Tier System for Feats?

[ImperatorK]

I need a reasonable guideline for pricing feats. Is there some kind of Tier or Point System for Feats (that does not suck, obviously)? Anything official that I could use for reference (although we know that official doesn't always mean accurate)?

[Stratovarius]

I have never seen one created, sad to say.

[FlaminCows]

I can confidently say that there is no Tier or Points system for Feats that does not suck.

[zook1shoe]

I think there's too many factors to tier feats efficiently and effectively

ex. Metamagic feats are awesome for spellcasters, but useless to most non-casters, while Cleave is not good for the average bard, but good for a barbarian.

[ImperatorK]

Well, obviously the rating would be for the feat's value for the intended class(es). A feat that's awesome for any class would be top tier, for example, while a feat that's awesome but only for casters would be just tier 2 or something like that.

How many tiers would be a good estimate for feats?
Tier 1 - awesome for any class/build.
Tier 2 - awesome, but only for limited classes/builds (ex. a metamagic feat like Persistent Spell).
Tier 3 - good for any class/build.
Tier 4 - good, but only for limited classes/builds.
Tier 5 - not optimal for anyone.
Tier 6 - totally sucks.

[Stratovarius]

Well, obviously the rating would be for the feat's value for the intended class(es). A feat that's awesome for any class would be top tier, for example, while a feat that's awesome but only for casters would be just tier 2 or something like that.

How many tiers would be a good estimate for feats?
Tier 1 - awesome for any class/build.
Tier 2 - awesome, but only for limited classes/builds (ex. a metamagic feat like Persistent Spell).
Tier 3 - good for any class/build.
Tier 4 - good, but only for limited classes/builds.
Tier 5 - not optimal for anyone.
Tier 6 - totally sucks.

Probably need Tier 7, or Tier: Broken, for those feats that just don't work mechanically, but aside from that, looks like a good place to start.

[ImperatorK]

Are there enough broken feats to justify a separate tier? Truenamer doesn't have a tier.

[Stratovarius]

Given the vast amount of feats out there, I'm fairly sure we could find enough that need to go in that bin. Plus, what do you do with feats like Draconic Aura, where there's two different (loud) sides, and the reading materially affects the strength of the feat?

[ImperatorK]

Well, by RAW the feat is awesome, so we'll give it a tier based on RAW (the better interpretation), but note it has lower tier with the other interpretation.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

There were some non-c.o.types that tried to put
a point value on many(most?) early on feats.
I remember a dude something like Szanty that had
Ultimate Feats and Ultimate Classes back at wotc.

googles around ... this is the guy, but not feats.
http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-general/threads/950866

idk if his stuff survived the many board biffs.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

This has been attempted before.

The better question is, where is that parody thread about tier thread for tiers threads. Someone raged about all the tiering. Basket burner? Soro? idk

[awaken_D_M_golem]

  ... and the Meta-Tier thread, about the threads about the Tiers.


Useless ... the 2000 or so never used feats.
Perhaps these could be split into Turnip-level and Town Guard -level.

But yeah, scaling feats to spells because spells and spell based feats, already have a useful metric.
Extend = 2*duration of most every spell
vs. Run = slight improvement of 1 spell equivalent
What is that about a 10,000 to 1 difference in power and application?

[Slippery_Chicken]

Simply going through the feats in 3.5 and sorting them into categories would be a herculean task (not nearly as tough as spells or items, but of comparable difficulty). I don't think anyone's managed to get them all in the same database, let alone appraising their value on an individual basis.

Also, I feel like a feat tier system would be of questionable value, since it would attempt sweeping generalizations about entities whose usefulness is highly variable with context. I think feat rankings are best left inside handbooks: each handbook can make a concise, useful appraisal of a feat's contribution in relation to the handbook's focus.

[SolEiji]

We use tiers (or their functional equal) for feats on our wiki, so you may have a head start there.  While doing all the feats ever would be a difficult task, doing them one at a time is reasonable.  As a general rule, Core never really goes too far above our Moderate, which I think equals somewhere around the 3-4 range for your system.  With a few exceptions.  Of course, things would be generalized of course.

