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

[C4]

So then I wonder if We ranked all feats in the game on a 1-100 scale with 100 being the most powerful and 1 being the least, how many people yelling for expertise (we will say easy in the 80's or 90's) to be givien for free would just take the next best feat, well the people who take the flavor stuff anyway would just get a minor bonus they wont care about... meaning alll we get are happy power gamers...

First, I'm going to point out the assumption you're making here. "It's the power gamers who want free feats." I've never seen a power gamer turn down free feats, but IME power gamers are just as happy to power game by RAW than by house rules. (Usually happier, actually.)

The players who want the rest of our half-level bonus (aka free "feats") cover the player spectrum -- what we have in common is an understanding of 4e's little math glitch.

Example: I am runing agame and player A has all the power gameing stuff, and player B has none... so A has a supr weap, expertise, paragon def, the 3 other def uppers, tougness...ect and B has skill training and skill power and astral fire, and alertness... so then WotC erratas +1 to hit and def at 5, 15, and 25...and takes expertise and paragon def, and the 3 def uppers out of the game...now Player A goes to the op board and finds the best most mathmatical feats...and player B gets +2 att and def... and then Player A gets EVEN MORE POWERFUL...

Speaking as the DM of a similar group, here's what happens when a real math fix is implemented:

The power gap between Captain Optimal and Sergeant Snowflake narrows. Because even if Captain Optimal squeezes a few more damage out of the feats he would spend on taxes, Sergeant Snowflake is hitting, dodging and contributing to the group the way that monster stats expect him to. This makes encounter building easier for me, and reduces teeth grinding all around.

Worst case scenario: the power boost I gave to the party as a whole means that I add a few XP to my encounter budgets. Which is fine with me, because Sergeant Snowflake isn't sitting on the bench so often.

Ok, so here is my quastion... how do you get rid of 'feat taxes' without upsetting a diffrent group of players and DMs (Like myself who see way too many over powered builds who already hit all the time and have atleast 3 good defences...and dont want to see those characters get MORE feats)?

Thank you for exemplifying the fearful attitude so many DMs have about free feats, which I mentioned to DEFCON 1. That's not a snark comment; it's simply pointing out the attitude I see so often with local DMs.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The power gap between Captain Optimal and Sergeant Snowflake narrows. Because even if Captain Optimal squeezes a few more damage out of the feats he would spend on taxes, Sergeant Snowflake is hitting, dodging and contributing to the group the way that monster stats expect him to. This makes encounter building easier for me, and reduces teeth grinding all around.

Ok no matter if I agree or not I love your names... but Captain Optimal will always oicks the best and Sergeant Snowflakes doesn't so yes it make them closer... but that closer is both higher... if on 1-100 scale SS was 76 and CA was 55 then after the fix SS was at 80 and CA was at 70.... it still makes SS who was dominating already MORE powerful... and I will tell you in my circles that would be a problem...

Thank you for exemplifying the fearful attitude so many DMs have about free feats, which I mentioned to DEFCON 1. That's not a snark comment; it's simply pointing out the attitude I see so often with local DMs.

See I use to be captain Homebrew...then it bit me in the butt a few times... then I spent years trying to homebrew around my players... balancing the game the way we play it... then 4e came and was already close to what we were homebrewing...


Now I fear every change. Every little thing like makeing a homebrew feat takes atleast a week to consider what it means. Does that make me a better DM...maybe maybe not...but it makes me a much more careful one...


I still have firearms rules and hombrew themes in this game, and a hombrew race...

 

[eamon]

There's just so much good stuff here!

either the feats are a math fix _or_ they're overpowered, but there's no real middle ground in which the system works hunky dory whether you choose to take them or not.

Completely.

In my general experience (several hundred sessions ranging from 1st - 23rd level), these types of bonuses are actually most common at low level - you do less fights per day (2-3 in heroic, 5-7 in epic, frex), more of the basic at-will powers give bonuses to attack, which people largely stop using, etc. As you get higher level, people tend to do harder control powers or attack granting instead, in my experience, such that you still see bonuses, but they actually go far down in quantity and regularity. Combat advantage comes from powers (daze + stun + prone) much more commonly, but on the other hand flanking (and PCs actually standing near each other in general) is less common. At least among those who want to survive all of the blasts and bursts coming their way

[...]
Depends on the party - usually the way it works if you actually have some near unhittable people, and some near autohittable people. Like, you might have a 22nd barbarian with Will 27 (monsters are attacking at +25) and a Will 43 Chaladin (w/ +2 to all defenses until he takes damage), both in the same party.

Marks also trigger less often as bursts become more common, or if they do, it's for situations like the above barbarian vs. paladin choice.

