What's the big deal with "feat taxes?"

[Mercurius]

Maybe I'm missing something but feats as taxes for extra bonuses makes sense in 4E with the existence of powers, otherwise feats end up veering too closely to powers. I mean, isn't that kind of what feats are for, to enhance a character's already existing capacities? I see feats as "character points" that you spend on making your character better in a particular configuration of customization (what a mouthful!).

What am I missing?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

"Feat Taxes" are feats- usually combat related- that are alleged to be required (thus, a tax) for a PC to keep pace with the the underlying assumptions of 4Ed's statistical/mathematical system.

 

[OnlineDM]

I'm not in the "expertise and improved defenses are feat taxes" camp, personally, but I think the issue with those feats is that taking them means that your chances to hit and be hit by even-level monsters stays roughly the same from level 1 to level 30, and not taking them means that you're missing more often and getting hit more often by even-level monsters as you level up.

 

[keterys]

Personally, I don't like any feats that are bland, but mathematically superior to most other options.

In my general experience, a lion's share of the first 4 or soplayer feats come from a very small list of possible choices. If those weren't choices, afaict, there would be a _far_ greater variety of interesting choics taken.

So I don't know that I consider them taxes or not, but I'm all set with them going away.

 

[aurance]

"Taxes" are a bad term for these.

Really, they're not any more than they appear to be. With them, you have X*5% more chance of hitting, and X*5% less chance of being hit. They're certainly not required in your game; how often your characters hit and are hit is a function of what you and your players feel comfortable with.

However if you include them in your game, they are in the odd position of being mathematically better than pretty much any other combat feat, by a great deal. And that's bad design.

Use them or not, that's up to you. But there's a fairly significant power difference between those that take it, and those that don't, so I advocate either having a campaign with all these feats banned, or having a campaign where everyone has these for free. Not half way.

 

[Ryujin]

Personally, I don't like any feats that are bland, but mathematically superior to most other options.

In my general experience, a lion's share of the first 4 or soplayer feats come from a very small list of possible choices. If those weren't choices, afaict, there would be a _far_ greater variety of interesting choics taken.

So I don't know that I consider them taxes or not, but I'm all set with them going away.

I have to agree here. Taxes or not, the vast majority of players will take them. They are the beige of feats; all mechanics and no flavour.

For example when I was playing my Eladrin Warlock/Bard multi, I had taken both Feyborn Charm and Heavy Blade Expertise. Expertise was seen as a necessity for hit bonuses (all of us had taken it), but Feyborn Charm was purely for the flavour of being better with charm-based attacks.

Then they turned Expertise into a Feat Bonus. The choice was either to maintain the hit bonus with my limited number of charm powers, most of which didn't do any damage themselves, or to maintain a hit bonus with ALL attacks. It was an easy choice but I hated making it, because it was based on mechanics rather than character concept.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The choice was either to maintain the hit bonus with my limited number of charm powers, most of which didn't do any damage themselves, or to maintain a hit bonus with ALL attacks. It was an easy choice but I hated making it, because it was based on mechanics rather than character concept.

And this is the attitude right here that those of us who either don't believe or don't care about the concept of the "feat tax" use to explain why.

You chose mechanics over flavor on your own. You didn't have to. Wizards gave you the opportunity to do it by providing the feats, but you yourself made the decision to do it. It's understandable why you did... logically speaking, a +1 to all attacks is better than a +1 to charms only... but the idea that it's somehow a less valid choice is in my opinion silly. Because for the most part, feats themselves aren't "flavorful". They're pretty much ALL mechanical benefit, and it all depends on the circle of abilities that get affected by it.

Does having Feyborn Charm as a feat really make your character more of a "charm" character? No. Whether your character is more "charmlike" all comes down to how you PLAY your character. You could take the Expertise feat (which applies to your charms too, after all) and still play the character as though charms were it's focus, and there would be no noticeable difference whatsoever. Someone would have to actually care enough to notice that the attack bonus you used for your charms was the same bonus you used on your other spells and have actually MATTER to them for it to somehow mean your character was less "flavorful" of a charmer because you had Expertise rather than Feyborn Charm.

But most people don't care about the numbers on other people's sheets. So long as you play your fey character as charm-focused... the numbers under the hood make absolutely no difference whatsoever.

 

[Jhaelen]

Really, they're not any more than they appear to be. With them, you have X*5% more chance of hitting, and X*5% less chance of being hit.

Actually, they increase your absolute chance to hit (or being) by 5/10/15%. This can be a big deal if your chance to hit is low (e.g. if your average chance to hit was only 10%, taking the feat to increase it to 15% means you'll be hitting 50% more often!) or pretty much irrelevant if it's already high.

Imho, the problem with these feats is that they're typically the most attractive for players who already feel they need to have a to-hit chance that is as high as possible, i.e. they already optimized their characters towards getting the highest to-hit chance possible. And even though they have the least effective gain from these feats they're considered 'must-have' by these players.

And players who tend to create 'suboptimal' characters because they fail to recognize (or don't care about) the importance of having a decent to-hit chance won't take them because they're 'boring' feats.

Imho, these feats should either simply set a baseline (i.e. the feat increases your to-hit chance to a fixed bonus, say (level+3)) or include a cap (i.e. if your to-hit chance is already higher than 'x' the feat doesn't do anything for you).

Or even better go all the way and use fixed to-hit chances for every character - don't derive them from any attribute at all.

The powers in the Dark Sun templates almost work like that: you always use your highest ability bonus for attack and damage rolls. So, unless your character's attributes are all identical, you should end up with a decent bonus.

 

[aurance]

But most people don't care about the numbers on other people's sheets. So long as you play your fey character as charm-focused... the numbers under the hood make absolutely no difference whatsoever.

This is a good point. Take whatever feats / powers that make your character better numerically, but that needn't be used to constrain how you role-play your character.

 

[renau1g]

One of the problems I have as a DM is balancing the combat for those that chose the "feat taxes" (i.e. more optimized PC's) vs. those who took something like Linguist to represent the various languages they've picked up over their past lives (a deva PC). Really, I feel that there shouldn't have been math feats and adjusted things on the monster side. I much preferred the bonuses to hit happening on more niche powers like that Gnome Phantom feat (whatever the name is). They have to give up a whole whack of great wizard powers to focus on the illusions.