STAT THAT: The Ever-Evolving Feat

I'm a thief. I stole the title of this post from a commercial playing constantly during NFL games, and I originally stole the idea of a Feat from White Box (which I never played, but which I read a little bit about) - the idea that you have one universal 'saving throw', and then you plunk modifiers around this as needed for situations. You don't need a reflex Feat, a willpower Feat, a Feat against dragon breath... you have a Feat modifier. If you are good against dragon breath, then somewhere you have a note that you get +2 to Feats against dragon breath. I find it keeps things simpler but you don't sacrifice much in terms of complexity.

But I've also found that over time I've allowed Feats to attach some barnacles. Not a lot, but subtle things. I found this was important for spellcasters, and made a lot of sense to me; as a caster 6, your spells are harder to resist than those of a caster 2. Your spells are generally DT 26 to resist, whereas the level 2 dude is DT 22 to resist (20 + level in both cases). That makes a lot of sense.

It also makes sense in how Feats have gradually escalated on the other side as well. Over time, my games have introduced more ways to pump up your Feat rating. You can use magic, and talents, and gifts, and special items, and the help of others to take a small bonus here and another small bonus there. But, when we're starting from a basic bonus of maybe +9 or +10, those little increments represent around 10%, so they add up quickly. I've needed to escalate the DTs of Feats to keep up with the escalation of the bonuses that the game provides. 

But old school gaming doesn't care what level your foe is, and old school gaming doesn't give you bonuses for crap. You are getting hit by dragon breath? Save vs. dragon breath. Is that a young black dragon or an ancient red dragon? Who cares? It's dragon breath. Save. You have an ancient ring of the elder drake that gives you unbelievable protection against dragon's breath? Fine. You get +1 to your save, then.

I've already scaled back the bonuses from attributes, and I like the impact it's had on my own psychology in character building. The bonus breaks are every 4 points instead of every 2 or 3, and it makes a difference; now, I don't really care if my character has an 9 or an 11 in a secondary stat, because it's still a +1 modifier either way, and I'm not going to be doing a lot of checks. It causes me to turn off the min/max part of my brain and let the character be a little more uneven. I can play a viable 'fighter' with a STR 9 and I'm not helplessly gimping myself forever, cursing under my breath every time I miss an attack by 1 or 2 points.

Now I've also scaled back the bonuses for Feats. There aren't a lot of ways to improve your Feats, and those there are don't really synergize and escalate nearly as much. As a result, I have been able to go with the default DT 20 for Feats much more often. I had to put some information into the GM section for Stalwart Age about how to build DTs for Feats, because there is a lot of variability and nuance to Feats that game requires. I'm not saying I was wrong there (I think that is a big part of what that game needs), I'm just happy here to be getting back to basics a little more, and speeding up gameplay a wee bit as a result.