This is so less of an issue in 4th edition than it is in previous editions. In 4e you design encounters for the group. Even if one guy totally optimized, has a single attack stat build with a 18-20 (at level 1) and took expertise, and another person made a crappy character, the DM can concentrate on challenging the party and it'll work for everyone. 3.x definitely had some problems where one character could be so amazing and another so terrible that you couldn't challenge one withou killing the others. With the advent of roles and the inability for a party to function as a bunch of individuals who don't work together, 4e has pretty much solved this problem.
Everything is more homogeneous in 4e so far because we haven't had the power creep and broken combos that inevitably surface once 20 splat books are released. Don't be surprised if this changes. Bloodmage combos already had to be errata'd for instance. You're deceiving yourself that this isn't still a problem.
Problem? It's a +1! Let's take a typical rogue. We'll say 18 dex, using a dagger. That's +8 to hit at level 1. What does it matter if it's +9? What does it break? Let's compare that to a sub-optimal guy with 14 in his primary attack stat. With expertise and a +3 weapon, that's a +6 to hit at level 1. +7 if it's a dagger wielding rogue or a weapon talent fighter. People are more than happy with a +6 to hit at level 1 right now. This feat becomes available and suddenly it's bad? Or becomes worse because the rogue goes up to a +9 or +10?
If everyone gets better at combat, then combats have to get slightly more difficult to remain equally challenging. To deny this is absurd. The biggest problem here is this feat allows the suboptimal build to potentially drift further from the optimal build. Thereby severely detracting from the ability of encounters to be fun for all. You've erroneously blamed this on the DM repeatedly in this thread but combat is fluid and the sub optimal guy will sometimes have to deal with the more challenging creature. You seem to aspire to the DM should be able to handle this theory but that's a silver bullet fix which is the definition of bad design.
This idea of not being able to challenge an optimized character without overwhelming an unoptimized one is outmoded thinking.
no, your perception that it's easy to make an encounter that challenges everyone roughly equally is a pipe dream if the characters are too far apart in ability. We're playing a game here, by definition games have a risk of negative outcomes. DnD isn't about winning and losing per say (there's no competition in DnD so there's not necessarily a winner or loser just positive or negative endings) but dieing is sort of the negative outcome equivalent to losing. If there's no chance of a negative ending then DnD is no longer a game, it's a story being primarily told by the DM with color commentary added by the players. Since the DM has erased the possibility of a negative outcome then player actions don't really have a significant impact on the story. It always ends the same. If you don't believe in playing the "story" version of DnD and would rather have real risks involved in the "game" version, then we agree. If not then we're not talking about the same game and this argument is moot. In the "game" version, being sub optimal increases the risks of pc's being killed. Trading some level of optimization for flavor is fine but at some point the gap gets so wide that one pc is now a liability. Given that I want to play in a game with real risks of pc death you have to accept that in some encounters the optimized pc is going to roll badly (maybe be stunned for 3 rounds) and the sub optimal build is going to have to shoulder the threat that the DM might have designed to challenge the optimal build. When you're missing on a roll of 15 you might quickly realize how important being close to optimal is. This simply the facts. Your arguments are mostly subjective fluff with questionable mathematical support.
Unless you've got a DM who loves monsters with high defenses, I think you'll be wasting a feat at level 1. When I think of the various builds that interest me, they're all way, way too different for me to say that 80% of them will do X. I can give you lots of examples where I definitely won't be taking expertise at level 1. My assessment of expertise is that I can see myself taking it with most builds by level 15 or level 25. As I've said before, something I take more than half way through a characters advancement cycle is hardly the best thing ever.
There you go blaming the dm again. If everyone takes a feat by a certain level it may not be the best thing ever, but it's certainly broken. No feats should be mandatory in order to stay on par with peers. It's really that simple, feats should offer choices and diverging flavors and any feat that is so valuable that everyone must have it is a horrible game mechanism. Your inability to grasp the difference between broken mechanic and "best thing ever" is a little tiring. It's basically another straw man argument.
Or that if you don't, you're somehow playing the game wrong.
No you're simply being ineffective. This is actually fine if everyone in the party is equally ineffective your DM can easily tailor the encounter level to handle this. Max encounters at N+3 instead of N+4 and only use monsters up to 5 levels max above party level instead of 7 and the campaign will roll along without a hiccup (perhaps gaining levels a tad slower but hardly noticeable). It's the wide gap in efficiency that's problematic.
