So, about Expertise...

[keterys]

What I'm trying to communicate here is that play priorities exist which make expertise a less desirable feat. You don't have to be stuck where you are where you feel you have to choose expertise over more interesting feats. You are doing that to yourself.

Not really - I can't houserule LFR games. For the game I'm starting tomorrow as DM, I've houseruled appropriately.

Other than that - I enjoy hitting with the powers I already have... that's why I took them in the first place. I'm not necessarily going to even have a need for Athletics on my warlock, but I know I'll be disappointed if my diabolic grasp misses and I don't get to slide someone around, or if frigid darkness misses so the rogue can't get his sneak attack or other people miss.

Now, I certainly enjoy some feats _more_ than a minor +1 to hit... which is why I took them.

Ultimately I'm extremely disappointed that 4e contains several feats that bear a passive and direct impact on a character's combat performance (bonuses to attack, damage, etc) instead of a bunch of flavor feats. Expertise is not the only example, but it's the most offensive for the size of the bonus and its poor design in other areas (you're a dragonborn bard / scion of arkhosia who uses a sword in one hand and instrument in the other? Oh, sucks to be you...)

I'd rather I had a huge list of feats that did nifty things that had almost no bearing on overall combat prowess or allowed suboptimal tactics to come up to snuff so people could make their odder ideas work.

Not necessarily weapon focus, but perhaps other feats-- depending on how they relate to the character's goals, concept, history, etc., and what themes the player may want to explore with their character.

For example? Let's take my wife's elf druid, for instance, who already has all the skills she wants due to her initial selection, background, and possibly 1st level feat (that is, she doesn't want to improve her social skills, and has nature, perception, athletics, and acrobatics covered). She's an elf but doesn't care about any of the 'better elven precision feats' - she'll probably take Light Step someday but she could honestly just RP having it for the same effect on actual gameplay that it will have, she might consider the druid charging feat since she does at least rarely charge so a bonus to attack and damage in that circumstance could be fine... the other druid feat wasn't appropriate for her though I don't remember what it was off the top of my head (paragon has great stuff for her, though).

So, it's level 1, 2, or 4 say and she has to pick a feat. She could get a minor bonus when she charges, or she could get a minor bonus with every attack she makes, including charges.

Hard choice.

Somehow Weapon Focus and Implement Expertise made it onto her list. Maybe after Primal Power is out she'll have another 2 options, but by that time she'll also be level 16 with 9 feats and dropping Expertise's +2 would be downright silly.

I'd not be surprised if she takes Skill Focus (Perception) sometime, though, so she goes from automaking every perception check in the game to automaking them with even more silly numbers. But she might as well get a feat that actually does something for her first.

 

[Smeelbo]

Expertise as Power Creep as Marketing, D&D as a Roleplaying Game

The game rules shouldn't allow you to make that choice. They should not allow me to make a character that is more -- or less -- useful than yours. That's what "game balance" ultimately means. My character can be different but not better.

Very good observation, but balance is difficult in practice. Even in a game like EverQuest, where after enough XP, characters of the same class and level have acquired all the same abilities, balance between classes is elusive. If it is difficult to balance classes, how is character balance even possible?

In EverQuest, balance is easier not just because all characters of the same level and class have essentially the same abilities, but there is only one central metric: how well one does in important combat situations (raids, grouping, soloing, etc.). A MMORPG like EverQuest can collect terabytes of combat data, and perform voluminous combat simulations and reach some useful conclusions.

But how is balance to be obtained in 4E? How is it measured? It is a much more difficult proposition. While the superficial resemblence to a MMORPG like EverQuest invites similar measures of balance, and those measures are useful, players, encounters, and campaigns very so greatly that reliable comparisons are hard to make.

Which brings us back to combat optimization, because combat is ubiquitous, and is subject to strenous analysis. Balance in combat is of necessity the most important balance issue. Other balance issues are far more vague and therefore much more difficult to analyze, if it is possible at all.

If we were playing EverQuest, I would agree with 77IM. Because we are playing D&D, I think his criteria is too strong to be fulfilled, except at the cost of minimizing choice (which one could argue 4E does).

