Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6262584" data-attributes="member: 1165">Expertise was a math feat fix. It should have been errata'd into the game.Expertise is not necessary but it's pretty vital. Depending on your character, you might already have a good attack bonus through other means (a thief always getting combat advantage, or a weaponmaster with their weapon talent using a sword with a +3 proficiency bonus). On the other hand, if you're playing a halfling runepriest, you might want to use a dagger rather than a hammer (which the PC doing that ended up doing) and still took expertise. (Missing doesn't just mean losing out on damage, but also on hit abilities.)The cantrips are part of a game playstyle evolution "war". In OD&D when a wizard wasn't using their spells they were using darts, daggers, etc. Given the few spells per day (often as low as 1) you had almost no choice in the matter. In 4e, by contrast, a wizard gets at-will magic. These spells are always (in the PH1 at least) things that deal damage and usually have a control effect (relevant as the wizard is usually a controller). Even the ones that don't deal damage directly are often doing things that force enemies to attack each other. While crossbows weren't available to 4 wizards without a feat, you could do it by spending a feat. That might be useful if you were facing someone with low AC (artillery or brute) but decent NADs (eg something higher level); however typically wizards didn't have great Dexterity anymore, reducing your attack bonus. (You could spend a feat to use another stat, but spending two feats on an already suboptimal combo is not the greatest idea.)In D&DN, you could use a crossbow or Ray of Frost, or even both if you choose. Unfortunately (something I've seen mainly in 3e and Pathfinder) the choices include the choice to make bad choices. You could choose to not use a weapon and not have any cantrips that deal damage, which means once your Vancian pool is tapped, there will be opponents you cannot deal with (with your magic, that is).DM authority has eroded to some extent. If a person shows up in a game with a bard/monk combo for a 3e or Pathfinder game, I suspect most DMs would not be happy about it, nor the other players, but beyond a brief talk nothing would be done about it. Same thing if a player shows up with a ridiculously overpowered or broken combo. In my own experience, these issues were only directly fixed if the DM got angry, more often in overpowered and broken combo cases.D&D Next is also not that simple; a DM might give a wizard character sheet a once over and not notice they're basically useless. So now you've got DMs worried that reasonable encounters might steamroll the PCs because someone decided to build a cool but useless wizard PC (or that their monsters won't be able to hit rogues, and other such issues).</blockquote>

Verification