t actually require Toughness). Pathfinder also made this change (with the added benefit of making it a minimum of +3, so you still can get that +3 at 1st or 2nd). It’s still not a good feat, though it’s clearly a better one, and neither Improved Toughness nor PF Toughness are recommended on their own merits.

Weapon Focus

Choose one type of weapon. You can also choose unarmed strike or grapple (or ray, if you are a spellcaster) as your weapon for the purposes of this feat. You gain a +1 bonus on all attack rolls made using the selected weapon. Additionally, you may re-roll an attack roll made with the chosen weapon once per combat. You must take the result of the new roll, even if it is lower.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Touch spells should also be an option for spellcasters, in addition to rays. Also, probably shouldn’t really restrict those to spellcasters—just say you can choose touch attacks or rays if you have any ability that allows you to perform such attacks (such as casting a spell, lay on hands, eldritch blast, whatever).

On the actual effect itself, “once per combat” is awkward in 3.5e; you might want to replace that with something like “after you have rerolled an attack with this feat, you cannot do so again for 5 rounds” or something like it—5 rounds would be an incredibly long combat, and if it does last that long, it’s probably fair to let someone reroll again.

Anyway, those quibbles aside, this is solid enough. Again, probably not excited about it, but I’ll remember I have it. I like it better than my old attempt, which I’ve kind of soured on. I think there’s merit to the idea there, but not all of the entries there are well-done.

Weapon Specialization

Choose a weapon type that you have applied Weapon Focus to. You gain a bonus equal to one-half your Base Attack Bonus to all damage rolls made with the selected weapon.

This feat no longer requires Fighter levels, just a BAB of +4. Later feats in this line do still require fighter levels, however.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

This might be pushing the envelope a little, but I think it’s fair. This is the first one where I’m like “yeah, actually, I’d make taking that a priority.”

Greater Weapon Focus

Choose a weapon that you have applied Weapon Focus to. Your bonus to attack rolls from Weapon Focus with that weapon increases from +1 to +3. Additionally, any time you roll a natural 1 on an attack roll with that weapon, you may re-roll it. You must take the new result, even if it is a 1. This does not count as a use of the re-roll granted by Weapon Focus.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Respectable. Again, not sure I’d take it on its own—and at this point there isn’t a lot that requires it—but I could see the hypothetical pure fighter doing so.

Greater Weapon Specialization

Choose a weapon type that you have applied Greater Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization to. Your bonus to damage rolls from Weapon Specialization with that weapon increases from one-half your BAB to your full BAB. Additionally, you may re-roll a damage roll with your selected weapon once per combat. You must re-roll all dice rolled, and you must take the result of the new roll, even if it is lower.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Rerolling damage isn’t all that exciting most of the time; unless you’re a rogue or similar, or I guess a spellcaster, most of your damage isn’t in the form of dice in the first place. Doubling the bonus from Weapon Specialization is quite enough here, honestly, though, so as a little bit of gravy it’s fine. I guess it could make a lower-BAB person who rolls more dice more interested.

If you want to amplify that, you could consider allowing a person to pick and choose which dice to reroll. That would be quite good, for those who roll a lot of dice. Though at that point it might be easier to just Empower the roll.

Mobility

You gain a +4 dodge bonus to Armor Class against attacks of opportunity and against attacks made as part of a readied action.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Yawn. This is better than stock Mobility but not by much. Still say you should just get rid of it.

Point Blank Shot

You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet.

Your accuracy allows you to target an opponent's vitals at close range. Before making a ranged weapon attack against an opponent within 30 feet, you may choose to forego your Dexterity bonus (if any) to your attack roll. If the attack hits, you may add your Dexterity bonus to the damage roll. This extra damage is precision damage and is not multiplied on a critical hit.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

A weird Power-Attack-but-it’s-Dex-instead-of-BAB feature. Archers like Power-Attack-like effects—see the popularity of Hank’s energy bow—but this is a weird one. Making it precision, making it non-multipliable, those only add to the awkwardness. I’m not sure this would be a popular option.

