Feat Taxes, or, It's That Time of the Week Again

[UngeheuerLich]

Ah, so you're just making things up then to justify your beliefs, rather then taking the statements of the devs at face value. Good to know.

8 rounds at what level of encounter? You clearly don't understand the factors involved here. 8 rounds is not inherently unreasonable, but it is unreasonable under certain circumstances, which are subject to a pure math analysis.

Show me the statements... show me your intimate knowledge... your references in your posts just show, the developers have realized a mistake... and are doing things to compensate... show me where they say:
"we have not been able to calculate up to 29"

Yes, my only defense is that I an intimate familiar with all aspects of the subject and you're not and that makes me right by default.

Also, even if i am wrong that does not make you right...
maybe you should take a lesson in logics...

 

[Aulirophile]

Beginning of D&D:
lack of +4 to hit at epic, rightous brand exactly giving +4 more to hit at epic... problem: rightous brand itself does not hit well enough...

RB gave Str mod... if your Str mod at Epic was +4 you'd need to roll an 14 (scaling to 17+ by late epic) to hit an even level (without Expertise). At Epic, on a Str Cleric, RB was giving 5-9 (5 is 16 starting stat, 9 is 16+2 racial+ED boost). Technically it could go as high as 10, but 20 starting Str for Clerics wasn't (and isn't) a good idea mechanically. And since it only applied to one ally it didn't solve the groups problem. At all.

This is bizarre. The numbers you present are wrong, but they are wrong in such a way that the problem would be worse, not better. How far off from reality can you be?

 

[wayne62682]

There was an oversight, that is sure... but it was not pure stupidity on the designers part... there has to be some intend...

I disagree. While I don't think it was "stupidity", I think that many of the issues with 4e's balance, and with 3.x before it, is due to a fundamental lack of both understanding theorycraft and a lack of time to run through all the use cases that would reveal deficiencies or more loopholes.

That's forgivable. The refusal to admit and correct the mistakes when they're revealed later on, however, not so much.

 

[Aulirophile]

Show me the statements... show me your intimate knowledge... your references in your posts just show, the developers have realized a mistake... and are doing things to compensate... show me where they say:
"we have not been able to calculate up to 29"


Also, even if i am wrong that does not make you right...
maybe you should take a lesson in logics...

True, we could both be wrong... but it isn't probable. The idea that I am right because I am familiar with the information available on the issue is inductively strong. The idea that you are wrong when the information you present as basing your ideas off of is wrong is deductively valid. You cannot be right if your premises are wrong. So you're definitely wrong and it is probable that I am right. Free lesson in logic for you.

You just... won my argument. "Mistake" OK, they made one, got it. "Compensate." If it isn't a problem... why does it need to be compensated for? Oh, right, because it causes issues. I don't claim to know why they made the mistake, you did, I said they publicly declared they made a mistake with the scaling and that it was, in fact, a mistake because it invalidated built-in assumptions (character power, encounter length, damage scaling, dozens of things).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I disagree. While I don't think it was "stupidity", I think that many of the issues with 4e's balance, and with 3.x before it, is due to a fundamental lack of both understanding theorycraft and a lack of time to run through all the use cases that would reveal deficiencies or more loopholes.

That's forgivable. The refusal to admit and correct the mistakes when they're revealed later on, however, not so much.

You don´t go out and change something that you don´t believe it is broken. In Aurilophiles post, which i believe to be true, it is stated, that the developers have changed the scaling.
But the result of the change were: other broken rules not working smoothly... mostly because of a 4 point difference to it... and this most surely was due to your stated lack of time...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

True, we could both be wrong... but it isn't probable. The idea that I am right because I am familiar with the information available on the issue is inductively strong. The idea that you are wrong when the information you present as basing your ideas off of is wrong is deductively valid. You cannot be right if your premises are wrong. So you're definitely wrong and it is probable that I am right. Free lesson in logic for you.

You just... won my argument. "Mistake" OK, they made one, got it. "Compensate." If it isn't a problem... why does it need to be compensated for? Oh, right, because it causes issues. I don't claim to know why they made the mistake, you did, I said they publicly declared they made a mistake with the scaling and that it was, in fact, a mistake because it invalidated built-in assumptions (character power, encounter length, damage scaling, dozens of things).

