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Thematic Cheese Feat: High Priest
Sometimes what the GM and players both want is not some carefully balanced, playtested, and theorycrafted expansion of the rules usable by a broad range of characters.
Sometimes you just want some cheese of the right flavor.
High Priest
Regardless of your level or base of operations, you are an acknowledged leader within your religion, able to command vast resources and use pure presence to bring others to your cause.
Prerequisites: Cha 13, member of a church.
Benefit: You gain the benefits of the Leadership feat, except your followers and cohort don’t arrive (and aren’t replaced) automatically, Instead, when you drop a foe to 0 or fewer hit points, if you have a cohort or follower slot open that foe could fill (it is the appropriate level or level-equivalent) you can force the foe to make a Will save (DC 10 +1/2 your level + your Wisdom or Charisma modifier — whichever is higher). If it fails the save, rather that die or fall unconscious, it’s alignment changes to match your deity’s and it becomes a loyal cohort or follower (depending on what slot it took). The foe gains a +4 bonus to this saving throw for each of the things that is true; the foe is a priest or divine agent of another deity or philosophy; the foe has an alignment subtype that does not mach the alignment of your deity; the foe is already a follower or cohort.
Additionally, when in a settlement with a church to your deity, you can command any service that does not have a significant cost to your church. This normally includes feeding and housing a modest number of people and having local priests cast any spell with no costly material components or inherent risks. However, any service with a cost as high as a single gold piece costs the full amount, and you can never use this ability to turn a profit.
Additionally, you can cast atonement, as the spell, once per character level as a spell-like ability.
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Thematic Cheese Feats: Elven Curvedance
Okay, let’s get back to some game ideas!
Sometimes what the GM and players both want is not some carefully balanced, playtested, and theorycrafted expansion of the rules usable by a broad range of characters.
Sometimes you just want some cheese of the right flavor.
Elven Curvedance
You know the ancient, and nearly-lost, art of the wardance of the elven curveblade, which strongly encourages (though it does not require) mobility in combat.
Prerequisites: Str 13, Dex 13, proficiency with the elven curveblade.
Benefit: You can use your Dexterity modifier in place of your Strength modifier when making attack rolls with the elven curveblade, as if you had the Weapon Finesse feat for just that weapon. When you choose to do this, and you make only a single melee attack on your turn, you may also use your Dexterity modifier in place of your Strength modifier when calculating your damage bonus with the elven curveblade (including adding 1.5x your strength modifier when using the weapon two-handed).
If you have an option that you can normally add to a melee attack only when making a standard action or attack action for a single attack, you made add that to melee attacks with your elven curveblade anytime you only make a single melee attack on your turn. for example, if you have Vital Strike, you could use it with your elven curveblade on a charge (a single attack), even though Vital Strike does not normally allow that.
Special: This feat counts as Weapon Finesse for any feat or ability that has Weapon Finesse as a prerequisite or modifies how Weapon Finesse works, but you can only use such feats and abilities with an elven curveblade unless you actually have the weapons Finesse feat.
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The Never Miss Feat
This feat is adapted from an edge designed for a Champions/Hero character, run by my friend Carl. It exists to allow the concept of “the character who never misses,” a popular fiction trope, without boosting accuracy to a degree that breaks the game. It can be considered a Genre Feat for some pulp campaigns.
Never Miss
If your attack roll does not connect, you didn’t shoot.
Prerequisites: Far Shot, Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot
Benefit: When making a ranged weapon attack (but not any other kind of ranged attack), if your attack roll fails to hit your foe’s AC, or hits your foe’s AC but misses as a result of a percentile miss chance, you actually didn’t make the attack (though you can’t take some other action instead), and do not expend the ammunition. If you used some ability in connection with the ranged attack (such as making an attack with true strike), that ability is still considered expended.
If you fail to hit or effect your target for any other reason (such as DR, energy resistance, invisible walls, your target being an illusion, and so on), you don’t get to invoke this feat and expend your ammunition normally.
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Genre Feats
For lots of really good reasons, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is designed to emulate a specific flavor of fantasy. It then branches out from that flavor sometimes with specific options, but they (for good reason) feel like bolt-ons.
But it’s not hard to turn Pathfinder into nearly any flavor of fantasy game. Sometimes you need more extensive rules (ranging from Anachronistic Adventures to comprehensive rules for Spell Points). But sometimes you just need a few tweaks to bring in a new flavor without having to rewrite the whole game.
Enter Genre feats.
Genre feats are specifically designed to reskin the flavor of a game. Characters get 2 free genre feats at 1st level, one additional bonus genre feat at 5th and every 5 levels thereafter, and may use normal (but not class bonus) feat slots to take more.
Genre feats have low prerequisites, often allow a build to work well that doesn’t in standard Pathfinder, and make genre-specific tropes easy. It’s common for a few genre feats to be popular with many players, and that’s fine. It reinforces the genre!
Here are example Swashbuckling Genre Feats. Obviously many more could be created.
A Flirt in Every Port
Benefit: In every settlement you come across, you have at least one local (at neither the bottom nor top of the social ladder) who is helpful towards you, and acts in a romantic fashion. Even if you spurn these allies and reduce their attitude towards you, it goes back up one step (to a maximum of helpful) every time you gain a level.
Brio
Benefit: You never take penalties for using improvised weapons. If you are using an improvised weapon in combat, you gain a +4 bonus to Perform and Diplomacy checks.
Chandeliers and Rigging
Benefit: As long as there are hanging ropes, lights, sails, or similar dangling flexible objects, you have a fly speed of 30. If you end any turn not within 20 feet of a dangling flexible object, you must land or you fall.
Elan
Benefit: Rather than suffer frightened or panicked conditions, you simple double or triple the penalties for being shaken if you would normally have those other conditions. Even when confused or mind controlled, you never attack yourself or an ally unless you wish to.
Flamboyance
Benefit: You may use your Charisma modifier (rather than Strength or Dexterity) when making attack rolls with weapons, and add your Charisma modifier (in addition to any other ability score that applies) to damage rolls with weapons
Unarmored Hero.
Benefit: When unarmored (or wearing light armor, if you are proficient with heavy armor), you gain a dodge bonus to AC equal to 4 + your base attack bonus. At 10th level this increases to 6 + base attack bonus. You lose this if you lose your Dexterity bonus to AC.
