Sometimes writers--both old and new--stall once the idea hits. You might not know how to begin at all because you haven't done it before. You might know what you want to say but not how to set it down. You might have good ideas about what to write and how to write it but not who you want to write it for.

A good answer for all of these concerns is what do the readers want? If you can provide a good answer for that question, you'll be able to solve most of your content-related questions in short answer. Know what the readers want, and you write material that publishers want.

This article uses D20 concepts for its example. If you're not familiar with the d20 rules, this article won't make as much sense.

An Idea

Begin with a thought. I recently began reading Complete Mage from Wizards of the Coast more seriously than the brief glimpse I gave it when it came out a few months ago. The reserve feats from that book beg for expansion.

To summarize the reserve feat, a spellcaster gains a moderate magical ability (such as creating a cone of fire) as long as the spellcaster has a higher-level spell prepared. If you have a 5th level spell prepared, you can generate a spell-like effect comparable to a 3rd-level spell. Once you no longer have any spells that meet the prerequisite prepared, you lose the ability.

Each feat also include a secondary ability; all of the examples in Complete Mage seemed to grant the spellcaster +1 spellcaster level with spells themed to the feat. In boringly thorough fashion, the book seems to describe one feat for each descriptor, so there are spells for lightning, cold, fire, acid, etc.

The Reader's Needs

Not all players like to play wizards. If you want to make an article out of adding new reserve feats, you have to make the feats available to non-wizards. How? Barbarians, for example, don't prepare spells, so they can't meet a prerequisite of having a spell prepared. They do rage, though.

A reserve feat that requires the ability to rage could provide a primary and secondary benefit similar to the ones for spellcasters. Let's begin with one of these feats and see how it stacks up. Where to start?

The rage ability currently grants a bonus to Strength, Constitution, and Will saves. It applies a penalty to AC. It limits the actions a character can take during combat. It fatigues the user after it ends. Current game mechanics already remove the fatigue, so that's not a direction we want this feat to go.

The metagame idea behind the reserve feats is to allow the spellcaster the ability to take more actions during combat. Typically, a wizard player casts a few spells outside of combat, a spell or two during combat, and has little punch during combat. After a couple of flashy spells, he's done. The ability to generate continuous warlock-type blasts is intended to give the player something to do. We'll keep that in mind as we design our non-spellcasting reserve feats.

RAGE FEAT (that's a placeholder name; we'll change it later)
Flavor text goes here.
Prerequisite: Ability to rage
Benefit:

For article-writing purposes, I usually draft a template like this, copy it to the bottom of the article and then copy & paste as I need it throughout the writing. Let's paste the template and write in a tentative couple of abilities.

RAGE FEAT
Flavor text goes here.
Prerequisite: Ability to rage
Benefit: As long as you have not used all of your rage uses for the day, you can choose to gain a +2 bonus on attack rolls and suffer a -2 AC penalty as if you had charged whenever you move more than 5 feet before attacking.

As a secondary benefit, you gain a +1 competence bonus to oppose trip attempts, disarm attempts and bull rush attempts.

The first ability encourages maneuver in combat. Players seem to prefer the constant jockeying for position during combat, taking advantage of terrain and numbers to gain a tactical advantage. It's far more exciting than two fighters standing toe to toe and trading die rolls.

For the secondary ability, I look for a benefit analogous to the wizard's +1 spellcaster level. The barbarian's rage ability isn't dependent upon level, so an effective +1 character level doesn't mean much. I didn't want to increase the rage benefit with this low-level feat, either.

As an idea for other directions to go with barbarians, you might concentrate on another of the class's aspects: increased movement rate, for example, hardiness, damage reduction, or outdoor survival.

Look also at removing liabilities. The barbarian suffers an Armor Class penalty while raging. Adding a Dexterity bonus while raging can effectively reduce or remove that penalty. Such a bonus should be a secondary bonus for this type of feat, because it doesn't give the character a new combat option, which should be the purpose of the main ability.

Once you have the crunchy details, add the flavor text and come up with a final name for the feat. You might have a name already picked out and allow the name to suggest the ability; that's fine, too. One thing that I try to do is come up with names that aren't merely descriptive. The world does not need more Improved This or Greater That feats. The feat name should be as evocative as the ability is attractive to the player.

Follow this feat with the placeholders Greater Rage Feat and Mighty Rage Feat. That allows three feats for the barbarian. For various feats, you could increase the number of rage uses left in the day as a prerequisite. For the Mighty Rage Feat, for example, you could require at least three uses left.

