So, about Expertise...

[KarinsDad]

The designers have basically admitted that there's a gap in their math. The players have known this for a while, you're free to ban anything you like in your game but suggesting the problem isn't real is plainly false.

Prove it. Which designer might that be?

I posted the monsters. I posted the fact that 16 stat starting PCs have a 45% chance against same level monsters without synergies. I posted several different ways PCs can gain synergy and improve their odds.

You posted rhetoric.

You are arguing to argue here. The math is solid, straight out of the PHB and Monster Manual.

Yours is a "player entitlement" argument. If a PC has a 60% chance to hit at first level, they should have the same chance at 30th level.

Nonsense. A 30th PC has many magical items and powers and feats that he did not have at 1st level. The synergy of multiple 30th level PCs is much greater than multiple 1st level PCs. It's a slightly different game with extremely different tactics at level 30 because of the additional plethora of options.


If the 30th level Orb Wizard gets lucky, he locks down the Solo monster for a significant portion of the rest of the encounter. The math states that he SHOULD hit less often because his control effects are so much more powerful.

The designers would be total morons to give the same 60% chance to hit at 30th level that they gave at 1st level. Just because one designer added a bad feat to PHB II does not mean that all of the designers are that stupid.

 

[Goumindong]

Prove it. Which designer might that be?

The ones that OK'ed the expertise feats. There is no other reason to O.K. these feats. If they're not meant to be stealth errata then they're blatantly overpowered. If 45% is supposed to be your base hit rate at Epic then a single feat giving you a 60% hit rate is overpowered. Its that simple.

I posted the monsters. I posted the fact that 16 stat starting PCs have a 45% chance against same level monsters without synergies. I posted several different ways PCs can gain synergy and improve their odds.

Same level monsters at a single level are not a representative sample of the base. The average hit chance changes from what is is in heroic to paragon to epic tier. This was the math he was explaining.

As well: Synergies typically require you to hit first, or are a limited resource. When you run out you run into a lot of problems. Enemies at higher levels have higher amounts of hit points and can absorb more punishment than they can relatively at low levels. An enemy might die in 3-4 average hits at low levels but there is no way that will happen in Epic.

Yours is a "player entitlement" argument. If a PC has a 60% chance to hit at first level, they should have the same chance at 30th level.

No, its not. Its a "The game will behave better in this manner" issue.

Nonsense. A 30th PC has many magical items and powers and feats that he did not have at 1st level. The synergy of multiple 30th level PCs is much greater than multiple 1st level PCs. It's a slightly different game with extremely different tactics at level 30 because of the additional plethora of options.

It is, for about half of the encounter, then you're stuck drudging through hit points. There are some ways around this but it requires a lot of ability management from players both in the character creation phase and the daily power use phase. Basically you need everyone to build characters around damage enhancing stances and to use one stance per encounter to keep DPR up.

Ideally, these damage enhancing powers would not be so much better than the burst damage powers, but due to the longevity needed to succeed in epic and paragon play the other powers simply do not compare.

If the 30th level Orb Wizard gets lucky, he locks down the Solo monster for a significant portion of the rest of the encounter. The math states that he SHOULD hit less often because his control effects are so much more powerful.

No, it doesn't. Wizards trade damage for control with the majority of their powers being d6 and low die count. They suffer no penalty to hit compared to their arcane equivalents. (unless you coun't prime shot on the warlock).

edit2: Also, since wand wizards exist and can get significant bonuses to hit to change one miss to a hit per encounter, it could just as well be said that they are designed to hit more often than others(if you're apologizing for orb specifically then we can whip out second implement since the orb ability is not dependent on hitting with the orb)

The designers would be total morons to give the same 60% chance to hit at 30th level that they gave at 1st level. Just because one designer added a bad feat to PHB II does not mean that all of the designers are that stupid.

You're now making the same argument you railed against earlier. You make an argument to a point then claim that the designers must also know this fact. And because of that, you reach a conclusion about the design intent.

