D&D 4th Edition RulesAsk questions about 4th-Edition rules and the like in here. General discussion about 4E or any other game belongs in General RPG Discussion, above.
View Poll Results: What most sums up your thoughts on Expertise feats...
They are a math fix needed at heroic levels on up
30
21.90%
They are a math fix needed at Paragon levels and up, heroic is fine
52
37.96%
They are a math fix needed at Epic levels only, heroic and paragon are fine
9
6.57%
They are broken and just plain need to be undone
28
20.44%
They work well as is, or with minor tweeking...WOTC PLEASE DON'T ERRATA THE MATH
37
27.01%
Multiple Choice Poll. Voters: 137. This poll is closed
I'd actually rate it a a fair bit less strongly than doubling the number of inspiring words. You get 3-4+ dice of healing at that level, which can be appreciable, and you often just don't want to heal two people at once.
If a player creates a character he loves, but is not optimal, you as a DM should take this in note and not throw hard monsters to hit in a encounter...
If you have a mixed party with optimal and sub-obtimal characters, just throw in a mix of enemies..
I am shocked...I may have to admit I was wrong...so far only 1/3 of the people think like I do...however I do atleast feel justified in feeling this was an issue with multi side...
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Planescape
It should be given special award to Die Vecna, Die: a module that manages to trash no less than THREE different settings (Greyhawk, Ravenloft, Planescape) in the course of one module.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Remathilis
Those of you who fretted that monsters have too many hp and fights take too long: meet the barbarian. The ULTIMATE "Lets speed this combat up, I need to whiz" class!
If a player creates a character he loves, but is not optimal, you as a DM should take this in note and not throw hard monsters to hit in a encounter...
If you have a mixed party with optimal and sub-obtimal characters, just throw in a mix of enemies..
... And hope that your crappy character fights your crappy monster and it isn't in fact the optimized character who kills everything?
Expertise is a stupid feat. I don't know why this gets argued. It's mathematically better than every other offensive feat after 15. It's strictly better than many other feats which are considered very good, such as nimble blade.
__________________ I will build a throne with the skulls of my foemen.
I play a warlord. Often my ability to contribute to the fight hinges on whether I can hit with my daily. I am usually forced to take expertise over my other feats because what they do is nothing compared to hitting or missing with a daily. I used to use a polearm for some cool strategy at levels 1-3, but I don't anymore. It has -3 compared to my sword (lower enhancement, lower proficiency, no expertise) and I can't afford to shell out a feat just to use it occasionally. So now my character is less interesting and more homogenized thanks to feat tax.
If I have to keep paying this feat tax, I want free health care for my PCs.
It's a math hack that's not a bad idea, but implemented horribly. It becomes a "must have feat" that is strictly better than many others (though it stacks with them). It also discourages characters taking more than one weapon/implement (say a STR/WIS cleric) and that already gets trashed badly by 4e.
It's just a horrible way to do something that only maybe needed to be done and is a net loss to the game as it reduces either flexibility or equity.
Is it possible ... just possible that wotc thought that BOTH
1. We had maybe one too many feats at paragon, and epic.
2. We had too low to hit in the respective tiers.
Thus they killed two birds with one stone?
Possible, but unlikely. It's a heroic level feat, so all they are doing is limiting your selction of heroic level feats, not your paragon or epic feats. Additionally, most feats add situational modifiers rather than solid modifiers so those feats probably give you less of a bonus than expertise could.
What I'm saying is, it would be very hard to argue that traditional feats make characters so powerful that they need to be limited. You could probably give a group of paragon or epic characters a handful more heroic feats for free without upsetting the balance much. It's like giving them more at-wills, it would only give them more options, not make their current attacks more powerful.
The only situation I can think of where feats stack for a bonus to a single number is for a caster with no armor proficiency to become proficient with hide and heavy shields (5 feats). I don't think that this needs nerfing though.
What about the option "It's a sure fire way to sell more PHB2"?
This is the main issue with marketing DnD versus DDI. I was hoping that DDI would work as a rules patching system similar to what you get when you buy and Blizzard game. Instead, rules issues are fixed by printing and selling more books. It's just better business.
It would have been bad business for Blizzard to release 'Brood War' and 'Lord of Destruction' as free patches for Starcraft and Diablo respectively. But at least Blizzard used their patching service to fix bugs, glitches and imbalances.
Wizards had the power to fix the math issues through DDI (and release these rules changes in sourcebooks such as PHB II for non-subscribers). They have a powerful tool with DDI, but they don't seem to know how to use it. It's like buying an expensive repair kit for your car, but then paying to send it to the shop when it breaks.
This poll assumes the expertise line of feats is about the math, no matter what you answer.
I disagree with that assumption.
I think you can believe the feats are fine, and simultaneous want WOTC to change some math. And that option is not available in this poll.
Even if they were not implemented as a fix, how can you look at them and say they were a good idea. The expertise feats:
-discourage characters to use builds which use more than one weapon/implement
-are very good at heroic tier, and incomparable to other feats at higher tiers
-offer a boring, static, flavorless bonus that is far better than other feats which offer interesting, challenging situational bonuses.
