WotC's hesitation on tackling the feat tax.

[Iron Sky]

For me, the biggest disappointment about the "feat taxes" is I'll sometimes be skimming through the feats and find a flavorful one that just makes me go "man, that would be sweet to have on this character" - then I realize I haven't taken Superior Will/X Expertise/Improved Defenses which are the real "Essentials" for characters I make.

It would be kinda neat if feats were designed to be mostly flavor with a bit of mechanics, instead of mostly being the things people take to make their characters as mechanically effective as everyone else.

 

[Lord Ernie]

In my home game, I've handed out the expertise feats + the paragon/epic defense feats for free since they were released. If the PC's want to take any other feats (Superior Def feats, Improved Defs), they are free to do so.

I can understand WotC's hesitation in creating a widespread solution for this, even though it's a pity the problem is there in the first place. From the beginning, they've strived to not make existing characters obsolete, at least in the sense that you can not play a character for a few months, come back to it, and not suddenly have the stat choices being illegal, or not have enough feats.

Errata screwed that idea up a good bit, but still... releasing a +1 to all defs/attacks per tier patch would invalidate a lot of characters. Sad, but true.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I still do not believe that any of the "Feat Tax" feats are necessary in the game, but WOTC has known about this since PHBII.

Why couldn't they have messed with the monsters back then? That would have been MMIII, DArk SUn and both Monster Vaults. And maybe MMII.

They COULD have made the change. Now, I agree, it is too late.

 

[Vael]

I'm quite satisfied with WotC's decision. Revamping the system is a major change, I'm not entirely keen on the confusion it would cause. 4e gets enough flack for having too much errata.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

as someone that belives that you can make a vharacter with out any of the 'feat taxes' that also belives the later game is a bit too easy, I would not be happy with errata.

I know that we have LFR players that never look at errata and it already slows game play.

I know encounters is WAY worse then LFr when it comes to no errata looing

 

[Klaus]

For me, the biggest disappointment about the "feat taxes" is I'll sometimes be skimming through the feats and find a flavorful one that just makes me go "man, that would be sweet to have on this character" - then I realize I haven't taken Superior Will/X Expertise/Improved Defenses which are the real "Essentials" for characters I make.

It would be kinda neat if feats were designed to be mostly flavor with a bit of mechanics, instead of mostly being the things people take to make their characters as mechanically effective as everyone else.

But if no one in the group takes Expertise/Improved Defenses, isn't everybody as effective as everybody else?

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

But if no one in the group takes Expertise/Improved Defenses, isn't everybody as effective as everybody else?

This is really the crux of the issue. It's not a feat tax if nobody takes it, but you will often have players of mixed inclinations in the same group - and that's when it becomes a problem.

Various people have suggested and implemented various solutions to this, to varying degrees of success. Granting everyone a free scaling feat bonus to attacks and defences seems like the way to go, from my point of view. That way, folks that want the extra juicy bonuses can still take specific feats, and those who want to go for more flavourful feat choices can still do so without worrying about falling behind, or worse, as in the case of those new to the system and those who aren't mechanics-focused - being left in the dust and not knowing why.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I certainly don't disagree but OTOH I feel the issue in these cases is more about overemphasizing mechanical combat prowess. In my game for instance I really try to always provide ways for people to use skills to accomplish things for instance, and almost equal time and weight is given to non-combat aspects of the game. Thus the character who spends his first 5 feats on combat bonuses will find he's rather one-dimensional. No doubt he'll still do OK outside of combat, but now and then he'll feel the loss, just like the guy that takes 5 non-combat feats will still fight OK but will sometimes fall a bit short.

It also goes to the question of how do these various feats really affect the game? As a DM if I find that the PCs are having an easy time in combat (IE they all took all the best combat feats) I'm probably just going to make combats harder.

I admit, because the feats exist they create issues of disparity and temptation. I think personally the answer would be to simply get rid of all expertise feats. The defense feats are a bit different, those are more needed and probably could be just folded into armor/neck slot bonus or something, or just hard coded tier bonuses.

Anyway, I think the answer they gave was pretty clear and makes sense. I suspect they drew a line at 'core numbers' and decided right from the start never to errata the actual core numbers. Once you start down that road of tweaking the whole structure of the game who knows where it ends?

 

[Pentius]

But if no one in the group takes Expertise/Improved Defenses, isn't everybody as effective as everybody else?

They're closer to it, anyway.

But in my experience, unless there's a group-wide agreement or DM mandate that no one shall take expertise/improved defense feats, eventually someone is going to notice them and think that they would indeed like to hit more often or get hit less often.

Pretty much since the expertise feats came out, I've been handling it the same way in each game I DM. I give everyone an expertise feat for free. That ensures that everyone has it, thereby nipping in the bud a potential power gap later on. And I've never once had a player complain.

 

[keterys]

It's a pretty rare group where no one takes any of them - especially the newer ones. I'll often want Superior Will for the daze/stun protection, the Will is gravy. Ditto something like Staff Expertise.