One important result in game theory is that the best strategies often do not seek the best possible outcome (as 77IM would seek), but rather to avoid the worse outcomes. 4E seeks to avoid the worse outcomes of 3.X by attempting to keep character effectiveness within a narrow band. That is, it seeks to minimize the difference between the best and worst combat ability of character choices.

Therefore, the problem with Expertise is that it potentially widens that gap, rather than narrow it. If exactly those characters that needed a boost took the feat, and those whose attacks were already sufficient did not, it would narrow the gap. But if, as is likely, combat-emphasizers take Expertise, but other-emphasizers do not, the gap has widened.

So for example, Expertise might better fulfill its apparent intended purpose if it had the requirement (not sure how to best word this) that the character have the appropriate attack stat starting no higher than 16. That would narrow the gap, not widen it.

But I've played in too many games where one PC wound up accidentally better or worse -- power-wise -- and the other PCs came to resent it. Then the DM has to untangle the mess and it's a pain. So I'm definitely in favor of the core rules being balanced.

And in practice this can only be achieved by avoiding outcomes that widen the gap. Indeed, this is supposed to be a central design tenet of 4E.

That's the core of my problem with these feats. They are too powerful for 4E feats. Having options that are too powerful in comparison with the other available options creates potential problems with in party balance. The game shouldn't be about trying to keep up with your teammate, and in general 4E is excellent at avoiding this.

He is completely correct. The correct design decision would have been to work the intended effect of Expertise into Errata. Sadly, power creep is a tried and true marketing tool, and Hasbro lacks the discipline to avoid it. Why, when it is in their immediate short term financial interest? Almost no corporations take a long term perspective, and instead are structured in such a way as to reward short term thinking and punish employees who might attempt to act instead in the long term interests of the corporation or its customers.

Because of this, 4E will break sooner than we'd like, and in no more than a few years, they will be selling us a "new" edition that fixes problems that they could have avoided in the first place. This new edition will be even more stable than 4E, but absent a change in corporate perspective and the business processes that support that perspective, the next edition will suffer from the same problems as the current edition, it will just take longer to collapse.

Instead, limit it to characters with less than 17 in their primary attribute in heroic (20 in paragon and 22 in epic).

This would work better at narrowing the gap, but it needs to be worded very carefully, I am not sure how. Otherwise, optimizers will work around the limitation somehow, using one stat to qualify for the feat, but in practice, depend on another stat.

The problem with this idea is that it promotes flipped builds, where you emphasize the secondary statistic of a class at the cost of the primary, relying on this feat to make up the lost to-hit. So, your Warlords can now have amazing riders on their powers sacrificing the hit chances that a Str-optimized Warlord currently has. Orb wizards can max their Wis without worrying as much about their Int. Etc.
That's not, of course, the intent of the change, but it is the optimizer's response to it.

Exactly.

Roleplaying?
Roleplaying exists in DND?
DND is and has historically been an explore, kill, loot game.

Yes, roleplaying exists in D&D. Lest we forget, it was the first published roleplaying game.

I've been playing D&D for almost 35 years now, and in every campaign I've ever played in, to a greater or lesser degree, D&D alternates roleplay and combat. Most people I've played with over the years identify with their avatars during the game. They act them out. They interact with the non-player characters, pursue goals, conflict with other characters' goals, enjoy triumph, and suffer defeat.

The mechanics of the game really have almost nothing to do with whether roleplaying occurs: it is a choice by the players, and a frequent choice in my experience. When I played EverQuest, mechanically a pure combat game, my friends and I roleplayed: we identified with our characters, developed distinct personalities for our characters, and relationships, guilds, even in-game marriages.

Compared to many other roleplaying games, D&D is very combat heavy. Big deal. That doesn't stop me from trying to pursue character goals beyond levelling and acquiring stuff.

Admittedly, D&D is not Burning Wheel, or Spirit of the Century, but even those games have significant combat rules.

