There was quite a stir when the still current FAQ ruled feats in RtL to be handled the same as in all other quests. Now, we are about to begin our first RtL campaign within the next few weeks, and I was wondering - did you already play with that new-ish ruling, and what are your experiences? Or did you house rule it?

We play with them as they are, and personally I don't find them all that powerful. But a fun add-on. The only real reason they seem powerful in our campaign is because of Laurel. She turns an otherwise near-useless card (+8 range) into +8 damage, and there are three of that card in the deck. The other three players rarely use theirs for anything else than a minor bonus. Mostly on the defense.

However, we are currently settled on making each card drawn cost 50gp (like a potion). That way, they do come with 'some' cost.

No wonder they don´t use them very often - 50 gp are rarely worth it for the minor boni.

If played as usual I would suspect that the Magic Feats can shift a dungeon heavily towards the heros. "Preventing Evil", "Foiled Plans" and to a lesser extent "We are not afraid" can ruin a lot of OL plans if timed correctly.

Imagine an Animated Weapons, a heavy spawn card or a Monkey Dance that you saved a lot of threat for and waited for the best opportunity simply cancelled by a Feat (ok, 2/3 chance for Preventing).

I have yet to play RtL with Feats, but in Vanilla it alters the balance quite a bit.

Especially in Lt. encounters I see a strong shuft towards the heros. They can prepare for that by saving one or two of these cards and totally bust a lot of strategies.

Disarm trap is henious. I hate it. Even while playing with feats costing an extra draw for the OL, it comes up way too often and ruins many a good plan.

I'll be starting our first campaign as well soon. We'll use the feats like normal, although I personally don't see why they don't have the heroes just get one feat, as they only start with one skill.

I think feats add a lot of variety to the encounters. I do wish the feat decks were larger and more varied though.

We are almost at gold level now in our campaign and the Laural and others are wrecking havoc with the feat cards. I often lose treat and cards to them.

I still manage to get along despite this, but I plan to houserule a price on the feat cards when we begin our next campaign.

House rule:

When a feat card draw becomes available a hero must pay the following price to obtain one:

Copper - 50gp, Silver 100gp and Gold 150gp

Right now we only have a very few house rules, that are only clarifications really.

I understand the shift of power the feats provide and I get some poeple wanting to house rule them. But I do not understand why so many people basically remove them from the game. Having the feat cards cost the same as a potion should cause any hero to never buy them.

granor said:

Why? If you have bought the potions available to you (which 2 a week, unless you are in a non-tamalir town) and you have sufficient gold? While I don't believe they make 'much' of a difference in dungeons, they can play an important part in countering Lt. especially after Bear Tattoo and Telekenesis was removed. With NoNamiums suggestion (which was the one I referred to in my initial post) I don't see the heroes buying feats past Silver level, unless gold means nothing to them, but at that point they should be much better off anyway, so the need for feats isn't all that crucial.

What I think the feats does to the game, is to forcing the OL to think in multiple smaller impacts rather 'all-eggs-in-a-basket'. Animate Weapons, and Dance of the Monkey God becomes less powerful, as the risk to playing them is greater (one could argue they are infinitely greater, as there was no risk before). But spreading out your power on several cards, and several attacks is much more desirable now. Also, once the OL gets a proper grip on which feats counters which sort of attack, they shouldn't be a problem either.

It's just metagame.

Hm, making them cost something does sound reasonable. While Feats are not necessarily totally balance-shifting, they certainly can be - and to the same extent as potions. After all, in most situations, 3 health points aren't that much, but they can be what makes a hero die or survive...

A slightly different, but related topic: You do follow the rules in that you don't allow Stoneskin Potions, right? I hear there are some who allow them in RtL, but I think those can really shift the balance, too, by making the heroes survive when they really shouldn't...

edderkoppen said:

I have never seen the heroes have "sufficient gold", maybe with the removal of 1/2 the crushing blows gold will become less of a limiting facctor.

Additionally with the number of chaft feats I feel buying one becomes a gamble. I would have to figure out as a hero how many feats I thought were worth 50 gold vs how many are not and then figure out what the true cost becomes.

We play with them at no cost. The OL has still kicked but through silver whether it was me or my buddy. I will admit that we have saved a disarm for a Lt. battle, but I honestly don't know how you ever would win a lt. battle to begin with if you don't have feats. Even with wind pact and feats, Merick with gold level eldritch and a bunch of event/trap treachery is simply ridiculous.

Bottom line is that there just aren't that many feats that are really so great as to warrant a cost. The ones that are great are tempered by their rarity and are either not used because they are saved for when you really need them or you see them once and wait until the deck cycles again. We DO keep our decks/discard separate between sessions so that you aren't seeing those really powerful feats over and over again.

granor said:

Because unlike anything else (including treachery), they are literally 'something for nothing'. There is no cost of any sort to either acquire or play them. Thus they are a significant balance changer - the most significant so far because every other piece of the balance puzzle has some cost of some kind at some time.

So if your game was reasonably balanced before Feats, introducing them for nothing just didn't work*. It screwed everything up.

We have so far only had opportunity to play with them in RtL testing various 'OL also draws a card' opportunity costs for either acquiring or playing feats. None have been entirely satisfactory.

*I think that they might just be acceptable 'as is' to counter the removing of Telekinesis and Bear Tattoo though. Certainly the loss of a few OL treachery options does not in anyway counter the loss of these incredibly important skills.

Actually I like feats a lot but do admit they need to be gimped somewhat in Road to Legend. The game is highly imbalanced towards the Overlord and feats help shift it back and help the characters counter some nasty combos the overlord pulls out. I've done experiments with no feats, limited feats and full feat rules. Full feat rules made it so that the PC's could easily have enough feats to play every turn putting a lot of pressure on the overlord. No feats the Overlord's plots were unstoppable as the threat rolled out and the PC's coulden't do anything about it. In the end this fix worked the best.

1. Each Player Character starts with 1 Feat of the same type as the skill they took at the start.

2. When a Glyph is activated that hero ONLY draws a feat. The person who gets extra feats draws two feats as normal.

3. If the PC's kill the Dungeon Leader (Or a boss for a Rumor or Legendary dungeon) all PC's draw a feat as a reward. I allow this because if they actually are able to get that far they've probably exausted some feats along the way and should get some replenishment. If there is multiple dungeon leaders they only get the reward for killing the last one standing. Either they kill off all the leaders or they don't get this reward. In addition killing a Lieutenet also gives this reward, although they have to kill them not just drive them off to get the feat draw,

4, Feats stay with characters until used so can be used in overland encounters. Hand size is still limited by the rules of the game.

So in the end, Limited Feats work very well. As they are comodities that come in small doses they have to be smart on how to use them rather than blowing them on a whim. Too many feats means the Overlord is gimped, too few means the Overlord walks all over the PC's, but limited feats works quite well for the games I run and play.