Opinions wanted: is 'Master at Arms' an expertise feat?

[Mithreinmaethor]

Why are we reducing monsters defenses again?

 

[Dice4Hire]

To make up for the slight math advantage monsters get by tier, the imbalance the expertise feat were invented to plug

That is if you think it needs plugged, or even exists.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Some smartass realized that monster defenses would pull just slightly ahead of PC attacks in paragon and epic. Never mind that leaders hand out plentiful attack bonuses that scale as their secondary stats go up, or that high-level PCs have more encounter powers to throw at monsters, or that there are various sources of re-rolls. :shrug:

My personal theory is that the 'hole' expertise feats plugged was left by the cutting of +2/4/6 stat-boosting items at some point in development...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Bonuses no longer scale that much. Many are fixed now. And still this reduction of defense is a mistake in my opinion.

Using slightly lowere level monsters and adding more minions or an extra monster to fill the xp gap seems to do the trick better.

-> lower hp per monster -> less grind
-> lower to hit vs players if you don´t count more chances for combat advantage with more monsters on board.

also -1/-2/-3 per tier is a bad idead, as monster defense is low enough on low levels already. If you really want to "balance" it, use

-1 for paragon, -2 for epic

and all expertise feats give a fixed +1 bonus in addition to that. So it becomes an option, but no "must" at paragon or epic.

 

[Jhaelen]

Why are we reducing monsters defenses again?

Actually, WE don't

 

[Dausuul]

Remember, you're already getting it for free with every weapon! The vanilla version, at least. I reduce monster defenses by +1 per tier, and no feat is required. I also give an additional +1 for describing attacks, but that's just gravy to encourage cool descriptions.

Thanks for the quick feedback, everyone. I agree, it's an expertise feat. And Blood Jester is a spectacular player who really does have awful luck with dice. I once watched him fail something like 6 saves in a row against a stun effect. Yikes.

Have you ever tried "reverse dice?" It's something I did once after watching my group's "bad luck player" roll an especially impressive series of botches. Basically, the player can declare any given roll (before rolling it!) to be "reversed," and instead of taking the roll as-is, subtract it from 21. So a 20 is a 1, and a 1 is a 20. It seemed to work for him.

Part of me says this is taking dice superstition to an unreasonable level. But heck, even if the only real benefit is to give the player an illusory sense of control, how is that different from the rest of the game*?

[size=-2]*This is not meant to imply that Piratecat runs an insufficiently sandboxy campaign; it's more a tongue-in-cheek comment on the nature of D&D itself.[/size]

 

[Piratecat]

Why are we reducing monsters defenses again?

Many of my players felt that the original expertise feats were a no-brainer, but I was annoyed that they (a) were boring and (b) applied only to one weapon. I try to encourage "do something cool" and p. 42-related improvised attacks in my game. My solution was effectively giving everyone the expertise feat for free.. and it was much, much simpler for me to just reduce all monsters' defenses by 1 per tier than it was to have the players change their character sheets.

I've not convinced that there's a big hole here for the feat to plug. I prefer my combats short and deadly, though, and it's fun for players when they hit. As a result I boost most monsters' damage, reduce many monsters hit points, and use the aforementioned house rules to slightly boost PC accuracy. I'm happy with the results, and I love what people describe to get the "cinematic" bonus.

 

[KarinsDad]

In this case I've decided on a nifty compromise. If anyone really wants an expertise feat, they can take it and no longer gain that "cinematic" bonus I mentioned earlier. It's sort of a feat tax, but they don't have the minor stress of describing every attack and they always get the cool extra feature that comes with the new expertise feats.

You might find this to be a mistake at Paragon and Epic levels when the PCs rarely miss.

-2 to defenses and +2 to hit is an overall edge of +4. +6 for Epic.

 

[KarinsDad]

To be honest, Expertise feats are not, despite what people claim, necessary to attain 50/50 attack rates... you start off, and stay, ahead of the curve.

Well, yes and no. The curve used to be 60/40 at heroic and 40/60 at epic. But with so many ways to boost to hit anymore (some class specific), it's can easily be as good as 70/30 (or a bit better in some cases) at heroic and 65/35 at epic.

So yes, without them, one can still get to 50/50 at epic, but with so many people used to hitting at much better than 50/50 anymore, 50/50 is like driving your Dad's old truck. People want to drive a sports car instead.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

Would you allow feats like Draconic Spellcaster and Gnome Phantasmist?