Difficulty and chance to hit don't have to have anything to do with each other.

This matches my experience to a T. Defenses diverge (that's systemic), it doesn't really matter too much, flanking is less common, and bursts+blasts are nasty enough to impact party positioning.

First, I'm going to point out the assumption you're making here. "It's the power gamers who want free feats." I've never seen a power gamer turn down free feats, but IME power gamers are just as happy to power game by RAW than by house rules. (Usually happier, actually.)

The power gamers I know, aren't generally out to disrupt the game, and they aren't generally even out to be more powerful than their party members. In fact, Power Gamer is something of a misnomer; a better name would be character builder: they've got a concept, and they're going to push it to the limit. That might be instructive with how to deal with them: you can try to impose limits and tone them down to the level of the rest of the party, or try to pull the rest of the party up.

Pulling them down is much harder than improving the rest; especially if you yourself don't like to powergame. You're going to come up with odd, inconsistent restrictions that probably come over as unfair (thus unfun), and/or are not as effective as you hoped. End result: you probably have a less happy gamer and you still haven't actually solved the problem.

Speaking as the DM of a similar group, here's what happens when a real math fix is implemented:

The power gap between Captain Optimal and Sergeant Snowflake narrows.

Ok no matter if I agree or not I love your names... but Captain Optimal will always oicks the best and Sergeant Snowflakes doesn't so yes it make them closer... but that closer is both higher... if on 1-100 scale SS was 76 and CA was 55 then after the fix SS was at 80 and CA was at 70.... it still makes SS who was dominating already MORE powerful... and I will tell you in my circles that would be a problem...

Even if the absolute gap wouldn't narrow (and it really does!) notice that the gap matters less at high hit rates. The difference between hitting 10% or 30% of the time? Huge. The difference between hitting 70% or 90%? Not very significant. In fact, the game would probably be largely playable if people always hit (there are a few exception, but you get the idea). That's probably the motivation behind expertise in the first place: systematically high hit rates are much less problematic than systematically low hit rates.

Finally, Expertise is a sneaky AC debuff: it allows using slightly higher level monsters with higher attack bonus without corresponding AC rise; so raising PC attack bonuses implicitly raises monster bonuses.

So don't fear the math fix: it makes the game easier to balance, not harder.

 

[Shadeydm]

While I can totally see why some folk don't like the so called "feat tax feats". I would just like to say that design wise I like the fact that I can pick those feats put them on my sheet and forget them. IMHO there are way too many feats that are too situational and end up forgotten. I have enough things to remember when running my character without having to remember that if I'm flanked and bloodied on a Saturday I get an extra +2 to my defenses. Give me feats like expertise that I can record and forget any day, over that narrowly situational stuff.

 

[Argyle King]

The feats don't bother me. However, the illusion of choice does.

Sure, I can totally choose a feat that gives me +1 to cold attacks while bloodied on a Tuesday in a rainstorm instead of Expertise -if I really want to. However, that goes beyond making choices for roleplaying purposes and starts heading into just simply making bad choices.

Even from a character's point of view, it makes sense to take Expertise. Imagine you're at the store buying some jelly beans. One jelly bean makes you smarter; one jelly bean magically puts money in your wallet; one jelly bean makes you strong; one makes you younger; etc; etc. Then, down at the end of the aisle, there's a jelly bean which -for the same price- does everything that the other ones do. What would you choose?

I'm of the camp which doesn't believe expertise was needed. However, even with believing that, I still feel there is a feat tax simply because of how vastly better Expertise is than any other option. It's especially noticeable considering the style of play that (IME) tends to be most common with 4E.

 

[Ryujin]

Ok, so here is my quastion... how do you get rid of 'feat taxes' without upsetting a diffrent group of players and DMs (Like myself who see way too many over powered builds who already hit all the time and have atleast 3 good defences...and dont want to see those characters get MORE feats)?

Example: I am runing agame and player A has all the power gameing stuff, and player B has none... so A has a supr weap, expertise, paragon def, the 3 other def uppers, tougness...ect and B has skill training and skill power and astral fire, and alertness... so then WotC erratas +1 to hit and def at 5, 15, and 25...and takes expertise and paragon def, and the 3 def uppers out of the game...now Player A goes to the op board and finds the best most mathmatical feats...and player B gets +2 att and def... and then Player A gets EVEN MORE POWERFUL...


