First, a Nod to Fellow Indie Authors
While it is easy to criticize works put forward by others, just having the steely will to sit down and take something from an idea to putting it out there takes tremendous strength. As an indie author myself, and soon to be releasing my own gaming materials in addition to the 12 books I’ve indie published, I know what it takes. So before going any further, hats off to folks like Eric Diaz for putting forward material in the genuine spirit of making our gaming experiences better.
What is Old School Feats?
Old School Feats is a 22 page contribution seeks to bring the 5e style Feats to Old School Essentials (OSE) by Gavin Norman. OSE is a popular retro-clone of the Gygaxian / Moldvayian Fantasy Role Playing Game Which Cannot Be Named (red lawyer eyes peer out from the bushes of the dark forest). While on the surface, it would be quick to dismiss this as someone else trying to bring something that’s not in the Old School movement into it and “missing the point of Old School”, there’s a bit more to it. Having played the Old School games when they were the only school (OD&D, then BECMI, then 1e, 2e…), there are certain plays inherent in it that for some folks, like me, really start to bother you after a few gaming sessions.
Old School Feats seeks to bring some more options and flavor, particularly for Thieves and Fighters, allowing for greater differentiation. It also has general feats as well as ones for Magic-Users and Clerics. The idea is once every few levels, the player would get to select one and that would add more uniqueness. If you think about it, in the Old School world of play, if you ran into a 10th level Fighter or Thief, you know everything you need to know about them because they are all the same (excluding if you’re using weapon specialization rules).
The author states in Old School Feats that his purpose is to also provide a way to avoid having additional classes like splitting Magic-User versus Sorcerer or having some classes that have minor versions of skills and abilities from other classes. A noble feat, one might say (and I’ve hit my dad joke quota for the hour).
The Feat of Feats
There are 10 general feats, which any character class (or class-race) can take. Then there are 12 Cleric-specific ones, 20 Fighter-specific ones, 12 MU-specific ones, and finally 20 Thief-specific ones. For example, there’s Resilient (general), which allows the player a choice between lowering all of their saving throws by 1 point or lowering three of them by one point and the last one by two points. There’s Aura of Courage (for Clerics) which gives all allies within 30’ a +1 to saving throws against magic and fear and a +1 to morale.
Some of the feats provide the character with the abilities of another class, like the Dilettante Cleric, which allows the ability to cast clerical spells and turn undead as if the character were half their level in Cleric (so an 8th level Fighter with this feat would also effectively be a 4th level Cleric), and also limits them to a maximum of 3rd level spells.
Missing Balance
In having gone through all of the feats in detail, I can see significant imbalance between them. In addition, some of them are However, in my opinion, there’s significant imbalance between the various feats. Here are some examples.
There’s a general feat called Ability Improvement. This allows the character to raise one of their ability scores by 3 if it’s currently lower than 14, by 2 if it’s below 16, and +1 if it’s higher. There’s a caveat stating that this usually is topped out at 18.
Now, let’s take another generate feat, Linguist. This allows the character to add 3 to the maximum number of languages they can learn and gives the character a 50% chance of reading unknown languages like a thief.
Then there are the feats that allow those class-like powers. In addition to allowing Clerical or Magic-User abilities, there’s Predator, which is a fighter feat. This grants the character the ability to backstab (+4 to hit, double damage), climb walls, move silently, and hide (but halved if not in wilderness).
While the author has some disclaimer statements about how this could imbalance some games, it’s hard to imagine players picking the less powerful, more rarely used feats over the more powerful, “use it all the time” feats. Some of the ideas provided at the end of the supplement around adding 10% XP cost if allowing feats comes across as not having been play tested and going against one of the key ideas stated at the beginning of trying to avoid additional book keeping / accounting.
Anything else?
There are some additional pages of content, bringing it up to the 22, about optional rules and other small items around creating balance, for example bringing up the idea of unified XP (i.e. all classes require the same amount of XP to get to level 2, like in 5e) and how you could allow some feats for the classes like thief to balance things out.
So, is it worth it?
There are the RPG supplements that you can just take and use immediately. At the other end of the spectrum are those supplements that give you ideas but you can’t directly use because maybe they’re for a different edition of the game or have things that seriously conflict with homebrew rules or norms.
For me, Old School Feats is more on the “good ideas” than the “immediately useable” side because of the imbalance. It’s further complicated by the Advanced rules of Old School Essentials when you have assassins, rangers, paladins, and the like. That said, for those who enjoy a lot of the simplified mechanics of the Old School world, it can provide you a good starting point for bringing in feats provided that you find a way to keep it balanced. Otherwise you’ll have a fighter who can cast magic spells and acting like a thief for an XP cost that’s unfair to others.
Price. Is it worth $4.99? When I picked it up, it was $0.99 (promotion week) and for that, I thought it was good value. Comparing with other supplements that are at the $4.99, I think it falls short. Maybe pick it up for a $1.99 or $2.99 sale if you’re really eager to get your hands on a starting point for 5e type feats in the Old School world.