Aside from Expertise, what are the most commonly acknowledged feat-tax feats?

[Mengu]

I see what people are saying with Expertise being a choice, and that adjusting the game math is in the hands of the DM, as they determine the difficulty of encounter, and encounter compositions. But it is a choice that simply trumps so many others, that it pushes itself in front of other feats. Before Expertise came along, Nimble Blade was a fantastic feat. However Expertise is clearly better, and should be taken before Nimble Strike since it applies to every attack. You look at the plethora of feats that give a conditional +1 attack bonus (Combat Reflexes, Arcane Spellfury, Oncoming Storm, Coordinated Explosion, Reckless Curse, Prime Strike, Resonating Covenant, Strong Willed Summoning... it's a very long list), and Expertise trumps every single one of them. At level 15, it trumps all the conditional +2 attack bonus feats.

So if a character is planning on spending one feat on boosting accuracy, it will be Expertise. As tactically important as it is to land encounter and daily powers, I can't really come up with a good reason why one would make the choice to not boost their chances to hit.

Let's not call it a feat tax, because it's not really required to make a character function in his role. You can still hit without Expertise albeit less often. And if all you care about is soaking up damage, then maybe you don't care about hitting anything, fine. Something that is necessary for a character to play their primary or secondary role would be considered more of a feat tax. For instance for Rageblood Barbarians who are supposed to be secondary role defenders, Hide Armor Expertise sure feels like a feat tax. For many Hybrids, Hybrid Talent is a feat tax for them to function at all (and this tax is clearly intentional).

Expertise is maybe not a feat tax, but it's a feat that's very difficult to pass up for many characters, and it's a feat that can change a sizable accuracy difference between characters (say a 20 dex halfling rogue with dagger and a 16 strength dwarf warden with an axe have 4 points of attack bonus difference), into something unsurmountable at epic (7 points of attack bonus difference if the warden won't take expertise).

Call it tax, or not tax, Expertise is simply not a good feat on it's own. In games I run or play, I prefer if it is either disallowed, or given for free. Otherwise, I'll just pick it up before level 6, and call it a day, but I also will not play a character who relies on multiple weapons, or a weapon and an implement in such a game.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

If an option is SO MUCH BETTER than all the other options, and it's boring, why allow that option?

To allow players like me the option of not hitting that ultra-optimized mark and play the game in a fashion that I feel is more entertaining.

To me the story of a hero that never misses, never loses, and never risks death, suffers an ignoble fate, or has a chance of failure... is not a story of a hero. It is boring. If I want to always see the good guys waltz through to triumph, I would play the 'A-Team RPG'.

The utlra-optimized striker in my campaign eventually got bored with being the guy charging in and doing massive damage. Sure it was fun to cut through bad guys left and right.. for a while. But it wasn't a challenge. He started charging in with no healing surges left, but it wasn't a challenge.
Now he is playing a non-optimized shifter druid with more of a focus on the roleplaying aspects and is having a great time with the options available to him.

Of course, the game is just cresting the 15th level mark and I have not expereince play at higher levels. However I can't imagine that if I continue to set the encounters up based on the parties capabilities that I will experience any 'feat-tax' issues.

 

[Nifft]

To allow players like me the option of not hitting that ultra-optimized mark and play the game in a fashion that I feel is more entertaining.

It fails miserably in that regard. It's a tide that lifts all ships, unless the "ultra-optimized mark" guy is actually very poorly optimized and forgot to take the most optimal feat in the game.

In other words, it's NOT an equalizer. It's actually shifting the less-optimal guy further behind, since the optimal guy will have taken Expertise already, and would have taken it twice if he could (i.e. if he's a Gnome).

To me the story of a hero that never misses, never loses, and never risks death, suffers an ignoble fate, or has a chance of failure... is not a story of a hero. It is boring.

"It is boring" is my chief complaint against the Expertise feat, so perhaps we're in agreement.

utlra-optimized striker in my campaign eventually got bored (...) it wasn't a challenge (...) Now he is playing a non-optimized shifter druid with more of a focus on the roleplaying

'Rollplaying-vs-roleplaying'? Really? That's a false dichotomy, and I'm sure you are smart enough to know it.