However, without taking a 16 vs. 20 and adding elements onto it to make the gap wider, the difference is +2. Combat advantage, cover, marking, etc ... +2 is a swing number that is acceptable in game.
situational +2 and every day +2 are not the same. Admittedly +2 is not going to destroy the fabric of the game, but this feat could turn a gap of +2 at level 1 into +5 at level 25 and that is broken.
I understand what relative means. I was pointing out that while there is the same gap between say a character with 25 and 50% hit chances vs. 50 and 75% hit chances, in the latter case both players will be contributing in combat, while in the first case, the person with only 1/4 hit chance is going to be a liability.
This is true to a certain extent but if the party is not challenged the game is not very fun. Adding monsters to the encounter to offset the optimized character and challenge the party can blow up in your face when the optimized character gets unlucky early. Contrary to grickherder's repeated assertions it's the dm's fault it's impossible to build encounters that handle all the possible situations when the pc's aren't relatively equivalent.
Not necessarily. The "bad" PC is the first person to get a level 6 item. However, the "good" PC will be the first one getting items like the level 10 item, the "best" of the +2 items. Each player trades off being the "best" item. The "bad" player is rewarded with items that directly improve his characters ability relative to the party, while the well built character gets the high level item that applies the same bonus, but has better secondary characteristics. Not to mention this is ONLY the weapon being talked about. It's possible the optimized attacker is in more need of having his defenses boosted ASAP.
kind of restrictive and sort of a silver bullet.
I'm not saying that this means it's less important if you hit or not, but that there are ways of challenging the group other than "make sure the best person in the party has a tough time hitting them, regardless of what the rest of the party looks like".
Agreed that this isn't the "always" but encounters built according to the dmg are based upon challenging characters built with a nearly optimal combat effectiveness. 18 or a 20 is personal choice and has opportunity costs that probably balance things (having slightly weaker defense for example if you have a 20 attack stat). having a 14 and a 20 is different. Having a 20 with this feat and a 14 without only exacerbates the problem.
Feats aren't really that scarce, but they are scarce enough for people to complain about feat taxes.
and a double feat tax on some classes/builds.
However, the existence of a character far ahead of the curve doesn't break the curve for everyone else.
It actually sort of does.
Preserving balance among characters to a certain extent is necessary so everyone feels useful in some manner. When you have someone far ahead of the curve, it can create a lot of frustration for the rest.
But that's probably not the biggest issue with this feat. It's simply *better* than most other feats. It's impossible to speak in absolutes, but in our 2 groups, almost everyone would take this feat. And that's pretty much feat tax. Seems like something all players should just have for free, if it's to be a part of the game. Let the more colorful feats be the defining parts of their characters.
Totally on target with both points.
If the guy to your right hits more than you, that doesn't mean you suck. D&D isn't about PvP, so it doesn't matter that another character has a big lead on your in to-hit bonsues as long as you are performing adequately against the monsters.
It does mean that you will sometimes be unable to pull your weight or the encounters will mostly be a "story" and not a game. You can't have it both ways, if the encounters are challenging from a game standpoint then being significantly less effective has a very real probability of eventually getting someone killed.
If anyone feels inadequate because someone else is hitting more often than them, but they're still doing just fine against the monsters, then the issue is likely with the player. Some people just aren't capable of enjoying themselves if someone else is doing better than them.
Another straw man. DnD is about combat to a large extent. Combat in DnD is tactical, but it also has a lot to do with math. You simply can't deny that in order for encounters to be challenging the math is a factor. If one character lags behind on math the other character will usually do more than his share and the laggard will do less. This is ok as long as everyone gets to do their relatively expected amount. As soon as something bad happens to the optimized guy, then the laggard is left in a situation where he must get lucky an perform above expectations or else the party is in trouble.
Another thing that DMs need to realize is that challenging players by using monsters that are hard to hit is a bad idea. It's boring. It' grindy. You're far better off having more, lower level monsters than few monsters of higher level with greater defenses. An excellent post about this:
you're using a buzzword to support your position but missing all the time is part of the "slowness" of grindspace so the non optimized character is actually significantly to blame for grindspace. You're trying to shift blame onto the dm and the optimized player but that's simply not correct.