This is a fair argument, so long as the "fact" is indeed a fact. E.G. "Gravity pulls things towards the earth, the designers of cannonballs know this and so the claim that cannon balls were designed to fly is spurious" Is a valid argument. But "Car's can fly and so the designers of cars clearly intended you to drive them off cliffs" is not since cars can't fly.

In the end, it all comes down to how well you can prove your point against how well he can prove his.

Edit: In the same breath you're saying that "expertise is not a problem" and saying that "the designers must be idiots if they gave people the same to hit at level 1 as they did at level 30" ignoring the fact that expertise does just that at the cost of a single feat

Having played some higher level games(as both a DM and a player) i've found both that "well specialized groups do not need much coaxing to beat high level encounters", but i have also found that "it takes a long time to beat encounters and a majority of that time is time where the encounter has already been 'won', but you're just grinding through enemy hit points."

Granted, the real test will be how it plays out when my current group(level 8, just finished Den of the Destroyer on the SoW path) gets up to paragon and Epic tiers, but i don't think it will play much differently.

 

[Elric]

Swordmaster DPR: 21st - 168.35 - Burst: Infinite - Wizards Community

Whether a build has an expected damage value of infinity isn't actually particularly relevant. The idea is that if one attack by you on average leads to >=1 additional attack, which has the same properties of generating additional attacks as the original attack, then your expected damage is infinite.

This is quite different from a build that always does an infinite amount of damage. This is quite similar to the St. Petersburg paradox. The probability of doing 3000+ damage is driving the infinite expected damage calculation, but such large amounts of damage are never relevant.

So a probability distribution of the damage that you do is more relevant for these characters. Two characters might both have infinite expected damage due to on average unending sequences of attacks, but if one character gets that because half of the time when he attacks he gets 2 extra attacks, and another character gets that because 1/20 of the time when he attacks, he gets 20 extra attacks, the first character is much, much stronger. The second character is essentially an ordinary character who auto-kills 1/20 of the time; extremely powerful, but not so strong that only another "infinite" build could be its equal. If the first build got 2 extra attacks 45% of the time it would no longer do infinite expected damage, but it would still be the stronger build.

 

[AngryPurpleCyclops]

Prove it. Which designer might that be?

LOL. People have been arguing there's a slippage in the math of 1 per tier for 6 months and now there's a feat that compensates by exactly that amount and is obviously so grossly overpowered in comparison to other feats that you're going to ban it but you can't interpolate that this is the fix? Ok, I can't teach a rock to sing either. This is my opinion. Totally substantiated by the math but I'll accept that you view it as my opinion.

I posted the monsters. I posted the fact that 16 stat starting PCs have a 45% chance against same level monsters without synergies. I posted several different ways PCs can gain synergy and improve their odds.

Um, define synergies. CA? That's part of the game at every level. If you hit on an 8 at 1st level and hit on an 11 at 25th level you can't say CA makes up for this because CA was available at 1st level also.

You posted rhetoric.

I posted the exact mechanic for creating monsters. level + 16 AC for soldiers being an example. every defense for every monster is based upon some number + level. That means 1 per level in case your math challenged. Hardly rhetoric, it's the actual design mechanic used in building monsters. Obviously you can adjust things a little for flavor or to add a strength or a weakness or to offset some other capability but none the less this is the frame work for ALL monsters even if you feel the authors were lying.

You are arguing to argue here. The math is solid, straight out of the PHB and Monster Manual.

this is you attacking me again. You're mistaken on both counts. You posted monsters from the book, I posted the actual formula. Yours is anecdotal in that there are few monsters at 28th or higher level. Yours is also anecdotal in that you're talking about 1 level and I'm giving you the Math for all of them. If you pick one level as an example of all levels you always make mistakes. You of course won't agree to that because you don't understand distributed probability and you're pretty much incapable of admitting you're ever mistaken. 4 out of 17 level one monsters are minions, can I conclude that 23% of monsters are minions? No because the population sample is small and the cross section is weighted poorly.

Yours is a "player entitlement" argument. If a PC has a 60% chance to hit at first level, they should have the same chance at 30th level.

