Defenses and To Hits for Your Party ~ Averages

Prestidigitalis · Dec 26, 2010

TarionzCousin said:
Wrong. He got banned from this site.

Herschel · Dec 26, 2010

AbdulAlhazred said:
Expertise is still a choice that has enough mechanical superiority that eventually basically any player that has ANY awareness of improving their character's combat capability WILL take it though.

I agree with this, and it may be unfortunate, but it would be needlessly complicated to have an expertise feat or the like with a pre-requisite of 'beginning primary attribute less than 17 post-racial modifiers' or the like. A few characters are rather feat-starved though and some times you might not have room for it until late in their "career".

Aulirophile · Dec 26, 2010

Herschel said:
Seriously, I did go there because it's a valid point. Just because the developers give it for free in their home games and stated expertise was a math fix... wait, what was I saying?

Fixed that for you. We really, really hate "FIFY" here. we consider it rude. Please don't do it. ~ Piratecat

The math of the game is really straightforward, has nothing to do with CharOp. Monster Defenses increase by 1 per level. PC attacks increase by 1/2 level+Enhance. One of these scales faster then the other. Hence why Expertise is a "Scaling Fix", because the stated intention during development was that throughout a PCs whole career he will hit an even level monster with the same number on the die, and they balanced a lot of other assumptions around that idea (including the concept of CA/Marked being a Significant Difference).

"Will work" is not a counter-argument to "the math is broken" either. Many things "will work" if you just muddle through, that doesn't change the fact that the designers of the game give it out for free because they consider it a scaling fix.

AbdulAlhazred · Dec 26, 2010

Herschel said:
I agree with this, and it may be unfortunate, but it would be needlessly complicated to have an expertise feat or the like with a pre-requisite of 'beginning primary attribute less than 17 post-racial modifiers' or the like. A few characters are rather feat-starved though and some times you might not have room for it until late in their "career".

Eh, yeah, there wasn't really a way to restrict it to the most game-friendly use. Ah well. I think the Essentials approach is the best compromise. Effectively Expertise is now just a label for a feat that happens to tack on an extra to-hit bonus along with some moderately feat-worthy benefit. They're still (even more so) going to be good picks, but at least the choice is now more flavorful.

AbdulAlhazred · Dec 26, 2010

Aulirophile said:
"Will work" is not a counter-argument to "the math is broken" either. Many things "will work" if you just muddle through, that doesn't change the fact that the designers of the game give it out for free because they consider it a scaling fix.

And the whole gross exaggeration of calling the math 'broken' doesn't do anything for your argument either. The math of the game was NEVER BROKEN, it worked fine. The purpose of it was to scale encounter difficulty and character potency through 30 levels and it did that quite well (though other things outside of the basic math didn't work out quite so well). PCs in epic have NEVER EVER had any problems hitting. If you actually take the time to go run an epic fight you will see that any even modestly competent party will mostly be hitting on 4's and 5's without expertise feats in actual practice. OK, so now they hit on 2's and 3's, big woopie!

There's nothing wrong with the factual assertion that with Expertise the math progresses evenly for all levels. The concept that it matters is thoroughly discredited. The notion that it 'fixed broken math' is simply derived from some abstract theorycraft understanding of the game that is totally disconnected from actual play experiences. Expertise isn't needed, never was needed, and that's the only relevant point to be made. So maybe you'll get a better reaction to your ideas sans the hyperbolic 'broken' adjective. Just sayin'.

Nemesis Destiny · Dec 26, 2010

Please don't let this "is a feat tax / is not a feat tax" argument take hold here. It's been done. And done. And done. And done. And done.

And done.

Okay, I'm done

Tequila Sunrise · Dec 26, 2010

Aulirophile said:
"Will work" is not a counter-argument to "the math is broken" either. Many things "will work" if you just muddle through...

How true! How many gamers play older editions and other games, which have balance standards that make 4e's math hole look like shallow potholes under a mac truck? Plenty of gamers just don't care about balance; they muddle through the unfairness, and call it fun. So I've made peace with the fact that many gamers just don't care that they're supposed to take Expertise and Improved Defenses. They just want to play the RAW and work around the muddy bits.

