I am forseeing problems with feats

[Campbell]

I don't think differences between 3e Toughness and 4e Toughness form a solid basis for comparison. 3e Toughness was one of those fool's errand mechanical elements that the 4e design team is trying to avoid.

 

[Sitara]

Where are you getting tis from? I seemed to have skipped that by completely!

I infered it from the feats article and a few comments made by designers on the wotc forums. Basically they said feats no longer have a 'level' prereq, only tiers.

However, this might mean feats may have other feats as pre-reqs...though as more info is released it appears even this may no longer be true. (for instance, in saga Dual Wapon Prof I-III is one of the very few feat cfhains; but in 4e we hear that TWF may become a class ability/power/talent)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

what they want to get rid off is the suck now to be powerfull later compared to be powerfull now and suck later. 3.x usually is that. You have to plan on 1st Level to get into a prestige class or get a precious feat combination at a level where it is worth the investment. If feats are ballanced for the whole tier (and maybe even later) then it means that the feat will stay powerfull. and even worse, when you are at that level, it can prove out that your choice you made at Level 1 isn´t very attractive anymore so that you are left with more or less useless feats.

toughness is the best example. It is worth the investment for every commoner, because it means doubling of their hp. even for a first level fighter it means standing a full damage swing of a great sword (12 + str vs 10 + con +3 from toughness) but at Level 2 depending on what you roll for hp tougness is useless...

 

[Morrus]

I infered it from the feats article and a few comments made by designers on the wotc forums. Basically they said feats no longer have a 'level' prereq, only tiers.

Interesting. Could you link to the source? That sounds newsworthy. I thought I'd gotten everything, but I've clearly missed this one. I know thye've said that feats no longer have prerequisites, but not seen any comment that connects that with levels and tiers.

 

[Doug McCrae]

There's nothing inherently unbalancing about feats without pre-requisites.

3e had no rules regarding feat construction so a splat could easily have a powerful feat without pre-reqs next to a weak feat with lots of them. The mere possibility of pre-reqs was no defence against brokenness.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

That means a first level pc can take any feat of the heroic tier he could also take at level 10. Is it just me or does it seem this can lead to a boatload of balance problems, especially when splats are released?

It depends more on the individual feats than anything else. You seem to be thinking more along the lines of the kind of Feat Chains that you have in 3rd Edition.

Feats like Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, Dodge, Weapon Focus, and Weapon Specialization are all fixed bonuses of +1 or +2. None of these by themselves are game breaking, regardless of when you take them. Feats like Expertise and Power Attack scale with level. While they are potentially very useful at level 5 or higher, they do not do too much for you at lower levels. I do not see any reason why those kinds of feats would be harmful to have in the first tier.

Also, as I think on it, I cannot really think of any 3rd edition feats that become unbalanced if you were to grant them earlier than usual. Feats that are broken tend to be broken because of what they do, not what the pre-requisites are.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Dausuul]

Seems to go with the whole balancing is a nightmare theme for 4e. I could be wrong, but who knows? Is this actually confirmed?

Uh... what? 4E looks like balance being infinitely simpler than 3E.

First of all, it looks like they're shifting to using tier as the main prerequisite for pretty much everything. That alone is a HUGE improvement to balance. With 3E's system, you always had to worry that somebody would weasel out a way to meet your prerequisites before the level minimum that the prerequisites were supposed to enforce. But when the level minimum is the prerequisite... pretty hard to weasel out of that one.

And the other balance mechanisms, like requiring weaksauce feats as prereqs for powerful PrCs, were unreliable as well. What if a new combo comes along and suddenly the weaksauce feat is now super-powerful? Or what if you find a way to stack several powerful PrCs that all happen to use the same weaksauce feat as a balance mechanism--or a decent PrC that gives the weaksauce prereq as a bonus? (See for example: Master Specialist Abjurer + Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil.) With any luck, 4E will do away with such things.

Second, the shift to a "universal bonus" of half your character level will have the effect of drastically simplifying balance calculations. If a fighter has an attack bonus of +6 at level 1, while the rogue has an attack bonus of +3, you know that dynamic will stay roughly the same. A 21st-level fighter will have an attack bonus of +16 and a 21st-level rogue will have +13. They won't diverge off to infinity the way they do in 3E.

Third, giving up PrCs and replacing them with paragon paths/epic destinies means no more dips in front-loaded PrCs.

Fourth, putting everyone on the same recharge mechanic (a mix, which will presumably be about the same across classes, of at-will, per-encounter, and per-day powers) means that there is no longer a balance concern with some characters benefitting from long adventuring days and others gaining from short ones. Furthermore, powers can now be weighed against each other directly. A 10th-level wizard power and a 10th-level fighter power can be compared in isolation and balanced on that basis alone, rather than having to try to consider how each one fits in the larger context of the class.

 

[The Little Raven]

That new Toughness feat combines both the 3.5 Toughness and Improved Toughness feats into one.

That's because Toughness was worse than trash. It's a prime example of how flawed the whole "system mastery" design was, because it (along with Dodge and Combat Casting) was among the worst feats ever made, occupying space in the core books that could have been filled by something useful. I'm glad they moved from that "let's trick new players into making bad choices" view.

 

[Raloc]

I haven't seen anything to confirm that all prerequisites will be gone, but the example feats shown in a Design and Development column a ways back had a listed tier and no other requirements. I'm not sure that the lack of prerequisites in the examples is all that meaningful. Currently the prerequisite line only shows up on a feat when there are actually prerequisites.

First Reaction
Tier: Paragon
Benefit: If you are surprised, you may spend an action point to act during the surprise round.

OT: Anyone else think this feat is really lame? If I were DMing, I'd probably say that using an action point to act on a surprise round should be a normal part of action points. Some might say that all characters would do this just because it's advantageous, but personally I'd merely give out less APs and allow them to be used for much more interesting things.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

That's because Toughness was worse than trash. It's a prime example of how flawed the whole "system mastery" design was, because it (along with Dodge and Combat Casting) was among the worst feats ever made, occupying space in the core books that could have been filled by something useful. I'm glad they moved from that "let's trick new players into making bad choices" view.

as pointed out: more than trash after Level 1

toughness gave you more hp than power attack gave you on damage... 3 hp compared to 0 and dodge gave you the same advantage as expertise without giving you -1 to attack...

and expertise was a great feat.

The improvement in 4e is that everything scales linear with level, BAB and Defense. So a +1 attack bonus stays usefull in 10th level as it is on first.

Example:
Attack bonus of +3 (16 str) vs AC 19 chainmail and large shield. Your chances to hit are 5/20, with weapon focus you have 6/20 so your chances to hit are improved by 20%!

if you have an AB of +1 and attack vs fullplate and shield, (AC 21) you only hit at 20, with WF, you hit with 19 and 20 thats twice as often.

in 3.x the problem is: at Level 10, your AB is 11 and the AC is still 21, so you hit with 10+ or 11/20. With WF you hit with 12/20 which is just a minor improvement of 9% more hits.

In 4e AB is 6 and AC is 26 at LVL 10, so your WF still gives 20% more damage. (not considering crits)

and dodge may reduce your damage taken in the same way, even if it still only gives a bonus of +1 to AC (but hopefully vs all enemies)

combat casting however was trash in 3.5 since skillfocus concentration did the job nearly as well and was more versatile... only a mage with too much feats and not enough skillpoints could have invested in both...