Another feat tax?

[BobTheNob]

So expertise feats. Some like em, some dont, and lot would say they are a feat tax. Making players pay a feat for a shortfall in to-hit or face a real rough time hitting anything in late game.

AC never had this problem, because masterwork armor made up for the shortfall.

NADs however did. There was nothing that got them those extra couple of points.

Then I saw the upcoming rule changes for essentials and Lightning Reflex/Iron Will/Great Fort are now Heroic and scale with teir.

Its like WOTC spotted the shortfall and built the scaling needed to keep the NADs in the ballgame into the feat. But, if I have assumed the motive correctly, isnt this the same issue people had with expertise? i.e. there is a shortfall and players are expected to invest in feats to make up for it?

 

[CovertOps]

I didn't like the feats when they were +4 epic tier only. My math has the shortfall at -4/-4/-7 assuming that you aren't bumping two stats like STR/CON, DEX/INT, or WIS/CHA in which case you'll be -4/-7/-7. If you include the other feat (Paragon/Epic Defenses) that was +1/+2 to all NADs then suddenly you're ahead of the curve (admittedly that depends on where you started since that 8/10 you put in one stat pair started at a 10 defense and the average starting AC should be ~16 with NADs at ~14 so you started 4 points behind and made up 2 of them)

 

[scylis]

I see it not as a feat tax, but a way to get around all the retraining that went on from one tier to the next for the feats that gave those bonuses. Now you just pick the one feat and not worry about it from that point on instead of picking up the Paragon feat for it and retraining it to the Epic version when you hit Epic tier.

While this technically obsoletes a handful of feats, anyone with a lick of sense to them only used one feat slot per NAD that way, anyway, and did so in a slightly clunky manner. This simplifies things.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Lightning reflexes were obsoleted by paragon and robust defenses

now you can either chose pargon/robust defenses, which boost all defenses a little bit, or you boost up individually to get the edge, lightning reflexes was meant to give. (+2 over the expected bonus)

Actually i have accepted feat taxes and look at this this way:

Feats handle weapon and skill proficiencies. (+1/tier or +5 bonus repspectively)
You can trade those bonuses in for other neat things.

 

[nnms]

With the revised damage outputs, there is little reason to use monsters of level+2 or more against PCs anymore. Level -1, Level, and Level+1 are generally challenging enough.

Once you take away the higher defenses of Level +2, +3 or even +4 or +5 monsters, you need PCs optimized for hitting way, way less.

The problem isn't in the feat tax, it's in the bad encounter design (and bad MM1 [and to a lesser degree MM2] monster design). If you want a more challenging encounter, use a higher level encounter not higher level monsters.

 

[Mika]

The expertise feats were called a "feat tax" because they basically set up a single feat that everyone would eventually feel compelled to take. (I would counter that these feats are not necessarily the first feat that every character takes -- there is still some thought to be given as to when to take them.)

That is not true of the NAD boosting feats -- there are more of them, all of them are now available from 1st level on, and different characters will vary in how important it is to take any given feat. If your character has enough priorities in other areas and/or picks up the right NAD-boosting items, he might neve take any of these feats and do just fine.

 

[Stalker0]

Its like WOTC spotted the shortfall and built the scaling needed to keep the NADs in the ballgame into the feat. But, if I have assumed the motive correctly, isnt this the same issue people had with expertise? i.e. there is a shortfall and players are expected to invest in feats to make up for it?

Its a valid question.

People will probably argue that these feats are not as much of a feat tax as the expertise feats mainly for this reason.

Each NAD only comes up so much of the time. Your attack rolls come up much more often.


That said, the defense feats do look exceptionally strong compared to many other feats, so I could see them high on many people's list.

 

[Gort]

I'd far rather see feats that increase attacks, damage, defenses and hitpoints be simply built in to all characters by default.

You could reduce the number of feats given to compensate for the gain in power level.

 

[BobTheNob]

I'd far rather see feats that increase attacks, damage, defenses and hitpoints be simply built in to all characters by default.

You could reduce the number of feats given to compensate for the gain in power level.

This is where Im sorta coming from as well. Dont get me wrong, I still think there are room for feats like LR/IW/GF with a +2 bonus, but its just the extra scaling at paragon and epic. To me, that should just be built in, so that characters can take these feats if they want a boost, but they are not obligated to.

The previous analysis of -4/-4/-7 by late epic was spot on, and with an inherent +2 by epic, this is a -2/-2/-5. Not a full solution, but closer, and without players needing to pay a feat. Then, if they really wanted to finally bridge the gap, they pay the feat cost then and get another +2

Its pretty fringe stuff, and I wouldnt go hammer and tongs fighting the point. I guess I was a little disappointed : scaling d20 values just doesnt make sense to me, and a few recent errata made me think maybe that WOTC had come to the same conclusion. Obviously I was wrong.

 

[AngryMojo]

scaling d20 values just doesnt make sense to me, and a few recent errata made me think maybe that WOTC had come to the same conclusion. Obviously I was wrong.

The scaling d20 values were the big problem with the math back in 3.X, and the leading source of rocket tag. I'm still not convinced of the entire feat tax argument, but I'll agree with you on this point.