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View Full Version : Vile Feat: Selfish-Sufficient



willpell
2013-01-17, 04:59 AM
Selfish-Sufficient {Vile}
You are a ruthlessly efficient survivalist who spares no effort to consider the needs of others while fending for yourself in the wild.
Benefit: You have a +4 bonus on all Heal checks which target yourself. You have a +4 bonus on all Survival checks, but it applies only to meeting the base DC of any Survival task (ie it does not provide additional benefits to other persons as a result of exceeding the DC).

Zombimode
2013-01-17, 05:30 AM
This doesn't do much. There are no uses of the Heal skill that can explicitly be used on yourself. However the language used for Treat Poison and Treat Disease allows for self-application.

The survival bonus makes you a good tracker. But otherwise the bonus will quickly fade into irrelevance.

ArcturusV
2013-01-17, 05:33 AM
Didn't think Vile feats got much love.

Anyway, I like it. Wouldn't mind having it in my game. Not sure that anyone would necessarily take it however. It's easily within the bounds of not being soul shatteringly powerful it's just that it's use is very narrow as my only concern.

Like the name of it. Like the flavor. It's where it should be power wise I think. Just usually I don't see players take those feats like Magical Aptitude and the other +2 to X and Y skill checks.

Being one twice as effective might break that trend, maybe? Let me know if you see anyone using it around the table. I'd be interested to see if people grab it up.

Ashtagon
2013-01-17, 05:36 AM
First aid on yourself is usually impossible (you're unconscious!). Although the Diehard feat could in theory help with that.

I'd allow this feat to grant long-term care to yourself (and no others). This would count as your entire activity for the day, during which you effectively have 8 hours rest (not full 24 hour bed rest). This is an exception to the normal long-term care rules, and potentially makes it a very useful feat.

Treat caltrop wound, treat poison, and treat disease, are valid uses on yourself anyway.

Epic quicken recovery and perfect quicken recovery (epic skill uses) on yourself should be allowable with the feat (not without).

Revised version:



Selfish-Sufficient {Vile}

You are a ruthlessly efficient survivalist who spares no effort to consider the needs of others while fending for yourself in the wild.

Benefit: You have a +4 bonus on all Heal checks which target yourself. You have a +4 bonus on all Survival checks, but it applies only to meeting the base DC of any Survival task (ie it does not provide additional benefits to other persons as a result of exceeding the DC).

If you can find a way to remain conscious (perhaps with the Diehard feat), you may use the first aid function of the Heal skill on yourself.

In addition, you may use the long term care, epic quicken recovery, and epic perfect recovery aspects of the Heal skill on yourself (only).

Long term care on yourself consumes all your time for the entire day, and is considered light activity. As such, you are considered to have had 8 hours rest, but not 24-hour bed rest.

Normal: You cannot use the first aid, long term care, epic quicken recovery, or epic perfect recovery options of the Heal skill on yourself. Even if you can find a way to remain conscious while at zero or negative hit points, you cannot use first aid one yourself.

You can use the treat caltrop, treat poison, and treat disease functions of the Heal skill on yourself.


EDIT: Clarified/Corrected an issue with the first aid function of the Heal skill.

willpell
2013-01-17, 08:48 AM
This doesn't do much. There are no uses of the Heal skill that can explicitly be used on yourself.


First aid on yourself is obviously impossible (you're unconscious!).

Meh, it might not be worded quite right, and I didn't reference the Heal skill when writing it. But I know there are bunches of Heal checks that could apply to yourself. And I'm pretty sure even First Aid will work on you if you're Diehard, which many users of this feat will also be because of the similar flavor (this is explicitly designed for my version of the Vasharans, which is why I made it Vile despite it not really being that evil; I could have gone with a hacky "this may be selected by Vasharans as if it was Vile" template, but generally I try to avoid that sort of unpleasantness if it's not actualy necessary somehow).


The survival bonus makes you a good tracker. But otherwise the bonus will quickly fade into irrelevance.

I care very little about whether a feat is useful past the early levels. Once you can afford large numbers of 10K+gp magic items and are either casting 5th-level spells or palling around with those who do, I think it's unrealistic to demand that your feats be able to keep up, unless they have prerequisites such that they can't be taken until that stage of the progression.


Didn't think Vile feats got much love.

Like I said it's only sort of perfunctorily Vile, and was just an idea that popped into my head today.