I feel for those who play a lot of LFR. From what I hear, there are a lot of high defense, high level monsters in there. There's nothing worse than fighting soldiers of 4 levels higher than the party. Boring! In such a situation, definitley take expertise. The root problem is bad encounter design though.
soldiers are tough. Probably broken from an experience point perspective (all soldiers should be worth 15-25% more exp) take 4 200 exp soldiers vs 5 200 exp skirmishers/brutes for instance 4 ghouls vs 5 wights. Or try 4 ghouls vs 4 gnoll marauders(level 5 vs level 6) both are are 800 xp vs 1000 exp. All that aside you keep trying to blame DM's who use soldiers as bad. Shoulder the responsibility for your actions. Soldiers are part of the game. The average party is expected to handle soldiers of higher level than their own on occasion, by
YOU making the
CHOICE to be
SUB OPTIMAL you've hurt the game.
It's not bad encounter design on the DM side it's bad pc design on your side. The expectations are known when you build a pc, so you're basically ignoring the job requirements and then blaming the reality for you being unprepared. Like a fireman who decides cotton jammies are more comfortable to wear than his bunkers, it's a choice you can make but don't blame everyone else when you get burned.
I consider a properly designed encounter to be party level +2 for the xp budget and monsters that are all equal to or lower than the party level, with one or two maybe being a level or so higher (especially if they're controllers/leaders).
This is where you diverge from the developers and much of the community. You're also opting for homogeneous encounter difficulty, no climactic battles, and greatly lessened danger. The campaign I play in uses encounters in the N+2 to N+4 range for 80% of the encounters. The designers monster level selections mean we sometimes face a BBEG.
Compare that to a party level -2 encounter made up of monsters of higher than party level. Ugh. I certainly feel for those who have to take a feat to compensate for bad encounter design.
When does this happen? This is fallacious. For a level 3 party of 5 pc's a level 1 encounter (n-2) could have 2 level 6 monsters. This means the monsters are pretty much always flanked, and even a level 6 soldier(the worst case) is not out of reach even without flanking. A Sahuagin Raider has 20AC 19R, 16F, 15W.
other level 6 soldiers:
Troglodyte: AC 22; Fortitude 21, Reflex 18, Will 19
Warforged: AC 22; Fortitude 20, Reflex 17, Will 18
I'm really wondering how you see this combat with 5 level three pc's going badly for the pc's or becoming grindy. EVEN if the pc's use no encounter powers or dailies they would rip up two level 6 soldiers in 4-5 rounds tops. The only character who might struggle is the +5 to hit vs AC or +3 to hit vs NAD guy who put a 14 in his primary stat. the rest of the party is going to be hitting on a 12-14 dice roll even without CA.
Hardly grindspace, just more arguments based upon emotion rather than fact.
This is my issue too. My hybrid bow/scimitar ranger who was already a feat sink to be slightly below par in two roles now has to find 2 feats to keep up. TBH the Iron Armbands of Power, another boring item, knackered him already, as he cannot have these & Bracers of archery so falls behind the dedicated classes.
Once again, an example of how this feat makes playing more varied builds less viable not more viable.
Players are more likely to be frustrated at being unable to hit the monster as they are to be frustrated that someone else in the party is hitting more often than they are.
agreed
The defenders have AC that will often be "far ahead of the curve" of the rest of the party.
not particularly true.
More to the point though. If a player is playing a sub-optimal character because of concept/flavor reasons, they are probably going to be frustrated by being ineffective against monsters, but are unlikely to be frustrated that their suboptimal character is suboptimal compared to an optimized character. If they were actually that upset ... they'd likely be trying to do things to optimize their character and close the gap, etc ... in which case there wouldn't be a problem.
true, but this supports the problem with efficiency feats.
Eventually everyon takes it, but when they take it becomes the customization question. It may be a feat tax, but I know a lot of characters that were running out of feat options in the heroic tier before they got to paragon tier.
There are too many effective feats for this to be true. I can name 10+ that will help any character, so no one can possibly "run out" of choices that are valuable, they just run out of imagination to apply them.
Hard to argue that all of the following are pretty nice benefits though none of them is critical they all have a significant utility to any build.
improved init, toughness, defensive mobility, jack of all trades, linguist, multiclass, skill training(especially stealth, perception, athletics/acrobatics, healing), winter touched(at level ten assuming someone in the party is likely to grab lasting frost at 11 this feat gives you CA multiple times per combat), any +1 damage feat that applies to your build there's at least one for each build, any racial feat, they're all pretty good and every race has at least one really nice one. every class has a good feat or two as well.
