Achievement Feats — Chronicling Your Adventures One Feat at a Time
Tricky Owlbear Publishing is clearly the best named publishing group in all of history. Achievement Feats is a collection of 51 feats designed as traits to be acquired by a character through the course of a game. These feats cannot be taken at character creation, and instead must be earned by meeting certain non-stat requirements. They’re part of the development of a character’s backstory, representing acquired skills or a reputation gained frm certain actions.
Many of these feats are tied to events that occur in a character’s career over time — because of this there can be a large amount of book-keeping involved, a fact that the introduction makes note of. Quite a few are tied to killing a certain number of a species. If you kill 20 Gnolls, you gain +2 to Will saves, attack, and damage rolls against Gnolls and Gnollish things, as long as you carry some Gnoll trophy on your person. That’s pretty cool for a Gnoll driven campaign, especially if your party is tracking their kills anyway (<cough> mine <cough>). Also, Dragonslaying makes you better at killing dragons, because they get less scary after the 5th time. I’m not mentioning this to my party for fear of them picking a fight with every draconic NPC they find. There’s one for not getting killed by traps you’ve set off, one for crafting rods of wonder and not getting killed by them, one for killing things bigger than you and one for killing things smaller than you.
They’ve got so many different things I couldn’t cover them all here without defeating the purpose of you buying the feats, so here are a few of my favorites:
There’s two feats for getting killed and coming back. This is comic relief gold. Every party has that one player who keeps dying, so why not toss them a bone? If he dies and comes back twice the character may save himself from one death, one single death, simply because he’s so used to being dead he knows his way back. I think this would be awesome if any of my current batch of PCs dies. The third resurrection makes his constant death inflict negative levels on critical hits. This is pretty sweet.
Probably my least favorite feat is Healer’s Touch. The requirement to gain this feat is to heal 1,000 points of damage. The downside is that each point of damage you deal subtracts 2 points from your healing total. The benefit is that every healing spell you cast will be automatically Maximized without needing the feat. That’s pretty sweet, but running a dedicated support character for 1,000 points worth of healing does not seem like fun, though I do know some dedicated support players, so this one is probably for them. [These remind me greatly of the “badges” or achievements you can earn in MMORPGs like City of Heroes. Sounds like fun implementing them into a P&P RPG!Ed.]
To end on a high note, my favorite feat is the Self-Made Hero. The requirements is that the character write ten books about herself and her heroics that have been translated into at least two different languages. Because of this shameless self promotion the character’s fame allows them to be better at negotiating prices and fees for services, because everyone wants to hang with a hero. This feat combines well with the Pathfinder Chronicler Prestige class. Both the feat and the class require having published works. When I get around to making a pathfinder chronicler, I’m going to work this into the campaign.
All in all this is a decent collection of feats that provides something for characters to plan around, and give a little bit more relevance to using craft skills and other parts of the game that see less use than I would like. Not all of them are winners, but if you look in the Corebook you’ll find a few questionable feats there too. The glory of these collections is that you can cherry-pick the feats you want, and not touch the rest if you don’t want to. I’d recommend it for a GM looking to try something new with character progression, but it may be too much bookkeeping for some groups.
The Achievement Feats PDF is available at RPGNow, along with a lot of other Tricky Owlbear products.
October 19th, 2010 8:20 PM
Ed, I kinda thought the same thing while reading through them. If you’re running a wild “anything goes” sort of campaign and don’t mind not hitting anything, Healer’s Touch and the Healer class from 3.5 would go great together. Especially considering the Healer really can’t do much but heal. Like are incapable of anything that doesn’t start with Cure and end with Wounds. It’s a really obscure class, found in a really obscure Wizards book, but those of you who have read the Miniatures Handbook know what ‘m talking about.
October 19th, 2010 10:38 PM
I know the healer class.
I imagine it could be good fun in an undead-heavy campaign. Does damaging undead with positive energy subtract from your point total? If so, that would be lame.
