Yeah, thats what I figured you meant Spike.

  Something that might work well is having some basic feats that pertain to a fighting style ( two-weapon fighing, weapon and shield fighting, two-handed weapon fighting, one-handed weapon fighting, missle weapn fighting for example )  that scale with your level, and then have plenty of additional supporting feats ( simple ones that don't scale with level ) that fit that style of fighting.

  That way, you aren't 'forced' to take, lets say Improved Two-Weapon Fighting at higher level.  You instead just get the benefits from that in the base Two Weapon Fighting feat since it scales with level.  Since you're not 'forced' to take the 'improved' feat ( it's of course just deleted from the game as a feat ), that opens up the door for you to take another feat that fits your character's concept.

  BTW, I'm asking you this because I'm not a 3.x/d20 player, so I don't have any experience with many of the pitfalls of high level play.  I want to understand them a little better because some day I'd like to create my own 'd20 fantasy lite' ( fully NON-compatable with all of you existing crunchy D20 books! ) that doesn't have any of the scaling problems that exists now.

Quote from: Spike;318890Further adoption of feats might come from adapting the class abilities of the Tempest prestige class (I think that was the one...), where you gain abilities like... using both weapons when making a normal (rather than a full) attack as part of a charge....

  I agree, but I'd like to point out that what you stated above goes againsts what you said you don't like, i.e. feats that break the rules.

  I personally have no problems with feats that break the rules as long as they're done right and it makes sense.

Well... if you want to get into it, we could create more granularity in our terms.  Most 'exception' rules become a problem when they change the rules for other characters.  Consider a feat like 'Improved Bull Rush'.  Its primary purpose is to deny the use of an AoO by the opposed character, not to make one's bull-rushing any more useful.

An exception, such as the Tempest class ability I mentioned instead add to the character's abilities. The only person who needs to remember that he can use both weapons on a charge (instead of just one...and note too that I find the iterative attack mechanic to be an indicator of another serious design flaw, but that is neither here nor there) is the player using the feat.  Call these, instead of exceptions 'additions' perhaps?

Since I'm not about to release a varient D&D rule set, all of this is merely noshing.

Quote from: Spike;318968Since I'm not about to release a varient D&D rule set, all of this is merely noshing.

  Yes, but perhaps someone needs to.  Pathfinder certainly isn't the answer from what I heard.