Feat Taxes, or, It's That Time of the Week Again

[keterys]

Haven't taken having toughness on any of my (couple dozen) PCs yet, and it's a pretty solid feat.

It's definitely something to look at and consider. Usually about 1-10 feats after however many I'm allowed. Maybe less likely, for certain characters.

 

[tiornys]

if you make a 30th level character, then yeah, toughness might not be so great

if you make a 1st level character, it REALLY comes in handy (almost to the point of being a must have for the defender, no?)

Ironically, no. The Defender gets the least percentage benefit from Toughness at level 1, since they have the highest base HP. Your typical non-Warden is gaining less than 20% from Toughness (Wardens even less). Definitely not a must-have there.

Anecdotally, I've seen around 40-50 1st level characters of varying optimization levels in LFR. Less than 10 had Toughness. If you look at play-intended builds on CharOp (that is, builds that are meant to be played from levels 1 through 30), you'll find that almost none of them take Toughness either. There are just too many things to take that are more important--and better at helping you survive to level 2--than Toughness.

Toughness is most valuable for melee strikers and leaders who have strong incentive to allocate most of their stats away from Constitution. And even then, it's not a top pick.

t~

 

[TheUltramark]

Ironically, no. The Defender gets the least percentage benefit from Toughness at level 1, since they have the highest base HP. Your typical non-Warden is gaining less than 20% from Toughness (Wardens even less). Definitely not a must-have there.

Anecdotally, I've seen around 40-50 1st level characters of varying optimization levels in LFR. Less than 10 had Toughness. If you look at play-intended builds on CharOp (that is, builds that are meant to be played from levels 1 through 30), you'll find that almost none of them take Toughness either. There are just too many things to take that are more important--and better at helping you survive to level 2--than Toughness.

Toughness is most valuable for melee strikers and leaders who have strong incentive to allocate most of their stats away from Constitution. And even then, it's not a top pick.

t~

ok, I am sooo not meaning this to be combative or argumenative, I am genuinely ignorant to this, but dude, you just typed in a language I don;t speak.

Why does % of increase factor into a 1st level character? at that point, isnt sheer number of HP the real concern?

then you got into flr, and optimizationalism, and ... "play intended builds"
all of which might as well have been in that weird avatar language.

and finally, we have a total of 9 characters in our "group" and 6 of them have toughness, and it has come in handy more than once

 

[tiornys]

ok, I am sooo not meaning this to be combative or argumenative, I am genuinely ignorant to this, but dude, you just typed in a language I don;t speak.

Why does % of increase factor into a 1st level character? at that point, isnt sheer number of HP the real concern?

then you got into flr, and optimizationalism, and ... "play intended builds"
all of which might as well have been in that weird avatar language.

and finally, we have a total of 9 characters in our "group" and 6 of them have toughness, and it has come in handy more than once

Heh, sorry. I get used to "everyone" being familiar with various terms.

The percentages were just used as a metric of comparing Toughness at it's strongest (level 1) to Expertise at the levels where its power level is problematic (Expertise at level 1, while very good, is not ridiculously overpowered).

Anyway, yes, Toughness is good, especially so at level 1. But even when it's at the zenith of its power, there are several other feats that are competitive or superior. That keeps it from being a "must have" in the same way that people mean when they say Expertise is a "must have".

t~

 

[TheUltramark]

Heh, sorry. I get used to "everyone" being familiar with various terms.

The percentages were just used as a metric of comparing Toughness at it's strongest (level 1) to Expertise at the levels where its power level is problematic (Expertise at level 1, while very good, is not ridiculously overpowered).

Anyway, yes, Toughness is good, especially so at level 1. But even when it's at the zenith of its power, there are several other feats that are competitive or superior. That keeps it from being a "must have" in the same way that people mean when they say Expertise is a "must have".

t~

wow - I would be scared to have some of you guys sit in at our table, for fear that we are playing WAY wrong.

at first level we were getting pummeled - like veal. When we all leveled up to level 2, the 3 "in front guys" took toughness. They were then surviving, where as the some of the middle and rear ranks were dropping, so now at third level:
warden , barbarian, avenger, rogue, cleric, and fighter all have toughness
the sorcerer, psion, and shaman do not

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You ARE playing it wrong...and so is everybody else!

 

[eamon]

Hitting doesn't just deplete the opponents' hp--its also necessary to add status effects to enemies, or removes status effects from allies. Hitting triggers healing, allows the attacker to teleport or stop an enemy from teleporting. Hitting allows pushes, pulls, slides.

In complete agreement. To go one step further (in case it's not obvious), hitting more often means your opponents die faster and in the period before their defeat will thus deal less damage (and other effects) to you.

