Talk:Swordsmith (3.5e Feat)

Questions and suggestions

I like this feat, I like the whetstone part, as I've been trying to think a way to make it useful myself and I couldn't. I'd suggest adding a benefit on critical hits, such as expanded crit range.

Instead of the generic +2 to Craft checks you could gave the benefit of the Skill Focus feat, allowing it to work as a requirement when Skill Focus is needed. What do you think? --The bluez in the dungeon (talk) 11:44, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment, always appreciate attention. The whetstone thing is actually based off of what Pathfinder does with the whetstone, except like, different. There, it only applies to the first attack and explicitly doesn't function on magic weapons, rather than being listed as an enhancement bonus. I'd rather not mess with critical hits. Changing the math on critical hits is a fool's folly. The numbers are tricky and prone to imbalance/swingy disasters, especially by characters that start investing in critical hits even lightly.

Making the bonus a +2 instead of Skill Focus was actually a conscious decision as well. It was a kind of design thing we noticed recently that became a trend in homebrewing (for better or worse depending on how you see it), wherein a lot of feats and features would count as some of the weaker feats that are used as prerequisites for other material (other feats, prestige classes, that sort of thing). It becomes a dual-edged blade in that regard, when someone (or something pre-existing that's published) makes something that requires a basic feat as a prerequisite and that material is intended as a balancer for getting the new thing. By making this process easier, it explicitly alters the balance. For this at least, I wanted to avoid it. Still open to changes of course, these new Item Creation feats I've been making are experiments in design anyway.--Ganteka Future (talk) 17:37, 4 June 2021 (UTC)