Also, in case there’s any confusion: precision damage is multiplied on a critical hit. You might just be saying that this precision damage isn’t, which is fine, but in general, it is. The thing that stops sneak attack, sudden strike, etc. from being multiplied isn’t the fact that they’re precision damage, but instead the fact that they’re bonus damage dice. Since this isn’t dice, it would normally be multiplied. “Precision” just means that it doesn’t work against things immune to critical hits or sneak attack.

Finally, on that note, damage is multiplied by more things than just critical hits. If your damage is multiplied for some non-critical-hit reason, does this bonus get multiplied? As written, yes, but that’s very weird—nothing else in the game treats crits differently from other kinds of damage multipliers.

Precise Shot

You may attack with ranged weapons against an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard -4 penalty on your attack roll.

Your aim can instead allow you to distract enemies with your shots, creating openings for your allies. If you choose to take the regular -4 penalty, a successful hit against an opponent engaged in melee grants a +2 circumstance bonus to melee attack rolls against that opponent for any creatures currently threatening the opponent in melee. This bonus lasts until the beginning of your next turn.

A fighter may select this feat as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Yeah, not gonna use that ever, I don’t think. There’s a lot of set-up involved (it only works for my allies already threatening the target who are going to attack them in the next round), and I’m taking a much larger penalty than the bonus I’m handing out. Precise Shot remains the taxiest of feat taxes.

Just eliminate the whole “into melee” penalty altogether.

Minor Changes

Weapon Finesse and Quick Draw lose their Base Attack Bonus prerequisites. This allows Rogues to take these playstyle-defining feats at 1st level.

Good change; almost every game I’ve ever been in has done this mostly by forgetting those stupid prerequisites exist in the first place, and it has always been an improvement.

Conclusion

The overall effect on the meta is, I think, small. Weapon Focus et al. become much more popular feats, and maybe those being better makes it worth considering fighter long enough that someone actually takes Weapon Supremacy (Player’s Handbook II)—maybe. But I doubt it, because ultimately these just provide numbers—and numbers were never a fighter’s problem. The fighter’s problem is making those numbers count. The fighter’s problem is having unique things to do that aren’t done better by pretty much everyone else.

Personally, my approach is to just remove feat taxes—and accept that this makes the fighter even more redundant than it already was. It’s a 2-level class you only take if you’re absolutely desperate for feats; oh well, it already was. (Dungeoncrasher excepted.) So is barbarian, and everyone loves barbarian just because those 2 levels are so good.

But this approach could be valid in general—you certainly shifted things on the Weapon Focus line. And the saving throw feat changes are pretty good. But the other changes aren’t nearly as meaningful, and don’t solve the problems with those feats.

You haven’t saved the fighter class, either—with Weapon Specialization getting half the bonus and not requiring any fighter levels, I figure most will take that but not take any fighter levels—certainly not 12 of ’em. Sprucing up the other feats more will help, obviously, but the fighter needs more. In particular, once you have whatever feats you need, it’s really hard to justify staying with the class. Every further level of fighter becomes harder and harder to justify because you already have the feats you wanted the most. So it can’t just be a linear class the way it is, or there needs to be more feats that require fighter levels that are good—but that will feel pretty tax-y. Your Weapon Specialization feat is pretty good, but I don’t see a lot of people paying a “12 levels of fighter” tax. If they do, Weapon Supremacy is also a pretty good feat—but I don’t see many paying a “6 more levels of fighter” tax at that point, either. I think fighter as written is just a lost cause.

Answer 2

Playtesting says: Good direction, but still rough around the edges.

I've now been playing with these changes for several months, and my players have reached mid levels and tried out a few different classes. So in the interest of furthering our collective homebrewing knowledge, here are my findings so far and suggestions for further changes.

Dodge

While the flat +1 AC is a big improvement, there is still room for some more benefits. A boost to Reflex saves, perhaps. Fundamentally, though, it's still got the same problem as before: nobody is excited to take it.

Also, while the mechanic for automatically assigning a dodge target is useful in some ways, it's been a bit frustrating in others. With the way it gets auto-assigned, a player getting screwed over because they forgot to assign a dodge target actually feels way worse now. This is mainly because the DM now has less freedom to let the player assign it retroactively after being attacked, as is extremely common with the official version of this feat.