The fact that D&D emphasizes combat is not because D&D is only a combat game, but given the stakes in combat, which is fun, we, as players, want clear and fair rules to adjudicate those combats. It is much easier to trust that the game master adjudicates the non-combat portion of the game fairly, that the non-player characters act consistantly and the world behaves in a way that we can have rational expectations and act on those, but in combat, if the DM kills my character, it better damn well be fair.

D&D has extensive combat rules because by and large it is the most important game domain to define unambiguosly, and, by and large, it is one of the only game domains that can be usefully defined unambiguously. The same is true to a lesser extent to almost all other published roleplaying games.

While it is true that several other games better support mechanically non-combat conflict, Dungeons and Dragons remains, for almost all the players I know, and all the players I enjoy playing with most, a role-playing game.

4E's biggest flaw in that regard is that the skill challenge system is broken, and does not support fair adjudication of non-combat conflicts. Most other RPGS are much better in that regard.

In the end, the emphasis on combat matters little to roleplaying. Give players avatars they can identify with and customize, and a world they can interact with, and many, if not most, will roleplay.

Roleplaying rules is an oxymoron. How would a 'rule' for granting xp for roleplaying look like?! You cannot have anything but roleplaying guidelines in a (roleplaying) game.

On the contrary, there are several RPGs that excel at exactly this. Check out Burning Wheel, or its latest incarnation, Mouseguard. As the author says, "It's not what you fight, it's what you fight for." In Burning Wheel, if you don't roleplay interestingly, your character will not only advance more slowly and not as far, but will perform more poorly in combat.

Likewise, Spirit of the Century is driven by character and story elements, and again, a poor roleplayer would suffer in combat because they would not receive rewards for playing to their character.

The element that 4E is missing is not rules for supporting roleplaying, but rather a good set of rules for resolving non-combat conflicts. The skill challenge system is barely a mechanic, and a broken one at that. Many other systems give much better mechanics for resolve conflicts outside of combat, and many other RPGs put character conflict and roleplaying at the center of the game, rather than just combat.

As for me, I will continue to play Expertise as written, and see what actually happens in play.

Smeelbo

 

[grickherder]

Add in various comments made by designers and hopefully you can see why several of us think these feats were created to patch the hit rate growth.

In any case, we'll hopefully have an article soon that will explain WotC's thinking on the feats.

t~

I'm willing to accept that it's a bad math fix and that the way I play D&D isn't typical and that I like expertise because I approach the game differently than my peers in this thread. My group looks at expertise and says "I don't really need to hit more, I hit enough. I think I'll take something else." I don't think it's done out of ignorance of the math behind the game but simply out of a current satisfaction with our in game hit rates.

That said, if I can play the game without chumps for characters, have expertise at the heroic tier not be an autoinclude and not have myself or my fellow players feel they have to pay a feat tax to stay competive, I'll keep doing what I'm doing. Those who play a certain way that makes expertise a problem can house rule it away or change the way they play. The rules as they are published are working for me just fine.

 

[grickherder]

Therefore, the problem with Expertise is that it potentially widens that gap, rather than narrow it. If exactly those characters that needed a boost took the feat, and those whose attacks were already sufficient did not, it would narrow the gap. But if, as is likely, combat-emphasizers take Expertise, but other-emphasizers do not, the gap has widened.

I have disagreed with this point in the past in this thread. I now admit to being wrong about that. All you need are two players in the same group who emphasize different things and you can end up with a wider gap in their in combat performance that before the publication of PHB2.

One play might make a character with a 16 in their primary stat and be satisfied with their combat performance while another takes a 20 and takes every possible feat, power and whatnot to eek out as much of a bonus to hit as possible. They've got expertise, they've multiclassed into avenger for a couple rounds of rerolls and are taking paragon paths to maximize their combat effectiveness, with the flavour of the paragon path be damned.

So what problems does this actually create in play? Is the person who took a 16 because they didn't really care if they rocked in combat going to start caring? In most cases probably not. The person who will care is the one who wanted to rock but didn't know the ins and outs of character optimization. So let's just say for arguments sake that it becomes a problem. That the optimized characters are putting out hits and damages and effects as if they are a couple levels higher.