I feel no sense of player entitlement, this is a silver bullet catch phrase you use to disparage anyone who has a different perspective than your own. Yours is a poorly thought out argument that displays an utter lack of understanding of play balance or game design.

Nonsense. A 30th PC has many magical items and powers and feats that he did not have at 1st level. The synergy of multiple 30th level PCs is much greater than multiple 1st level PCs. It's a slightly different game with extremely different tactics at level 30 because of the additional plethora of options.

Pretty rhetorical and totally wrong. The pc's number of options and power of equipment has scaled with level but so has their adversaries. You think the pc's have gained an advantage because you have a nearly fascist need to control the game down to th tiniest detail but the monsters have scaled in a pretty elegant design that tries pretty effectively to maintain balance across 30 levels with one system. Now despite all evidence to the contrary your ego has led you to believe that you see a flaw in the designers and nearly everyone elses logic. You're the ONE person with the right answer.

The "illusion" you call it. It's mathematically there even if you deny it. You now try to conjure up a reason that the fact is illusory and introduce the buzzword "synergies". There are lots of ways to get bonuses to hit. There are equally as many ways to get penalties. The foes you face at every level are designed to have powers that are roughly equal to the pc's, thereby creating their own synergies.

The reason the fact that the math slipped matters is not because of entitlement it's because of design and balance. It was meant to be that way they just made a mistake. They obviously know it or this feat wouldn't exist, there's really no other logical reason to explain a feat so obviously better than so many others.

If the 30th level Orb Wizard gets lucky, he locks down the Solo monster for a significant portion of the rest of the encounter. The math states that he SHOULD hit less often because his control effects are so much more powerful.

The math states nothing of the sort. Where does it state this? In any event, you're joking right? As evidence to support your laughable supposition you bring up one of the most controversial and likely broken parts of the game.

The designers would be total morons to give the same 60% chance to hit at 30th level that they gave at 1st level. Just because one designer added a bad feat to PHB II does not mean that all of the designers are that stupid.

Now everyone that disagrees with you is stupid... and only one designer had his hand on the most powerful feat yet introduced? No one else noticed that this was +3 ATT at level 25? One guy slipped it in? really? and Bill Clinton didn't inhale right?

I notice once again you chose not to discuss how your theory doesn't work for a level 24 party vs a level 27 green dragon. Hard to account for that with your "synergy" theory. You've discarded the feat the professional game designers introduced to fix the problem so that the game remains balanced and blame this on entitlement but at level 1 pc's can handle a dragon above their level, apparently you're ok with an encounter the dmg says pc's should be able to handle and totally inline with the encounter design charts is now almost unwinable?

 

[Eldorian]

Whether a build has an expected damage value of infinity isn't actually particularly relevant. The idea is that if one attack by you on average leads to >=1 additional attack, which has the same properties of generating additional attacks as the original attack, then your expected damage is infinite.

This is quite different from a build that always does an infinite amount of damage. This is quite similar to the St. Petersburg paradox. The probability of doing 3000+ damage is driving the infinite expected damage calculation, but such large amounts of damage are never relevant.

So a probability distribution of the damage that you do is more relevant for these characters. Two characters might both have infinite expected damage due to on average unending sequences of attacks, but if one character gets that because half of the time when he attacks he gets 2 extra attacks, and another character gets that because 1/20 of the time when he attacks, he gets 20 extra attacks, the first character is much, much stronger. The second character is essentially an ordinary character who auto-kills 1/20 of the time; extremely powerful, but not so strong that only another "infinite" build could be its equal. If the first build got 2 extra attacks 45% of the time it would no longer do infinite expected damage, but it would still be the stronger build.

Best post in the thread.

 

[KarinsDad]

As well: Synergies typically require you to hit first, or are a limited resource. When you run out you run into a lot of problems.

We are discussing synergies that give a bonus to hit, not any other types of synergies.

Are you claiming that 30th level groups have the same number of these types of synergies as 1st level groups?

Are you claiming that 30th level groups have the same to hit boost of these types of synergies as 1st level groups?

There are 17 powers in the PHB that give a bonus to an attack roll. Most of those are not available at level one.

