Proposal: Replace Expertise Related House Rule with Feat Slot

renau1g · Mar 27, 2010

elecgraystone said:
SO it's going to be option 10? Sigh... Could have really used the extra non-expertise feat right now but at least I will not have to change my sheet. Maybe I'll try that new Versatile Expertise feat.

Well, you'll get another at level 6

. Again the point of the original bonus wasn't to grant a bonus feat, it was to correct the math that was the rationale for WoTC publishing that feat.

elecgraystone · Mar 27, 2010

renau1g said:
Well, you'll get another at level 6 . Again the point of the original bonus wasn't to grant a bonus feat, it was to correct the math that was the rationale for WoTC publishing that feat.

And I believe that granting the 'original bonus' was to allow diversity by not forcing players to pick a feat because they had to.

So now we're forcing players to pick a feat a 5th so they aren't forced to pick a feat at 1st?

Seems a little ironic.

Moon_Goddess · Mar 27, 2010

I'm worry about power creep though.

I'm not completely sure how people can say giving a free expertise feat at level 5 is power creep, but yet not giving it for free is feat tax. One side has to be nuetral and the other is positive or negative off of that.

Personally I believe that not giving the feat free is not feat tax (since there are others arguing they'd rather not have to take it so obviously not everyone will take it and thus not a feat tax) so that means giving it away free is a minor power creep.

Giving a free feat without restriction however is far more power creep and even though I'd rather have some other feat, I think it's important that we do not allow it to be just any feat, that's too powerful.

elecgraystone · Mar 27, 2010

DarwinofMind said:
Giving a free feat without restriction however is far more power creep and even though I'd rather have some other feat, I think it's important that we do not allow it to be just any feat, that's too powerful.

This confuses me. I've heard again and again that the expertise feats are the best pick and 75-80% of people will think they are 'must haves'. So allowing feats that are generally agreed as less powerful is somehow too powerful?

Soooo confused...

Moon_Goddess · Mar 27, 2010

versatility is always more powerful than chosen for you

That's why humans only get a +2 to one score.

with versatility your free to find some unexpected combo that works perfect for you to make you OP,

I also disagree with the whole "expertise feats are the best pick and 75-80% of people will think they are 'must haves'." thing, so I never saw the feats as a feat tax in the first place only 1 player in my home game has taken one.

Overall it's probably best in your case to not think about this as a feat, that way your not losing a feat, it's not a feat slot you ever had, to it's still just the +1 bonus just now it's easier to put into the character builder.

elecgraystone · Mar 27, 2010

DarwinofMind said:
with versatility your free to find some unexpected combo that works perfect for you to make you OP.

LOL, you can look at my characters and see I don't take feats for that reason. I pick for a theme and go with it.

DarwinofMind said:
I also disagree with the whole "expertise feats are the best pick and 75-80% of people will think they are 'must haves'." thing, so I never saw the feats as a feat tax in the first place only 1 player in my home game has taken one.

I too have never used them, hence my wanting an option that didn't make me 'have to' take one. I figured that if we're giving out a feat, I like to take one I'd normally pick anyway.

DarwinofMind said:
Overall it's probably best in your case to not think about this as a feat, that way your not losing a feat, it's not a feat slot you ever had, to it's still just the +1 bonus just now it's easier to put into the character builder.

LOL I don't think I can but I'll manage somehow.

There are a dozen other feats that would look SO much better in that slot. A +1 to hit is just so boring...

renau1g · Mar 27, 2010

Well as it was never a feat in the first place just a flat bonus to all to hits, but people weren't happy with that as there is one instance where you need expertise to qualify for one PP in the whole ruleset that we changed it. So I can't imagine how you could construe it as losing a feat in that there was never a bonus feat at 5th level, just a bonus to hit.

You know, why don't we just give your PC an extra dozen feats. We already have 25 PB to have more diverse PCs and grant a bonus to hit to help out the math on non-optimized PC's but apparently that's not enough. I'm pretty tired of all the whining about being given free stuff. Would a dozen feats make you happy?

duhexenhase · Mar 27, 2010

I know that it's the type of cheese that neither the judges would go for, nor would I hope most of the players here try, but there should probably be some sort of ban on retraining whatever feat slot is used for expertise. Maybe only allowing it to be trained over for another expertise.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, one could, at first level, take expertise, and then dump it after lvl 5 for some other feat.

evilbob · Mar 28, 2010

renau1g said:
Would a dozen feats make you happy?

No offense, but this seems like a disproportionate response to some reasonable arguments. I don't think I would call anything that has been said in this thread "whining"; I'm sorry you feel that way. If it really bothers you so much then why don't you vote for disbanding the house rule altogether? It's certainly cleaner that way.

DarwinofMind: Whether or not the expertise feats are a tax has been discussed at quite some length on this board and others. I appreciate your point of view, but if you wish to discuss this here, it could expand this thread by about a hundred pages. Does anyone have some links handy to other ENworld discussions about this so we don't have to repeat those arguments?

duhexenhase: The expertise feats would be banned until level 5 is how I think this would end up working. Altho specifying that these feats can only be retrained as another expertise-type feat is probably worth spelling out.

renau1g · Mar 28, 2010

I just want people to understand that it was never a bonus feat, you get a feat at 1, 2, 4, 6, etc just the same, it's not like us draconian taskmasters of judges came in and said "NOW BOW TO US, YOU MUST GIVE US YOUR FEAT SLOTS AND WE CHOOSE THEM RAWR!"

I preferred the houserule as it was actually very clean, I fail to see what the issue was with it? A flat +1 to hit at level 5. Simple, elegant, clean, what WOTC should have done in the first place. Now, someone (you maybe?) brought up that WotC has introduced a PP that requires expertise to enter. Thinking about it now I should have just proposed we change that requirement to L4W Expertise instead.

It just seems a few people have the attititude that we're stealing a feat slot from them. I just fail to see how that could be as there was never a feat slot. I was being facetious
obviously, my point is that (and THB also made it) this IS NOT A BONUS FEAT TO JUST GRANT A BONUS FEAT!!! the point of this was to address a math issue that WotC has identified in the game and introduced a rather poor mechanism to address. Whether the rest of the interwebs outside of L4W agree or disagree has 0 bearing here. The judges and community decided on this course of action when the setting was created so it was determined that this was the best way to correct the math issue.

That's why I don't want to get rid of the house rule, it's fine, I just don't want people saying we're taking feats away from them.