People will find my solution to these problems (or at the very least my means of mitigating them) to be unsatisfying. It's the exact same answer that's been given for when a character becomes unbalanced in old D&D, 1st edition 2nd and 3rd.

The DM intervenes.

Be it through encounter design and monsters making different tactical choices. Or through a direct intervention. Basically it's time to renegotiate the social contract and say either "you guys who aren't optimizing your characters need to start!" or "you guys who are optimizing your characters need to dial it back a bit."

For encounter design and monster tactics, the first rule of that should be to know the party you are designing encounters for. Let's assume 2 non-optimized characters, 1 middle of the road characters and 2 optimized to the max characters.

As the DM, I need monsters the weakest characters are going to want to attack that they can actually hit. I need average monsters as well and I need tougher monsters that the optimizers can take down. I also need to set up the encounters such that if the optimizers don't do their job and take down/control/defend against the strong monsters, it's obvious that they are failing in their job rather than the other characters being too weak. In short, encounter design becomes difficult, but still not impossible and still easier than 3.x where you're trying to design for a high level spell caster being present while everyone else isn't. I bet I can even do it without people realizing that's what I'm doing.

Some people will find that reprehensible though. They'll make the point that the fact that the DM has to intervene or change how they're designing encounters is proof of a flaw-- if the game was working properly the situation should never come up. That the optimizers and non-optimizers might have to get together and find a middle ground is proof that the game can't work for both simultaneously. I think expecting the rules to make it so you never have to think about your social contract or never have to rely on the DM to make things work is asking too much. It's asking for perfect balance. I think Smeelbo pointed out the flaws with that expectation in his paragraphs referencing Everquest.

Sadly, power creep is a tried and true marketing tool, and Hasbro lacks the discipline to avoid it. Why, when it is in their immediate short term financial interest? Almost no corporations take a long term perspective, and instead are structured in such a way as to reward short term thinking and punish employees who might attempt to act instead in the long term interests of the corporation or its customers.

Sadly I think you're describing reality here. As I said earlier in this thread, you probably have the pulse of the gaming community better than I and perhaps PHB2 sales are driven by people who might buy it for the one awesome feat.

The element that 4E is missing is not rules for supporting roleplaying, but rather a good set of rules for resolving non-combat conflicts. The skill challenge system is barely a mechanic, and a broken one at that. Many other systems give much better mechanics for resolve conflicts outside of combat, and many other RPGs put character conflict and roleplaying at the center of the game, rather than just combat.

Yep. I've had to drift/house rule skill challenges quite a bit to make them do what I want. I'm interested to see what DMG2 has to say about skill challenges. Perhaps that book will overcome this short fall.

As for me, I will continue to play Expertise as written, and see what actually happens in play.

This is where I am as well, but none of my players will take the stupid feat! I can't exactly report back that it's not causing a problem if no one ever takes it. Well, except for that it's not causing any problems because no one is taking it.

 

[Bayuer]

Well if someone is interested hows the math works on higher levels here is complete crunch:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4735419-post1.html

At late paragon player must roll 12 to hit monster, at epic it's 13 now. And we talking about the skirmisher whose level is the same as player.

That's no brainer Expertise is bad feat. Let's wait for this article. We will see how the designers see this problem.

 

[KarinsDad]

So what problems does this actually create in play? Is the person who took a 16 because they didn't really care if they rocked in combat going to start caring? In most cases probably not. The person who will care is the one who wanted to rock but didn't know the ins and outs of character optimization. So let's just say for arguments sake that it becomes a problem. That the optimized characters are putting out hits and damages and effects as if they are a couple levels higher.

Or like in my game, maybe it's the player who wants a certain concept like a Tiefling Rogue and the game just does not support that well.

People will find my solution to these problems (or at the very least my means of mitigating them) to be unsatisfying. It's the exact same answer that's been given for when a character becomes unbalanced in old D&D, 1st edition 2nd and 3rd.

The DM intervenes.

Be it through encounter design and monsters making different tactical choices. Or through a direct intervention. Basically it's time to renegotiate the social contract and say either "you guys who aren't optimizing your characters need to start!" or "you guys who are optimizing your characters need to dial it back a bit."

