Defenses and To Hits for Your Party ~ Averages

[Herschel]

So, what six feats are all better than +2 to all your attacks, especially the ones that trigger teleports to get away from your aegis target and your punishment attacks from triggering aegis?

I hit very well so Toughness, Improved Warding, Earthshock Master, Elemental Echo, Versatile Resistance, Extra Manifestation at heroic, not including such possible choices as Primordial Surge, Extended Teleportation, Intelligent Blademaster (depending on Strength), White Lotus (especially Riposte), a couple of the Rose King feats, Low Crawl, Passage of Mael whatever and Durable can all be better depending on your DM/Campaign/group.

Hitting is rarely an issue and I usually have combat advantage when possible too. That doesn't take in to account commander/controller effects either.

 

[Herschel]

Did you feel that a Dwarf Fighter with a 16 Str and +2 proficiency weapon was 'behind' the Fighter with 18 Str and a +3 proficiency weapon?

If so, why do you think the Dwarf Fighter with 16 Str, a +2 proficiency weapon, and Expertise... isn't still behind the Fighter with 18 Str, a +3 proficiency weapon, and Expertise?

You miss the point. The Fighter doesn't need the feat and can spend that slot of something else while the Dwarf likely wants to spend that feat. I don't think it would have been accepted very well to have the feat with a text wall of prerequisites even though some my have preferred it to be that way.

At level 30 - honestly, by level 11 - not taking Expertise is taking a huge hit to power. And no feat should be that necessary. Sure, you can play without it, but when it is worlds better than all your other options, something is clearly wrong.

Again, it's not necessary in a number of cases because it isn't a "huge hit" to power. With normal stat distribution, good tactics and leaders/controllers with a clue hitting generally isn't an issue unless dice get very cold. Boosting durability, defenses, damages, etc. are often more important. Sure, if you want to ignore party composition and try to play all strikers or such then it becomes more important but with normal role spread it generally isn't a big deal.

 

[MrMyth]

You miss the point. The Fighter doesn't need the feat and can spend that slot of something else while the Dwarf likely wants to spend that feat. I don't think it would have been accepted very well to have the feat with a text wall of prerequisites even though some my have preferred it to be that way.

Why does the fighter (with already good stats) not need the feat? Because he already hits enemies on a 10+? Wouldn't it be even better to hit enemies on a 8+?

That's what I don't understand, here. Once again - let's say we've got a dwarf fighter. Lower Str, lower proficiency weapon. He hits enemies on a 12+. We've got another fighter with better stats on hits enemies on a 10+. You seem to feel the dwarf fighter needs the boost from Expertise to stay viable - that the difference of +2 to hit really matters between them.

So why doesn't it matter just as much for the other fighter? Why isn't it just as much an improvement to hit on an 8+ instead of a 10+? What other feats could possibly be more important than +2 to hit?

Now, at Heroic levels the bonus is only +1, of course, and I agree that other choices may be more important. But by the time it reaches an unconditional +2 to hit, Expertise has been better than everything else out there.

And I simply can't understand any viewpoint that can insist it is useful for bringing lower accuracy characters 'in-line' with more optimized characters.. while ignoring the fact that optimized characters will take it as well, and the same difference between the two will remain. And, more importantly, other non-optimized characters won't take it, and the difference between them and optimized characters will only grow larger.

Again, it's not necessary in a number of cases because it isn't a "huge hit" to power. With normal stat distribution, good tactics and leaders/controllers with a clue hitting generally isn't an issue unless dice get very cold. Boosting durability, defenses, damages, etc. are often more important. Sure, if you want to ignore party composition and try to play all strikers or such then it becomes more important but with normal role spread it generally isn't a big deal.

What do you mean by "hitting generally isn't an issue"? Keep in mind that most abilities used by all classes rely on hitting to really work - automatic effects are usually the domain of daily powers, and non-attack powers are few and far between. So, yeah, hitting is pretty important.

