Which feats are "taxes"?

[Garthanos]

Entire casinos in Vegas are founded as multi million or billion dollar businesses on differences in odds tighter than those generated by a heroic tier Expertise feat.

Which is why I seriously discourage players from taking... "power attack" in heroic tier....

 

[keterys]

I'll admit that Improved Initiative offends me a lot less. It's a single roll that has a tactical / strategic bearing on the combat rather than a purely damaging one.

 

[Nifft]

I still don't see the problem with Expertise as a feat tax.

1. Taking it before level 6 for most PCs is a waste. Most PCs have at least 3 powerful, neccesary, or staple feats in the heroic tier they they'll take eariler if they were optimizing. Proficiencies, aror, class and racial features will be upgraded first. +1 to attack when you don't really need it is not so important.
2. By the time you actually need it, you should have over 6 feats. Unless you are heavily optimizing, you should have most to the feats you really want. One of seven or eight feats doesn't hurt you too bad.
3. It fixes the math at least.

Here's the problem: it's boring. It removes mechanical variety. It makes all PCs that much less interesting.

Sure, it's only one feat slot... but it's not. The Barbarian just got a feat-fix for his AC issues. This isn't a one-time thing, it's how they seem to want to fix many of the bugs in their initial design.

It's sloppy design to patch errors by consuming a resource that should be used strictly for cool stuff.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Nifft]

I'll admit that Improved Initiative offends me a lot less. It's a single roll that has a tactical / strategic bearing on the combat rather than a purely damaging one.

Yeah, for some reason Improved Initiative seems okay to me.

I guess it's because rolling initiative is effectively an Encounter power. It's nice, but not vital -- though going first is very nice for Rogues.

Cheers, -- N

 

[GMforPowergamers]

from another thread...

The disparity between player bonuses and monster bonuses is blindingly obvious and clearly intentional. People talk about this 'glitch' as if they've discovered a secret, but I think what they've actually discovered is that there's more to the game's math than basic arithmetic. WoTC had a staff mathematician working on this stuff, for crying out loud.

I think that truly analyzing the game's math requires looking at the probabilistic ranges involved in a day's worth of encounters, considering resource attrition, the action economy, and survivability over time... analysis that no one complaining about the 'glitch' has actually done.

the second paragraph is what I have been trying to say...so here said better then I do...

 

[Blackbrrd]

Here's the problem: it's boring. It removes mechanical variety. It makes all PCs that much less interesting.

Sure, it's only one feat slot... but it's not. The Barbarian just got a feat-fix for his AC issues. This isn't a one-time thing, it's how they seem to want to fix many of the bugs in their initial design.

It's sloppy design to patch errors by consuming a resource that should be used strictly for cool stuff.

Cheers, -- N

I agree that removing mechanical variety is boring and makes the game less interesting.

Regarding the Barbarian feat-fix for AC issues - we have a Half-orc barbarian with 18 starting dex who hasn't had any big problems due to his AC. The only downside is the relatively low con, but it's not a huge issue. The boring part is that I can't really recommend any other races but Half-orc barbarians, if you aren't going the heavy armor route. In other words - the "fix" here is more of an option.

Getting +1/+2/+3 to hit for up to 30% more successful attacks isn't really an option. You can either take the feat or miss consistently more than the other characters with the feat. There is no way you can get that +3 to hit for all your attacks in any other way. That is what makes it a feat-tax.

Feats like toughness are important, but there are a lot of feats that compete in the same department. For instance the paladin has a feat that gives him wis modifier damage reduction. It's has nearly the same function as Toughness, but does it in another way. You probably want it, but it's not gonna be your first feat. For some builds it's going to be skipped completely, since you are going for avoiding damage instead. It's a good optional feat, but it probably won't be taken by more than 50% of the characters.

The feats I don't like are all the expertise feats, but I don't really have a problem with the Paragon defense feat. It's good value for money, but not every character will take it.

The Epic defense feats looks more like a feat tax than anything. +4 to a single defense, or 3 feats for all of them? As a Defender this is probably invaluable. Feels like a feat tax to me.

As noted above, I feel that the expertise feats are feat taxes. In my current game, that has gotten to level 8 I have banned them (the characters are so optimized that they haven't got any problems hitting), but I will give them the +1/+2/+3 if I see them starting to miss. Missing more than 50% of the time have dragged some interesting fights to a slow burn. Not very amusing. So far it has only happened at level 7 which was a break point. When they got to level 8 with +2 weapons, stat gains and the level bonus, they suddenly had +3 more to hit. I will probably let them get +1 to hit at level 9 or level 11.

 

[Herschel]

As I also said, check in with the other players at the table and the DM about what kind of expectations they have. I not only wrote that; it's in my sig.

As for what I would do?

