Which feats are "taxes"?

[Nifft]

Designing Frodo Baggins ;-), non deadly character concept.

Feh, blatant GM's girlfriend with her super-artifact at level one.

"Unsafe in any edition", -- N

 

[Garthanos]

Feh, blatant GM's girlfriend with her super-artifact at level one.

"Unsafe in any edition", -- N

Hey but she had no clue about optimization ... way too generalized ability scores hybriding warlord and rogue together etc.. and she was so scared of using the epic ring that it became a plot device.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

At the end of the day I guess I'm just not really clear on your objection. He said that the +2 to all FRWs seemed excessive and therefore a required feat. You countered that it didn't stack with some other feats.

The counter to 'This is a required feat' with 'You might instead feel this other feat is required' is a bit odd. It's got a lot more meat than saying Weapon Expertise is fine because you could instead take Focused Expertise, though.

Either way, changing the amount you can increase FRWs from +2 to +6 in one product, the same one that increases hit by +3, makes it feel very similar.

Hey at least you have a choice to bump the one defense you think is too low.

I consider those +4 feats more of a math fix, because you have difficulties to get all of your NADs to a relevant level.

(if you are hit on a 3 or 4 its not funny. If you are however hit on a 7 or 8 its ok)

You have more of "paired feats"
like improved initiative and quick draw
like armor specialization and shield specialization
like paragon defenses and combat anticipation (which also gives an AC bonus in certain situations... but doesn´t stack with armor spec... but maybe worth as a feat for 2 levels or so)

So yes, i think there are some bonuses you should try to get of a feat for certain character concepts, but you still have a choice between more or less equal feats.

The problem with expertise is, that it makes some feats redundant, which would not be so bad if it was a paragon or epic feat. But as it stands, it is a heroic feat which is straight better than nimble blade in all regards, and is a too good bonus with +3 at epic to overlook with most characters. (+1 at paragon, +2 at epic would be much more acceptable)

But at least you have a choice when to take it. And there are a lot of feats which you will get before you take a feat like expertise.

 

[Saeviomagy]

There are critical hit feats which allow followup attacks and knock prone. Allow you to retain combat advantage and recharge dailies. And IMHO they are too unreliable if they only trigger 1 of 20.
Triggering twice as often however sounds ok. So expertise becomes a no-brainer from level 15 on. Not before.

Retaining combat advantage or knocking prone are minor advantages compared with hitting.

Getting a free extra attack is a smaller bonus than hitting when you might have missed, because there is the chance the extra attack would miss.

Additionally that free attack is a basic attack, which are almost always less powerful than... anything else you might choose to do.

My personal definition of a tax feat is any feat that I feel bad about passing up for being boring.

I don't feel good if I take the feat, because there were more fun feats to take.
I don't feel good if I don't take the feat because I get that nagging feeling that it was mechanically superior.

The feat is a tax on fun either way.

Incidentally I'd like to nominate backstabber and improved quarry as tax feats. They fit the criteria of unfun regardless of whether you take them or not. They should probably be built into the base versions of the class features (because the numbers seem to assume them).

The warlock gets stung with a tax item instead.

 

[Elric]

In my experience, both when I play and when I dm, people are missing by a margin of 5 or greater. I think I have only had one player keep missing by a point or two. Now this is anecdotal but from my experience at the table the expertise feats are not make or break feats but the defense feats would have made a huge difference to the players.

This anecdote does not support your conclusion. +1 to hit adds 5 percentage points to your chance of hitting going forward (I'm assuming you don't already have to roll a 20 to hit, and don't already hit on a 2+). Your experience in play with "how much people miss by" makes no difference. This is an example of why facts cannot be interpreted without the benefit of theory.

Edit: To elaborate, a (fair) d20 is equally likely to yield each result. So if you currently need to roll, say, an 11+ to hit, it's equally likely that you miss by each of 1-10 or hit by each of 0-9. That means that a +1 to hit causes you to hit 5 percentage points more often in the future. A +2 to hit causes you to hit 10 percentage points more often in the future, and so on. Let's suppose that your players always need to roll an 11+ to hit in your current campaign, and have tended to roll more 5-7s than 8-10s. This doesn't imply that going forward, a +3 to hit is any less valuable than if they've mainly rolled 8-10 as opposed to 5-7 (unless you think the dice aren't fair, in violation of my above premise- if so, get new dice!). Your experiences don't imply anything about what dice rolls will come up in the future; it's random.

In general, people do not have a good innate understanding of probability and statistics (for example, I got the Monte Hall problem wrong the first time I saw it, as I assume is common). This is a reason to take courses in these subjects and also to avoid designing your game in a way that gives sophisticated players a major edge. A sophisticated player will realize that even if he's rolled a lot of 5-7s and few 8-10s so far, +3 to hit is still incredibly valuable. A less sophisticated player might not realize this.