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

[blargney the second]

The net effect of increasing attack bonuses is that combats will tend to resolve quicker. If you're okay with fights ending faster, then have at it. If you're currently satisfied with encounter pacing, then it might not be the best fit.

Given the house rules you have in place, personally I'd allow Master at Arms to stack only if it was a flat +1 to hit. You've already accounted for the supposed math bug with the increasing penalty to monster defenses.
-blarg

 

[Piratecat]

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.

Absolutely correct. As Blarg notes, I'm thinking of Master at Arms as only giving +1, while it actually scales to +2 and +3. I need to think out of the "heroic" box.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, and all of this is why I have a 'no house rules' philosophy. The game works. It ain't worth the hair pulling to resolve stuff like this, and even the most innocuous HR often leads to these debates. 3+ years in and only ever had ONE actual "I don't think it does/should work this way."

And my favorite solution to faster battles is just have plenty of ways for the PCs to pull something on them. Rather than weaken the monsters, put something really cool into the fight they can use to move things along (the 20' diameter psychically controlled ball of rock rolling around the room was priceless...).

 

[KarinsDad]

Eh, and all of this is why I have a 'no house rules' philosophy. The game works. It ain't worth the hair pulling to resolve stuff like this, and even the most innocuous HR often leads to these debates. 3+ years in and only ever had ONE actual "I don't think it does/should work this way."

Agreed. After years of house rules, our group is mostly down to campaign flavor ones like "no evil PCs" and "no monstrous PC races" (with a definition of what monstrous means).

And my favorite solution to faster battles is just have plenty of ways for the PCs to pull something on them. Rather than weaken the monsters, put something really cool into the fight they can use to move things along (the 20' diameter psychically controlled ball of rock rolling around the room was priceless...).

To me, faster battles are not necessary.

What is necessary is faster individual turns so that everyone gets to act in a reasonable time frame. Essentials does this nicely with aura marking.

But, a 4 round encounter or a 14 round encounter, no difference. Both are enjoyable as long as the players are having fun.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Agreed. After years of house rules, our group is mostly down to campaign flavor ones like "no evil PCs" and "no monstrous PC races" (with a definition of what monstrous means).

Yeah, those are fine. At least they don't ever cause 'problems' later on. Really more the kind of customization that is good to use to make things more interesting. Heck, the players can put those limits on themselves.

To me, faster battles are not necessary.

What is necessary is faster individual turns so that everyone gets to act in a reasonable time frame. Essentials does this nicely with aura marking.

But, a 4 round encounter or a 14 round encounter, no difference. Both are enjoyable as long as the players are having fun.

Ah. Well, I agree mostly, yes. I think personally I'd rather have a couple shorter encounters with some different mix of elements vs one long one, usually. OTOH variety is the spice of life.

I have a sort of love/regret relationship with Essentials. It does do what it says on the tin, which is nice. OTOH I like all fiddly bits in some ways, lol. I'd just like them to be more 'fiddly during character creation' vs 'fiddly in the middle of a fight'. You're totally right, 20 minute turns makes the best battle a snore. 5 minute turns is still pretty slow and at high levels with old-style characters that seems almost inevitable.

 

[WalterKovacs]

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...

The 'technical' part was, 15 from half level, 6 from magic items, 4 from stat boosts (assuming all 6, plus the 2 automatic all stats, are added to the attack stat) only adds up to 25 over the course of the game, while monsters do scale a +1 per level. So, you fall behind as you level.

And yes, leaders hand out some bonuses based on stats that get bigger, but many of those to hit bumps have been errata'd (especially in at-wills), and require hitting, which gives a bit of a chicken/egg thing.

Also, by level 11, you have the most encounters you'll ever have (not counting utilities or feats and the like). Other than your paragon path and epic destiny, you are simply trading one power for another. You get more utilities, but for 2/3rds of your career you have 4 encounter attacks. They will improve over time, but they won't increase beyond that.

 

[KarinsDad]

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:

Too bad that the 'smartass' didn't work at WotC before the game was released.

Course, the fact that monsters and their defenses go up to level 36, 6 levels higher than the max PC level, was also not taken into account. This was only level 33 in the original MM, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that Orcus wasn't going to be the toughest monster possible and that they were going to go beyond that.

PCs, +26 over 29 additional levels. Monsters, +35 (+37 for soldiers) over 35 additional levels.

The actual potential loss is more than the 3 regained via Expertise since it is likely that most 30th level battles will not be against 30th level foes. And even at that level, the DM has to protect against grind, regardless of the level of the foe.

Not having the +3 of Expertise and other recently added bonuses (feats, powers, or class abilities) means that the game falls apart when NPC ACs are 52 and PC attacks are straight up +33.

So was the guy who figured this out a smartass, or just smart?

The 'technical' part was, 15 from half level, 6 from magic items, 4 from stat boosts (assuming all 6, plus the 2 automatic all stats, are added to the attack stat) only adds up to 25 over the course of the game, while monsters do scale a +1 per level. So, you fall behind as you level.