It was absolutely not my intention to win anything... i don´t deny they made a mistake... but i honestly believe they believed before gen con, that they did not make a mistake...

that they thought scaling leader bonuses and synergies were enough to compensate... of course the inability to apply those bonuses and synergies resulted in dramatically bad results. You see, that those leader bonuses were nerfed after the introduction of expertise?

 

[wayne62682]

You don´t go out and change something that you don´t believe it is broken.

Even if a lot of people say it's broken and, more to the point, can provide mathematical evidence that it is? I remember the days of 3.5 where CharOp would show empirical proof that such-and-such powers were broken, and I remember only one time that Wizards ever admitted it and fixed it (and that was with the changes to the Polymorph spells).

If WotC doesn't consider something broken, but people who have more of a grounded theorycrafting background show them "Yes, this is broken", and WotC responds to the effect of "I don't think it's broken, so I won't fix it" then who is in the wrong?

EDIT: The issue is also the fact of HOW they implemented the fix, i.e. by tacking something on instead of actually correcting the fix.

 

[Aulirophile]

I disagree. While I don't think it was "stupidity", I think that many of the issues with 4e's balance, and with 3.x before it, is due to a fundamental lack of both understanding theorycraft and a lack of time to run through all the use cases that would reveal deficiencies or more loopholes.

That's forgivable. The refusal to admit and correct the mistakes when they're revealed later on, however, not so much.

Exactly. I'm not speculating on they "Why" they changed it (there may or may not have been a good reason, it could've been sleep deprivation for all we know, deadlines can suck) but the reason isn't relevant. They said, after the community did all the theorycraft, that it was a mistake and it ought to be fixed. Their solution, feats that plug the hole, is justifiably labeled a feat tax and lambasted by a large portion of the community.

Tony's idea that originally there were stat boosting items very nearly plug the hole perfectly. Perhaps they decided to completely remove this as an artifact of 3.x late in the development cycle. It could be any number of things, and it is very difficult for people, conceptually, to grasp that minor changes can propagate throughout a rules system and change things in an unintended manner. And that is one idea that explains the change and you can easily see the logic chain, considering what stat boosting items did in 3.x. That is one of dozens of ideas that would perfectly explain it.

But explaining it isn't necessary. They said it was a mistake and they understood what the issues it caused were, because of the community that pointed them out. Simple. Easy.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

RB gave Str mod... if your Str mod at Epic was +4 you'd need to roll an 14 (scaling to 17+ by late epic) to hit an even level (without Expertise). At Epic, on a Str Cleric, RB was giving 5-9 (5 is 16 starting stat, 9 is 16+2 racial+ED boost). Technically it could go as high as 10, but 20 starting Str for Clerics wasn't (and isn't) a good idea mechanically. And since it only applied to one ally it didn't solve the groups problem. At all.

This is bizarre. The numbers you present are wrong, but they are wrong in such a way that the problem would be worse, not better. How far off from reality can you be?

+4 more than at level 1...

+8 to strenght over the course of 30 levels... (if not counting epic destiny). Again helping your reading comprehension:
"rightous brand exactly giving +4 more to hit at epic..."

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Even if a lot of people say it's broken and, more to the point, can provide mathematical evidence that it is? I remember the days of 3.5 where CharOp would show empirical proof that such-and-such powers were broken, and I remember only one time that Wizards ever admitted it and fixed it (and that was with the changes to the Polymorph spells).

If WotC doesn't consider something broken, but people who have more of a grounded theorycrafting background show them "Yes, this is broken", and WotC responds to the effect of "I don't think it's broken, so I won't fix it" then who is in the wrong?

EDIT: The issue is also the fact of HOW they implemented the fix, i.e. by tacking something on instead of actually correcting the fix.

Hey, i stated the exact opposite:

If you don´t believe something is broken, you don´t fix it. Wizards sometimes refuse to change something that IS broken... why should they change something (in beta) that they believe to work correctly?

I was not speaking of the later expertise "fix".