Now maybe with the martial power/arcane power/PHBII/etc books there will be enough feats that the feat tax becomes a real sting ... but arguably a lot of people will take that feat at the point where they are running out of interesting feats.
This is a very bad argument. There are too many interesting feats already. Give me a build and i'll give you 6-7 great feats that significantly improve it.
It's the ceaseless mockery that irks me.
especially as it's used to deflect from the facts and make straw man arguments
Sorry, but it wasn't mockery. Some people really can't enjoy themselves if someone else is better than they are. They'll have to take expertise to "keep up" with everyone else. No different that getting a big screen tv you don't need to keep up with the Joneses. It's part of human nature.
keeping up with the joneses doesn't pertain to not failing to win an encounter and thereby get the party killed. You ceasely blame the results of your actions on others. If you fail to make a strong character and you die or get the party killed because you made that choice, you are the one to blame, not the dm.
Absolutely. But if you are contributing meaningfully but someone having a +1 to hit on you makes it feel like you're not anymore, what's really changed?
+1 to hit seems small but even one more hit at the right time can mean the difference between vicotry and death.
Now if I was playing LFR or with a DM that loved high defense monsters, I'd groan and accept expertise as treating the symptom while leaving the the root cause unaddressed. And I'd be happy that the expertise feat is coming to help address the problem. It's ability to compensate for bad encounter design is a feature, even if the real solution is to not design bad encounters.
Once again you're denying the problem is your perception that being suboptimal by a significant amount isn't a trade off that has consequences. I've never made a 20 stat pc so I'm not arguing for the very high end but I've never made a 15/16 stat pc either. Own your decisions. If you choose to be suboptimal accept that you are responsible for the result when faced with a high defense monster.
Now you're telling people how to enjoy the game. People get enjoyment from different things. Some focus on playing a role. Some focus on the enjoyment of winning (or surviving) against tough odds. Some like to tinker with the mechanics to make an efficient character. Some like to have their time in the spotlight. None of these things are 'wrong', as long as the group is having fun. D&D was built to accommodate all of those styles of play, which is why it has retained a broad appeal.
I get enjoyment from pretty much all of these to some degree.
Furthermore, wanting to contribute to a team effort IS a virtue. Saying that someone who feels like they didn't contribute is being petty or small is an insult.
bingo! every player should get his chances in the limelight.
We play games to have fun, and if the group's success doesn't hinge on anything your character does, then you're just along for the ride. For many people, that's not fun - and the point of playing a game is to have fun. Who are you to judge people for that?
What many people in this thread are saying is that Weapon Experience and Implement Experience are so much better than other feats, that it affects the balance of the game. Unless everyone takes the feats, those who don't take them can't contribute as much as their companions, which can make things less fun for those people. If everyone does take the feats, the characters that require both (because they use both weapons and implements) are unfairly taxed by needing a second feat. And even then, those with non-weapon, non-implement powers like Dragon Breath or Earthshock have no way to bring those powers on par with the powers other people are using. There are entire prestige classes built around such powers...should characters built with those classes be behind the curve for no good reason?
great points. Does prestige mean paragon in this example?
If you will hit with your encounters and dailies then you will don't need at-wills so much.
First this is subjective on the "if". If you miss with the dailies and encounters you need the at wills even more.
So when it comes time to make you char and you just need to take so many feats to don't be weak at combat there is not much room for flavor feats and now its one more taken:/
This is really the biggest point beyond the possibility of power gap exacerbation.
Umm. No. If that's the conclusion you're coming to, you're either misreading me or I'm not being clear.
it's the conclusion that alot of people are coming to...
Only if they DM does it wrong.
Not true. There's an expectation of being challenged in encounters. As one character gets more effective so does theoverall party and thus the challenges must be more difficult in order to equally challenge the party. Challenging the party is the DM doing it right, not wrong. Failing to rise to the challenge is you doing it wrong.
A single +1 is not a big deal in most instances but it does change the projected outcome of battles by a small amount. +2 slightly more. +3 quite a bit. Over the course of a campaign these start to become significant when applied to the law of large numbers. You will have combats where the creature who you fail to put down because of missing by 1 or 2 puts you down or puts another pc down or both. This can be the difference between success and TPK. Do you agree that mathematically making sub optimal characters increases the parties chance of losing a character?