I've played epic levels before taxpertise existed, and it was painfully boring for my PCs. Miss, take damage, miss, take damage...I know others optimize more than I do, but I do optimize within the realm of what the game assumes. Well, maybe not; maybe the game assumes only charoppers play epic levels. In which case, shame on the devs for such a horrible design philosophy.

TarionzCousin · Dec 26, 2010

Prestidigitalis said:
Is that true? See this post.

Razz, is that you?

AbdulAlhazred · Dec 26, 2010

I think they assumed that in order to succeed at epic level the PCs would have to cooperate effectively. If they do that then there's no real issue with being able to hit. Even the most ordinary at-will buffs easily compensate and with 20 daily powers available in a 5 encounter work day you can almost be assured of having considerable ongoing buff/debuff effects on top of that, plus AP effects from PPs which often add more bonuses, 11+ feats, item properties and powers, ED features, and basically it is a long list. Even with just PHB1 and AV1, which is about where things started by the time anyone got to epic, you had a LOT of ways to get bonuses to almost all attacks.

So the basic theory was that PCs would be making most, if not all, of their attacks against enemies that they would have CA against, that would have a debuff of some kind, that they would have a buff of some kind, etc. This jibes quite well with my experience of epic play. Characters rarely missed and were often sporting +7 on top of static bonuses, sometimes even more.

Now, I'd say actually that PC DEFENSES at high levels were not in as good a shape. If anything could be described as broken it was epic level defense numbers. I'd be more inclined to consider the newer defense boosting feats to be 'fixes' than any flavor of expertise. Even now with better feat support it is quite common to see epic characters with a NAD so low it can't be missed by equal level monsters. Condition shedding is common enough that it isn't crippling, but it can get a bit frustrating for a player to know that monster X will hit every single round.

Aulirophile · Dec 27, 2010

AbdulAlhazred said:
And the whole gross exaggeration of calling the math 'broken' doesn't do anything for your argument either. The math of the game was NEVER BROKEN, it worked fine. The purpose of it was to scale encounter difficulty and character potency through 30 levels and it did that quite well (though other things outside of the basic math didn't work out quite so well). PCs in epic have NEVER EVER had any problems hitting. If you actually take the time to go run an epic fight you will see that any even modestly competent party will mostly be hitting on 4's and 5's without expertise feats in actual practice. OK, so now they hit on 2's and 3's, big woopie!

There's nothing wrong with the factual assertion that with Expertise the math progresses evenly for all levels. The concept that it matters is thoroughly discredited. The notion that it 'fixed broken math' is simply derived from some abstract theorycraft understanding of the game that is totally disconnected from actual play experiences. Expertise isn't needed, never was needed, and that's the only relevant point to be made. So maybe you'll get a better reaction to your ideas sans the hyperbolic 'broken' adjective. Just sayin'.

I'd hazard a guess I have more epic play experience then you do (by an order of magnitude), having played 21-30 on two Bards, a Druid, a Cleric, a Warden, a Wizard, a Fighter, a Paladin, an Invoker, a Ranger, a Rogue, and two Sorcerer's. It does break the intended math, no question about that. Whether that is "useless theorycraft" or not isn't relevant, except insofar as, hey, the people who develop the game agree the feat is mandatory to the point where they give it out free (people who also have more epic play experience then you I would hazard to guess).

So, is the statement that PCs lose 1/2/3 per tier to hit factually correct? Yep. Is this a scaling issue with 4e's math? Yep. Was 4e intended to be so tightly balanced that +2/-2 was a big difference? Yep. Is -3 therefore a big difference? Yep. Is that broken relative to the design intentions? Yep. Does Expertise fix this? Yep. Is Expertise a scaling fix? Yep. Does something need to be broken to fixed? Yep.

No, I'm good, I'll stand over here with math and the developers of the game.

Also if you have an issue with NAD math being auto-hit you have an issue with expertise. You can't have an issue with one and not the other because they are out of whack for the exact same scaling reason (monsters get +1 to attack per level, PCs get 1/2 level+Enhance to defenses). The fact that you can even say you have an issue with one but not the other is an indication you fundamentally don't understand the math being discussed.