Are feats the problem?

[keterys]

Eh, it'd probably work fine. You bake in those bonuses to everyone, and there are plenty of people who dig feats like shield push, mobile challenge, style/domain feats, disciple of freedom, martial resolve... pushing on charges, shifting after this, etc. There are _lots_ of good optimizable feats without tapping into core math.

Anyhow, if they're not even spending a surge, sounds like something wrong with the encounter. Even the most optimized tables I can do a couple surges before they blow up the monsters post-MM3.

 

[Mirtek]

Eh, it'd probably work fine.

Not for me.

and there are plenty of people who dig feats like shield push, mobile challenge, style/domain feats, disciple of freedom, martial resolve... pushing on charges, shifting after this, etc.

And plenty of people who do not. At the moment we have feats for both. I dare say the gained number of people who dig them but are currently unwilling to play a game that has both types is smaller than the number of people who would stop playing a game without such feats

 

[Ryujin]

There is nothing that says your personal campaign has to use every option out there. In fact it's beneficial to limit the options, both from a mechanical and role playing aspect. The original Character Builder had a great feature, specifically for this, with which you could set and save your personal campaign settings to a file, so that the players could load them up when creating characters.

In my own campaign, which is based on a fairly open Points of Light world, I've specifically banned Dark Sun elements. They simply don't work, for the feel of my world. Our previous DM went through the various additional material and created a campaign settings file, then emailed it to all of us players.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Even once you straighten out any optimization issues, you can still get a wide range of challenge for a given party level.

Out of the nine players that sometimes play in our 4E campaigns, 2 are tactically savvy, one is moderately so, and the rest are not (but to varying degrees, still). With pregen characters, all built by me, unoptimized but not gimped, I get different results depending upon who makes a session. If both tactical players are there, I'm hard pressed to challenge them with any kind of fair encounter. If both are missing, that same encounter (adjusted for party size) may result in a near TPK. (There is a party synergy here. Because the players that aren't tactically savvy know who is, and aren't bothered at letting them lead in a tactical situation.)

If those two tactical guys were the kind to explore the char ops boards and spend hours on their characters, it would be even worse. Of course, they'd help the rest of the group optimize too. Pushing everything to the limit makes the margins more difficult to manage.

 

[keterys]

Not for me.

The trick is... you don't actually know that. You certainly think that.

But let's say I were running a 4e Heroic game and I said "Okay, everybody gets a +2 bonus to attack, damage, saves, and defenses. No bonus from any feat or combination of feats will stack with that.

Would you look at the feat options and decide to try _really_ hard to milk out a +3 from some combination of 3 feats? I'm pretty sure a lot of people would just go "Yay bonuses" and look at what else was available after their standard numeric list.

Certainly that's what I've observed when I've done the lesser experiment of giving a +1 feat bonus to attack, damage, and defenses.

There are all kinds of gaming things that people think they feel, but would probably still work well and possibly even convert naysayers. If done right, of course, which is a heck of a caveat.

 

[Vael]

Would limiting feats tone down the level of potential abuse? How about forcing a character to take at least as many non combat feats as combat feats (i.e. ones which effect defences, damage, damage type, accuracy, combat movement etc)?

Can anyone see this working?

I'm not really in favour of this, I'm more in favour of using diminishing returns. For example, imagine there's only two damage feats in the game ...

Improved Damage
Benefit: You gain a +2 feat bonus to damage. This bonus increases to +4 at Paragon tier, +6 at Epic tier.

Greater Damage
Prerequisite: Improved Damage
Benefit: +1 Damage
Special: You can take this feat up to four times, and stacks with itself.

So, yes, your PC could burn 5 feats to improve your damage, but each feat offers a smaller and smaller percentage of your overall damage. Meanwhile, another PC could just take one feat and then use his other feats to improve skills and other abilities and not be completely outclassed by the Hyperspecialized PC.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Overall, I think feats are at the root of most optimizer trouble.

And most of the rest is magical items.

I really wish WOTC would finally learn to have only two or at most three types of bonuses and no untyped bonuses.

I understand the concept, make static bonuses typed and conditional or racial bonuses not typed, but it just does not work. There is just too much wiggle room to overpower things.

I really would prefer to see the feat system drastically changed to more utility, but not more power.

But, yes, I can see that is a near impossible line to draw.

 

[Recidivism]

Honestly I'd probably say that "Levelling" is more of the problem than "Feats" although the two are clearly intertwined. (And maybe at its core this is an issue with desires and expectations of people at the table.) At least in my own personal experience, 4e makes this more obvious, as you gain your +1 bonus to attacks and monsters gain a +1 bonus to defenses leaving the system basically into an escalating numbers race.

I think D&D (in terms of the 4e model) would be a lot better off if there were substantially less "ambient number inflation" overall. I find that while the variety of abilities you have to choose from in a higher level campaign is nice, replacing one power with another just because it deals 4d6 instead of 2d6 is a little banal. A lot of rules could be much more reuseable if the system relied less on constantly increasing values.

 

[DracoSuave]

Optimization has, at its source, two major sources, and if you fix either of these, you fix optimization.

1) Players who over-optimize

2) DMs who allow players who over-optimize.

This is true of every rpg ever made.

Feats are not really the problem, as over-optimizers will simply tweak other valves, and in a month's time we'd be complaining about +2 racial bonuses allowing minmaxers to get their hands on 20 Strength or some nonsense.

Once you realize the problem is the social contract of the group and not the system itself, things can become a lot more manageable.

 

[Kzach]

Optimization has, at its source, two major sources, and if you fix either of these, you fix optimization.

1) Players who over-optimize

2) DMs who allow players who over-optimize.

This is true of every rpg ever made.

That's a ridiculous argument followed by a plainly untrue statement.

There are many systems where 'optimisation' isn't a problem because you can't make choices that aren't optimal.

All that without pointing out that optimisation isn't in and of itself problematic. If everyone at the table optimises, then it's the person who doesn't that is the problem. Therefore it's just as valid to say that non-optimisers are the source of all the problems in D&D and that DM's who allow players to play non-optimal characters are just as guilty. And it would be just as ridiculous to state that.