The DM can intervene easier by making house rules that lousy game fixing feats like Expertise are out and rules that affect all PCs to balance the delta and the math problem are in.

A lot better than trying to tell one player "You cannot do that" and another player "You must do that".

Win win for everyone, the DM included.

For encounter design and monster tactics, the first rule of that should be to know the party you are designing encounters for. Let's assume 2 non-optimized characters, 1 middle of the road characters and 2 optimized to the max characters.

As the DM, I need monsters the weakest characters are going to want to attack that they can actually hit. I need average monsters as well and I need tougher monsters that the optimizers can take down. I also need to set up the encounters such that if the optimizers don't do their job and take down/control/defend against the strong monsters, it's obvious that they are failing in their job rather than the other characters being too weak. In short, encounter design becomes difficult, but still not impossible and still easier than 3.x where you're trying to design for a high level spell caster being present while everyone else isn't. I bet I can even do it without people realizing that's what I'm doing.

Some people will find that reprehensible though. They'll make the point that the fact that the DM has to intervene or change how they're designing encounters is proof of a flaw-- if the game was working properly the situation should never come up. That the optimizers and non-optimizers might have to get together and find a middle ground is proof that the game can't work for both simultaneously. I think expecting the rules to make it so you never have to think about your social contract or never have to rely on the DM to make things work is asking too much. It's asking for perfect balance. I think Smeelbo pointed out the flaws with that expectation in his paragraphs referencing Everquest.

Yes, I find your solution extremely flawed.

Fix it once for the PCs as opposed to fixing it for every single group of monsters for every single encounter for what could be years of play for the DM.

What a workload for the DM!

There is no doubt that a fix is needed, but this is the worse suggestion for a fix I have seen so far.

 

[Regicide]

I've been playing D&D for almost 35 years now, and in every campaign I've ever played in, to a greater or lesser degree, D&D alternates roleplay and combat. Most people I've played with over the years identify with their avatars during the game. They act them out. They interact with the non-player characters, pursue goals, conflict with other characters' goals, enjoy triumph, and suffer defeat.

The mechanics of the game really have almost nothing to do with whether roleplaying occurs: it is a choice by the players, and a frequent choice in my experience. When I played EverQuest, mechanically a pure combat game, my friends and I roleplayed: we identified with our characters, developed distinct personalities for our characters, and relationships, guilds, even in-game marriages.

Compared to many other roleplaying games, D&D is very combat heavy. Big deal. That doesn't stop me from trying to pursue character goals beyond levelling and acquiring stuff.

4E has no affordance for RP. Sure, like Everquest you could RP, but it's you doing it almost in spite of the game, not with any help of it. Actually EQ promotes RP far more than 4E does.

4E is a mechanically balanced system of gold and XP and nowhere is there room for role play in it. Most games will give RP awards in their modules or can make allowances for family heirlooms that are level + 8, 4E... not so much.

Alignment is meaningless in 4E, good and evil and redemption are common tropes but with no in-game consequences for what is in the alignment box on your character sheet, they lack any game meaning and are simply things you do without any assistance or consequence within the game. Anything done for or about RP is "tacked-on" and not a part of the game.

Hey, looky there! You won yourself a suspension for trolling!

Folks, please discuss; don't try to pick fights. ~ Piratecat

 

[KarinsDad]

I've been playing D&D for almost 35 years now, and in every campaign I've ever played in, to a greater or lesser degree, D&D alternates roleplay and combat. Most people I've played with over the years identify with their avatars during the game. They act them out. They interact with the non-player characters, pursue goals, conflict with other characters' goals, enjoy triumph, and suffer defeat.

If you say so. I think thou dost protest too much.

I've played with hundreds of people for nearly that long as well and I have never seen:

1) A PC marriage in a campaign.

2) Two PCs or a PC and NPC fall in love.

3) A PC ever respect a rival. Rivals = enemies.

I have never ever ever seen the level of roleplaying the hopes and desires of a PC that people sometime claim happens in their games. I have never seen it on any of the videos on YouTube. I have never seen it at a gaming store where people come in and play. I have never seen significant immersion in character beyond the adventuring goals du jour.