I would recommend an "unquantifiable" tier, Leadership really exemplifies that.

As a slight sidetracking, I've recently enjoyed the concept of a tier system more akin to alignment; two scales measuring both its overall power and usefulness, and its versitility.  Because there's a lot of feats (and classes) that are really good, but one trick ponies (uberchargers), or really versitile but not too powerful, or both (wizards) or neither (CW samurai), and it just seems more... descriptive.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Yeah, just shoe-horn this onto pre-existing scales.

Tier 6 = Elemental Envoy (>Commoner for 5 levels) ; pre-req feats retrained in for Tier +2 PrCs
Tier 5 = Tashalatora
Tier 4- = what's that Paladin one that makes it's spells Swift
Tier 4 = the add UMD feat ; Sword Of The Arcane Order ; Natural Spell (all by itself) ; Metamorphic Transfer ; Assume Supernatural Ability
Tier 4+ = Linked metapsi (not as strong as leadership)
Tier 3- = Cerebremetamagic Dr#349 (dramatically increases metamagic)
Tier 3 = Leadership , Tier 2 with a Tier 1 class.
Tier 3+ = Expanded Knowledge Psychic Reformation

Tier 1 = anything that's part of a Psi Recharge set-up

[Captnq]

Okay.

Step One: Get every feat in alphabetical order in a massive text file.
Step Two: One by One, go through and color code them to your ranking system.
Step Three: Put personal editor notes under each feat.
Step Four: Search the internet for any threads/handbooks that talks about feats.
Step Five: Steal the ideas for your handbook.
Step Six: ???
Step Seven: Profit.

EDIT: Oh, I already worked up the metamagic feats for the spell section of the EVD. Feel free to steal it.

[Aliek]

Perhaps another handy alternative(And I'd dare say more useful in quite a few situations) would be having subgroups and some tiering inside those groups.

As in, a 'spellcaster list', a 'melee list', 'ranged list' and so on. And a 'slot-filler list' with those feats that kinda go well with anything(Leadership being probably the strongest).
Heck, it wouldn't even need to be comprehensive, just a few on each list would help lots on build ideas and fleshing builds out too.
If I'm going a melee build I probably wouldn't need a list of over 40 feats(Unless, perhaps, I'm a human fighter 20  ).
I think that would help immensely the new-ish people to our world of CO 

[SolEiji]

Perhaps another handy alternative(And I'd dare say more useful in quite a few situations) would be having subgroups and some tiering inside those groups.

As in, a 'spellcaster list', a 'melee list', 'ranged list' and so on. And a 'slot-filler list' with those feats that kinda go well with anything(Leadership being probably the strongest).
Heck, it wouldn't even need to be comprehensive, just a few on each list would help lots on build ideas and fleshing builds out too.
If I'm going a melee build I probably wouldn't need a list of over 40 feats(Unless, perhaps, I'm a human fighter 20  ).
I think that would help immensely the new-ish people to our world of CO 

I believe I saw an arrangement like that, but for sorcerer bloodlines and their usefulness for various builds.  So you would have something like this...

Plushie Bloodline (Tanks, Battle Control, Blasters, Skirmishers)

Thus indicating this feat is good for skirmishers and battle controler, not so much tanks.  And of course feats which don't apply to a build (metamagic for a fighter) are dropped entirely.

[Hades]

The number of feats is huge, and feats itself are too varied to create a general "tier list" imho.

For example Natural Spell is a must have for every widshaping druid, but is useless for a fighter.

Maybe it could be easier to do a "tier feats for each class".

[FlaminCows]

Maybe it could be easier to do a "tier feats for each class".

The class handbooks do that already with colour codes. This does make it a lot easier to do if anyone wants to make a feat tier list: just look through the handbooks and arrange the feats by recommended-ness in a single file.