Background Favored Feats

[The Shadow]

A background includes a list of favored feats that may be longer than two, which is all a character is allowed.

Do you pick your favored feats at 1st level, or is this left to your discretion as you level up?

[Jonathan Moyer]

Do you pick your favored feats at 1st level, or is this left to your discretion as you level up?

My read on it is that it's left to your discretion.

The character is not required to take either of the background’s favored feats, they’re simply strongly associated with the background and common to it, therefore always available as an option.

Jon

[timemrick]

It's unclear whether a character must choose which feats on the list are favored at 1st level, even if he doesn't take anything from the list at that time.

If the Narrator wishes to distinguish human cultures by what favored feats each has (as is suggested under that background's entry), then humans at least should choose their favored feats at character creation.

[The Shadow]

If the Narrator wishes to distinguish human cultures by what favored feats each has (as is suggested under that background's entry), then humans at least should choose their favored feats at character creation.

Perhaps not. They should choose their human culture, of course, which will have its own list of favored feats, but the player might not need to pick which two on the list until he chooses to take one of them. Even odder, until he chooses to take one of them *outside of its usual role*.

[Jonathan Moyer]

The way I see it, when a character goes up in level, he can choose his Feat from the following two sources:

1) His role's favored feat list
2) or his Background's favored feat list.

So let's say you're playing a Dwarf who is picking up a level in Adept. This means you could choose:

1) any Adept feat you meet the prereqs for, or
2) Diehard or Favored Enemy

The dwarf could be going from Adept 11 to Adept 12 - no matter what his level or what his role is, he could take a role feat, Diehard, or Favored Enemy.

Now, having said all this, I don't think this answers the Shadow's original question . Given that Dwarf, Elf, and Gnome all have their Background Favored Feats listed at character creation, I'd say you have to do this for culture background Feats as well, even if you have a list of culture favored feats. However, I don't think it breaks the game if you let the player choose what these feats are later on in play, so I'd be pretty lenient about it.

Jon