Retraining

[Veilan]

I know ALFA is already strongly biased towards the ones with regular DM access, but institutionalising that through feats that have a different value for different people seems like crossing a line.

A line we already crossed with crafting, obviously.

It's wishful thinking and far outside the reality of ALFA, but somehow I still dream about one feat having the same effect no matter who takes it, not only those privileged through special DM invitation. I guess it's extraordinary PCs hypercharged... guaranteed DM attention not only now, but with the next team on server too.

It's a pity we can't muster the will to get a standardised and universal handling done, so instead we leave it up to DM fiat, i.e., favouritism - but it is the nature of the game.

I sincerely hope it'll be a bucket of fun for everyone involved, and a thoroughly enjoyable experience of what ALFA can be and do at its best (at least for some people).

Cheers,

[Adanu]

Veilan, this is why I decided against it, and went with another line of thought for what he's looking to do.

You can rest easier :p

[Darkmystic]

Allow it.

[orangetree]

If I may throw my two cents in this. Just food for thought, certainly if you already have something in mind, go with it. This is only an opinion.

I think there should be some flexibility in this sort of thing. That is why the D20 rule exists, to simplify access to scenarios and events that might not be governed easily by the set rules.

A person wishes to accomplish something... however, they do not have the 'feat' for it. Lets take something really mundane as an example: If I do not have the shield feat, can I really not use it at all? I could say my char attempts it, and likely have my char flying behind hitting a wall, lose the shield, and take damage... but hopefully somewhat less then an axe hitting them all the same, and the gain of 'distance', which would help in the next move.

Possessing a feat means you have 'trained' for it, (except for certain starting feats where you were 'born' with those traits) but not all leaders are -trained- leaders. If a character is not trained, that is what the basic stats are for, right? I would roll charisma, to get a feel for how much they inspire. If they need to work out a war-strategy, I would use Intelligence rolls, with a limit that they can not work something out that has a DC higher than 10- which could increase, if they begin to study and RP accordingly (perhaps on buying various books on the history and tactics etc).

If a character succeeds his rolls, and doing very well, then they should be encouraged to take a feat in leadership to represent this new experience on their next level or even taking a ranger level to reflect a 'studied prey' in some way.

I think this approach would be in general, fair to the character, reasonably realistic, and takes away the artificial 'no feat, no chance' situation. Obviously this would only apply to actions 'anyone' can take... a fighter trying to cast a spell, without taking any wizard levels is not going to happen... though if they are studying, i dare say they should be able to roll lore, intelligence, but with the DC ceiling as the limit.

[Ithildur]

[editted, misread your last paragraph, sorry!]

OT, some of what you're talking about is feasible and does already happen in ALFA; other things like the Leadership feat, there's specific reasons why it's required for certain things.

As far as a pure sorcerer using a shield, actually in 3.5e you can do that just fine (have to deal with spell failure and armor check penalties unless it's made of a rare material called mithral or such); unfortunately it's a rule that I wish NWN2 implemented but it didn't, and I don't see this changing for ALFA anytime soon (though someone probably brought it up in suggestions at one time).

And you can certainly lead without the Leadership feat. The feat is there for a fairly specific purpose; that is being able to bring the resources of NPCs at your PC's disposal... which is potentially a HUGE boost of power in game terms, as well as IC influence, notoriety, fame, etc. You can look it up here:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#leadership

But no one is saying you can't ever lead anything/be a leader without the feat. In fact one of the posts in this thread said exactly the opposite. However if you specifically want to have powerful (which mid level characters with class levels actually are) NPC sidekicks following you around or want to raise an army, we use Leadership feat as a base. The former is most likely not going to be feasible in ALFA short of a massive amount of work from both Tech folks and DMs.

[orangetree]

Makes sense. I was just thinking that reasonable actions can be rolled. It doesn't mean they will do it well though. Didn't think it was that big a can of worms.

[talonbreak]

Well, fun fun.

In the end my flexible DM has offered me several choices to meet the situation.

I am going to take them all.

*drags the retraining horse out back and buries it*