Essentials feats seem a little too good?

[Otterscrubber]

The defensive feats and the "master at arms" feat seem a little over the top. The MoA seems to give the benefits of all other expertise feats combined into one with no pre-reqs. I'm curious if others find this balanced or not. There are clearly many feats in the Essentials that seem to completely negate several of the feats in the PHB. Was this intended?

 

[nookiemonster]

Yes, I think it was intended that some of the feats make PHB1 feats redundant. It's been said that tier pre-reqs for feats have been nuked completely (at least, this is what I understand Mike Mearls to have said, others differ in their interpretations), and other feats have been extensively revised to scale by tier (confirmed true, such as the feat that gives you bonuses to NADs that scale by tier).

 

[Obryn]

I'm thankful that the "generic" feats are finally more useful. I'm looking forward to nuking stuff like Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise from my Character Builder entirely.

Master of Arms only seems crazy if you didn't already give everyone Expertise bonuses. Now that it exists, along with a ton of great specialized Expertise feats, I've removed my Expertise houserule. (Though I'm still giving bonuses on non-weapon, non-implement attacks.)

I'm looking forward to seeing Totem Expertise, Rod Expertise, and Tome Expertise. I expect we'll get two of those in HotFK. Oh, Ki Focus, too, I suppose.

-O

 

[Otterscrubber]

Ya, well we have a houserule on expertise that you can only get an expertise feat if none of your starting ability scores were 16 after racial mods at 1st level. Our DM wanted to promote well rounded characters. Since none of us have expertise I doubt we'll be using that one, as if it is an option, it's a must have no brainer which has kinda been our barometer for broken feats. Who knows, perhaps the monsters in MM4 will require us to get it

 

[FireLance]

I think that the problem with many early-4E feats was that they weren't "character defining" enough.

 

[NMcCoy]

Reading through the Essentials, one thing that struck me was that everything in it was a really solid option - All of the feats and powers elicited a "hey, that's pretty cool" (and some of the wizard powers earned a "DUDE THAT'S AWESOME") ; nary a "meh" in the lot. The feats, in particular, stood out to me in this way. PHB1 was lackluster in a lot of things, whereas Essentials was polished to a shine, and it really shows. I wouldn't consider it power creep - while some new feats obsolete old ones, it was uniformly uninteresting and uncompelling feats that got obsoleted, and the high end of value-for-a-feat stays close to what it was. It's just the low end that's been pulled up a bit in Essentials.

 

[nnms]

Some of the feats are really, really good. Staff Expertise is a good example. No more opportunity attacks for casting adjacent to enemies is an awesome addition to +1 to hit. The other feat the Mage in question took was hafted defense. Unarmoured Agility was also considered, along with Leather Armour Proficiency. But he went with +1 AC and +1 Reflex over +2 AC. I forget what his level 2 feat is.

The thief snapped up Master at Arms right away. He uses a short sword and a hand crossbow and it just made sense to get a +1 with everything. He also has defensive mobility I think.

The cleric took weapon proficiency: triple headed flail and toughness.

The slayer took Toughness and Melee trainingEX

 

[Tony Vargas]

No, it's not balanced to take feats that are already so 'must have' as to be considered 'feat taxes' and make them even more potent. Yes, it's an example of 'power inflation.'

Neither of those things may be a problem, though. Power inflation is inevitable, and a little surge of power inflation goes a long way towards getting players to accept (nay, demand) a new ruleset. Balance is really nice, but it carries a price. 4e was willing to pay that price, Essentials not so much. Essentials builds, feats, items and so forth seem to be more about faithfully getting accross a concept and just plain being cool than being perfectly balanced with eachother, let alone balanced with what came before. Since Essentials is meant to be a begginer's product and a complete game in itself, it makes some sense to give it nothing but quite solid options, even at the risk of some of them being overpowered: it means that new players run less of a risk of being overshadowed by more 'advanced' players using more complex builds, and that, even if Essentials isn't heavily supported going forward, it won't quickly fall behind any 'power inflation' curve.

 

[Pseudonym]

Staff Expertise is a good example. No more opportunity attacks for casting adjacent to enemies is an awesome addition to +1 to hit.

In addition, if the staff is used for a melee attack it gains reach 1. It was the first feat I took for my mage. Its almost in the "too good" category.

 

[Zaran]

I guess the question is : Does it unbalance the game? I don't think so. Everone has access to the new feats so it doesn't change balance between classes. I won't argue the fact that it's power creep. It definately is that. Is that bad?

I do wonder how/if they will update the older feats though.