SOme how online the arguement always goes "I do the math and find the best feats and can show you why this is the most bang for your buck, so I HAVE to take them before my lfavor feats"

But in real life all I see is "I do the math and find the best feats and can show you why this is the most bang for my buck, and every errata I find the new best of everything power, feat, you name it... so I only trade for the best and never take flavor I always take power"

So then I wonder if We ranked all feats in the game on a 1-100 scale with 100 being the most powerful and 1 being the least, how many people yelling for expertise (we will say easy in the 80's or 90's) to be givien for free would just take the next best feat, well the people who take the flavor stuff anyway would just get a minor bonus they wont care about... meaning alll we get are happy power gamers...

Quite frankly, I wouldn't worry about it either way. It all comes out in the wash.

In our last campaign the Ranger, who I referred to as The Demigod of Archers, could take down Soldiers with a couple of rounds worth of fire, all by himself. He actually usually 'wasted' damage in the kills. As a result he would be ganged-up on, chased down, cornered, and beaten into unconsciousness in almost every encounter.

By comparison my unoptimized Warlock build was virtually ignored; partly because of the inability to nail me down, with all the teleporting that I could do, but also because of the comparatively little damage I did. It took the DM a while to notice when I started doing upwards of 200hp in a nova round, because it was to multiple opponents. Usually other characters got the kills, as a result.

It is a simple truth that the nail that sticks up, gets hammered down.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Quite frankly, I wouldn't worry about it either way. It all comes out in the wash.

I dont belive it will

It is a simple truth that the nail that sticks up, gets hammered down.

yes except then the other PCs notice that and feel that one PC is the "star"





starting next month our local power gamer is runningn his own game once a month... he is giving 1 expertise feat (including master at arms or fey charm ext) for free at 1st level, and a sexond at 5th, then at 8th and 16th you get a free def feat (he has a list of armor or nad feats) and at 11th you get a bonus any feat, and if we get to 21 we get a bonus any feat as well... Also all at wills do epic damage at 1st level, and we are useing themes and starting at level 3.

Tonight we are going to make characters...and since he also 6 hombrew themse we will not have the character builder at all... It will be intresting. I think that he has gone overboard....

 

[Ryujin]

I dont belive it will

yes except then the other PCs notice that and feel that one PC is the "star"

We were all secretly laughing up our sleeves because, far from being the 'star', he was the 'punching bag.' Sometimes the DM would slip an extra 4 or 5 Minions, or a Brute into the encounter, just to bounce him around.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

We were all secretly laughing up our sleeves because, far from being the 'star', he was the 'punching bag.' Sometimes the DM would slip an extra 4 or 5 Minions, or a Brute into the encounter, just to bounce him around.

Maybe you dont understand... Bruse willis in Die hard gets the crude beat out of him all the time...and in the movie no one would trade places with him (he is the punching bag) but most of the screen time is his, he is the star...

I have 6 players that all want 'screen time' and I try to make sure they all get eqaul amounts... focusing all my attacks on the power gamer, or even throwing extra bad guys for him only is just giving him more screen time...


Lets take 5 PCs and put them against 5 equal level monsters... now lets take 3 monsters and pile them on the power gamer that means

player 1 fights 1 monster
player 2 fights 1 monster
player 3 fights 3 monsters
player 4 has no monsters to fight
player 5 has no monsters to fight

So, yes 4 and 5 can attack on there turns, but then they sit out until there next turn... player 1 is getting attacked once, player 2 as well... player 3 on the other hand is 'in the spot light' not just on his turn (when he does better then others) but also 3 other turns when he gets to show off his intrupts and reactions, his high defences and such...

 

[Ryujin]

Maybe you dont understand... Bruse willis in Die hard gets the crude beat out of him all the time...and in the movie no one would trade places with him (he is the punching bag) but most of the screen time is his, he is the star...

I have 6 players that all want 'screen time' and I try to make sure they all get eqaul amounts... focusing all my attacks on the power gamer, or even throwing extra bad guys for him only is just giving him more screen time...


Lets take 5 PCs and put them against 5 equal level monsters... now lets take 3 monsters and pile them on the power gamer that means

player 1 fights 1 monster
player 2 fights 1 monster
player 3 fights 3 monsters
player 4 has no monsters to fight
player 5 has no monsters to fight

So, yes 4 and 5 can attack on there turns, but then they sit out until there next turn... player 1 is getting attacked once, player 2 as well... player 3 on the other hand is 'in the spot light' not just on his turn (when he does better then others) but also 3 other turns when he gets to show off his intrupts and reactions, his high defences and such...

Oh, I understand completely. I'm just saying that isn't how it went for us, in practise. In our campaign the remaining character ganged up on and slaughtered the creatures, that weren't occupied in beating the snot out of DGoA, then saved his butt. Sometimes we would pause, in our awesomeness, to pull his bacon out of the fire for a round (I'd Fey Switch him out, or something).

He came off more like Chris Tucker in "Rush Hour", than Bruce Willis in "Die Hard."