Don’t know how Pathfinder books work (like, if you can use the Healer class, can you use the Book of Exalted Deeds?), but there are some vow of nonviolence feats to take advantage of while you’re not dealing damage. Why not go healer/monk and deal nonlethal damage with your flurry o’blows? Does that count?
October 20th, 2010 3:35 PM
The way it’s worded means that any damage subtracts from the total. Kinda ouch, there.
That’s the huge downside to this.
October 20th, 2010 3:57 PM
Yeah, that is icky. Definitely requires a particular personality.
I’m sure there is a way to break it though. Er, I mean… make it viable.
Wish I knew more about pathfinder. Doing something over and over again to get a small bonus is pretty much right up my alley. Maximized healing isn’t exactly small either.
What if, during a layover in a town, my character spends all day in the hospital healing the sick and injured? Every evening, have a companion flagellate my character for his sins and heal myself with any remaining spell slots I have. Have to be a Favored Soul though for the spontaneous casting, for sure.
October 20th, 2010 4:13 PM
What about the Summon Monster spells?
Technically, my celestial dog is doing the damage. How about that one, feat gods?!!
October 20th, 2010 4:19 PM
This sort of thing degenerates into “heal farms” pretty quickly in the online games, so obviously it’s up to the GM to keep it under control.
October 20th, 2010 4:44 PM
So, if a favored soul with a 20 in charisma (obviously need an 18 to start and a race with a +2 in Charisma… drow maybe) uses nothing but healing spells, he can cast Cure Minor Wounds (1 hit point healed) 5 times a day and Cure Light Wounds (1d8+level hit points healed, average 5.5) 5 times a day. So, within 31 days, he can meet the prerequisite of the feat.
Now, if he takes Augment Healing feat (Complete Divine, +2 per level hps healed via Conjuration (healing) spells, prereq: 4 ranks in heal), he meets the prerequisites in just under 20 days! That’s like an internship. If your character can write 10 books, mine can intern in a military hospital/temple for 4 weeks.
October 20th, 2010 5:21 PM
If a player put in the effort to work that into a character’s backstory, I would probably be ok with it.
October 20th, 2010 5:38 PM
The hard part is getting to 3rd level to get the feat. Since you’re a Favored Soul, in addition to CLW, 2 of Magic Weapon, Doom, Cause Fear and Shield of Faith are all good options for the 3 known 1st level spells. None of those cause damage (Magic Weapon can be cast on an ally’s weapon).
Once you do hit 3rd level and gain the feat, your now freely maximized Cure Light Wounds does 8+3+6 = 17 hit points of healing every time. Not too shabby.
Billy, do you need to keep track of hit points healed after you take the feat? Can you lose it if you deal damage?
October 21st, 2010 3:08 PM
No, you do not need to keep track of damage after meeting the requirements. The feat says nothing about that. also, there is no Favored Soul in Pathfinder. There is the Oracle class, which acts as the spontaneous divine caster, with some cooler benefits than the Favored Soul. Also, cooler name. The self flagellation is mentioned specifically as a problem for GMs to deal with, and summon spells would get around the damage. I now want to go for this as a Summoner, but I know hat they have terribly low spells per day and it would therefore take forever.
October 21st, 2010 5:18 PM
I found the achievement feats on a pathfinder srd site. Looking over the feats, and when I read your article, I’m reminded me of the Spell-touched feats in Unearthed Arcana in D&D 3.5. The prerequisites for Spell-touched feats are a bit easier, but similar in that they aren’t mechanical prerequisites, but more based on your character’s experiences.
For example, one is called “Live My Nightmare.” You have to have suffered some of the effects of a Phantasmal Killer spell, one of my favorites. The benefit is:
“If you are targeted with a Divination spell or effect, you have the option of inflicting a Phantasmal Killer on the caster (Will Disbelief DC 14 + your Charisma bonus. If unsuccessful, Fort Neg to avoid dying (same DC)).”
Oh, were you looking for ME? Here’s your worst nightmare to chew on! Pwned.
October 23rd, 2010 6:41 PM
Live My Nightmare sounds like a metal band. Deadly ability though.