Proposal: Alter Expertise Related House Rule

[weldon]

I must respectfully disagree, the DM's have enough going on to worry about this.

Good point. There's also some discussion about how the wiki and character sheets are intimidating to new players. It might be a valid preference to keep character creation as close to RAW as possible.

Did I understand correctly that this math problem only comes into play at level 5? And then increases again at levels 10 and 15? (I assume that these levels are where monsters/NPCs gain extra AC compared to PC's to hit abilities).

 

[covaithe]

I find myself strongly suspecting that the "math problem" in place here has less to do with bad scaling and more to do with WotC's predilection for balancing things to take into account PCs who are, shall we say, not well optimized. They want it to be possible to waste half your feats, pick bad race/class combinations, powers with more bark than bite, and still have a reasonable chance of success.

At least, that's the only conclusion I can draw from the vast majority of published adventures I've read. Which are almost all laughably easy. I thought 4e was supposed to be closer to old school gaming, where you don't show up to gaming night without half a dozen characters drawn up, 'cause you're likely to go through that many. What happened to the good old killer dungeons? You kids get off my lawn!

Uh, I may have gotten distracted there.

 

[Velmont]

lol... that's true. My rate of death character have lowered with each edition. But I still have lost one or two charcaters under 4th edition rules, and the rate of death in L4W seems close to LEW... now, is it just the players dumber or the DM meaner, that's another thing

 

[renau1g]

I'm with you Cov, the difficulty level of published adventures is terribly easy. I played through Spellgard Tower (or whatever it's called) in FR with my group in RL. The first adventure we didn't have a leader, so it was a bit challenging without decent access to healing powers. After we got a new player (pacifist healer) I don't think my PC was ever really worried about dying after that. Once I think I got to single digits, but even then it wasn't terribly worried.

Also, those of us here tend to be more serious gamers (after all we spend hours just making the PC with the wiki ) so choosing a gnome warden with a linguist feat isn't likely to come into play.

Maybe the new Tomb of Horrors can bring back some deadliness, although I'm about 100% certain it will have it's fangs removed as 4e isn't about insta-deaths.

 

[Velmont]

I think also players want to make too much extended rest (well, no one want to die, so they are not really to blame) and master allow it too much (I must confess I might be part of that group). I have seen players wasting resources and then taking a rest after two encounters. Sure, if you spend half you daily in an encounter lvl-1, it will be easy.

 

[Kalidrev]

The more I think about it, the more I'm liking elec's almost-proposal. I think I really like the idea of an expanding list of feats that can be selected from at 5th level. 1 free feat would correct the math problem, not take away the flavor that some of us would like to keep around, and keep everything as close to RAW as possible.

Elec: If you would make this into an official proposal, you would garner a favorable vote from this judge, at the least

 

[renau1g]

Should we wait until we read the rules in PHB3 first? I won't vote until I can read Versatile Expertise to ensure it works for those weaponment users.

We ain't all lucky to have a FLGS with access to it...

 

[elecgraystone]

Elec: If you would make this into an official proposal, you would garner a favorable vote from this judge, at the least

I would be more than happy to but I agree with renau1g. Nothing is going to get resolved until PHB3 comes out and people get a look at the new feats and not everyone was lucky enough to get an early copy.

What I'll do is post that proposal on the 16th, the 'official' PHB3 date.

 

[Kalidrev]

*resists the urge to PM all his favorite peoples with everything that is contained within the PHB3, just to move proposals along* =P

 

[elecgraystone]

LOL I understand wanting to press on Kalidrev. I got to skim through a copy myself and I'm pretty sure on the points relevant to this issue. However, I don't have a copy myself and until I do I can't look up something or point out where other can find the info. I also can't ask people to vote on something sight unseen.

It's just a week wait at most, so it's not THAT long a wait.