Ever.

And when I go back and read the original DND rules, the term roleplaying is not there. There is one single sentence "Before they begin the campaign, players must decide what role they will play in the campaign, human or otherwise, fighter, cleric, or magic-user."

Roles in the original game was a different word for class.

Role playing in the original game context was moving your avatar around, exploring, fighting, and looting.

The game was about the exciting parts of the adventure, not the mundane parts. There is no doubt that roleplaying plays a part in every game. It's just not even 25% of the time spent in the game in any game I have played in (typically closer to 10% of the time). It's a fraction, not a majority. My only point is that roleplaying is not the core of the game. Combat is the core of the game. More time is spent in combat than in roleplaying. At least, IM (35- years) E. YMMV.

 

[grickherder]

The DM can intervene easier by making house rules that lousy game fixing feats like Expertise are out and rules that affect all PCs to balance the delta and the math problem are in.

I'm now starting to see it your way. See below for more.

Yes, I find your solution extremely flawed. Fix it once for the PCs as opposed to fixing it for every single group of monsters for every single encounter for what could be years of play for the DM.

What a workload for the DM!

We need to remember that such a solution only needs to be implemented if the gap between the optimizers and the non optimizers poses a problem.

But you're right. My favorite thing about DMing 4e is the lowered workload.

Expertise isn't a problem for me as I don't have a power gap between the characters in my group and I'm having a hard time even convincing people of taking it. They find +1 to hit uninspiring and are happy with how often they hit.

However, all it would take is slightly different play priorities and you end up hitting a point where people will prioritize it over almost every other feat. People with such play priorities might also be inclined to optimize their characters and the potential for a performance gap widening certainly exists.

Furthermore, such players may feel they are contributing less if they don't take the feat. While I believe these problems are all the direct result of their chosen play priorities, the fact that the game creates such a situation for how a large percentage of the people play the game, it needs to go.

Unfortunately for those playing in LFR, house ruling isn't an option. For everyone else, house rule the crap out of this if you find the problems pop up. I'm not going to as it's not a problem for my group. I'd also like to encourage everyone to give different play priorities a try-- they might find something they enjoy that they didn't know they would. Or at the very least think about why one makes the decisions with one's character.

Or like in my game, maybe it's the player who wants a certain concept like a Tiefling Rogue and the game just does not support that well.

I'm not convinced of this. I think you could viably play the following party:

Tiefling Rogue
Dragonborn Wizard
Deva Ranger
Half Elf Warden
Halfling Cleric

I think the notion that you must have an 18+ in your primary attack stat and must take a race that gives you a stat bonus that matches your classes just isn't true. Yes, those characters might be more powerful, but it's hardly necessary. The following party would be more powerful:

Drow Rogue
Deva Wizard
Elf Ranger
Goliath Warden
Longtooth Cleric

But I don't think the first party would somehow fail at completing published modules or encounters designed as per the DMG.

 

[KarinsDad]

I'm not convinced of this. I think you could viably play the following party:

Tiefling Rogue
Dragonborn Wizard
Deva Ranger
Half Elf Warden
Halfling Cleric

We currently have:

Tiefling Rogue
Human Invoker
Human Ranger
Genasi Swordmage
Elven Cleric

The problem for the Rogue is not the 16 Dex results in 1 less to hit and 1 less damage.

The problem for the Rogue is the 16 Dex results in 1+ less to AC.

At first level, the Rogue had an AC of 15. She just got smacked around a lot.

The Swordmage had an AC of 18, the Invoker, Ranger, and Cleric had an AC of 17.

Unlike a Wizard who can hang back and have an AC of 14 and still survive without getting attacked, a Rogue has to be in melee a lot.

The combination of Leather Armor and a 16 Dex makes for a very fragile melee PC. The 16 Dex Rogue loses 1 AC for Dex and 1 AC for Leather instead of Hide compared to other non-melee classes. The differences for both offense and defense add up. It's as if the Rogue is level zero instead of level one.