Another feat tax?

[Incendax]

It's a Feat Tax.

I think it is demoralizing to my players to only have a 50% chance to hit an opponent. 70% seems like a much better chance to hit. I've seen far too many players have poor dice rolls and basically sit out entire encounters. Certainly the odds indicate that it will all even out in the long run but those sessions where you miss every single daily are remembered a lot more vividly than those encounters where you hit every single daily.

The least fun way to play is not getting to play at all.

 

[CovertOps]

I should also have mentioned that this is not new. The feats, prior to this errata, as +4 available at epic only were just as much a feat tax as they are now (if you're believing that).

 

[Zaran]

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?

I honestly think that the classes were designed to have a low stat just like they were in earlier editions. Those feats are put in to offset this only if you really feel like you need it or it's part of your character idea. I do not think this is a feat tax. And personally I don't think Expertise is either.

You know when I use Expertise? When I spread my points around instead of putting them all into a primary stat. Expertise is great for when you want to make a cleric that has both Str and Cha based powers. I think the Non-AC Defenses feats are the same idea.

When Expertise first came out, I took it for my fighter. He never missed because the GM always balanced his encounters to the level.

 

[TarionzCousin]

"Nothing is certain in this game but death and feat taxes."
--Sir Ben Jaymin of Frankland

 

[WalterKovacs]

The Essential books didn't solve the feat tax, but at least put in some, shall we say, tax "incentives".

A - Instead of the old expertise feats, the new ones give a secondary bonus based on the weapon/implement type. Included is a staff feat which combines both weapon and implement expertise in staves. There is also a weapon expertise feat which applies to all weapons and gives a quick change benefit, so that, for example, a rogue that uses a short sword and a short bow only needs a single feat, etc. By giving secondary benefits it makes weapon choice relevant (you "need" to take an expertise feat, but your weapon of choice determines it's rider effect, so it's adding a minor feat to the feat you have to take).

Similarly, with NADs you have the old option of "which NADs to help, get the +1 to all, or the +2 to specific NAD?". On top of that, if you have a 15 in one of the stats for that NAD, you can get a feat that gives you a rider in addition to improving that NAD. Those feats reward you for improving the NADs you should already be good at. So instead of getting your NADs up to snuff, you improve your good ones to great to make it hard to hit (perhaps leaving another of your stats to be a weak spot).

Ultimately, attack rolls and AC need to scale with level. The heavy/light armor and masterwork quality allowed the armor to scale with level ... the expertise feats were the unfortunate cudgel to fix the math mistake for scaling attack bonuses. Other that those, most other feats that may seem like a tax (at least on all characters) are really just options.