First, I would wonder why battles were becoming harder and harder, why it felt like we were fighting short-handed. I would start thinking about why it was suddenly harder for all of us to achieve narrative goals.

After a while, I'd presumably notice that your character was not hitting creatures, was absorbing more damage, and was requiring more frequent emergency measures to bail out. Then, I'd try to diagnose why this was occurring. Are you devoting resources to other things that equivalently help out the party? Then, that's fine, provided that you're making sure that other people know not to devote resources to that choice. Are you new to the game and need some help? Are you unhappy with how things are going? Well, then we can figure things out, pretty easily. Some people don't like the mechanics of the game; if I can lend a hand with that and let them shine in other areas, what's the big deal?

BUT: if you're taking magic items others should have to make up for these choices, that's a problem. That's a problem, because that's when your choices impacted someone else's fun.

And if someone's character dies because you can't hit the side of a barn or soaked up all the healing? That's a HUGE problem, because that's when your choices impacted someone else's fun. That's when I get angry.

So, yeah, if your choices are going to impact someone else's fun, the least you can do is let your fellow players know.

Understand my take on this now?

Yeah, it's all about you and what you think someone else's character should be and do. You are accusing people who don't build characters as you want them of badwrongfun. In this post, you make it sound as if YOU should be the decider of how someone else builds there character so it fits in YOUR plan. He even mentioned LFR, where it's OPEN gaming to people of all experience levels, not just people you approve of.

I find your post extremely insulting and if it were the only exposure to your words or personality (which it obviously isn't) that even though I play very "good" characters I would not want to play with you either.

 

[Dausuul]

Ok,you didn't actually go that far, you know that, right?

Bottom line here is that feats would be a nightmare if none of them added flat numerical bonuses. I got at least two guys in my group who don't have or want the character builder and really can't keep track of all the stuff their character currently gets from feats, powers, class features and magic items.

IMO, that's because a lot of feats, powers, class features and magic items are poorly designed and non-intuitive, so keeping track of them is a nightmare. I'm pretty good at running complicated characters (I played casters almost exclusively pre-4E), but when I'm building a 4E character there are a lot of feats that I just toss out the window - not because they're not good feats, but because I don't want the bother of keeping track of them in play.

Good "character-rounding" feats are things like Linguist and Skill Training. They're both essentially giving passive numerical bonuses (Linguist gives you +3 to your languages known, Skill Training gives you +5 to a skill). Very small cognitive footprint.

However, they're not in the same category as Expertise and Weapon Focus, because they aren't stacking; instead of piling extra bonuses onto something you're already good at (which is almost always the best choice for the optimizer), they give you new things to be good at.

 

[Herschel]

I still don't see the problem with Expertise as a feat tax.

1. Taking it before level 6 for most PCs is a waste. Most PCs have at least 3 powerful, neccesary, or staple feats in the heroic tier they they'll take eariler if they were optimizing. Proficiencies, aror, class and racial features will be upgraded first. +1 to attack when you don't really need it is not so important.
2. By the time you actually need it, you should have over 6 feats. Unless you are heavily optimizing, you should have most to the feats you really want. One of seven or eight feats doesn't hurt you too bad.
3. It fixes the math at least.

This is an important point that seems to get ignored by those claiming it's a "feat tax". There the debate revolves around the minimum of +2, many observe it's not necessary until it's a +3. Were it an Epic Expertise feat would it be more palatable? As it's set up now, you can take the feat earlier and it has a scaling benefit. The debate over powers scaling is long and "loud", yet here's something that actually scales properly to make it useful all along.

 

[Cadfan]

The debate over powers scaling is long and "loud", yet here's something that actually scales properly to make it useful all along.

Math does not work that way.

If Expertise has to scale to remain useful, then that's proof positive that its a math fix, or broken. Objective, incontrovertible, definitive proof.

Certain things have to scale to remain useful. Damage bonuses, for example, must scale because their effectiveness is proportional to overall damage. To give an example, if you do 10 damage per hit and that gets increased to 11 by a feat, you got a 10% boost. If at a later level you do 20 damage per hit without that feat, that feat needs to give +2 to be equally useful.

Attack bonuses don't work that way. As long as your underlying math is scaled properly, an optional bonus should never, ever scale with level. To give an example, if you hit on a 9+ most of the time and that improves to 8+ due to a feat, you got a 1/12th increase in damage output. If everything scales properly and that feat is not a tax then at a later level you will continue to hit on a 9+ without that feat, leaving aside variance and noise which should move equally in both positive and negative directions. If that feat comes along and gives you the same +1, you get the same +1/12th damage increase. If that feat has scaled though and gives +2, you're getting 2/12ths damage increase. Which is completely unnecessary and is scaling you faster than the underlying math.