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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5559709" data-attributes="member: 61155"> That seems a relatively flawed approach to game design. Ignoring the effect an option would have for the vast majority of games in order to compensate for a perceived weakness in the one game where no beneficial feat/item/power/PP/ED choices are made? Not exacty a reasonable approach, in my mind.  Now, tiornys's argument (which you've also briefly mentioned before) is definitely the stronger one - the idea that monster hp has scaled enough that this is what compensates for the enhanced abilities of the PCs.  At the same time, I'm not sure that his example... assuming that PCs are still just sitting there swinging with At-Wills with no other effects in play - is really accurate for an Epic party.   No, it really, really isn't.  The only fact at hand is whether a PC loses 3-4 points of attack bonus, relative to monster's scaling defenses, over the course of levels 1 through 30.  That is, yes, a fact.  Whether other elements of the system compensante for that (in terms of PC options) or exarcerbate it (in terms of monster hp) is not something you can directly measure and offer up as objective fact. Similarly, the designers having their own opinion on the matter is not the end-all and be-all; while they may have positions of greater authority on the mechanics of the game, they are not infallible by any means.   Well, yes and no - sometimes the bonuses do require hitting. Quite often they aren't, if the result of utility powers, Effects, feats, items, etc.  And, especially by Epic levels, many PCs will often be able to bring some resources to bear to ensure a specific attack lands. So if you stack up some temporary attack bonuses for one key attack, which then gives a huge attack bonus to every else for the round... well, it is an effective strategy.  Now, not every group, again, will have that exact approach or those exact powers. But almost every group will have some sort of advantage or approach along those lines, and Expertise only really makes sense when one ignores all those other possible resources.   Because it isn't an either/or - you put the +1/2/3 into the system alongside all the other benefits. And so suddenly Epic level PCs are regularly hitting significantly more often than they were at Heroic levels.  Now, the argument that tiornys makes is that they need to be able to hit more often, to compensate for enemy hp, and maybe that is, though I'm not convinced.  And the argument that Aulirophile makes is that it doesn't matter if most groups are now hitting far more often then they should, as long as some idealized 'minimum' group is now hitting at the exact same percentage as at level 1... which I don't agree with either, since, again, taking something like that out of the context of the rest of the game just doesn't make sense to me.</blockquote>

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