The same argument goes for defenses, of course: the better your defenses, the longer you survive, thus the more damage you can deal. The difference is in the "details": it's quite feasible to maintain a hit ratio of 55% (and situationally much higher), whereas it's virtually impossible to maintain decent defenses, certainly if you consider NADs which (even if you take improved defenses and otherwise focus on them) will generally be trivially hit by monsters.

Scaling defenses is also more difficult because it involves 4 stats, and almost no rule elements boost all four. Tactics also plays a role; 4e is quite team-play and combo focused, and pulling off a groups best combat tends to require a series of attacks - if one fails, the rest are weakened too. So there's a kind of multiplier going on: the more accurate your attacks, the more elaborate team plays you can make. On the monster side of the fence, the same is generally much less the case for various reasons. Focusing on attacks over defenses reduces combat length; again, a factor in PC's favor, who have a limited number of encounter/daily powers that don't recharge and represent a greater improvement over their at-wills than monsters' recharge powers. So as the combat takes longer, the scales slowly shift to the monsters' favor: if you can't win using dailies and encounter powers, then by the time both sides are down to at-wills (and the monster to occasional recharge powers), the PC's have lost more.

Then there's the fun! It's just more fun to dramatically and swiftly kill things rather than merely die so slowly you win by default. It's fun to build the occasional tough-as-nails tank valuing survivability over offense, but most characters are more dependent on their active abilities, and while one defensive turtle in a party can be cool, as a strategy for an entire party, it's not fun.

So, there's truly lots of ways in which 4e encourages focus on offense over defense. When it's easy to get or critical to your role/character concept, defenses make sense, but that's the exception, not the norm.

 

[tiornys]

wow - I would be scared to have some of you guys sit in at our table, for fear that we are playing WAY wrong.

at first level we were getting pummeled - like veal. When we all leveled up to level 2, the 3 "in front guys" took toughness. They were then surviving, where as the some of the middle and rear ranks were dropping, so now at third level:
warden , barbarian, avenger, rogue, cleric, and fighter all have toughness
the sorcerer, psion, and shaman do not

Hey, if everyone is having fun, then you aren't playing the game "wrong". I suspect that your group has room to improve in terms of tactical acumen, but play experience should solve that. Toughness is definitely good for buying you space to deal with misfortune, whatever the source.

Here's another perspective on Toughness: Toughness gives you extra HP. HP are a measure of how much damage you can take, which (along with your defenses) is roughly a measure of how many attacks team monster needs to make in order to drop you to unconscious. A level 1 monster has an average at-will damage per hit of about 8.5, with limited damage expressions averaging about 10-12. Since a monster hits you around half the time, the 5 HP from Toughness represent roughly one extra attack that you can absorb before falling unconscious.

Now consider a feat like Dwarven Weapon Training (admittedly, one of the strongest available feats at 1st level). DWT lets you upgrade from a Warhammer to a Craghammer, and adds 2 bonus damage on top of that upgrade. That's an average of 3 extra damage per hit. More precisely, it increases your expected damage per hit from 9.5 to 12.5, which is a 32% increase in damage. That's generally enough to reduce a 4 round kill to a 3 round kill (3*1.32=3.96, or almost 4), easily sufficient to drop a 5 round kill to a 4 round kill, and goes a long way towards reducing a 3 round kill to a 2 round kill. If you kill a monster one round faster, you've effectively denied it the chance to make an attack.

So on the one hand, you have a feat that lets you absorb an extra attack. On the other you have a feat that denies team monster an extra attack. There's a rough equivalency there, but for various reasons, denying an attack is slightly better than absorbing an attack, especially because it's easier to make enough attacks for DWT to result in multiple denied attacks than it is to receive enough healing for Toughness to result in multiple absorbed attacks.

t~

 

[Herschel]

Ironically, no. The Defender gets the least percentage benefit from Toughness at level 1, since they have the highest base HP. Your typical non-Warden is gaining less than 20% from Toughness (Wardens even less). Definitely not a must-have there.
t~

This is simply an incomplete view in practical play. Battleminds, certain fighters, certain wardens and Shielding Swordmages are fine without it, but Assault Swordmages, Tempest Fighters, etc. generally get a huge amount of mileage out of it (as do the melee strikers and leaders). If you only want to choose from half the defender builds then yeah, it's not an issue. (though it still can help in numerous situations)

It also depends on what backgrounds are available to help mitigate a lower Con score (Durable comes in to play also). Defenders draw the most attacks and take the most damage. They get a huge benefit from it early on. Training out later is okay but it is great to have at level 1 and arguably until level 4 (depending on party composition).

And yes, party composition is big too. If there are numerous melee combatants to take pressure off the defender then some of those hits will go elsewhere, but in a range-heavy band the defender generally takes more hits.

And of course, the DM's choice of opposition is the biggest swing factor of all.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Depends how much you are fokussed. The leader can make good use of another 5 hp.