Different Classes

The paladin has two daily abilities that make reserve feats an attractive choice, in addition to limited spellcasting. Between the ability to turn undead and the ability to lay on hands, making use of the turn undead ability is the better choice. For one thing, two core classes have the ability, so the same feats can apply to both classes, although the two classes will qualify for them at different levels.

A second, although lesser, consideration is that the paladin can split up the lay on hands ability to any increment. If you require only that a character have any healing ability left, a character can always choose to hold back 1 hit point of healing. That's a weak prerequisite.

A 4th level paladin with Charisma 18 can lay on hands for 16 hit points during the course of the day. A 16th level paladin with Charisma 12 has the same ability to the same degree. Whenever possible, you want to be able to predict what level the character gains the feat so that you don't assign the wrong power level. The variation between characters of different Charisma scores makes it difficult to assess.

Paladin and cleric primary abilities should focus on the two things those classes have in common. Turning undead, healing, combat, and religion are elements they share. The ability to heal at will is far more upsetting to a campaign than the ability to inflict damage at will, so it's best to avoid that as an at-will ability.

How about brandishing the holy symbol for a lesser but broader effect? If we want to encourage combat options, the ability shouldn't be tied only to the undead. The character could use the power of his god to menace the enemy, as with the demoralize use of the Intimidate skill. The effect might be a heftier penalty than the demoralize effect, either in degree or in duration.

The obvious choice for a secondary effect is to grant the character a +1 bonus to either turning checks or damage-or both. I would avoid giving the character an effective +1 level when turning undead because another feat already does that. Subsuming another feat under your new feat's secondary effect is a sign that your feat is too powerful.

For monks, the ability to use stunning fist is a natural focus for reserve feats. While not all monks choose the ability, it's a pretty common one. At higher levels, monks gain the abundant step and empty body abilities once per day each. Those are likely candidates, too.

Bards have decent spellcasting ability, but they also have the ability to use bardic music. Reserve feats based on the number of bardic music uses left per day provide another alternative.

Fighters and rogues have no daily abilities. Their versatile character-building options hamper the application of this type of feat. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Fighters and rogues almost always have an action, and it usually involves a satisfying squish sound.

Include GMs and Players

Including GMs is easier to do when writing source material than crunch, but you can do it with an article like this, too. You could design feats that depend on monstrous abilities, for example. Demons can summon other demons; a reserve feat dependent on retaining the ability to summon a demon might summon an infernal bat swarm, for example. A good secondary benefit might be an extra point of damage reduction or one flavor of energy resistance.

Organize and Format

Once you have a list of feats, order them alphabetically. Depending on the length of the article (for which you might check your magazine's submission guidelines or compare similar articles in the magazine), you might have anywhere from 6 to 20 feats. Make sure you've represented all the classes.

If you're writing these items for a book, you might want to create a table that summarizes them. You might want the table anyway for your own reference. When writing an article that features new spells, for example, you want to make sure you covered multiple spell levels evenly. An article containing 4 9th-level spells and 1 each of 1st through 3rd-level spells is awkward unless there's a good reason for it.

Add your introductory text explaining what you set out to do and why you set out to do it. If you're including this for a specific game setting, describe how they fit into the setting.

One of my points of judgment on game material is the question "Does this material open up as much as it closes off?" You might include a bulleted list of unused ideas as suggestions for additional feats.

Playtest

Introduce the material into your campaign. If you have friends who run games, ask if they'll experiment with the material. Solicit feedback. If a feat or a spell engenders a lot of heated debate, that's usually a good thing. Crunch items that are too good or too bad generate unanimous responses.

Rewrite

Revise and edit your text, change your abilities, and clean things up in general. Make sure to remove as many passive writing as possible. That sentence, for example, should be "Remove passive writing." Remove unnecessary qualifiers such as most, often, and sometimes. Run your spellchecker. Check point of view for consistency. It's common for a revision to reduce your word count by 10%. Do that, and then do it again.

Make sure your article complies with the market's format and style guidelines.

Send that puppy in.

That's a Wrap

That's a brief version of how an idea turns into a complete article using an easy example. Articles less reliant on crunch require more decision-making during the design process, and are less conducive to a workshop format. They require more personal attention. Feel free to bring up specific examples you'd like help with in the forums, and I'm sure you'll get no lack of attention.