Most prestige classes have a way to increase their chance to hit. Sure, many of those are limited, but they do exist.

There are dozens and dozens of powers in the PHB that shift allies or foes or knock foes prone that increase the frequency of Combat Advantage alone. High level PCs can get Combat Advantage on a significantly higher percentage of attacks.

There are higher level abilities that give an increase in the number of action points. That equates to an increase in the number of PC attacks.

There are higher level abilities that allow for an attack re-roll. That equates to an increase in the number of successful PC attacks.


There is no doubt about it. The chance to hit decreases over 29 levels compared to the defenses: stat increase (4) + magic (6) + 15 < 29. But, it is only true that this is a serious problem if one ignores the additional to hit synergies gained over those levels.

Nobody is disputing the decrease change in to hit math here, it is a matter of disputing the frequency of higher level to hit synergies. A +3 to hit boost at higher level breaks the math a lot here: stat increase (4) + magic (6) + 15 + 3 is still < 29, but it is only less than it by one. There are a many ways to get synergy boosts >=1 at high levels that do not exist at low level.


A PC minmaxed a bit (even without Expertise) for to hit can get his same level chance to hit into the 60% to 70% range at high level (20 starting stat, Kensai, Demigod, Fighter class, etc. is +5 greater than the example I gave above and takes that same level example to 70% hit chance). Expertise takes such a PC consistently into the 75+% to 85% range for same level opponents. That's not balanced either.

And, the fact that people ignore that many higher level foes are solos blows me away. Sure, the NPC might get as many as 3 or even 4 attacks in, but the PCs at those levels can get 5 to 10 attacks in depending on situation. With the number of additional conditions that can occur on a PC attack, the odds are definitely in the favor of the PCs.

PS. Search the web for people who have played at high level. The general consensus that I have heard so far is that high level is fairly easy. There are just too many ways to pound enemies and assist allies, keeping the action economy in favor of the PCs.

 

[keterys]

Most of the stuff I've seen has been theoretical stuff that wouldn't happen in games I play or DM, so it's been pretty limited use... y'know, here's my level 30 guy breaking demigod to use a power twelve times to bla bla or Okay, so we're fighting Orcus, no, wait, two Orcus, and we guarantee we go first, and see, we hit them with a fear-based stun (save ends) power that autohits and they have a -15 to saves so only have a 5% chance to break out, except they need to roll twice cause of the Starlock so it's actually .25% chance and then they just explode.

The stuff I've seen from people who appeared to _actually_ be playing the game without trying to break it were a lot fewer and far between and ran the gamut.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I think the real problem with this feat, as has been said, is that it can increase the difference between optimal and suboptimal builds. Making it necessary for characters with suboptimal builds to take if the characters with optimal builds take it.

For instance a guy with a 16 strength +2 proficiency bonus is in a party with a guy who has 20 strenght, +3 proficiency bonus.
Guy A has an attack bonus of +5, guy B has an attack bonus of +8.
Assuming they have equal enhancement bonuses and they both increase strenght when possible and that neither take paragon paths boosting attack (all reasonable assumptions) then this diffference in attacks will never exceed +3.


If the expertise feat is introduced to the game and the optimizer (B) takes it then at level 25 this attack difference will be +6, instead of +3.
Note guy B is not super optimized (no kensai paragon path, not a demigod etc). But with this feat his attack bonuses reach that level of optimization, with it and those things he far out strips guy A.

Guy A needs to take the feat to remain effective (becuase being 6-9 points behind in attack bonus is ineffective).

 

[77IM]

If you want to get non-theoretical, lead the attack is a warlord daily 1 that, if it hits, can radically change the expected outcome of a solo encounter. I've seen it happen many times (and I weep for my poor solos ).

Granted, that's just one power, and it's a daily, and it has to hit first, and it's really only good against solos and tough elites... but it's level 1. If there's crazy stuff like that at level 1, I have no problem believing that there is crazier stuff by level 30.

-- 77IM

 

[RefinedBean]

lead the attack

Sweet mercy, I love that power. I want to marry it.