WotC's hesitation on tackling the feat tax.

[MerricB]

Ability Score inflation really sucks at high levels when the difference between your good and bad defenses becomes "autohit" and "automiss".

When there's an 8-point gap in defenses based on your ability scores alone (and then feats factor in as well), things start getting very swingy.

 

[KarinsDad]

AND remember, your 16th level PCs had BETTER be good. Here's an interesting tough encounter for you 4 Elder Blizzard Dragons, in the middle of a snowstorm. Yes, you will NEED that Cloak of Courage! That's only a level 19 encounter. It should be tough but of course you will handle it, and trust me there is going to be plenty of surges going off, lol.

Like I said, we do not have Cloak of Courage.

4 Elder Blizzard Dragons would definitely be a challenge. However, at least one dragon (and probably two) is blinded or dazed in round one or two, and -4 to -7 to hit PCs. A dragon would sometimes be dominated (and would run past one of the immobilized PCs granting combat advantage and being -5 to hit next round for running). It would take about 3 rounds to focus fire kill each dragon (12 rounds for the entire encounter) since our 3+ strikers tend to do 50 to 60 points of damage per round and have high chances to hit (and we have quite a few ways to give the strikers extra attacks).

However, Rising Wind would definitely mess up the two melee Strikers big time (hence, the 3 rounds per dragon kill instead of a more typical 2), but some of the other PCs have blasts and bursts which both restrained and blinded do not stop. The second toughest thing would be the immobilization, but most of the PCs have ways around that (for example, half of the strikers are ranged and my leader has ways to slide PCs). But the PCs have multiple ways to immobilize foes at range, to take foes out of the combat completely for one or more rounds each, to debuff foes, to blind foes, to give temp hit points, to knock foes prone, to dominate foes, to negate riders, and to hand out free saves. The dragons are tough, but because of debuffs and immediate interrupts, they won't be hitting the PCs nearly as much as the PCs hit them, and temp hit points will make many of the attacks weaker than normal. Even my PC (who has a low chance to hit in the group) will hit the dragons on 8 or less. The sole exception to this is if the dragons can manage a lot of hits with Rising Wind. Hot DM dice could make this type of encounter real nasty.

The problem that the dragons have is that they are huge. It will be real tough for all 4 dragons to focus fire on a PC like the PCs can focus fire on a given dragon (unless the dragons can manage some type of pinball slide a PC, but again, they have to hit first). So the dragon damage, when it actually hits, will probably be spread out over the group.

Note: we would use a lot of healing surges, but my PC would probably not. He tends to use one healing surge per encounter. Sometimes two, but that's rare (he regenerates and can heal himself nearly to full with a single heal, so he uses the 5 minute rule for an encounter power to regen back to not bloodied and then heals back up).

Oh, and the dragons better come in at ground level or at least one of them is falling for whatever height they come flying in at. It's a lot of fun watching a dragon bounce.

 

[Tony Vargas]

May have already mentioned this...

Gamma World just gives PCs the same +1/level everything as monsters. Seems to work fine. There are no stat bonuses, no enhancement bonuses, no inherent bonuses. 'Magic Items' (Omega Tech) are handled in a randomized fashion in which items are basically all encounter powers that may not stick around after the encounter is out...

 

[keterys]

Yep, that's how I'd prefer D&D worked myself.

Well, not necessarily the deck of random magic treasure, but much cleaner math, no stat inflation, yes.

 

[MerricB]

Yep, that's how I'd prefer D&D worked myself.

Well, not necessarily the deck of random magic treasure, but much cleaner math, no stat inflation, yes.

I'm hoping we get something like that with 5e.

It all started to go so horribly wrong with Supplement I: Greyhawk...

Interesting note: in OD&D + Greyhawk (which introduced the more significant stat bonuses), only fighters gained a to-hit/damage bonus from high strength - not just percentile strength, but the entire upper end of the table worked only for them,

Likewise, only fighters got to use Dex to improve their AC!

Cheers!

 

[MrMyth]

Well, I might agree with this previous to the fix to increase monster damage. Now, I don't believe it for a second.