It's easily within the bounds of not being soul shatteringly powerful it's just that it's use is very narrow as my only concern.

It's intended solely and exclusively as a stronger but narrower equivalent of Self-Sufficient (which I still regard as being a perfectly reasonable feat choice, though I'm not above giving it away as a bonus feat, or using some variant of the Feat Point System to make it cheap). Conceptually, my Vasharans are huge on self-sufficiency (this is probably true of canonical ones as well, but mine are much more rooted in it, focusing less on the "race of ur-priests" shtick and just being more generally an unsympathetic portrayal of Cro-Magnon Man, contrasting both with "modern" humans and the Neanderthals of Frostburn).


I'd allow this feat to grant long-term care to yourself (and no others). This would count as your entire activity for the day, during which you effectively have 8 hours rest (not full 24 hour bed rest). This is an exception to the normal long-term care rules, and potentially makes it a very useful feat.

Will have to think about that, but it's probably fitting. I don't think my Vasharans would necessarily refuse to treat each other's wounds (if only because they have very few clerics - no theoclerics at all, but a handful of ideoclerics devoted to Evil Itself, an archfiend, an elemental power, or whatnot)...but it certainly isn't especially in-character for them to do so either. I figure their doctors are the type who will saw off your gangrenous leg, sell it to a nearby ogre tribe as "long-pig jerky with authentic human seasonings", transfuse you some dretch blood for an experiment, and then bill you triple because your screaming made it hard for them to enjoy their mid-surgery coffee break.


Epic quicken recovery and perfect quicken recovery (epic skill uses) on yourself should be allowable with the feat (not without).

No comment; I'm not familiar with the epic skill rules (though i did glance at the ones for Survival while writing this).

ArcturusV
2013-01-17, 09:03 AM
Hey, another guy who plays Vasharans. Neat.

Thinking about it though, with how it got reworded by Ashtagon I could easily see certain characters taking that as my Vashar Bonus Feat. So that's always a good thing.

willpell
2013-01-17, 10:07 AM
Hey, another guy who plays Vasharans. Neat.

DMs, actually. They're one of the approximately 12,000 races I have in my campaign who pretend to be humans in order to infiltrate humanity. It's kind of a running gag, or it would be if I ever actually told the players about it.


Thinking about it though, with how it got reworded by Ashtagon I could easily see certain characters taking that as my Vashar Bonus Feat. So that's always a good thing.

I'm flattered. And since I didn't say it before, thanks for playing editor for me Ashtagon. I have never pretended to be good at the nitty-gritty; I just try to come up with neat ideas, and I'm always glad when someone besides me deigns to pay them heed.

willpell
2013-01-18, 02:56 AM
Okay, I'm cool with your version Ashtagon, except for a couple stylistic adjustments and a clarification to the self-healing part (the feat doesn't deny you the ability to help others, it just doesn't apply when you do so; if epic skill uses require you to have a high check to even try them, you would need to qualify without the feat to use the epic Heal options on someone else). This is the approved and presumably-final version of the feat, and is going into my campaign as available.

Selfish-Sufficient {Vile}

You are a ruthlessly efficient survivalist who spares no effort to consider the needs of others while fending for yourself in the wild.

Benefit: You have a +4 bonus on all Heal checks which target yourself (treat caltrop wound, treat poison, and treat disease and so forth). You have a +4 bonus on all Survival checks, but it applies only to meeting the base DC of any Survival task (ie it does not provide additional benefits to other persons as a result of exceeding the DC).

If you can find a way to remain conscious (perhaps with the Diehard feat), you may use the first aid function of the Heal skill on yourself.

In addition, you may use the long term care, epic quicken recovery, and epic perfect recovery aspects of the Heal skill on yourself (only). If you attempt to perform these functions for another's benefit, the bonus from this feat does not apply to your roll.

Long term care on yourself consumes all your time for the entire day, and is considered light activity. As such, you are considered to have had 8 hours rest, but not 24-hour bed rest.

Normal: You cannot use the first aid, long term care, epic quicken recovery, or epic perfect recovery options of the Heal skill on yourself. Even if you can find a way to remain conscious while at zero or negative hit points, you cannot use first aid one yourself.

Ashtagon
2013-01-18, 03:07 AM
Looks good to me, and you definitely got my rule as intended with that clarification.