Defenses and To Hits for Your Party ~ Averages

[TarionzCousin]

What is the title of the Essentials Expertise feat? My Essentials books are on loan and I don't see it in the DnD Compendium.

Is it just +1 to hit at 1st level, +2 at 11th level, and +3 at 21st level?

 

[fba827]

What is the title of the Essentials Expertise feat? My Essentials books are on loan and I don't see it in the DnD Compendium.

Is it just +1 to hit at 1st level, +2 at 11th level, and +3 at 21st level?

It's broken down by category...
Heavy Blade Expertise, Rod Expertise, and so on...

Each gives the +to hit that you mention, but has a rider bonus reflective of the nature of the item as well.
Heavy Blade Expertise, for example, is +to hit and also +2 to defenses against OAs (or something like that) to represent your parry ability with the heavy blade.

So, long story short, you can't find it because it's not just "Expertise" but "(something) Expertise"

 

[Prestidigitalis]

So, long story short, you can't find it because it's not just "Expertise" but "(something) Expertise"

If you search for feats with the string "expertise" in the compendium, it will find them -- you just have to sort through them for the right one.

But one trick that you might have missed is that the search function is by whole words only. So if you searched for "expert" it won't find what you are looking for. And of course, spelling counts, though capitalization does not.

 

[Aulirophile]

If you search for feats with the string "expertise" in the compendium, it will find them -- you just have to sort through them for the right one.

But one trick that you might have missed is that the search function is by whole words only. So if you searched for "expert" it won't find what you are looking for. And of course, spelling counts, though capitalization does not.

expert*

Despite the search features it does lack, Compendium does support wildcard searches.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

But that wasn't the reason, and developers have stated it was a scaling fix. Which is why they give out expertise free in their home games.

Do you have a source for either of these statements? 'Cause that would really come in handy!

There are plenty of people on this very board who have stated and experienced characters working just fine without it.

There are also plenty of gamers who don't see anything wrong with playing say, a fighter with 13 Str. (One of them is a player of mine.) So the "just fine" argument is subjective at best.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

expert*

Despite the search features it does lack, Compendium does support wildcard searches.

Thanks. I could have sworn I had tried wildcards and failed to get results.

It would be handy if they had a Help link on that page, or even better, examples.

 

[Aulirophile]

Do you have a source for either of these statements? 'Cause that would really come in handy!

House Rules: Bonus Feats « In the Eye of the Beholder

Greg Bilsland

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Mike Donais.

Those are two I can prove off-hand, but from personal conversations other then play-testing games (which are played by strict RAW for obvious reasons) all the developers games give out expertise for free.

In addition to that, the issue of scaling was noticed pre-PHB2 and posted about on the official forums. WotC said there would be "fix" in the PHB2. You could dig up those threads with dedicated searching.

In addition to that, one of the developers answered the question of why it was a feat with "We wanted to make sure everyone got it and not only online-savvy players" or something to that effect. Pretty sure it was on Enworld in fact... either Noonan or Mears IIRC (possible I don't, this issue has been dead for me personally for a long time because, well, if you were around at the time and read everything about it the developers made their stance pretty clear).

 

[Dragon Sin-Camealot]

Topic - 3 out of 5. :razz:

There's too much philosophy on the subject for an adequate answer imo. If you want a cutthroat character you'll spend as much time necessary to optimize it.

It depends how much work you want to put into it. Since DnD is mostly a non-competitve game I don't think it's that important imo.

I would go to more magic and chess tournaments over this game because those games are more rewarding. There's also less of a set-up in the pieces, people, and places.

It's like you have to overprepare for this game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Topic - 3 out of 5. :razz:

There's too much philosophy on the subject for an adequate answer imo. If you want a cutthroat character you'll spend as much time necessary to optimize it.

It depends how much work you want to put into it. Since DnD is mostly a non-competitve game I don't think it's that important imo.

I would go to more magic and chess tournaments over this game because those games are more rewarding. There's also less of a set-up in the pieces, people, and places.

It's like you have to overprepare for this game.

It is what it is. Magic tournaments require a LOT of work, if you have any idea of being competitive. You'll need to spend loads of money on getting the right cards, make dozens of test decks, learn all the various other deck builds, etc. Being a (mostly) competitive game you kind of have to work at it to play. You can surely buy a pack of cards and have fun playing your friends, but it is hardly the same thing as a D&D campaign, which is intended to be an ongoing game where you put some time into it. In any case you can have the full 4e experience without putting any big effort into character building. Notice that the DM the OP's players started with seems to have been one of these 'put the screws to the players' sorts of people. A more supportive DM would have pointed out build problems and not dinked the players out of ability score points they would normally have.

As far as chess goes, you might as well not play in anything but the most casual fashion if you haven't spent 100's of hours studying various lines, basic theory, and played through a lot of games. I can play chess at a pretty good casual level and now and then beat some decent players, but even that is the result of some amount of study and playing fairly often, and I'd hardly consider myself good by any stretch of the imagination.

D&D seems pretty casual to me. Maybe it was more so in the AD&D days, but not by much, if at all.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Topic - 3 out of 5. :razz:

There's too much philosophy on the subject for an adequate answer imo. If you want a cutthroat character you'll spend as much time necessary to optimize it.

It depends how much work you want to put into it. Since DnD is mostly a non-competitve game I don't think it's that important imo.

I would go to more magic and chess tournaments over this game because those games are more rewarding. There's also less of a set-up in the pieces, people, and places.

It's like you have to overprepare for this game.

I think you're confusing preparation by the designers with preparation by the players. As a player there's a total of one thing you need to do to keep your character viable through the entire heroic tier - start with a base of 16 in your primary stat and at every point you get a stat bump, put a point in there. And otherwise follow the guidance (at Heroic you need to only multiclass sanely). I can set up a solid first level character in a class I don't know in five minutes including booting the character builder.

That doesn't mean you can't do a lot of preparation if you want to. Just that you really don't have to - especially by 3e standards.