The changes to monsters definitely changed things, but... in my experience, it meant that you could actually run at-level encounters as average encounters, rather than having them just being speedbumps, and needing Level+2 or Level+3 in order to be a standard encounter (and even higher for actually challenging fights).

So... yes, the Expertise feats are needed for a group that only fights encounters 3 or 4 levels above them. I don't feel they are needed to 'keep up' with the normal expected challenge of the game, however.

The simple math does show that a PC will 'lose' 3-4 points of attack bonus over the course of 30 levels. However, that is entirely absent of the rest of the context of the game - such as the fact that they quadruple the number of encounter powers and daily powers they have, and gain even more encounter powers, items, along with special abilities from paragon paths and epic destinies (and now themes as well). I've found that you'll make up about half that bonus based on different builds and conditional feats, and the other half tends to be made up for in the increased potency offered by your greater array of powers and options.

Now, others disagree, and... fair enough. But with the Expertise in play, by Epic levels, my experience was that PCs almost never missed. It didn't mean they hit 'as often' as they did at level 1 - it meant they hit nearly all the time.

This was, admittedly, with a somewhat optimized group (though certainly not at the very extreme of such things.) And I do get that the balance needs to be aimed at the 'average' PC. But the math that Expertise is supposedly based on isn't aimed at an average PC, it is aimed at a PC who completely lacks a Paragon Path, Epic Destiny, Theme, feats, items, powers. It only really works in the absolute void of every other relevant aspect of the game, and once those other elements are added in, I think it unbalances the math too far in the other direction.

In my opinion and experience, at least.

Because Controllers really have very limited control, and every class (shy of a lazy Warlord) except Striker does little damage, and because monsters hit so much harder now, everyone is trying to tweak out every tiny little bit to hit and to damage whenever possible. It's become an arms race of getting the absolute best stuff, not much different than picking the absolute best cards in Magic to ensure your ability to be competitive.

Is this something that has only just developed? I'm not saying I haven't seen such behavior - I definitely play with one group that often takes that approach - but it was just as true at the start of 4E as now.

It is true that the challenge tends to adapt to the PCs - I view the boost in monster damage as getting monsters 'back in line', though, so that the proper challenge level they provide is actually as expected.

If one looks at it objectively, first WotC handed out Expertise, defense feat boosts, and masterwork armor changes to the PCs (AV and PHB2) to balance out the "to hit" math. Then when the game became too easy, the concept (that many players did mention early on) that the monsters did not do enough damage was addressed (MM3), attempting to balance out the "damage" math. This shifted the balance of power back to the monsters. WotC then introduced more surgeless healing / temporary hit points (now that damage actually mattered), simpler and stronger Essentials PCs (not necessarily overall, but with respect to an average attack), and the ability for PCs to use any number of item Daily powers at any time (a major boost in versatility). This shifted the balance of power back to the PCs. WotC then introduced the concept of common, uncommon, and rare magic items in an attempt to shift the balance of power back to the monsters (this was done at the same time as Essentials, but it's pretty obvious that Essentials classes and feats are in many ways stronger and/or more versatile than many core classes and feats, so it looked like an attempt to balance Essentials right out of the box, which was a good thing). Then this year, they handed out Themes which have the potential to increase the versatility of the PCs. Again, power shift towards the PCs.

Hmm, I'm not sure all that is as 'cause and effect' as you feel. Even before expertise, the feeling was that monsters were low-damage; it wasn't that this made them 'too easy', just as the supposed math gap didn't actually make them 'too hard' - they both were just seen as contributing to the dreaded 'grind'.

Surgeless healing actually got toned down, after monster damage had gone up. I don't know if temps have actually become more plentiful, so much as the result of newer classes needing new design space to fill out, rather than retreading the design areas we've seen before.

The change in magic items - removing daily powers and adding a rarity system - happened simultaneously. One wasn't an attempt to boost PCs, and the other an attempt to tone them down. They were both rooted in completely seperate issues from balance - the perceived flavor of items, and their use in the game.

