Its long been my main balance beef with the PotM set up. The extra feats, they are just entirely unnecessary in my opinion. Across the board. The system has its heart in the right place but the net result is undesirable and throws the balance off more than a little and greatly affects other aspects of gameplay.
Dropping the entire extra feat system might not be considered I realize, as much as I think it would help, but what is available on the potm bonus feat levels might be something that could be addressed. I believe that certainly no metamagic feat should be available on those potm bonus feat selection lists at all. A wizard already has 3 extra feats to select those feats in their base progression, in addition to the base feat every 3 character levels. It would be completely okay to me if only the non combat related feats such as willbreaker and skill focus (perform) comprise the list and eliminate the rest. But at the very least if we are going to give classes with built in class bonus feats lists such as wizards and fighters even more feats than by extension the rogue class should also get them to preserve their progression chart advantage(s) as compared to their peer base classes.
Other than the excessive feat progression, the main overkill feature of the server's implementation of D&D rules is that the saving throws and DCs are extremely high. We could start by completely getting rid of the bonuses accrued from spellcraft, which might be about the weirdest thing bioware implemented. The spellcraft skill already has video gamey mechanical use by identifying spell effects so it would never be useless. We could further collectively lower the arms race by eliminating excessive saving throw related gear, or restricting it to just the +1 items that drop randomly in low level areas. +2s could be a fantastically useful find and rare, and +3s and beyond basically unheard of, at least not without penalties to make it barely worth it. The three saving throw feats should also not appear on potm bonus feat levels, so as to make that choice a harder one. And make spell focus something that a spell caster has to truly choose one or maybe two schools of magic to specialize in and also its worth noting that we have the +2 (3.0) version of spell focus and it does not seem hard to change it to just +1 as it is in the revision.
I think the server would be better for it, as much as it would shake up the status quo. Just as diamonds making raise dead a very rare occurrence, and clerics losing a spell slot per level were also not perceived as ubiquitous improvements, so too could this prove to be a move in the right direction of giving real weight to build decisions and contribute to a magic-requires-great-sacrifice type of feel to the gameplay. It would not hurt anything if a DC 17 spike growth worked on more opponents, so that the level 5 druid feels like his magic has chance to work. As we have it now, anything that allows a saving throw is nearly without utility even at the levels you first obtain them and they do not retain any utility at all as you progress. The saving throw modifiers that these spells have to overcome are regularly in the teens or more. I just feel with some smart thinking we can come to a good compromise and improve several areas of gameplay all at once. They are more than a little bit connected.
Completely unrelated to this topic but the recent lore changes gave me pipe dreams of implementing the various knowledge skills, that could be used to further spread out skill point distribution and create specialists in areas of lore. An undead hunter would want Knowledge (Undead) but would find their self at a loss to identify what type of ooze they were facing, whereas a Knowledge (Dungeoneering) specialist would have the opposite area of expertise. A further way to differentiate characters in both a story and mechanical way. But again, off topic.