Cheers, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

The utlra-optimized striker in my campaign eventually got bored with being the guy charging in and doing massive damage. Sure it was fun to cut through bad guys left and right.. for a while. But it wasn't a challenge. He started charging in with no healing surges left, but it wasn't a challenge.
Now he is playing a non-optimized shifter druid with more of a focus on the roleplaying aspects and is having a great time with the options available to him.

80% or more of the D&D rules revolve around combat. For many groups, it's a large percentage of their gaming time. Because of this, players will get turned off if their PC sucks (e.g. I have a player of a 14th level 21 Str/22 Wis Cleric who I am trying to convince to take fewer healing feats/powers and a few more melee feats/powers because I see that she gets slightly frustrated when other players hit more often and for a lot more damage when she does have the PC go into melee).

It's cool (but anecdotal) that your player is having fun without being overly optimized, but the entire game system balance has to work for all groups, not just yours.

The problem with the Expertise feat is that it takes that balance out of the hands of the core game mechanics and puts it into the hands of individual players and DMs. What this means is that when the DM balances an encounter with a few overly optimized Expertise PCs in the same group with some low optimized without Expertise PCs, the to hit delta can be 3+ different in mid-Paragon and 5+ different in mid-Epic. On a D20, that's huge because the math does not come from the core mechanics, it comes from feat/ability selection.

I see it already at 14th level in my game. The Fighter (optimized for to hit) is +22 to hit, +24 with her best to hit power, and the Cleric is +18 to hit versus AC. That to hit delta of 4 or 6 is already large enough to frustrate the player of the Cleric, especially if I ever throw an encounter in with foes with high AC to challenge the Fighter.


It would be worse if we played in a game where the feat was not handed out for free and the Fighter took it but the Cleric never did (the Ranger in the group is +19 so he is in a similar situation and the Swordmage is +21).

Plus, although the Cleric is a Shifter Cleric with both good Str and good Wis, it would be 2 feats instead of 1 for her to even attempt to stay at the 4/6 delta with the Fighter. She might as well blow off Str at that point and never take melee powers cause it basically sucks to just hit one time in three.

Of course, the game is just cresting the 15th level mark and I have not expereince play at higher levels. However I can't imagine that if I continue to set the encounters up based on the parties capabilities that I will experience any 'feat-tax' issues.

If you are good at looking at monster capabilities, total monster hit points, and understand approximately how much dpr your PCs dish out, you should be fine without Expertise. Don't just take the DMG encounter balance equations verbatim though. There are a lot of auras and conditions and synergies that monsters get and if the PCs do not have Expertise, they will need to use up more resources to accomplish similar goals as they had at lower levels.

The removal of Expertise means that encounters will drag out on average for about an extra round or so, which in turn means more resources used. If your group never goes into "dungeon setting" mode of 5 to 7 encounters per day and you are good at balancing encounters, that's probably not an issue.

For example, a simple solution to the math issue (if you believe one exists) is to just throw lower level encounters at your group. Instead of an N, N+1, and N+2 encounter at Paragon (or whatever difficulty is comfortable for the makeup of your group), you can easily throw an N, an N, and an N+1 and Expertise is not an issue.

 

[Garthanos]

I just dont think that any of the backgrounds are as good as any feats, even in heroic.

Scales of War AP and Forgotten Realms backgrounds feel about feat worthy. aka about the same as 2 or 3 generic backgrounds.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

It's cool (but anecdotal) that your player is having fun without being overly optimized, but the entire game system balance has to work for all groups, not just yours.

That is my point, and the reason I brought up anecdotal evidence in this discussion.

The OP and others are continually stating 'Expertise is a feat tax and if you dont take it your character will suck'

I wanted to voice that this is not always the case and other GMs/Players reading this thread should consider that perhaps the loud cries of SUCKAGE should be evaluated based on thier own play style and group dynamics.

And Nifft, your right. My bad for slipping that roll-vs-role comment. I understand that optimized does not equal lack of roleplaying, as well as the reverse.