Similarly, Essentials characters are not by default any better or worse than existing PCs (despite that many folks have made both claims). They have their differences, but I don't think they've shifted any fundamental power level - aside from, and this is one genuine change, the shift in power level for feats, which did definitely rise with Essentials. (And, largely, ties back into the entire expertise issue.)

Honestly, I haven't seen any fundamental back and forth rebalancing as you have described. Changes have definitely been made, but I think they have had a variety of causes and reasons behind them, rather than each one being somehow a direct response to the change exactly prior to them.

So I don't think we can just look at the to hit math gap as one game element out of sync. There were several out of sync elements, WotC has addressed them over time, and it has resulted in major shifts in many things including what types of roles are found at tables in which ratios. We only have one leader in our Paragon campaign out of 5 to 9 PCs (depending on who shows up) because even in extremely difficult encounters, we really don't need a ton of extra healing (we also only have one leader in heroic out of 7 PCs). The strikers tend to kill the foes quickly, the controllers tend to debuff the NPCs (we have one who gives the NPCs anywhere from -4 to -7 to hit the PCs, so even defender marks/auras become a bit moot), the defenders stand around taking a significant portion of the damage, and the leaders are mostly there as an emergency healing/control stopgap, so many leaders are not needed.

I'd say that the lack of need for leaders may be a good example that balance has been compromised. I'm not saying the game should require a group to have every role covered in order to succeed. But Expertise has made it so easy to focus on damage and Strikers, and simply assume you can kill the opposition first.

At this point, I'm not sure there is any easy way to remove the expertise feats from the game (though I have been having success in my current campaign doing just that). But everything I've seen still tells me that they were put in place to fix a perceived problem that was not actually the issue they thought it was, and they've instead ended up unbalancing the math more than balancing it.

 

[keterys]

The variety of hit bonuses (especially from leaders like a Battle Captain, Battlelord of Kord, Warchanter, or Battle Engineer, or certain very specific psionic builds) can easily negate the gap... but also means that groups without those are at a major disadvantage compared to those who do. Personally, I wish almost every attack bonus / defense penalty switched to a 2 change instead of, say, a full stat difference. And didn't stack.

Objectively, a rogue at 1st level needs about a 4 to hit (5 stat, 4 prof/talent, 2 CA - vs AC 15)

At 30th, he needs about a 7 without expertise (10 stat, 4 prof/talent, 6 enh, 15 level, 2 CA - vs AC 44), 4 with.

Similarly, his first level damage (~18.5) is about 2/3 of an enemy's health (~28), while at 30th his damage (~68.5) is about 1/4 of an enemy's health (~274).

So, combats at low levels are fast and furious, and combats at high level _can be_, but also can easily not be - can even drag on quite a bit - depending on level of optimization. S'tricky.

 

[Ferghis]

I understand the math involved in this issue, and at this point my ONLY real complaint about the whole thing is that the online CB does not allow implementing the houserules they acknowledged as reasonable.


In case they're wondering what to do to implement such an option, in my campaign, I propose to:
- give out a cumulative +1 to all attack rolls except those receiving +3/6/9 at levels 5, 15, and 25.
- nerf the bonus that Expertise feats grant to a flat +1 to attack rolls with augmented, encounter and daily powers.
- nerf the bonus that Superior Will, Fort, and Reflex (along with Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will and Great Fortitude) grant down to a flat +1.

The following houserules don't need to be incorporated into the CB (but it would be nice to just be able to set these up in there, and share them with other players, so the characters are automatically legal in the campaign.
- Only one Epic Defenses feat can be taken, and only for the lowest non-AC defense.
- All other feats that unconditionally increase non-AC-defense cannot be taken.

The very first of these fixes the perceived drop in offensive competitiveness. Despite the correctness of the math, I think the drop is easily spanned by all the buffs that characters benefit from at high level. However, I can understand that knowledgeable players (the worst kind!) would feel cheated without the bonus given the hubbub about the feats. Further, I understand that hitting is more fun than missing. So the problem remains that this bonus occupies a very precious feat slot. So I'd like to give the bonus away for free, and let players take the feats if they're interested in the rider. That's why I need the second change.

