Shiz
3rd June 2009, 04:48 PM
Some of you may not care about a forum squabble but this sums up the Expertise Feat issue very well:
Just figured I would try to explain the controversy over Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise, as clearly as possible, in case other people fail to understand it. My goal here is not to say that people should or should not use these feats in their games, it is just to explain why some people choose not to use them.
Why the Feats were Created
The first thing you need to understand in order to understand the controversy is how attack scaled with level in the initial release of 4E.
A typical 1st level dwarven fighter with 16 strength using a warhammer would have the following attack bonus:
+3 (strength) + 2 (weapon proficiency) + 1 (fighter weapon talent) = +6
A typical 1st level skirmisher enemy would have an AC of 15 (14 + level). This means the fighter would hit him on a 9 or higher (60% of the time).
The same dwarven fighter on 30th level would have the following attack bonus:
+7 (strength) + 2 (weapon proficiency) + 1 (fighter weapon talent) + 15 (level) + 6 (magic weapon) = +31
A typical 30th level skirmisher enemy would have an AC of 44 (14 + level). This means the fighter would hit him on a 13 or higher, (40% of the time).
As you can see, characters lost 20% of their to hit chance (relative to enemies their own level) over the course of their careers. Many people considered this a problem, as hitting rarely is not much fun, soldier enemies can become almost impossible for most people to hit, and characters who weren't min/maxed became nearly useless in the epic tier.
Weapon/Implement Expertise add +3 to hit over the course of a character's career, thus in the example above the dwarven fighter would have a 55% chance of hitting on 30th level, a perfectly reasonable loss of only 5%.
Why Some People Dislike the Feats as a Solution
There are a few reasons given why people dislike the current feats as a solution. I have listed the ones I see most often below.
Feat Tax
Some people do not like the fact that they must take a particular feat in order to continue functioning at high levels. They adhere to the design philosophy that no single feat should be absolutely necessary, and that feats should be a chance for you to make your character unique and different. Forcing everyone to take a particular feat ruins this.
Weapon + Implement Users
Some characters use a weapon and an implement (for instance: clerics, paladins, and avengers), or two different weapons (for instance: a ranger who uses a bow and double longswords). These characters must take two feats if they wish to stay on par with their attacks. This makes these characters substantially less appealing.
Non-Weapon/Implement Attacks
Some attacks do not use either a weapon or an implement (for instance: Dragonborn's breath weapon, and many powers from racial paragon paths). These powers cannot benefit from weapon/implement expertise, and so they become very unappealing choices for high level play.
Feat Imbalance
The expertise feats are substantially more powerful than other feats their level. To understand why, we'll need to do a little math.
Let's go back to our dwarven fighter, described above. At 1st level, taking weapon expertise would raise his chance to hit from 60% to 65%. This increases his average damage per round by slightly less than 10% (a 66% chance to hit would increase his damage by exactly 10%). At 30th level, however, it increases his chance to hit from 40% to 55%. This increases his average damage per round by slightly less than 40% (a 56% chance to hit would increase his damage by exactly 40%). An increase in damage of 40% is exceedingly powerful, and no other single feat comes even close. Furthermore, hitting often means inflicting status ailments. This further increases the usefulness of the feat.
Possible Solutions
Many people feel dissatisfied with the feats for one or more of the reasons I mentioned above. They have proposed a number of solutions. I list some of these solutions below, with their rationale.
Give people an expertise feat for free
This rule gives all players a free expertise feat at first level (or sometimes at 5th level). This solves the feat tax problem for people who use a single weapon or implement, and reduces the feat tax problem for people who use multiple weapons/implements. It does not solve the problem of powers that use neither weapons nor implements.
Combat Expertise
Some people create a new feat called Combat Expertise. This feat provides the bonus of weapon expertise and implement expertise for all powers. This does not solve the feat tax problem, but it does make it less of a problem for people who wield both a weapon and an implement, and it brings powers that use neither weapons nor implements up to the appropriate level.
Eliminate the feats
Just cut the expertise feats from your game entirely. This solves every problem except the one that originally inspired the feats. High level characters, particularly non-optimized ones, will not hit very often.
Fix the math without feats
Like the above solution, this cuts the expertise feats out of the game entirely, but then introduces other new rules to fix the original problem. Some possible new rules include:
I. All monsters get a -1 penalty to defenses at paragon tier, and another -1 penalty at epic tier.
II. All characters get a +1 bonus to attack rolls at paragon tier, and another +1 bonus at epic tier.
III. Characters get a +1 bonus to hit at level 5. This bonus increases to +2 at level 15 and +3 at level 25.
Don't worry, be happy
This solution involves just leaving everything as is. People adopt this solution when they either don't see the problems outlined above as very important, or they wish to keep their campaign in line with RPGA rules.