The reason you don't see 'I believe these feats are fine' as an option is because there is no rational argument to support these feats as being balanced with respect to other feats. What possible logical reason validates putting in a feat that is strictly more powerful than most other feats but less interesting?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oompa
It's even simpeler..
If a player creates a character he loves, but is not optimal, you as a DM should take this in note and not throw hard monsters to hit in a encounter...
If you have a mixed party with optimal and sub-obtimal characters, just throw in a mix of enemies..
You are correct that a DM should never penalize a player for creating a non-optimal interesting character. Many DMs were probably already implementing your suggestion (even subconsciously) in their campaigns before the advent of the expertise feats.
The issue of the expertise feats is that they increase the difference between the min/maxers and the fun players. Suddenly the multi-classing bard is at -3 to attack relative to the longsword only fighter, because he couldn't afford to take expertise for his two implements and his weapon.
Now the monsters you send after the weaker players are going to be 4 levels lower than those you send after the strongest one (rather than 1 level) and the players are going to notice. And when your higher level monsters end up fighting the wrong PCs, that bard is going to miss with two dailies and an encounter power and be very upset.
Indeed, any feat you're expected to take, from Toughness to Weapon Expertise, devalues the feat system. Feats were designed to be character options - ways for you to define your character. As soon as certain feats become something you're expected to take, they're no longer options.
Sure you have the option of not taking them, but you're expected to, so it's a rhetorical choice.
I what campaigns I've run or played in, Toughness hasn't been so much a necessity, so I'm fine with that. It's good for making a character feel tougher, but if you want a character that doesn't feel all that tough, not taking the feat isn't a death sentence.
The Expertise feats, however, immediately became so mandatory among my gaming groups and fellow players that they revised their builds or retrained as soon as they leveled up, making it obvious how these feats were no-brainers. I've subsequently given players a +1 bonus to all attacks at levels 5, 15, and 25 and removed the Expertise feats, freeing up that feat slot for the players again.
Anyway, what I wanted to say, I guess, is that implementing "math fixes" like this should not be at the cost of the optional elements of character design. If it's a general flaw in the math of the game, make a general errata that affects all characters regardless of character design or concept, not something you need to be aware of as a player and then pick the right feat to compensate.
Obviously Expertise and Defense boosters were intended to be a math fix for paragon and epic levels, but they just don't work right. The missing math is:
4 lost from attacks, 4 lostfrom NADs by 30th level and 2 lost from AC by 30th level.
So Expertise doesn't do quite enough for attacks, and the NAD boosters have the potential to actually overcompensate for the lost math. And AC is still left out in the cold, even if you consider Armor Spec. Frankly, I'm still amazed at how many DMs seem content to accept these feats as-is, or even argue for this particular aspect of RAW.
__________________ Proud gamer of Sullivan, New York.
Death is not the end, but yet another journey--one that we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world parts, everything fades to silver glass and then you see it--the white shore and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.
--Everything that I'd like to believe about the afterlife.
So Expertise doesn't do quite enough for attacks, and the NAD boosters have the potential to actually overcompensate for the lost math. And AC is still left out in the cold, even if you consider Armor Spec. Frankly, I'm still amazed at how many DMs seem content to accept these feats as-is, or even argue for this particular aspect of RAW.
Yes, those strange, strange people who believe the game should get harder as you go up in levels instead of hitting Vecna on a 8.
__________________ "Welcome to the Honorable Temple of Tiamat. Survivors of the monster attack will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Donations gladly accepted."
99% of edition conflict boils down to "For me, there are a lot of things that [Edition] can not do in the way I want them done nearly as well as other systems can."
Obviously Expertise and Defense boosters were intended to be a math fix for paragon and epic levels, but they just don't work right. The missing math is:
4 lost from attacks, 4 lostfrom NADs by 30th level and 2 lost from AC by 30th level.
So Expertise doesn't do quite enough for attacks, and the NAD boosters have the potential to actually overcompensate for the lost math. And AC is still left out in the cold, even if you consider Armor Spec. Frankly, I'm still amazed at how many DMs seem content to accept these feats as-is, or even argue for this particular aspect of RAW.
The reason some people think that +3 to attacks, +0 to AC, and +3 to NADs (and even +1 to a 3rd ability score on levels 4, 8, 14, 18, 24, and 28 for the 3 lost to weakest NAD) is sufficient is because of other synergies:
+1 to AC due to various feat specializations
+2 to NADs due to feats
+x to additional buff and debuff powers that do not exist at lower levels
+1 to various buffs due to Paragon Path
It seems reasonable for a fix to make up most of the 4 drop, but not all of it. Most players will not notice a 5% dip, especially when other PCs are throwing out buffs and debuffs and when they do not know the level of the monsters they are facing. They will notice a 20% dip when it occurs every encounter.
__________________ The first sign of a broken rule is when someone suggests that the way to stop it is by readying an action.
So you have a ruleset for bringing vecna to level 30 or bringing the characters to 35?
Because thats the only way anyone is going to hit vecna on an 8 without severe min/maxing.
Eh, getting your base hit there is extremely difficult as I covered in an earlier post, but combined with any power that either adds an ability score to hit or subtracts an ability score from defense, it's not _that_ hard.
Granted, I think people overestimate how many rounds such powers are actually up.
Linear Mode
And yet another word from our sponsors