The defense issue is more complicated. The only fix I see necessary is the relative drop in one (sometimes two) non-AC defenses as characters advance into epic tier. That's why I allow one of the epic defenses feats to patch that issue. But otherwise, I don't want characters raising their defenses. If they do, I have to pitch higher level monsters at them to properly threaten them. When I do that, the odds of overshooting the sweetspot where players feel like they may lose an encounter but manage to come out on top increase dramatically. I'd rather throw more lower level monsters that the PCs can hit and KO more easily, but who can also hit the PCs relatively easily.

If you allow PCs to superoptimize their defenses (or worse yet, if only one PC superoptimizes their defenses), the DM has to throw higher level monsters to really threaten them, increasing the risk that a few (un)lucky rolls result in a TPK. But I'm willing to compromise, and I like the Superior NAD riders, which is why I allowed them and flattened the bonus. I might add a paragon-level requirement to them, though.

 

[MrMyth]

The variety of hit bonuses (especially from leaders like a Battle Captain, Battlelord of Kord, Warchanter, or Battle Engineer, or certain very specific psionic builds) can easily negate the gap... but also means that groups without those are at a major disadvantage compared to those who do.

Right. I said in my last post that the problem with Expertise is that they are measured against a group with no options, rather than one with the average options. What I didn't make clear is that there really is no easy way to know what that 'average' group is.

Now, in theory, with a balanced system, the group that doesn't have those "+5 to hit for a round" powers will instead have other powers that make up the difference in other ways. In actuality, that isn't the case - some abilities are certainly more potent than others.

Will the average group generally still end up with at least a couple such abilities? I think so. I've seen non-optimized PCs bust out powers that I didn't think much of, compared to the 'easy choices', and discovered their choices were perfectly effective as well.

With your 30th level rogue, without expertise, in theory he is hitting less often than at 1st level. But is he targeting more Non-AC defenses with his powers? Is he making attacks as minor actions or interrupts? Does he have Nimble Blade or other bonuses that let him benefit more from combat advantage? Is he more able to guarantee having combat advantage?

And even if he does end up being more accurate than at level 1, has he still fallen behind due to the shift in damage vs monster hp? Is that compensated by the more effective conditions he is inflicting? Etc.

It is a hard question to answer. Honestly, the hp issue is, I think, more relevant than the accuracy issue... but also looks worse than it actually is - that big chunk a rogue does compared to monster hp is most exaggerated at level 1, and tapers to a more average amount somewhat early on.

Could some of these issues have been removed by a more balanced system? Probably. Multi-attacks, and the huge attack bonus buffs, and other stuff like that, definitely throw things off a bit, making that optimization 'potential' much higher than it would otherwise be.

Items are another area, especially since the question of whether you can choose your own items or not will shift from one campaign to the next.

So in the end, you can't really measure what the 'average' PC is capable of. On the other hand, balancing against the absolute weakest PC is, in my mind, just as poor a choice as balancing everything against only the most optimized of characters.

 

[Kzach]

Instead of adding more to stats, inherent or otherwise, I think the whole system would work a lot better if you never added to ability scores at all.

Ability Score inflation really sucks at high levels when the difference between your good and bad defenses becomes "autohit" and "automiss".

When there's an 8-point gap in defenses based on your ability scores alone (and then feats factor in as well), things start getting very swingy.

I'm hoping we get something like that with 5e.

It all started to go so horribly wrong with Supplement I: Greyhawk...

I agree with everything said here.

I actually started work on a modified 4e system where you only get very small increments to all level-based additions to the character. Over the course of 30 levels you'd get about an overall +3 increase to hit and damage (+1 to non primary stats) and about half again of your starting total of hit points. No magical plusses either.

Flattening out the system like this would make DM'ing SO much easier. Instead of measuring power in plusses, it would be measured in versatility and options. Sure, your 30th-level fighter might only have +3 more to hit and damage than your 1st-level fighter, and he might only have an additional 15 or so hit points, but he'd have more healing surges, more ways in which to spend those healing surges, more ways to get temporary hit points, more ways to mitigate incoming damage through temporary bonuses to defences, more ways to increase his damage and attack potential through temporary bonuses to hit and damage, etc.