While I am generally a fan of 4e and believe that it meets it's design goals, I would say that it fails to accomplish this. Others might disagree, but I find that monsters of 7 levels higher cause many problems.
I agree monsters 7 levels higher are extremely challenging (usually about 30% hard to hit and hitting an excessive number of times) On the other hand they're usually in encounters with few creatures giving the party more options and attacks. It also depends on role. A brute is not such a big deal. Ogre savages are frightening at first level but hardly insurmountable. Ogre skirmishers are more problematic as the defenses are higher. Switch to a soldier and the encounter might be too much. I have a problem with soldiers exp values to begin with so I would agree that a L+7 soldier should rarely if ever appear in an encounter.
Challenging players by choosing monsters that are harder to hit is a lazy and boring way for a DM to operate. Thank God there's an expertise feat available for those poor souls trapped in grindspace. While it does't address the root problem, it does provide some relief.
You're still making excuses and denying the fact that grindspace is created by sub optimal pc's. DnD is made to be a variety of encounters with various challenges, sometimes the terrain, sometimes the spells or special attacks of a creature, sometimes the number of defenders, sometimes the stealth of attackers and sometimes the toughness/defenses of the bad guys. You're repeatedly trying to support your argument that saying "dm's who use xyz encounter are bad" when in fact xyz is an expected encounter type by design. There are guys on another forum who argue that their elven party can never be surprised or never forced to fight at close quarters. They don't go under ground and any DM that ambushed them in an ally with groups of bad guys at both ends are out to get them. They try to defend their sub optimal build(they think it's the best build ever) of all strikers and controllers by saying any dm that forces them to fight in an unfavorable encounter is cheating/diabolical/out to get them. You're making an analogous argument here. The encounters that hurt your pc are unfair even though they're part of the game. You jump on a buzzword bandwagon and see this as supporting your argument but it really just points to the flaws in your perception.
Encounters that don't seem to have a significant chance of pc's dieing are not the opposite of what I consider grindy. You can create incredibly lethal encounters using only monsters +/- 1 level of the PCs. The encounters I disparage as being grindy are the ones where hitting the monsters is hard, there's lots of rounds of nothing happening, often involve a low number of high power monsters and accentuate the whiff factor of 4e.
Please support this with an example. It's simply not true in most cases. You call it grindy and blame the DM for your choices but really it's your fault not his.
Yes it does. Yes it can. (that was useful)
typical. lets talk about "useful" shall we. Your arguments are full of unsupported arguments and hyperbole. This is an example where you toss out an untruth like it's fact and don't support it because you can't. I simply said no it's not because YOU offered NO SUBSTANCE. The scientific method requires the person making the assertion to supply support. That's how an intellectual discussion works. You make an assertion and supply proof in some fashion for others to mull over and agree or disagree. Those that disagree offer support for why something doesn't work and the process continues. Once again you are at fault and now shifting blame away from yourself and now trying to blame me because you offered no support for me to refute. You'll find forums like this full of arguers who offer no proof or bad proof just lots of fluff, emotional hyperbole and straw man arguments. You're the former in this case. It's commonly referred to as being intellectual dishonest.
So I'll back track and elaborate since you were too lazy to support your argument in either the original supposition or the rebuttal to my objection.
No it doesn't make any classes more viable. The tax clearly hurts builds that are at the high end of feat requirements, thereby making them even weaker as they might not have the feat slot available to complete their build vision and take this feat.
No it can't compensate for bad DM encounter design because the expectation will be that you have it. If the design is truly flawed then having it won't save you but if it's YOUR fault the design only seems flawed because you're role playing your firefighter in cotton jammies then maybe you should cowboy up and admit it.
Behind whom? Just a hint, you're not fighting the other PCs, you're fighting together against the monsters.
Behind the anticipated power level the game was designed to be balanced for. If you're not doing the average expected "work" (be it healing, controlling, damaging, tying up that makes up your classes primary work) then YOU are dragging the party down regardless of your willingness to see the forest for the trees.
Just a hint, I don't really need your hints, perhaps you should take up your arguments about monsters being too tough and DM's being lazy with WotC so they can add that chapter to a future DMG2. I've got a pretty solid handle on the game mechanics both in operation and from an analysis standpoint. It's fine if you want to deny the reality of the game design but please feel free to skip presenting unsupported garbage as condescending gospel. You're pontificating but not engaging in a meaningful discussion because you fail to support anything you say with meaningful analysis.