Keeping the selection of dodge targets is important for not breaking other feats that rely on it, but it really just needs to be fundamentally reworked. Any kind of mechanic that grants a piddly bonus as a free action is going to be ignored. It needs to either eat into the action economy (like requiring a swift action for a way bigger bonus) or make a more tangible change to the game state (like allowing some kind of movement) or both.

Psionic Dodge

This feat perfectly exemplifies the point about meaningful actions and meaningful bonuses.

The players never took this, but designing enemies with it was fun. Solid change. Maybe bundle the target selection into the focus spending, though, because right now it feels a bit tacked-on.

Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes

Perfect changes. The party Knight has Iron Will, and her 1/day reroll has saved her hide on three separate occasions. It makes a very non-interactive part of the game way more fun for the players, and on the other side of the DM screen it has given me a way to emulate 5e's Legendary Resistances, which is a great tool to have.

Toughness

Nobody took it. It's just a really hard sell given how feat-starved most characters are, and the saving throw feats completely crowded it out for the players who didn't have a clear vision and just wanted defense.

Honestly, I don't really have a good way to fix it. Maybe give it damage reduction like Roll With It, or maybe give it an effect that increases healing received. Either way, it needs a fundamentally new effect.

Weapon Focus

This has panned out very nicely. However, there was often some confusion between this feat and the save enhancers, namely that the players kept forgetting this one is usable more than once per day. Dropping it down to once per day and then tacking on some extra benefit (like rerolling concealment as well?) may be good, or just giving it multiple uses per day and tie it to BAB or some other stat.

Weapon Specialization

This needs to be a fighter exclusive feat. Other classes have their own ways of enhancing damage output - this is supposed to be the way that Fighters can compete with that. So, when a whirling frenzy dual-wielding Barbarian picks it up, things quickly go out of hand.

While this is a very nice feat for archers to keep up their damage in mid-to-late levels, the abuse cases at early levels probably outshine this. Forcing archers to take levels in Fighter isn't an inherently bad thing as long as they're getting something worthwhile, which this feat certainly is. Maybe give it to Rangers as a bonus feat if killing archer diversity is such a concern.

Greater Weapon Focus & Specialization

Nobody went high enough level in Fighter to pick these up, likely because they only really needed Weapon Focus. Just focus on giving Fighters interesting options in other ways, and then players will be able to afford these improved feats. It's like KRyan mentioned, though: Fighters already do enough damage, so while these feats may be competitive with other options, they still don't do anything because they're crowded out.

Mobility

Absolutely the most forgettable feat at the table. While I ended up introducing a massively buffed version of Whirlwind Attack that made one player take this feat, it has pretty much never been relevant. This feat absolutely needs more to it, even if it's some totally new effect like granting Tumble as a class skill or granting the "balance check without being flatfooted" thing normally reserved for 5 ranks in Balance.

In short, this feat is in the perfect place to ease some of the strange pain points in 3.5's convoluted movement mechanics, and it's just sitting here doing nothing. Definitely needs a second pass.

Point Blank Shot

This feat has been tactically interesting, though with the caveat that the "not multiplied on a critical hit" part got dropped pretty fast. Not a massively impactful feat, but certainly a huge improvement.

Precise Shot

This kind of effect is better suited for the likes of a skill trick. It's a neat little tool that has come up once or twice, but never to any particular fanfare. It was just "neat."

While the intent with several of these feats was to give the DM a way to resolve forgetfulness, like with the dodge target thing above, this feat fails at that. I mean, come on - who forgets to remove the -4 penalty for firing into melee?

That said, it's not a bad direction. It just needs a bit more juice behind it. I ended up changing the effect to instead making the enemy hit count as flanked, which meant that a rogue could effectively flank an enemy with his archer buddy. Much more impactful, and a way better use of the accuracy cost.

Overall

These changes have definitely been a net positive at my table, but they are woefully incomplete. Among other things, there are still plenty of other dead weight feats (Combat Expertise, Improved Shield Bash, and Improved Unarmed Strike, to name the main offenders). It may be worth considering just how fixable these problems are without requiring more fundamental changes.