No, but I believe it's the only +3 prof reach weapon right? Again, a corner case
Which weapon are you talking about? The Whip, the Greatspear, or the Spiked Chained?
LEB Discussion Thread '10
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Which weapon are you talking about? The Whip, the Greatspear, or the Spiked Chained?
evilbob
Explorer
+3 to hit is amazingly better than +2. A 5% chance to hit really is that huge. Power attack is a trap and no one should ever take it.
Every single + to hit is huge. It's more than a 5% chance to hit: it is a 5% chance to land effects, damage, etc. It's huge. If you don't believe or understand, check out the charop forums on the wizards site where they can explain to you with exquisite math that more +to hit is always better than more +to damage because +to hit gains you more damage in the end.
All that said:
I had forgotten about the main reason I supported the flat +1 bonus in the first place, which is multi-weapon users, paladins, and dragonborn. In other words: anyone who uses multiple different types of attack items gets screwed when you are forced to take multiple different feats to get your precious +1/2/3 (which is required in order for you to be effective with your character).
The thing is, the new expertise feats actually go BACKWARDS in that respect, because it seems like the reason they added bonus riders on each feat was so that you didn't feel bad about having to take two of them when you needed multiple feats to make your character work.
Ugh. Personally, I hate the whole system, and there is no easy way to fix it. At this point, I think it might be better to keep the +1/2/3 at levels 5/15/25 and then also give people a free expertise feat at level 1. The benefits wouldn't stack, but then people wouldn't be missing out on the new more powerful feats, either.
r1: just to give an example that I happened to remember from thumbing through a copy of the Heroes blah blah Lands book, I think there was something like "staff expertise" for staff implement users that gave you the bonus to hit AND made it so that any time you cast a ranged or area spell with a staff, it did not provoke OAs. That's right: casting with a staff effectively doesn't provoke OAs anymore. That's pretty big. AND you get the bonus to hit, which is required for your character to hit things.
Also responding to some of the posts pages ago, I have no problem with characters level 1-4 having a higher chance to hit than levels 5-30. Giving people more chances to do cool stuff with low-level powers doesn't seem unbalanced to me, but rather more fun.
And finally, I would like to remind everyone that what we do on the PbP boards is probably necessarily a little unique from the D&D world at large, since what we do here is to play the game slightly differently. We don't have many average encounters. We have lots of high level encounters. This means that having a bonus to hit is even MORE important, since we're all a little "behind the curve" constantly because we're always fighting things above our level.
Every single + to hit is huge. It's more than a 5% chance to hit: it is a 5% chance to land effects, damage, etc. It's huge. If you don't believe or understand, check out the charop forums on the wizards site where they can explain to you with exquisite math that more +to hit is always better than more +to damage because +to hit gains you more damage in the end.
All that said:
I had forgotten about the main reason I supported the flat +1 bonus in the first place, which is multi-weapon users, paladins, and dragonborn. In other words: anyone who uses multiple different types of attack items gets screwed when you are forced to take multiple different feats to get your precious +1/2/3 (which is required in order for you to be effective with your character).
The thing is, the new expertise feats actually go BACKWARDS in that respect, because it seems like the reason they added bonus riders on each feat was so that you didn't feel bad about having to take two of them when you needed multiple feats to make your character work.
Ugh. Personally, I hate the whole system, and there is no easy way to fix it. At this point, I think it might be better to keep the +1/2/3 at levels 5/15/25 and then also give people a free expertise feat at level 1. The benefits wouldn't stack, but then people wouldn't be missing out on the new more powerful feats, either.
r1: just to give an example that I happened to remember from thumbing through a copy of the Heroes blah blah Lands book, I think there was something like "staff expertise" for staff implement users that gave you the bonus to hit AND made it so that any time you cast a ranged or area spell with a staff, it did not provoke OAs. That's right: casting with a staff effectively doesn't provoke OAs anymore. That's pretty big. AND you get the bonus to hit, which is required for your character to hit things.
Also responding to some of the posts pages ago, I have no problem with characters level 1-4 having a higher chance to hit than levels 5-30. Giving people more chances to do cool stuff with low-level powers doesn't seem unbalanced to me, but rather more fun.
