Espy Feats?

Okay, so, we’re all vexed by the lack of espionage feats, so why not have a thread for it? If nothing else, I couldn’t think of a more suited place for this idea I had, so I think a new thread is in order. If I’m wrong, Anna can slap a lock on this thread, or delete it, or whatever.

My idea for an espy feat may sound a little convoluted, but I think it’d be both neat and balanced.

Tired of having no espy feats? Tired of using a whole clip of ammo when you snipe? SOLVED! My proposed feat is as follows.

Conserve Ammo:

Level requirement – Espionage around 100 or so. Not too high that it never gets seen, but high enough that not everyone and their brother will have it.

Effect – Instead of using a whole clip when you snipe, you’ve learned to conserve your ammunition, and use less ammunition per shot. I’m thinking not a HUGE difference, but enough to make the feat worth getting. Maybe anywhere from 10% of the clip, to 25%, or 50%. Even saving half the ammo in your clip would be nice. It’d also make is so you don’t have to have a full clip, just enough for the new required %.

It could be a combat feat, but I figured espionage would be a fitting place for it, since spies would be good at shot-counting to save ammo. It’s not so far off as how smugglers have an evasion feat, which is GREAT for combat characters.

Other ideas for espy feats I had included things like a feat to let them scan further, a feat to let them actively watch a camera(It’d be like you were standing there instead of viewing a snapshot), a feat to add a mike to your camera when you make it so you can pick up sound(Only people with the mike feat could pick up the sound on that camera), a feat to let yo encode your camera so that you can restrict who can view it (Instead of just using monitor_camera #, you’d have to use monitor_camera # (code #)).

Another idea is maybe a feat that makes you an expert door cutter, so you can raise your chance of success, and maybe also raise your cutting speed.

All this sort of stuff would be great for espionage characters, and help them get a leg up in the "I wanna be one of those!" department.

I’d love to hear more ideas, too, if this thread stays open, and I’m sure it’d be a great place to condense all of our espy feat ideas for the IMMs to partake of!

Espis don’t need combat feats. A good Espi won’t even see combat. The reason why Smugglers have reflexes is because Smugglers are adept at avoiding combat, but know some tricks around combat should it come down to it. Espis are about mental toughness and this is something I would like to see expanded on if you are going to go the route of feats with Espis.

However, I do like the idea of being able to constantly monitor a camera as if you were in the same room.

The only combat-ish feats I could justify for an espionage main would be maybe something dealing with unarmed combat, or something with blackjack (which starts combat), or the "Crix Madine"–turning a blaster ammunition cell into an armed grenade.

That being said, I’m all for espionage mains having feats (really, I am; half my mains are espionage, it seems), but the problem is, the more feat we add, the more specialization characters have. And one of the defining features, as compared to most other games (other muds, DnD, etc.) is how LITTLE specialization there is. Sure, you may only be good at one thing–but you’re good at everything about that one thing. And I’m not for changing that, because a clan may only have ONE espionage main, or ONE medical main, or whatever.

The more feats we get, the more I’ll resuggest this: feats should be passive. If it’s an activated ability, make it a skill. That’s (barring a few combat ones… and all of our combat feats are passive, anyways!) how DnD/SWd20 feats work, and they’re supposedly where we stole the idea from…

This would keep LotJ’s anti-specialization in tact. Every espionage main would be able to do every espionage thing; every engineer would be able to do every engineer thing. They just wouldn’t be as good in some areas and better in other areas–but they’d still be capable.