Do you mean that people already hit just fine? That seems to be your indication... but I'm guessing your party doesn't hit all enemies on a 2+. In which case, yeah, they still will be missing on attacks. Increasing accuracy by 2-3 points is going to be a really big deal, regardless of class and role. Now, are other elements (durability, defense, damage, etc) also important? Sure. But rarely will you find a single feat that offers enough in those other areas to compare to what expertise offers for accuracy.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I suppose that this has always been true of D&D, and RPGs in general, but something about 4th edition really drives this point home: hitting is everything.

Maybe it's the way 4e makes the action economy feel more compressed. Maybe it's the way that most fights in our first 4e game turned into an infuriatingly long whiff-fest. Maybe it's that this is the first time I've really started examining the rules with an eye toward how they work. Nevertheless, it's very obvious that hitting really matters.

Big damage numbers look good on your sheet, but it means nothing if you can't connect.

So, basically, you should be actively hunting down every single useful hit bonus you can possibly find. I know not everyone will, but it is important. Not everyone will, and in a way, it may detract from the playing experience those gamers have. Perhaps it should have been hard-coded into the rules that everyone gets expertise right from the start, but they didn't think of that. It makes sense that those feats get given out for free. By making those feats have an extra rider, it makes them feel less like a tax (like finding out the government owes YOU money), but they are still pretty vital. I sort of hate it that the designers give you this resource to customize your character (feats), and then print feats that are not only so-good-that-you-would-be-silly-not-to-take them, but basically necessary to keep up with the game's [flawed] math.

I mean, sometimes it matters less than other times, and I have an interesting and extreme example I would like to share.

[sblock=lengthy anecdote]Our gaming group currently has 2 active parties in the same region. They are allies, for the most part, but one group is [was at the time] level 2, and the other has [at the time] a range of level 7-9. For story reasons, one of the level 2 characters was accompanying the higher-level party across the countryside when they were waylaid by their enemies. The encounter included, among other things, summoned undead bears (level 7 brutes).

At one point during the fight, the lower level character, a Tempest Fighter dual wielding shortswords ended up flanking a bear with the highest level character from the other group, a 9th level Weaponmaster wielding a powerful (+3) bastard sword and shield. Even without flanking, the Weaponmaster could hit the undead bear's AC on a roll of 2 or better. He was built for it; 22 Strength, accurate weapon, expertise, and weapon talent. Surprisingly though, the Tempest was holding her own. With CA, she was still hitting on an 8 or better, against a monster 5 levels higher than her. She had 17 Strength, accurate weapons, +1 magic, expertise, and a +1 from tempest technique.

Now, of course, the bear could hit her on a 6, and due to roleplaying reasons she kept foolishly marking it. She got clobbered a few times, but made it through without dying.[/sblock]

I'm not entirely sure what I was trying to say anymore, but I'm sure it's somehow relevant to a point I was trying to make.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I suppose that this has always been true of D&D, and RPGs in general, but something about 4th edition really drives this point home: hitting is everything.

Big damage numbers look good on your sheet, but it means nothing if you can't connect.

So, basically, you should be actively hunting down every single useful hit bonus you can possibly find. I know not everyone will, but it is important. Not everyone will, and in a way, it may detract from the playing experience those gamers have. Perhaps it should have been hard-coded into the rules that everyone gets expertise right from the start, but they didn't think of that. It makes sense that those feats get given out for free. By making those feats have an extra rider, it makes them feel less like a tax (like finding out the government owes YOU money), but they are still pretty vital. I sort of hate it that the designers give you this resource to customize your character (feats), and then print feats that are not only so-good-that-you-would-be-silly-not-to-take them, but basically necessary to keep up with the game's [flawed] math.

There are a few different aspects of this and a few different ways of looking at it, which is why it elicits such bitter (or at least long and tedious) arguments. The first question is what is "hitting enough"? Secondly is the question of where the to-hit bonuses needed to get to that number come from. Then there is the question about whether or not any numbers from the basic hit progression needed to be modified (and what really does 'needed' mean). Other questions are things like does Expertise create a larger gulf between some characters to-hit numbers and others.

You can find every different opinion on this. Unfortunately some people have long since decided that there is an absolute right and wrong of it and simply repeat the same opinions cast as absolute facts every time it comes up. This happens on both sides of the argument, but the upshot is you can't have an actual rational discussion about it anymore on any board.

