My Personal Solution to the Expertise Circus

[Xyrlove Woodsoul]

I know there are other threads dedicated to it, but I dont have the time to look.

But my house rule is, no expertise feats, and a +1 bonus to attack at levels 5/15/25. This solves 5 of my problems by the RAW and how they are solved.

1. I think there is a math issue and it solves the problem.
2. Before the erratta, I thought the expertise feats were overpowered, or a must have. It solved that problem and allowed for more feat versatility.

-or-
3. Given the erratta having the feat descriptor in the Expertise feats now, it solves the problem of the erratta making many other feats useless.

4. There are now more a selection of feats to choose from overall, without "must haves." (or not as "must have")

Now I know, not everyone optimizes, but it's really easy to make a useless character in dnd in my opinion unless you try to optimize. I kind of frown upon optimizing in all other games but dnd.

My favorite part of the fix is that it opens up more feats to players. The math problem is only teritiary with me. Feat selection is now a lot more fun.

The new errata given Expertise feats feat descriptors made the selection even more narrow. So now I'm twice as happy with my decision.

Unless I'm missing something, afterall, I am Rastafarian.

 

[eriktheguy]

Yes, this is how we do it.
Another variant is to give -1 to the monster defenses at 5/15/25 because:
-solves math issue with level 5 monsters against level 4 players, etc
-cannot add +1 in character builder easily
-only one person (DM) has to worry about change

 

[BobTheNob]

This is the most common fix, everyone does it.

My fix was a little different
1. everyone get a +1 at paragon and epic (i.e. +1 at 11 and 21) to to-hit, ac and all nads
2. All feats that offer a scaling +anything from above bonus is brought back to a flat +1. So expertise feat is still available, but its a flat +1 feat bonus. Same thing for instance Improved Armor of faith and Draconic Caster (though with draconic caster, this only applies to toHit portion of feat, not the damage which still scales)

From the above 2 points, with a feat you can get the +3 at epic, and without a feat you get a +2. I didnt think there was no place for expertise, I just didnt think it needed to scale up, making it virtually compulsory.

3. Cancelled Masterwork armors. Heavy armor gets an automatic bonus built into the feat to give a +1 AC @ 8,14,21,28. Masterwork armors that offered something other than just an AC bonus have be "re-interpretted" as enchantment types.
4. Didnt really counter-compensate NADS as I generally find they get very challenged keeping up in the later stages anyway and they just needed a boost. All except the "Epic" nads bonus feats (+4 uptyped...pfft)

The object of this was that you could remain feasible without being forced to spend feats, but you still had the option of boosting by spending feats. It works by saying that the scaling is given to the players for free, so we dont need to put it into feats, and we certainly dont end up with situations where players can have multiple scaling feats that stack.

 

[Xyrlove Woodsoul]

ha That's too much for we Rastafarians to remember.

I could see how your above solution would work. In my group, everyone would still take them though. So I just "Occum Razor" it. And everyone at my table seems to miss at 5th level + anyway. And I want to get into some of these other feats. I dread houserules, but I'm happy with this one.

Why do you nerf Improved Armor of Faith? I thought the Avenger got nerfed already? My Avenger in my solo-delving thing-a-ma-bob, he gets toasted when attacked as it is, and he's even optimized (as much as my brain allows for, that is).

Thanks for the tip on the Masterwork Armors. Its seems that all games overdo it on the masterwork armors.

 

[eriktheguy]

Yeah, some of the DMs here (myself included) are way more finicky than you. Expertise is the worst example of where a houserule is needed. If you just cover that, you should be alright. Simple rules and more time playing.
I come up with dozens of houserules that are great (IMO) in concept but just not worth the time to implement.