LEB Discussion Thread '10 Pt 2

[stonegod]

This is the general discussion thread for Living Eberron. General out of character discussion not pertinent to a game goes here.

Game on!

Old threads:

• LEB Discussion '09
• LEB Discussion '10

 

[CaBaNa]

Awesome.

Also, feat smell, feat smell bad.

Ok, here is my actual contribution to the topic of feat house rules. It's a link to a CharOp post that breaks down +hit vs +dam, and expounds on the topic.

 

[KarinsDad]

That post is in error somewhat.

Yes, +1 damage does typically work better for many PCs than +1 to hit. But for strikers and controllers, +1 to hit is typically superior (twin strike being an exception).

Here's why:

1) Let's take a striker PC that does 18 average damage and has a 50% chance to hit with a +1 damage feat. With a +1 to hit feat instead, he does 17 average damage and a 55% chance to hit.

In the first case, his dpr is 9 (not including crits).

In the second case, his dpr is 9.35.

Overall, he will do better with 17 points of damage per attack than 18.

With a 50% chance to hit, the break even case is at typically at 11 points of damage without the +1 damage feat. 11 *.55 vs. 12 * .5, but the +1 to hit gets better the higher above 11 points of damage one gets. So, this is not just applicable to strikers.

2) In the case of a controller, damage is not the main goal. A few extra points of damage per encounter is nice, but not required. What is required is getting foes controlled. And obviously, getting them controlled means hitting.

3) Most PCs can have their cake and eat it too. PCs don't just get a single feat. They get a lot of them. And since there are a limited number of bonus to damage feats, eventually a PC will run out. Even for a PC where a bonus to damage feat is better, once he runs out of those, it makes sense to eventually take the bonus to hit feat and increase dpr.

4) Hitting is more fun than missing. A combat might extend a little bit because a player chose a +1 to hit over +1 damage, but the player will probably have more overall fun because he is hitting slightly more often.

 

[CaBaNa]

Actually hitting became much less important for controllers after essentials came out, most things do the control part on a miss now...

I haven't formed a solid opinion toward the topic yet, as I don't believe I have a firm enough grasp on all the parts and pieces. That is why I posted the link instead of my stance... Shouldn't be too much longer... Any day now...

			Bunnies... Unicorns... Puppies... +1 to hit via feat bonus... OH butterflies...

 

[KarinsDad]

Actually hitting became much less important for controllers after essentials came out, most things do the control part on a miss now...

1) Some few powers do the control part on a miss now. Most powers do not.

2) This only affects Wizards.

3) And the miss part is often way weaker control. For example, Illusory Obstacles. Dazed and unable to charge on a hit. Unable to charge on a miss. The miss portion does virtually no control at all for this power. Every power that I have read, the hit effect is a lot stronger than the miss effect. The Wizard still wants every +1 to hit that he can get.


And, of course, Essentials at LEB is still 2 weeks away for Wizards and a long time for most other controllers.

 

[LogicsFate]

Just popping to declare an imminent return of me and my shifter.

Might be a while, just getting my first look at 4e.

How's everything going?

 

[Walking Dad]

The core game is already set up that these 3 feats are viable. They don't stack with Expertise, but people are not required to take Expertise.

The LEB game is already set up that these 3 feats are totally viable.

By changing the LEB bonuses to attack rolls (which are a patch to the rules) to a feat bonus, you make these 3 (and several other) feats non-viable.

My idea here is: Don't negate these feats in an effort to add in the new, sexier feats which are stronger than any of these feats.


Just because the designers at WotC screwed up by making the math patch a bunch of feats instead of just fixing the darn game doesn't mean that we should do that here at LEB as well.

By making the LEB house rule a non-feat bonus, the judges already decided to not screw it up like WotC did. They put the patch into the rules where it belongs, not into feats. By making the house rule a feat bonus, you negate a lot of conditional feats that were nice, but not overpowered like the new Essential feats are.

Quote:
Originally Posted by evilbob
Throwing out all the new expertise feats that also give rider effects seems extreme to me, especially since some people have already expressed that they would take the feats just for the rider effects - even without gaining a +to hit from them.

It's not excessive. Every single one of these new Expertise feats is a WotC bandaid for another Wotc bandaid (the original Expertise feats).

We should throw out the +1/+2/+3 part of them since LEB already hands that out.

That way, they are just feats with a specific effect. Not great, but not terrible either.

Quote:
Originally Posted by evilbob
Also, just to clarify: the way the rules are written right now, you COULD take a new expertise feat from the essentials book AND get a +1/2/3 untyped bonus at level 5/15/25. Is that something that people like or dislike?

Not until October 21 you cannot.


And, we obviously do not want this, so we do need a house rule here.

But throwing out the Draconic Spellcaster, Gnome Phantasmist, and Diabolic Soul feats is questionable. We shouldn't change the LEB house rule to do that. Those feats are conditional bonuses already (although the GP one is totally under the control of the player).


Explain to me why the new Essential feats should trump these and other feats. I don't think they should. They are a hack due to the fact that the last hack was so lame. These feats are already limiting. You have to be a Gnome and use illusion powers. You have to be a Dragonborn, etc. Not everyone can take them and the PCs that do take them, have a limit of some sort or other to their utillity. Unlike the new sexier feats that everyone will want to take.

But if we change the house rule to a feat bonus, we throw a lot of other weaker limited feats out the door completely, just to put in a math fix that we already have in the house rules. The only problem here is the new sexier Essential feats AFAIKT, not the old ones.

I'm normally a reasonable player, but I don't get what you want to say. Living Eberron allows 3 very expertise like feats (Gnome Phantasmist, ...) to stack with the LEB 'our-mathfix, but we give it for free and don't call it expertise' bonus, what gives a kind of super bonus to , for example, gnome illusionist builds, who can stack the bonus from LEB, Phantasmist and Superior Implement (Crystal Orb) against the save that is regarded by most as best to target. This IS the big LEB screwup in my humble opinion. Even with the three feats only giving their bonus to damage, they are still strong.

Wizards screwed up the math first, but tried to fix it with expertise, and they realized in hindsight that some options were simply to strong. They changed their bandaid not to stack with the to-hit-bonus of the three above feats, because they did their math at last.

Why should this 3 feats are better than any else by stacking with something they weren't intended to?

My suggestion:

LEB bonus becomes a feat bonus and the 3 above feats become a fixed +1 bonus (untyped), like Hellfire Blood, the most similar core feat that stacks with the WotC bandaid.

 

[CaBaNa]

Maybe I should have given Pok an accurate orb

 

[KarinsDad]

Maybe I should have given Pok an accurate orb

I gave Sheeva an accurate dagger.

 

[renau1g]

Just popping to declare an imminent return of me and my shifter.

Might be a while, just getting my first look at 4e.

How's everything going?

It's going well welcome back. I wish WotC didn't suck so hard at releasing material on time (say DS updates for the CB), but anyways, yeah...