Expertise

[Mengu]

So this question is for those who house ruled free expertise at level 1 or level 5 or whenever, and for people who were lowering monster defenses, and ruling away the expertise feats. For my games I had ruled that you can have expertise for every conceivable weapon or implement you can ever use, for free at 5th level.

Post Essentials, we now have a new bunch of expertise feats that not only give the expertise feat bonus a bit sooner, but also have an added benefit.

Are you making these new feats free also? Or if you had gone with the monster defense bonus adjustment, are you making these feats available, with the attack bonus stripped off? Or are you allowing these feats as is, and if people want to ignore their free expertise and take these feats instead, they can spend the feat slot?

Also the benefits are currently available for the essentials builds, but nothing else really. There is no Tome Expertise, Holy Symbol Expertise, Ki Expertise, Rod Expertise, Totem Expertise, etc. We have many characters who use implements not covered by Essentials.

Just curious how everyone else will be handling the situation. I'm undecided as of now.

 

[DonAdam]

If I were running a long term game, I might give a free expertise or defense-pumping feat for free at levels 5, 15, and 25. Or nothing, and outlaw large swaths of pre-Essentials feats (to reduce the search cost for the players and eliminate some of the fiddly feats that are time-consuming and headache-inducing at the table).

 

[jbear]

It's a good question and one I've been thinking about recently.

My players were awarded Expertise for all their weapons and implements at level 5 as a quest reward gained when they made a very dangerous pact with Zehir, god of poison.

Part of the deal is that each of them has to complete a task that will benefit them in their combined struggle agains Cyric, whose madness even Zehir fears. These tasks will ultimately benefit Zehir and have lasting negative repercussions on the world. But it will open a path to power for my rather unwise, power greedy players. So taking that into acount, I was thinking of adding these 'extra' bonuses to Expertise as a second boon gained upon completing Zehir's tasks.

They are attempting to complete the first now, so I will have to come to a decision fairly soon, but I'm fairly sure that this is how I will deal with the issue.

 

[Lord Ernie]

I've been pondering the same thing as of late, and am gonna discuss it with my player and my co-DM. Now, I'm a bit in luck, cause the only implements in our games are staffs and orbs (sorcerer, invoker|cleric, wizard), so whatever I do decide will not negatively effect anyone.

I've considered the different approaches you suggested, and I'm not sure yet. Leaving them in as an optional choice with both the earlier attack bonus will mean they'll be very popular levels 11-14 and 21-24, and I don't think that's the kind of reaction I'm looking for. Making them spend a full feat just to get the secondary effect, on the other hand, means that sometimes the bonus would be quite minimal for the cost of a feat. Giving them for free is an option, but... I'm not quite satisfied with that, either.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I just learned to accept, that one of your feats is needed to train in a weapon category.

Like every PC knows how to use a simple weapon, but someone who is trained (expertise) in it is using it better. If you want to spend your feat otherwise, it is our choice...

Just like multiclassing feats are better than skill training. And usually it would be dumb not to multiclass somewhere between level 1 and level 30...

 

[Spatula]

Just curious how everyone else will be handling the situation. I'm undecided as of now.

I plan to still give versatile expertise for free at 5th level. If players want to take the Essential expertise feats as well, they can. The bonuses don't stack, but the Essential feats are still worthwhile since they give their bonus sooner and have that extra benefit.

 

[spinmd]

In my campaign, I wanted to add Ari's wound system from the Advanced Players Guide (BTW, this is the best wound system I have seen, simple and effective). The players and I agreed that we would use the wound system and the players would get a free feat as a balance measure.

Then the expertise feats came in and we added the +1/+2/+3 on all attacks for free at 5/15/25.

Now that the expertise feats are bonus plus special feature, we are planning to give two free feats (one feat being an expertise type) for the inclusion of the wound system. Whether or not that is too good or unfairly penalizes certain weapon & implement builds remains to be seen.

 

[True_Blue]

I give all of my PC's Expertise for free at 1st level. This way, they never have to agonize whether or not to take it, since *all* of the PC's really want to hit more often.

With the change to the feats, I've just went ahead and gave them the extra part also. Yeah it makes the feat a little more powerful, but I figure it doesn't hurt to have the PC's just a little more powerful. That small bit isn't a big deal in my games.

So basically all the PC's have an extra +1 to hit, and they get the extra part if there is one.

 

[Pickles JG]

I am giving them one free expertise feat of their choice instead of vanilla expertise in as many things as they want to use. (I have sort of chosen for them - they are not hardcore but are free to do differently)

This works ok because of my specific party:-

Dagger wielding Rogue
Axe wielding Barbarian
Bow Ranger
All obvious

Paladin with longsword & thrown hammer - will like Master at Arms as the quick swap is more useful to him than the riders on hammers or heavy blades
Warlord MC wizard with longsword & wand - versatile expertise, will not miss the riders

The defences will live on as a feat tax & I will give the Dragonborn +2 on his breath now he is 11th level.

 

[SabreCat]

I'm one of those who's taken the "fix the monster math behind the DM's screen" approach, with the additional tweak of giving a tiered houserule bonus to each character's weakest NAD, so the Essentials changes definitely put me in a tricky spot. My plan for the moment is to continue disallowing Expertise feats and +all NADs feats until the second Heroes Of book comes out, since one of the characters in the group is a Pact Blade-wielding Warlock, for whom a fancy Expertise feat hasn't been released. If she's still not supported at that point, the feats stay disallowed. If she is, then the problem's gotten complicated enough that I'll put the question to my players about what to do. They don't tend to be rules-mechanics gearheads--one took the Linguist feat, ha--so I'm curious to find out if they even care which way we run it.

The suggestion I'll float will be to hand out one bonus feat slot per tier, usable only on feats from the Expertise and defense-enhancing families, and reset monster numbers to their by-the-book values. We're at Paragon now, so that should give people the ability to cover their core competencies and make a meaningful decision or two about the best way to do so without feeling "taxed". Not sure whether it'd be OK to take additional +defense feats with normal picks or not; I'd feel sad to see people's character sheets fill up with math bumps. But again, for this crowd it might actually be a meaningful decision to pick between e.g. Great Fortitude and Connected or whatever.