You forgot the +2 ability score bonus for 21st level. The most a player can increase an ability score is 10, or +5 by level 28.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@KD, this is not a good argument. The enemy mix at level 1 is the same as the enemy mix at level 30, relatively. If on the average you're fighting enemies with an AC of say 17 at level 1, then it will be 47 at level 30. Sure, there will be one now and then that is higher at either level, and some that will be lower. You're basically fighting enemies from 0 to 5 levels above your own. If you could hit those enemies at level 1 then you'll be relatively -4 vs them at level 30 without expertise, or -1 vs them with expertise.

There's also the now rather common +2 ability score bonus for many EDs. Thus a character taking an expertise feat and any of those EDs has no loss of accuracy at all. In any case why was it necessary to have this expertise bonus when PCs were easily curb stomping every epic monster out there? Sure, it wasn't because the PCs were TOO accurate, but being MORE accurate was needed? Nonsense.

 

[KarinsDad]

@KD, this is not a good argument. The enemy mix at level 1 is the same as the enemy mix at level 30, relatively. If on the average you're fighting enemies with an AC of say 17 at level 1, then it will be 47 at level 30. Sure, there will be one now and then that is higher at either level, and some that will be lower. You're basically fighting enemies from 0 to 5 levels above your own. If you could hit those enemies at level 1 then you'll be relatively -4 vs them at level 30 without expertise, or -1 vs them with expertise.

There's also the now rather common +2 ability score bonus for many EDs. Thus a character taking an expertise feat and any of those EDs has no loss of accuracy at all. In any case why was it necessary to have this expertise bonus when PCs were easily curb stomping every epic monster out there? Sure, it wasn't because the PCs were TOO accurate, but being MORE accurate was needed? Nonsense.

Yes, I mentioned the +2 for ED (but I stated that it was 21st level which wasn't quite accurate).


There's some major differences though between level 1 and level 30:

1) How many times do you face off against a level 4 through 6 foe at level 1?

2) How many times do you face off against a level 4 through 6 foe at level 1 along with an entourage of NPC allies? I don't know of any DM that just throws Tiamat at the group. It's usually Tiamat plus a few extra dragon helpers and a bunch of traps, etc.

3) How about terrain features? At level 1, it's a minor nuisance to encounter a wall or a square of difficult terrain. At level 30, the PCs have to be able to get across a 5 square ravine, even the PCs that have lousy Athletics skill.

4) And monster abilities are so much tougher. Ranged attack monsters flying 40 feet in the air that the defender and leader cannot touch. The DM should run low to mid 30 level monsters with 22 Int as brilliant tacticians. The best he can think of.

5) At level one, most of the monsters are Standard monsters. At level 30, most of the monsters are Elites or Solos.


Sure, if you set up your level 30 encounters like your level 1 encounters, than the PCs will mop up. But by level 30, the encounters should be EPIC in scope. Challenging. Unexpected. With magical effects and traps and allies.

Not, we enter a room and fight the bad guys.

The PCs have a greater number of options and stronger options at level 30. So should the bad guys.


But my personal opinion is that there are a few reasons why players can start to mop up at Epic levels, even without Expertise:

1) The PCs have a lot more options than any given NPC.

2) After playing their PCs for 20+ levels, the players are a lot more familiar with the abilities of their PCs and how they synergize with the other PCs than the DM is familiar with the NPCs that he is using for the very first time.

3) Many DMs do not take out the time to analyze their Epic level NPCs in order to create a challenging encounter. They might throw in some interesting terrain, but a good challenging Epic NPC encounter is not easy to design like a first level encounter. The DM has to look at the synergies of the NPCs and actually take out time to design the encounter. Just throwing a bunch of Epic monsters together doesn't work like it works at level one. Players will pick up on the montser weaknesses and rip them apart if a DM does that. He has to design the encounter to minimize their weaknesses and emphasize the synergies of their strengths.

The reason he has to do this is precisely because of #1 above. The PCs have so many options that they are not using too many At Will powers (except for some Essentials PCs) until the middle of the encounter.


But, I think that you are mistaken. Anecdotal evidence from people who have run the encounters isn't the only thing that one should look at.

If a first level Cleric has +4 to hit the 17 Will (40%) of a 4th level monster and without Expertise, the 30th level Cleric has a +30 to hit the 47 Will (25%) of a 34th level monster, many of those attacks will miss. Sure, every Cleric could be a Divine Oracle, but that's boring.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, this is a debate that has been had over and over all across the Internet, so I am not going to bother to get into it again. The fact is that even without expertise feats PCs are heavily favored to win encounters at 30th level. MUCH more so than at 1st level. Yes, of course DMs can make tougher encounters, we know this. The point is that PCs are capable of defeating 'X', toss on expertise and they can now defeat 'Y' which is stronger than 'X'. So what?

The thing is that the level 30 cleric will have nothing like a 25% chance to hit even without expertise. The actual difference is more along the lines of missing on a 2 vs missing on a 5. I'm not real worried about that. Obviously if you're jacking everything up to a level where the to-hit chances are as low as you're seeing then either you want expertise in the equation or you want to cut the level back a bit, either one will work fine. Truthfully even with low to-hit chances things will work out for the party the majority of the time anyway, but yeah it COULD be boring. There are just so many factors involved and so many of them revolve around exactly what capstone monsters you use and how you employ them and what other feats etc the party has, how tactical the players are etc that generalization at level 30 is not very useful.