Class-specific Feats

While I'm at it, I'll take issue with those few feats that require specific class levels to access. In the PHB there are three of these: Extra Turning (Cleric or Paladin), Spell Mastery (Wizard) and Weapon Specialisation (Fighter level 4+). There are others in various supplements.

Fact is, two of these three don't need specific class restrictions. Extra Turning should have as pre-requisite "Ability to Turn Undead", and Spell Mastery should be "Prepares Spells from a Written Source". The feats are useless to any other class anyway.

Weapon Specialisation is a bit more difficult. Clearly, this feat is useful to other classes. However, I don't believe that it's so useful that every character would necessarily take it, even if freely available. So, try changing the requirements to "Weapon Proficiency (chosen weapon), Weapon Focus (chosen weapon), BAB +4 or higher". This opens the feat to Rangers, Paladins and Barbarians of 6th level (since they don't get a Feat at 4th or 5th level), or multi-class Fighters of lower level (Take Paladin at levels 1-3, make sure Weapon Focus is one of the feats, and then add Fighter at 4th level). This probably isn't unbalanced.

(Actually, there was a discussion about Weapon Specialisation in the very first Dragon after 3rd Edition came out. I'll look up the thoughts in there when I get home tonight.)

As regards Fighter access to Feats, I would propose that the best way to retain the usefulness of Fighters at high level is to expand the various Feat chains, so that other classes, who get a maximum of 8 feats in their career (okay, apart from Rogues and Wizards, but they have other things to spend feats on), can't learn all the feats in the chain. For instance, have 10 mounted combat feats in the chain. That way, a high-level Fighter is the only character who can learn the whole of the chain, and so will be the undisputed master of mounted combat.

Anyway, that's my thinking on feats.

Oh, one more thing...

I really like the handling of Track - any character can follow obvious tracks, but only by getting the feat can a character follow tracks with a DC of 21 or more. I think a similar feat should be present for the Rogue traps ability. For instance:

Traps-lore
Benefit: A character may detect traps with a DC of 21 or higher.
Normal: A character may only detect traps with a DC of 20 or less.
Special: Rogues receive this feat at 1st level.

Similarly, there is some scope to add some of the high level Rogue special abilities (the really high level ones that they choose at 10th, 13th, 16th and 19th level, such as Crippling Strike and Opportunist) to the list of Feats, with prerequisities set to make it extremely difficult for non-Rogues to gain them.

Just a thought or two...