Feat Tax and Why It Harms the System

[Upper_Krust]

Hey all!

Would the perfect solution (for problems #1 and #2) maybe just have been to double the +1 to stats bonuses through levelling to a +2?

 

[Echohawk]

What is stopping Wizards from biting the bullet and directly correcting their game rather than beating around the bush and forcing taxes to follow their players even into D&D?

My guess is simply that the issues that are clearly serious problems for you, are just not serious problems for the majority of D&D players, and thus not something that the WotC designers are losing any sleep over. Like Crothian's group, concerns about "feat tax" simply haven't come up in our group's games.

 

[Fifth Element]

My guess is simply that the issues that are clearly serious problems for you, are just not serious problems for the majority of D&D players, and thus not something that the WotC designers are losing any sleep over. Like Crothian's group, concerns about "feat tax" simply haven't come up in our group's games.

I'll echo this. My group does not see this as a problem at all. I believe only one of the six characters has an Expertise feat, and they are a very effective party. It's been two sessions since any character has even fallen unconscious in combat, and I've been setting some tough battles on them.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Feats are meant to make a character more interesting. Every feat that you consider taking is a "feat tax" in that regard. The unique thing about feats like the Expertise feats is that they apply very universally (either to all classes, or every member of a particular class, or every member of a particular class build).

But - would we consider "Surging Flame" a feat tax for people that use a lot of fire powers? Is "Toughness" a feat tax for Defenders since they need hit points?
Is "Nimble Blade" a feat tax for light weapon users?

 

[billd91]

Feat taxes don't exist unless you choose to see them in that fairly perjorative manner. What they are, in reality, are strategies that are unbalanced in the sense that they are substantially better than the majority of alternative choices. The opportunity cost of picking them is dwarfed by their utility.

Now, with all sorts of different character concepts and campaign styles, there may be any number of choices that have that characteristic - being better than the cost of having them - but when that applies to a pretty much all categories of play styles, campaigns, and character concepts (with only a few exceptions), then you're really looking at a strategy that dominates. And dominating strategies aren't good for balanced games.

 

[Filcher]

For my game, this sort of metagaming is ludicrous. Clearly, this isn't the case for your game, but I feel the desire to represent the 4e crowd that doesn't feel this way. (This is one reason I left 3.5).

For us, it would be something along the lines of:

"The imperial fencing academy of Archbridge is the best in the known world! You'd be an idiot if you even think of picking up a blade if you don't attend."

Sure, some things make you better. But due to circumstances beyond your control, sometimes you don't get to be the best. Maybe you grew up an urchin on the streets. Maybe you're a barbarian from the north. But for whatever reason you didn't train at the academy and get the improved whatever feat.

Sometimes heroes have to make do against impossible odds. We're okay with that. Feat tax is not an issue for us. (And when a PC takes a certain feat, there better be a story behind it.)

Again, this clearly wouldn't fly with the OP's game, and I respect that. But this perceived error on the part of Wizards is not egregious to us.

 

[Elric]

Hey all!

Would the perfect solution (for problems #1 and #2) maybe just have been to double the +1 to stats bonuses through levelling to a +2?

No. Proposals to fix the math that include increasing your highest two ability scores more than they do now suffer from two problems.

1) This increases AC for light armor characters (who boost Dex/Int), which means that these characters' ACs are both too high relative to the monster's scaling and too high relative to heavy armor users. If you increase heavy armors' benefit as well, then AC scales faster than monster attack bonus by default, which is problematic in its own right and maintains the asymmetry in the scaling of AC and FRWs.

If you just remove Masterwork Light Armor in proposals that increase stat bonuses, you're getting closer to this goal (though Light Armor would both scale 2 points faster than Heavy Armor and scale sooner- at lower levels- even if you remove masterwork light armors under the above proposal).

2) Increasing primary and secondary stats changes the balance of the classes significantly. For example, the Tactical Warlord-Battle Captian gains hugely from his Int increasing faster. Just adding to-hit and defense bonuses directly avoids this problem.

 

[MichaelSomething]

These people seem to not need expertise at all.

 

[Hellzon]

These people seem to not need expertise at all.

And keterys popped in at post #4 and said he envied Revellion's group because his group needed between 7-12 to hit, with expertise feats. But hey, cherry-picking arguments is fun.

 

[Nymrohd]

Hmm attack bonuses present with diminishing returns you know. A +1 to attack is not +5% to hit. It really depends on what number you hit before getting it. For instance +1 to hit when you hit on a roll of 8 or higher is exactly as valuable as +2 to hit when you hit on a roll of 16 or higher. Obviously the differences are not that great but people will reportedly hit over a great range of numbers at the upper paragon and epic tier. Indeed what the expertise feat does at those levels is not increase the chance to hit but either provide the certainty to hit with only the simplest of synergies (dagger rogues and avengers with expertise and combat advantage can get to the point where they always hit) or allows you to skip some synergy before unloading those attacks that have to hit (striker dailies for instance). In essence expertise does not fix the numbers; it substitutes the leader powers that increase hit chance (perhaps allowing the leader to focus on defense or damage instead of hitting or allows smoother damage curves on groups that have leaders with poor control over hit chance).