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

[Aulirophile]

Wow...that's amazing! How often do you play? The games been out around 3 years or so, so about 150 weeks and the 20 PC's is 600 levels + say 30 x 15 levels = another 450 levels, so you've leveled up well over 1000 times in 150 weeks?!?!?!

True story: my fiancee of 6 years (well, one as a fiancee, five as a live-in girlfriend) cheated on me and we broke up right around the time 4e came out. I joined every single local group that formed and started many, many more (two colleges in my town, tons of people wanting to game). I played nearly every day, with four campaigns on the weekends, with different groups. It was a coping mechanism. For the first year if I wasn't working, I was playing 4e. Given the vast mechanical experience this gave me in 4e my groups just started burning through content, most of the groups were easily doing a level per 6 hour session at the 7 combat encounters, 3 skill challenges template (I've talked about this before in other threads, I was so familiar with the mechanics that player turns were like 45 seconds and the DM took 2 minutes for his whole round of monsters, on average) which, if you do the math, leaves about 3 hours of RP time and 3 hours of combat. That accounted for roughly 1/2 of my total 4e play and I've been slowly cutting back since the first year ended. Particularly in cases where I set up the group and scheduled everything and etc., I just feel bad abandoning the group so I have to wait for them to die naturally.

I'm down to two home games+some LFR atm.

@Ultramark: Level 30 monster will have 44 AC. An Elite will have 46 AC. Assuming the character started with the minimum to hit at level 1 (hit on an 11+ for a level 1 elite) and didn't take an ED that boosted their primary stat (not all of them do, after all) they will have 7+6+15+2 to hit. Or +30. So they'll need to roll a 16+. A +3 Prof weapon, 18 starting stat, and a boosting ED will reduce that to 13+. That is literally all the bonuses you can be guaranteed, not all leaders (or all classes, for that matter) give out additional power bonuses to hit. It is in fact quite easy to find yourself without such perks (I have, it isn't pretty, the first Dwarf Warrior I played with had +31 at 30 and, because of the classes picked, we had zero ways of increasing hit chance outside of CA). And that is vs even level, monsters can be higher level then PCs (and often are). And you can't flank while dazed. Dazing is pretty popular on epic tier monsters. Gaining CA consistently these days is basically trivial, it was not quite so easy at release.

+1 to hit at 5/15/25 is the basic fix.

 

[Aulirophile]

Do you have a source for this by any chance? If you need to make sure numbers adds up to 29, you don't need a statistician; you just need someone comfortable with fairly basic math. Adding up numbers is not what professional statisticians do.

Hell, it was in one of the development blog interviews about skill DCs and they mentioned early on they really wanted the game to be consistent, so they hired and etc.

Remember the scaling change (whatever it was) was made late in the development cycle. The math guys had already done the consulting work for the baseline assumptions. Someone screwed up something bad at some point. We just don't know what.

 

[Herschel]

I'll grant that using high prof weapons, using +4 weapons (if your DM drops them), using CA and knowledge checks and having a warlord in the party are all terrific ways to increase chances of hitting, and should all be utilized whenever possible.

Can you grant that perhaps for non-sword users without access to +4 weapons in parties without a warlord, Expertise is a must-have?

Almost, depending on what other powers are available but yes it becomes much more important. (there's still a lot of modifiers floating around IF the party chooses to take/use them) In my view that's the situation expertise is for, to even things out when characters are "behind". There are usually benefits to taking an axe, for example, that make up for the one less proficiency bonus. If the DM goes a little.....light? on enchanment bonuses then I may start to notice, especially if I'm not getting combat advantage. Taking a feat to make up for that difference at some point doesn't bother me.

I do find it offensive to refer to it as a tax that everyone must take, as do I the "you must optimize or you're playing it wrong" view that's pushed by some. I generally play weapon users and I have yet to take Weapon Focus, for example, outside of one level at paragon for one character in LFR to try it out and found I didn't miss the two damage at all while still having a lot of fun.

 

[Herschel]

It can be both 'broken' (not performing to spec) and working well enough. Like a crappy car you can put up with because you can't afford a new one. .

I disagree. To me "broken" means non-functional. If my car burns a little extra oil it still works. In that case I may defer to the expertise of "Stop Leak" or I can replace the rings. One's a lot easier but both may get the desired results.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I disagree. To me "broken" means non-functional.

If you prefer some other term for an inferior game mechanic that reduces balance and playability, I'd be happy to use that term in this discussion.

 

[wayne62682]

See, here you go again. It's not people "can't" do the math it's that they don't let the math rule them or care enough to micromanage it when they're having fun.

This attitude is utter nonsense. The math is what makes the game playable. Just because you can ignore half the rules in the book and "still have fun" doesn't mean that those rules are fine and that people should just ignore shoddy work.

I really don't understand why people continue to have that oldschool 1st edition AD&D attitude of "All the rules are just guidelines"; it's led to so much pain and suffering in games (personal experiences, obviously) as people haven't evolved to the new edition's style and refuse to change to it.

 

[Herschel]

I do compliance and data analysis for a living, I don't care to let my hobbies get bogged down in it. I'd rather focus on the cool and the tactical. The game is robust enough to handle multiple playstyles but one of teh biggest themes in 4E is teamwork. That means needinf your allies and them needing you to make everything work best. Give eachother bonuses find synergies that work with other characters not just trying to find "broken" combos for yourself.

Your idea of "evolution" is not, it's of being a narcissist who can't see the big picture. Balance is achieved in many ways, they made concessions to those who aren't as teamwork oriented to make the game playable for more people.

 

[Jhaelen]

I really don't understand why people continue to have that oldschool 1st edition AD&D attitude of "All the rules are just guidelines"

It's so easy to understand, though: It's because all the rules are _still_ just guidelines

 

[TheUltramark]

I do compliance and data analysis for a living, I don't care to let my hobbies get bogged down in it. I'd rather focus on the cool and the tactical. The game is robust enough to handle multiple playstyles but one of teh biggest themes in 4E is teamwork. That means needinf your allies and them needing you to make everything work best. Give eachother bonuses find synergies that work with other characters not just trying to find "broken" combos for yourself.

Your idea of "evolution" is not, it's of being a narcissist who can't see the big picture. Balance is achieved in many ways, they made concessions to those who aren't as teamwork oriented to make the game playable for more people.

no need for name calling

 

[MrGrenadine]

I do find it offensive to refer to it as a tax that everyone must take, as do I the "you must optimize or you're playing it wrong" view that's pushed by some. I generally play weapon users and I have yet to take Weapon Focus, for example, outside of one level at paragon for one character in LFR to try it out and found I didn't miss the two damage at all while still having a lot of fun.

I totally agree--it bugs me, too, when folks feel like you have to optimize. However, the devs could easily encourage players to create off-kilter, interesting, non-optimized characters by adjusting the math so a non-optimized character could still consistently hit 55% of the time, (or more), at high levels. Anything less starts to get into "unfun" territory, especially since the player could be missing with dailies and encounters, (and in 4e, power management is so important).

Also, about Weapon Focus--I personally wouldn't consider any feat that boosts damage as a tax. The attack roll is everything, since powers do so much more than just deal damage, and hitting with a specific power at the right time could be the difference between success and failure.