Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="unan oranis" data-source="post: 5094976" data-attributes="member: 65462">This is the impasse to the debate on the existence of feat-tax (aside from the usual sniping and disagreement on the parameters to math it out).Even if the designs intent were so, and the execution flawless, it would still not be true.Is a +1 to necrotic damage going to be useful to a character without any necrotic attacks?I don't know what the official philosophy for this or the previous edition was, but in practice the feats stack up as a list of crappy, moderate and ultimate options.Where it gets interesting is that these definitions shift depending on a lot of factors, which you have to figure out for yourself.Some may appear, or be, universally "ultimate" regardless of other factors - which would mean things getting uninteresting because there is nothing to figure out.  Feat tax by any other name would smell just as lame, so it is a genuine complaint and not "ignorant".I haven't been convinced any feat falls into this category, but for the sake of argument lets say expertise does.Would it be terrible to have one or two of these in the game? Trying to axe system-mastery as a pre-req for a competent character is a noble goal, but you have to use your brain when you pick your feats. There are a number of easy to spot, obviously ideal-for-your-class-feats, like backstabber.I've run a couple dozen first time players through the character creation process, both 3e vets and complete newbs alike spotted these feats and chose them.A little more invested into the game, a little further on, a player will figure out that expertise is way good.  It's not as easy to spot as people make out, not unless you've played a couple times and understand the value of +X to hit.So in it's way, expertise is helping fool-proof the feat tree.But that's all presuming that expertise is in fact universally the ultimate choice for any build.One of the reasons I don't think so is because it means that there is an ideal starting stat value.  You can't argue for it being the ultimate for bob the halfling fighter with 16 in strength, and just as invaluable for bill the dragonborn fighter with a 20 in strength.You can say bob has to have it or be hopeless, but if that benefit is the difference maker between being viable, bill is more than viable without the feat already! If bob is hopeless regardless of taking the feat or not, and the only chance of bill being viable is by taking the feat, then the only viable starting stat is a 20!  And that opinion (if it exists) should be discussed elsewhere - I dismiss it out of hand.Perhaps the reason bob has such low strength is that he has a high alternative stat and will go on to largely use some other classes powers - maybe in an extremely effective way.Or maybe he's a newb, and will always have to roll high to hit monsters - maybe he's the low water mark on effectiveness.  Should it be some other way?  If you are too zealous with balance you end up with generics.A system of this scope must have some kind of "bad" choices by it's very nature, IMO the feats as presented from the book leverage relatively shallow pit-falls into deep options.</blockquote>

Verification