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

[Dannyalcatraz]

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,

Yes and no- IME, there's something else going on. Often, those who label them "feat taxes" do so because they believe- rightly or wrongly- that the designers built into the game an expectation that PCs should hit level-appropriate opponents a certain set % of the time, and that if you DON'T take these feats, you will fall behind 4Ed's power curve. This, they argue, will lead to dissatisfaction as your PC starts to perform poorly. And because this forces a conflict between PC concept and the game's statistical assumptions- fluff VS mechanics, if you will- this is a "tax" on PC resource development.

Me? I want my guy to be as close to my mental concept of him as possible- to hell with the numbers- so I don't touch those feats, generally speaking. (Though I do agree that this is potentially a flaw in the system if their analysis is correct.)

 

[MrMyth]

Yes and no- IME, there's something else going on. Often, those who label them "feat taxes" do so because they believe- rightly or wrongly- that the designers built into the game an expectation that PCs should hit level-appropriate opponents a certain set % of the time, and that if you DON'T take these feats, you will fall behind 4Ed's power curve. This, they argue, will lead to dissatisfaction as your PC starts to perform poorly. And because this forces a conflict between PC concept and the game's statistical assumptions- fluff VS mechanics, if you will- this is a "tax" on PC resource development.

Me? I want my guy to be as close to my mental concept of him as possible- to hell with the numbers- so I don't touch those feats, generally speaking. (Though I do agree that this is potentially a flaw in the system if their analysis is correct.)

For me, part of the issue is that once they are in the system, whether there is a real problem for them to fix or not, the damage is done.

If there isn't an issue with the math, then if everyone in the party takes them, they are now virtually several levels higher in raw potency than the system assumes they should be, and the DM needs to adjust for this or encounters become trivial.

If only have the party has them, the same thing - except, now, those without them will now have problems facing these enhanced creatures.

Unless everyone either avoids the feats, or everyone takes them, but later levels the bonuses are substantial enough that a disparity makes a huge difference between PCs. And if you resolve this by everyone taking them, the feat is, thus, a tax, and this is part of the problem folks are complaining about.

 

[Ryujin]

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.

I would perhaps agree, if the math didn't seem to require that bonus. There's nothing wrong with ACTUALLY making your character better at something, in order to enhance that concept. It's the same as someone being better with a stabbing weapon than a slashing weapon.

 

[Estlor]

Here's where feat tax, and the issue with it, comes from.

When 4e was first released, the developers made it a point to explain their motivation behind the feats in 4e was to make them nice little extras that modify an aspect of your character. The "sweet spot" they attempted to hit was that a feat should provide enough of a mechanical benefit that you appreciate having it/want to take it without becoming so good that everyone would want to take it. A quick survey of the PHB1 feats will show you lots of options that are generally useful, but aside from maybe Toughness not too many that everybody is going to seriously consider taking them.

Now, if the Expertise feats existed solely as a method of improving accuracy, they'd be nice feats and quite a bit too powerful compared to others, but nothing to get bent out of shape over. The issue, however, comes from the underlying math the system is based on. As you move from heroic to paragon and then into epic tier, the system-assumed balance between attack bonus and monster defense wasn't linear. Rather, monster defenses increased at a greater rate than PC attack bonuses such that, in epic, a PC was hitting 10-15% less often than encounter balance assumes. Rather than issue a rules errata to improve PC accuracy, WotC created feats to solve the problem.

Suddenly PCs have to give up resources - a feat - to get what the system should have already given them. Hence, a feat tax.

So the outrage is over the idea that PCs have to give up a limited resource to get back to the baseline, no questions asked. Of course, some people are of the opinion that no such math discrepancy exists. If you're okay with missing progressively more often as you level, then there's no problem.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

And there are people, that believe, that this kind of math discrepancy exists, and that those feats are a feature, and not a bug.

I came to the conclusion, that if you want to excel in combat with your chosen weapon, you should train in it between level 1 and 10...

the defense feats are a different matter... i believe here the system should have been modified to just give +1 bonus to defenses at level 11 and level 21 along with the other increases (you could also increase accuracy here, but it is not really needed... see above)

I don´t want to go into the discussion again, why the discrepancy exists, but i want to say, that there once were encounter long or at will bonuses that increased by level that exactly bridged the gap. If it was coincidence or not, a party with those leaders were expected to have no problems without the expertise feats. BUT the leader himself didn´t hit the broad side of a barn, especially if you consider that those leaders wanted good secondary stats, and that due to the nonletality of monsters at epic tier made DM´s use level + 6 or so monsters regularily, which made fighting terribly boring (at least that is what i heard).
So expertise feats + MM3 monster math improves the game´s performance at high levels considerably!

 

[Kaodi]

This scaling with level thing seems to be the real problem. If you are a sub-optimally built character at level 1, maybe you have a -2 (or -3, if you count min-maxers) penalty versus the more optimized characters, and perhaps some people can lieve with that. But if that difference is more like -4/-5 at level 21, it is really getting hideous.

 

[DEFCON 1]

So the outrage is over the idea that PCs have to give up a limited resource to get back to the baseline, no questions asked. Of course, some people are of the opinion that no such math discrepancy exists. If you're okay with missing progressively more often as you level, then there's no problem.

But the reason many of us find this to be a somewhat false argument is because the assumption is if a person wasn't taking a so-called "feat tax" feat... they'd be taking some kind of esoteric "roleplay" feat to enhance their character concept or design.

But in actuality... if practically every single build suggestion I see here on ENWorld is taken at face value... most players don't even come close to doing that. They just go ahead and take the other important combat feats instead. I'm not seeing any of this "loss" that people claim are happening. They "have" to take Expertise at level 1... which just means Toughness, Superior Weapon Proficiency, Action Surge, Heavy Blade Opportunity and every other basic strong combat feat just gets postponed a level. Not really seeing any real loss or a big deal here.

 

[Ryujin]

But the reason many of us find this to be a somewhat false argument is because the assumption is if a person wasn't taking a so-called "feat tax" feat... they'd be taking some kind of esoteric "roleplay" feat to enhance their character concept or design.

But in actuality... if practically every single build suggestion I see here on ENWorld is taken at face value... most players don't even come close to doing that. They just go ahead and take the other important combat feats instead. I'm not seeing any of this "loss" that people claim are happening. They "have" to take Expertise at level 1... which just means Toughness, Superior Weapon Proficiency, Action Surge, Heavy Blade Opportunity and every other basic strong combat feat just gets postponed a level. Not really seeing any real loss or a big deal here.

Feats are a finite resource. It isn't a matter of "delaying" another feat but rather simply not getting to take one at all, because 'the math' requires otherwise.

 

[AeroDm]

I would take a broader view of feat taxes. Most arguments seem to include some idea of "keeping up with the math" but whether you are keeping up or pulling ahead, the effect is that the feat resource is consistently funneled into the same handful of feats. So anytime a feat (or any power, really) is so good that it obviates other options, it becomes a tax. Since D&D is a game about designing (and then roleplaying) a character, anytime your options are diminished the overall game is diminished as well. The fact that many of the "so good" feats also tend to be beige just compounds the problem.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Feats are a finite resource. It isn't a matter of "delaying" another feat but rather simply not getting to take one at all, because 'the math' requires otherwise.

The feat slots you are "losing" are the last ones in Epic. If by that point your character still needs these slots in order to take so-called creative "fluff" feats in order to make your character concept stand out... you've probably been doing something wrong up until that point.