Hope this helps anyone who has had trouble following the issue.
Just figured I would try to explain the controversy over Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise, as clearly as possible, in case other people fail to understand it. My goal here is not to say that people should or should not use these feats in their games, it is just to explain why some people choose not to use them.
Why the Feats were Created
The first thing you need to understand in order to understand the controversy is how attack scaled with level in the initial release of 4E.
A typical 1st level dwarven fighter with 16 strength using a warhammer would have the following attack bonus:
+3 (strength) + 2 (weapon proficiency) + 1 (fighter weapon talent) = +6
A typical 1st level skirmisher enemy would have an AC of 15 (14 + level). This means the fighter would hit him on a 9 or higher (60% of the time).
The same dwarven fighter on 30th level would have the following attack bonus:
+7 (strength) + 2 (weapon proficiency) + 1 (fighter weapon talent) + 15 (level) + 6 (magic weapon) = +31
A typical 30th level skirmisher enemy would have an AC of 44 (14 + level). This means the fighter would hit him on a 13 or higher, (40% of the time).
As you can see, characters lost 20% of their to hit chance (relative to enemies their own level) over the course of their careers. Many people considered this a problem, as hitting rarely is not much fun, soldier enemies can become almost impossible for most people to hit, and characters who weren't min/maxed became nearly useless in the epic tier.
Weapon/Implement Expertise add +3 to hit over the course of a character's career, thus in the example above the dwarven fighter would have a 55% chance of hitting on 30th level, a perfectly reasonable loss of only 5%.
Why Some People Dislike the Feats as a Solution
There are a few reasons given why people dislike the current feats as a solution. I have listed the ones I see most often below.
Feat Tax
Some people do not like the fact that they must take a particular feat in order to continue functioning at high levels. They adhere to the design philosophy that no single feat should be absolutely necessary, and that feats should be a chance for you to make your character unique and different. Forcing everyone to take a particular feat ruins this.
Weapon + Implement Users
Some characters use a weapon and an implement (for instance: clerics, paladins, and avengers), or two different weapons (for instance: a ranger who uses a bow and double longswords). These characters must take two feats if they wish to stay on par with their attacks. This makes these characters substantially less appealing.
Non-Weapon/Implement Attacks
Some attacks do not use either a weapon or an implement (for instance: Dragonborn's breath weapon, and many powers from racial paragon paths). These powers cannot benefit from weapon/implement expertise, and so they become very unappealing choices for high level play.
Feat Imbalance
The expertise feats are substantially more powerful than other feats their level. To understand why, we'll need to do a little math.
Let's go back to our dwarven fighter, described above. At 1st level, taking weapon expertise would raise his chance to hit from 60% to 65%. This increases his average damage per round by slightly less than 10% (a 66% chance to hit would increase his damage by exactly 10%). At 30th level, however, it increases his chance to hit from 40% to 55%. This increases his average damage per round by slightly less than 40% (a 56% chance to hit would increase his damage by exactly 40%). An increase in damage of 40% is exceedingly powerful, and no other single feat comes even close. Furthermore, hitting often means inflicting status ailments. This further increases the usefulness of the feat.
Possible Solutions
Many people feel dissatisfied with the feats for one or more of the reasons I mentioned above. They have proposed a number of solutions. I list some of these solutions below, with their rationale.
Give people an expertise feat for free
This rule gives all players a free expertise feat at first level (or sometimes at 5th level). This solves the feat tax problem for people who use a single weapon or implement, and reduces the feat tax problem for people who use multiple weapons/implements. It does not solve the problem of powers that use neither weapons nor implements.
Combat Expertise
Some people create a new feat called Combat Expertise. This feat provides the bonus of weapon expertise and implement expertise for all powers. This does not solve the feat tax problem, but it does make it less of a problem for people who wield both a weapon and an implement, and it brings powers that use neither weapons nor implements up to the appropriate level.
Eliminate the feats
Just cut the expertise feats from your game entirely. This solves every problem except the one that originally inspired the feats. High level characters, particularly non-optimized ones, will not hit very often.
Fix the math without feats
Like the above solution, this cuts the expertise feats out of the game entirely, but then introduces other new rules to fix the original problem. Some possible new rules include:
I. All monsters get a -1 penalty to defenses at paragon tier, and another -1 penalty at epic tier.
II. All characters get a +1 bonus to attack rolls at paragon tier, and another +1 bonus at epic tier.
III. Characters get a +1 bonus to hit at level 5. This bonus increases to +2 at level 15 and +3 at level 25.
Don't worry, be happy
This solution involves just leaving everything as is. People adopt this solution when they either don't see the problems outlined above as very important, or they wish to keep their campaign in line with RPGA rules.
Hope this helps anyone who has had trouble following the issue.