Which feats are "taxes"?

[Dice4Hire]

Yep. And this goes back to my point about how 4e was supposed to remove (or at least greatly reduce) the impact of system mastery.

It's fair to say they did a good job reducing it, but it's creeping back in at an uncomfortable rate.

Cheers, -- N

That is really the truth. I have liked a lot of the feats in 4E, the racially and class specific (or even class build) ones, because it spreads the great feats out and makes taking all of them a lot harder, or just plain impossible.

But WOTC continually makes feats that are superior to mosst other feats.

I do not like the expertise feats, and really think they should be 3 seperate feats to make that +3 in epic a real problem to get, and horrendously expensive.

But loloking at trends in feats coming out form WOTc shows a very worying pattern. First the PHB was more balanced, with heavy armor and light armor nicely balanced, but now with more class builds and feats the pendulum is switching to light only.

CLasses are mroe and mroe encouraged to get that 20 at 1st level and bump it every time since then, because of the argument aht "You will get more benefit from a combat feat than a non-combat one" Probably true, overall, but let's jsut make our characters more mindless sets of optimized numbers that are more L33T than everyone else's characters.

All I am thinking now is "Welcome back to 3.5 brokeness."

 

[keterys]

That isn't even entirely what I'm getting at unless you consider the D&D system to be the combat system and little else. I understand you're going for hyperbole here, but I've run and played in sessions (in 1e-3e) in which we used the system extensively... but mostly the skills, wilderness exploration, utility spells, and other systems not directly involved in combat.

A game focused on those would probably find issues with feats designed to favor certain skills that get used more than others or where certain classes get advantages in over-used skills. In those cases, the combat feats that form a dominant strategy for combat-heavy games wouldn't be an issue. The skill-based feats might be.

I wasn't actually going for hyperbole on the percentage of combat of the rules and character. Say, looking at one of my characters, I've spent a feat, an item, a power, background, and carefully chosen skills trained, so that I can get the most out of the parts of D&D that aren't combat based. And my other 90% or more of my character is about combat. And there really isn't that much else for me to do with the system to improve the parts that aren't combat. I don't really want to improve things that wouldn't be appropriate for my character, and the stuff I'm good at I near never fail. And fwiw, getting so that I _never_ fail (such as by taking skill focus) is not really desirable for me.

But, fwiw, I would similarly object to a feat that gave +3 to all skills, per tier, which would put it in line with Expertise.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

And here I thought this thread, by the original post, was asking "Which feats are "taxes"?"

I want that thread back. Where'd it go?

 

[Garthanos]

But WOTC continually makes feats that are superior to mosst other feats.

So far I am not seeing that I am seeing a small number of feats that seem like nails with there heads sticking up... and a small number of magic items with there heads sticking up... and people getting out there hammers ;-). I mean small in comparison to the number of total feats and magic items they have released since the phb came out. (there really have been a lot).

How few have actually been mentioned on this thread?

 

[Midnight Dawns]

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.
Now for some this may not mean much but the expertise feats do only deal with a single group type. In my experience secondary weapons are rarely of the same type as the primary (rogue excluded) and in both games I DM and those I have seen friends run this makes a difference. You don't always have access to your preferred weapons.
All in all it seems that feats such as expertise are only really taxes in contests, which as another poster mentioned, everyone is paying the same tax (and ideas of concept over optimization aren't an issue either).

 

[Midnight Dawns]

To address the OP. Feats such as backstabber. It is a feat that I can't even think of a conceptual reason to not take. While not "essential" it seems too good to not have. Any other racial/class feats like that I would say would be feats that you are looking for.

 

[Nifft]

All I am thinking now is "Welcome back to 3.5 brokeness."

While I generally agree with you, I don't think this sentence is anywhere near the truth.

During 3.x optimization threads, it often became necessary to qualify which infinity was relevant to a given build.

4e has no infinite damage, stats, or time-travel (though I did find an infinite travel hack, it requires an infinite line of minion-pairs at small intervals... not exactly applicable to a normal game). When 4e gets some nice little infinities of its own, then maybe it can come and play in 3.x's brokenness league.

Cheers, -- N

 

[keterys]

There is a build that can get infinite attacks once a day (maybe more with salves). Horizon Walker something to get moves that use a stance that attack to get infinite AP-move-attacks for one turn.

And the silly Blade Cascade Orcus setups were close enough to infinite damage, if ridiculous theorycraft to setup.

 

[Dausuul]

And here I thought this thread, by the original post, was asking "Which feats are "taxes"?"

I want that thread back. Where'd it go?

What, you expected it to stay on topic? I think you're intarwebbing wrong.

Anyway, to that original question... there are a number of feats that I consider borderline feat tax. You don't have to take them in order to be effective, but they're good enough that it's hard to justify not doing it:

Expertise (before 15th level)
Paragon Defenses (all paragon characters)
Action Surge (all humans and half-elves)
Backstabber (rogues)
Lethal Hunter (rangers)
Nimble Blade (rogues)
Weapon Proficiency (all weapon-users who can get a damage die upgrade by taking a superior weapon)
Leather Armor Proficiency (all characters who don't have it already)

These are the feats that I regard as pretty much auto-picks whenever I make a character who falls into the appropriate category. I'm always going to take Expertise, all of my rogues are going to have Backstabber and Nimble Blade, all of my sword-wielders are going to have Weapon Proficiency with bastard swords or fullblades, and all of my wizards are going to have Leather Armor Proficiency. I might delay them for a couple levels to pick up an important concept feat, but no more than that.

The only feats I regard as definitive feat tax - "take me or you suck" - are Expertise from 15th level on, and Robust Defenses at epic tier. Anything that gives an across-the-board +2 or better to attack or defense is beyond the pale. It's pretty obvious that these feats were only added in PHB2 because WotC realized their math was off at higher levels, and these feats were necessary to fix it.

 

[Garthanos]

In my experience, both when I play and when I dm, people are missing by a margin of 5 or greater.

Maybe I suck at statistics been awhile since I studied it and it really doesnt dominate my work... but due to the linearity of the d20 dice roll.. this anecdote cant be taken as meaningful ... check to see if your dice are imbalanced (if they can ever hit they will miss just as often by 5 if they can ... as 4 as 3 as 2 as 1.)