And finally, I would like to remind everyone that what we do on the PbP boards is probably necessarily a little unique from the D&D world at large, since what we do here is to play the game slightly differently. We don't have many average encounters. We have lots of high level encounters. This means that having a bonus to hit is even MORE important, since we're all a little "behind the curve" constantly because we're always fighting things above our level.
renau1g
First Post
Gah! Super power creep? That's the equivalent of a level+3 magic cloth armor...that's crazy...now I see why WD wants them
twilsemail
First Post
It still hoses people who aren't using the stuff that's actually gotten a feat. Warlord running around with a whip? Too bad. Sorcerer casting with a dagger? Nope, no feat for you. Swordmage? Nada.
I can see the appeal in granting both (Din would love that Light Blade feat, frex.) but there are a lot of people who'd sit and watch others get candy and they're stuck with... I guess an empty pumpkin...
Gah! Super power creep? That's the equivalent of a level+3 magic cloth armor...that's crazy...now I see why WD wants them
That's pretty hoss, I guess I missed that one. Light blade is just a small damage bump with CA and HB is... I think a bonus against OAs...
Anyone? I'm AFB.
Why do people HAVE to have the "new more powerful feats"?
This sounds like an entitlement argument. The feats exist, so we need to give players a motivation to take them. Err, no, we don't. Either they take them, or they don't.
Ok, first you state that +1 is amazingly huge. Then you state that it's ok for level 1 to 4 to have it. Seems like a bit of a contradiction unless your position is that we should be throwing a lot of free big bones to the players.
I don't buy this argument at all. In our home game, our average encounter from level 1 to 18 was n+2. The players preferred fewer harder challenging encounters than more easier sleep through them encounters.
My daughter is currently DMing four first level PCs in The Slaying Stone and she isn't changing the encounter in any way, even though it is designed for five PCs (she's a brand new DM, so she's going by the adventure as written). Although the DMG indicates that a level N encounter for 5 PCs is approximately the same as a level N+1 for 4 PCs, this is totally misleading. 4 PCs do 80% of the average damage that 5 PCs do, so the encounter runs 25% longer and hence, the 5 PCs with 80% fewer hit points take 25% more damage than a 5 PC group would. That's a 50% increase in the amount of hit point damage each PC takes every single encounter (more rounds of damage spread over fewer PCs). And that means, if the party could handle 6 encounters in a day, now they are limited to 4 encounters per day. For example, if a normal encounter results in the average first level PC taking 20 hit points of damage, a 4 PC group will take 30 hit points on average. That's a lot more devastating than N+1. The reason is that if the XP stays exactly the same but there are 5 monsters instead of 4, the action economy shifts heavily into the NPC direction.
So far, we have waltzed through the encounters. Sure, the PCs have been whaled on a lot and a few even went unconscious a few times, but every encounter has been n+2 through n+4 (+1 for XP, +1 for 5 monsters instead of 4) instead of the recommended n through n+2 of the book (assuming that this is the general range of the encounters in the adventure) and the PCs have been able to handle them all (and first level is the most swingiest level due to the fact that first level PCs have the fewest number of additional options such as more encounter and daily spells and virtually no bonus daily items or consumable items).
Additionally, the players here on this board have access to ALL WotC material. The PCs here tend to be heavily optimized, so again, this goes counter to your position here. Heavily optimized PCs can more easily handle higher level encounters. There's no reason to optimize the PCs here even more.
This sounds like an argument with little evidence to back up the position that PCs here are hurting to hit and need a power boost. I don't buy that. PCs here are already extremely powerful and efficient.
twilsemail
First Post
I don't say this often, but I agree with KD.
If "Axe guy" is the sum of your character, take a feat to back it up. It's not really necessary to give out these freebies.
But KD, I've seen how you're rolling these days. You need every +1 you can get.
Walking Dad
First Post
light blade gives extra damage if you have CA. The new expertise feats are good enough that most will take them eventually, but you can say the same for unarmored agility/leather proficiency and monks, avengers and wizards.Gah! Super power creep? That's the equivalent of a level+3 magic cloth armor...that's crazy...now I see why WD wants them
I thought about it and maybe you are right. My character (bard who uses his weapon nearly only as implement) doesn't really benefit from the new feats and the 'sub-effects' are good enough many will take them any way.
My new no brainers for a staff wizard:
1 Unarmored agility
2 Improved Initiative
4 Enlarge Spell
6 Staff Expertise
8 Superior Implement
10 Toughness
Barring the even better racial feats, why take something else?
Walking Dad
First Post
That is the reason why Toughness is the last. II is for the big ally-unfriendly blast at the beginning of the combat
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