L4W Discussion Thread IV

[Mewness]

I think the house rule for expertise should grant a feat bonus if that's what they're doing with that bonus. Draconic spellcaster would get stupidly amazing otherwise.

 

[Oni]

Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise are feat bonuses now.

Should our house rule now grant a feat bonus as well?

This would probably be a good idea if you don't want them stacking with things like Draconic Spellcaster and Feyborn Charm which was the reason for the change in the first place.


I wonder if instead of allowing a free +1/+2/+3 to hit at the appropriate levels if we shouldn't just allow for an extra feat slot on the assumption that most people will take expertise anyway since it's the best thing going in terms bang for the buck, but at the same time it allows Draconic Spellcaster or Feyborn Charm to be reasonable alternatives for more focused character builds. At the very worst people would just use the extra feat slot for whatever suited their fancy it's not like it would be more powerful than the extra +X to hit they could have otherwise taken.

Thoughts?

 

[renau1g]

Why? It provides a feat bonus to a specific group of commonly resisted spells? Weapon focus Dagger works the same but for every spell. Nobodies really rushed out to build gnome wizards since AP came out with their equivalent feat

 

[ryryguy]

FWIW they did add a damage bonus to Draconic Spellcaster at least, so it isn't entirely useless if you also get Expertise.

The change to make Expertise grant a feat bonus seems intended mainly to prevent different Expertise feats from stacking with themselves, i.e. no stacking for Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise. That's not an issue with our house rule.

 

[Mewness]

But under our house rule the hit bonuses from things like Draconic Spellcaster would stack with the freebie hit bonus. That seems like too much.

 

[TwoHeadsBarking]

Winged Horde was good, but way better than Scorching Burst so something needed to give on it. It can't be enlarged now though so that's too bad...

Am I missing something? Why can't Horde be enlarged? It still rolls dice for damage.

 

[Oni]

The change to make Expertise grant a feat bonus seems intended mainly to prevent different Expertise feats from stacking with themselves, i.e. no stacking for Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise. That's not an issue with our house rule.

Except they had already fixed that before. I really don't know why they would change it again and have to adjust so many other feats as a result if they weren't trying to address a separate underlying problem. IMHO that problem as precisely feats like Draconic Spellcaster and Feyborn Charm, they simply could not be adjusted in a meaningful way without adjusting the Expertise feats. I think it's especially important we don't ignore the fact they are no longer allowed to stack for a reason, Draconic Spellcaster now especially since the changes to weapon implements makes achieving a specific damage type so easy.

 

[Mewness]

I just realized that my first character actually BENEFITS from this update. He must be really suck

 

[taran]

This post got a little long, so in summary: unless we change our house rule for the Expertise feats, Draconic Spellcaster and its ilk are not going to be worth taking.

I think Wizards' new philosophy is that everyone should have a hit bonus feat. The baseline hit bonus feats are Weapon Expertise, Implement Experise, and presumably the forthcoming Focused Expertise. Then you have a second tier: narrower, more powerful feats like Draconic Spellcaster and Fey Whatever It Was. It wouldn't surprise me to see more in this general vein.

This makes problems for our house rule, though. Consider: Alcinus the Sorcerer takes Implement Expertise: Dagger, while Susannah the Sorceress takes Draconic Spellcaster.

Under Wizards' default system, Alcinus and Susannah are more or less balanced. Alcinus gets a bonus to hit with all sorcerer powers, but Susannah gets a bonus with all implements, and gets bonus damage as well. For these benefits, Alcinus and Susannah each pay one feat.

Under our system, Susannah has to pay a feat, but Alcinus doesn't. Probably she'll skip Draconic Spellcaster altogether.

The only fix I've thought of so far is to offer a free feat in place of the free to-hit bonus. It's pretty inelegant, but it would work.

 

[elecgraystone]

I agree, I'm just re-stating their comment.

Yes, it fix the overly high AC of one barbarian build they nerfed everyone instead of just nerfing the offender. Sigh...

With the removal of all possible AC improvements to druid in wildshape, this makes them low man in melee AC in heroic to pretty much auto-hit with attacks vs AC in epic.

And glad to see someone got something out of this Mewness. Me, I've got to look over the retirement/redo your character rules. Good thing I'm still 1st going to 2nd.