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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5545088" data-attributes="member: 61155">Fair enough. I do certainly get what you are saying - if a player feels the need to take Expertise instead of an RP feat, wouldn't they feel the same urge with Superior Weapon Proficiency or similar choices? And there may be some truth to that. Still, though, I think the sheer difference in power level makes Expertise stand out. Especially once you hit Paragon and the bonus as started to ramp up - I might take every other choices based on what fits the concept, but by that point, at least one feat pretty much feels reserved for Expertise. I might not feel the lack of Toughness or a Superior Weapon, but would definitely feel the lack of Expertise.   Just to clarify, I'm pretty firmly in the camp that the math isn't broken in the first place. The few numbers that diminish on the PC side of the fence by epic levels are more than made up for by the greater number of powers and, generally, the sorts of benefits and capabilities that are being thrown around by that level, even accounting for enemies also having more potent abilities. That was what I suspected from the start, and my experience has largely born it out.  Now, I won't say that my experience is universal or that I know any of this for an absolute fact. But I think that if WotC had never released the Expertise feats, the game would not have suffered in the slightest. It is one of several areas where I think WotC made a kneejerk response to a problem, and even if there was a problem in need of fixing, the response was disproportionate to the cause. (See also: Skill Challenge DCs and their first 'fix'.)  That said, its true that WotC isn't likely to just remove the Expertise feats from the game at this point, and instead has largely focused on amping up the power level of other feats to try and match them. (Which I'm not especially a fan of either). While also amping up the danger and difficulty of monsters so they aren't overwhelmed by the power creep of the characters.  There certainly doesn't seem to be any quick and easy solution that would fix things for the game as a whole - though, in my own game, I'm relatively confident I can remove the Expertise feats entirely without any real damage done.  I admit you may be correct that no matter what we argue, this is an area of the game that isn't likely to change at this point - Essentials has shown that rather than back away from this decision, WotC has pretty much embraced it wholesale. Of course, my original input here was mainly to try and counter the position you seemed to be mocking people for - and I don't think you intended any insult, and were genuinely just pointing out what seemed like an absurdity to you. But it came across as assigning a straw man argument to the other side of the debate, and then mocking them because of that.  And so I felt the need to weigh in, and offer up both other legitimate reasons for a dislike of the feat, as well as to point out that the Expertise feats are potent enough that, honestly, it isn't that simple to compare them with other 'good' feats. And, having made that case, that probably would have been the appropriate time for me to let the matter lie and depart the thread, but I've never been especially good at that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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