As far as your reasoning goes it is sound. Yes, you need to be able to hit. BUT what I would observe is there are a bunch of ways you can attain the needed bonuses. The easiest way is surely taking Expertise feats, but clearly most characters without them still perform perfectly well. There are also a number of build concepts that benefit quite a bit less from having really high to-hit numbers. Builds that do significant auto-damage on a regular basis, rely a lot on extra free actions, crit fishers, and builds that do lots of multi-attacking are less impacted by small differences in to-hit. Many of them actually gain more from other feats. All of them eventually will benefit from extra static hit bonuses of course, but many of them are fine right up through level 30 even without expertise. Going without it puts more of a premium on team play in epic, but at least IMHO if you are playing epic you better know that aspect of the game. Expertise IMHO actually just kind of cheapened epic, made it work marginally less well, and totally missed the major issues with it (monster design, and weak PC defenses). That is where I've always been coming from.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Something like a +1 to one defense at each tier would just about do it. Most PCs will still have a single weak defense, but at least it will be high enough that it CAN be missed and if the player wants to put a feat into it they can shore it up pretty well.

Yes, the epic NAD boosters can fill in what holes remain in a PC's NADs. Problem is, optimizers will take all three while casual players might take none. Fix one problem, create another.

There may still be some builds like the INT/DEX war wizard build that double on a single NAD, but it isn't easy to fix all possible cases.

Actually, it's sinfully easy to fix all cases. It's just that, like I said, most DMs just don't think about it or are too stingy to give the PCs anything that the rules don't say to give them. Here's the fix: the PCs get +1 to all abilities at every stat boost level. It's simple, it fixes the problem effectively, and yet few DMs are willing to use it.

 

[Aulirophile]

Actually, it's sinfully easy to fix all cases. It's just that, like I said, most DMs just don't think about it or are too stingy to give the PCs anything that the rules don't say to give them. Here's the fix: the PCs get +1 to all abilities at every stat boost level. It's simple, it fixes the problem effectively, and yet few DMs are willing to use it.

That is an option, but it presents other issue.

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[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Granting ability score increase to all ABs kind of plays havoc with the assumptions of the skill system, etc.

If you want pure opinion I think the root of the whole problem was ability score increases of ANY kind to start with. Doing away with them would have meant some other sort of adjustments to the attack math, but it would have actually improved the skill system by compressing the divergence at higher levels between primary and non-primary stats. This would also have made the whole Masterwork Armor hack unneeded. Various tweaks ensue, but IMHO at least the game works better and you can still keep the +1 at all tiers and maybe give ALL EDs a +2 to one stat. That way you're still getting a bit of improvement, but not creating 2 tiers of stats. Maybe it is somewhat 6 of one and half a dozen of the other, but I never really liked the whole stat inflation thing that much.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Can someone XP AbdulAlhazred at 4:22 PM for me? My XP pen has run dry.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Rather than stat-boosting, I had been considering a flat +1 untyped bonus per tier to attacks and defences. I guess it amounts to the same thing as handing out the feats for free, but maybe worse because of stacking cheese. Yeah, nevermind.

Another thought I'd had was that of handing out non-combat feats, several per tier, sort of like 2nd edition with weapon and non-weapon proficiencies. The idea would be to place them in the "slower" levels, where you don't get stat boosts, level bonuses, or other feats. Something like, one for free at 1st, then another two spread out over the tier, at say 3rd and 7th or whatever. The idea being that this would allow players to slot all the "necessary" combat boosters without sacrificing flavourful and/or highly situational character-enhancers. (This is where you put things like Linguist )

The restriction on the "non-combat" feats would be that whatever you take at those levels cannot have any benefit during combat. No plusses to hit, damage, or saves. Nothing to augment other combat conditions, such as CA, movement, etc. Preferably not even to skills, but if you eliminate those feats, there isn't a lot left. I might even just take feat-like abilities and slot them in; let the players tell me what kind of things, outside of combat, their characters have a knack for.

Obviously, this is just an idea. I have no idea how necessary this is, if at all. I may playtest it in my next game if my players are on-board.