But, how about this. Instead of throwing foes with high ACs to challenge the fighter, and thereby frustrate the cleric... base the monsters defense on the mid-ground and let the fighter enjoy being an expert at hitting things while the cleric can still be effective. Look for other ways to challenge them other than having them miss.

What I learned in 2e with skill checks is to design encounters that have targets set for the mediocre characters skills, enabling the focused characters to shine... then set it up so that the entire group has to succeed, not just one character.
I follow the same conceit with 4e combat. So what if the party steam-rolls over an encounter or two. Encounter balance is much more than just to hit numbers and DPR.

And my group has done 5 to 7 encounters in an encounter day, but that took some tight planning on my part and the group was very low on resources by the time it was done. Flip side... 3 healers makes a much more survivable group. {Bard, Cleric, and Paladin}

 

[Nifft]

The OP and others are continually stating 'Expertise is a feat tax and if you dont take it your character will suck'

There are several schools of thought regarding Expertise. Some consider it a tax, others consider it unnecessary. Nobody thinks it's good for the game.

And Nifft, your right. My bad for slipping that roll-vs-role comment. I understand that optimized does not equal lack of roleplaying, as well as the reverse.

But, how about this. Instead of throwing foes with high ACs to challenge the fighter, and thereby frustrate the cleric... base the monsters defense on the mid-ground and let the fighter enjoy being an expert at hitting things while the cleric can still be effective. Look for other ways to challenge them other than having them miss.

Well, it sounds to me like you're finding the game more fun when everyone is similarly effective. IMHO 4e did a pretty good job at keeping very different characters at comparable competency, using "siloing" and whatnot. Still, there's some room for variance, and it sounds like your Striker guy was originally too far "up" the competency curve to enjoy participating in combats geared for the rest of you. When he dialed his PC back a bit, he enjoyed the game more.

The important thing seems to be that all PCs are clustered together on the competency scale: having one stand out for being too good, or for being too sucky, seems to detract equally.

(This is where I plug again: having Expertise in the game only widens the possible gap between best and worst, so it's a bad set of feats which are bad for America. Good night and god bless, but hopefully not Vecna.)

Cheers, -- N

 

[tiornys]

Different people have different opinions of "grind". A group of caffeine-loaded AD/HD rollers are going to look at it differently than a laid-back social gathering that gets around to combat and RP between jokes and munchies. It also is different in combat round duration expectation. If all combats were 3-4 rounds, I'd find that pretty boring myself. I have only experienced "grind" once and that was in LFR Spec 1-2.

Sure, my whole point was that anecdotal evidence is highly dependent on individual experience and opinion, which will vary widely.

Also, the fact is as you go up in level,, the buffs/de-buffs/status effects become more numerous and more powerful. Just because a solo character's relationship numbers change does not mean the "math" is off, just that it has shifted. It also assumes roles are covered. Going without a controller, for example, really changes things.

A lot of variables change as levels rise. The only one that matters when considering whether Expertise is meant as a math patch is the relationship between player hit rate and monster defenses. That relationship decays by about the amount that Expertise provides. To me, that fact along with some other evidence is enough to convince me that Expertise is supposed to patch the math, but I can see where others might not be convinced.

Nobody is debating that some feats aren't more powerful than others, but numerous examples have shown they aren't necessary. That's an important distinction. A "tax" would be necessary when it clearly is not, just desired in numerous cases.

If you're conceding the power level of the Expertise feats, then you're conceding that they are as close to feat taxes as 4E gets. Thankfully, 4E is balanced enough that no feats are actually necessary for any character to function. However, Expertise is so powerful that it is necessity in any level 16+ build that considers itself remotely combat optimized (barring odd corner cases like the Warlord|Shaman that takes nothing but powers that give their attacks away).

In any case, Nifft said it best. The Expertise feats are a bad set of feats, regardless of whether you think they were supposed to fix the math, and regardless of whether you think the math needed fixing in the first place. They are bad because their power level breaks the power curve, because they widen the gap between an optimized character and an unoptimized character, and because they are boring on top of those flaws.

t~