Hide armor expertise

[RedBeardJim]

Would you ban two weapon barbarians too? (who have Dex as a secondary, thus getting Hide Armor Expertise without needing the feat)

As a tradeoff, they have lower HP and surges.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

doesn´t stack with barbarian agility and problem solved. Another idea would be: hide armor ins considered heavy armor while using this feat. Or special: you do not get the barbarian agility bonus to armor while using con instead of dex or int

 

[holywhitetrash]

what exactly does hide expertise do? and where is it?

 

[RedBeardJim]

what exactly does hide expertise do? and where is it?

Lets you use your Con modifier instead of your Dex/Int modifier as an AC bonus when wearing hide armor. Prereq: any primal class. It's in Primal Power.

 

[holywhitetrash]

oh that is kinda dumb

 

[holywhitetrash]

i think this is a dumb question but i had to ask
can a warden with this feat add in both his con and wis mods to ac if he was wildblood?
since both would say instead of dex or int

 

[Wormwood]

Banning this is my sole house ruling on 4e.

Which says quite a lot about this otherwise excellent system.

 

[Eldorian]

i think this is a dumb question but i had to ask
can a warden with this feat add in both his con and wis mods to ac if he was wildblood?
since both would say instead of dex or int

No. The feat allows him to add his con modifier instead of his dex/int. If he already adds his con modifier instead of dex/int, then he is not adding his dex/int, so he has no dex/int mod to replace.

 

[Destil]

Broken in all the bad ways. A Str/Con build can already take a feat to get better AC (it's called armor proficiency). The fact they 'fixed' this for the barbarian build that already had a decent option if they wanted AC, still left thanebornes out in the cold (yes, the class ability doesn't need much Cha, but all of their power kickers LOVE high Cha) is just sad. Rageblood can already generate temp easily HP and get plenty of surges, too.

No way you can argue this feat being allowed to exist as written in a world where avengers aren't even allowed leather armor. The only build it makes sense for is the swarm druid, and there's a good 5 or 6 builds that just don't have an option to keep up in AC without bending stats in bad ways. High Str/Con builds like this already had feat options to fix it (again, heavy armor).

Banning this is my sole house ruling on 4e.

Which says quite a lot about this otherwise excellent system.

I've fixed a handful of things (including AC scaling options for classes that actually have issues), but banning this was at the top of the list for a while.

Would you ban two weapon barbarians too? (who have Dex as a secondary, thus getting Hide Armor Expertise without needing the feat)

I'm seriously considering getting rid of their barbarian agility class feature, since they don't need it. But it hasn't come up (I think I would in a second if it did, until then I'm just being lazy).

 

[Runestar]

I wonder what was wotc's rationale behind designing said feat.

Surely they would have enough experience by now to recognize a blatantly overpowered feat when they see one? This isn't some innocuous looking feat which seems harmless enough on its own, and is really only broken when used in tandem with some other ability. I certainly hope it is not power creep with the intention of selling more books either.

I am inclined to say that like expertise, it may well be some sort of feat tax/stealth errata, considering that barbs are barred from heavy armour, yet have little incentive to boost dex/int over str/con/cha.

Or am I overlooking something?