Fixing the math: A case against Expertise feats

Unlike other overpowered feats, Implement Expertise (and its cousins Weapon and Focused) was never intended to be balanced. Although feats as absurdly strong as these are usually the consequence of hasty development or lack of playtesting, this time the reason was different: It's an attempt to fix a problem with the game's core mechanics. In today's article, I'll discuss what problem they were meant to solve, why I'm not completely satisfied with the result, and some alternate solutions that might work better.

The problem lies in the game's math. 4e has a remarkably straightforward model behind character progression, since both attack rolls and defenses increase at a constant rate of +1 per level. The idea is brilliant, and among other things it allows DMs to upgrade or downgrade monsters on the fly, as well as ensuring that the success rate of attacks remains the same (typically between 50% and 60%) across levels, both for monsters and PCs. At least, that's the theory, because there's a tiny problem with how it got implemented: they got it wrong.

To be fair, the error is small, though not insignificant. The attack bonus for a level 30 player character is actually 3 points (i.e. 15%) below what it should be. This gap has grown over the course of many levels, becoming noticeable at Paragon tier, and painful at Epic. Monster attacks and player defenses do increase as expected. This difference doesn't make the game unplayable by any means, but it does result in harder, longer encounters at higher levels. Also, the reduced chance to hit makes player actions slightly more frustrating. It is rumored that the game designers were perfectly aware of this from the beginning, and intended for paragon and epic tier encounters to be increasingly challenging. Also, this would be somewhat compensated by the increased access to attack boosting effects, particularly from Leader characters.

By the time Player's Handbook 2 was released, it's obvious that the official stance had changed, as the book featured Expertise feats for weapons and implements that provided an unprecedented, overpowered, and gradually increasing bonus to attack rolls that topped out at a very convenient +3. The attack progression issue would be corrected, as long as every player took the appropiate feat. And they inevitably would, since they would be the most powerful feats anyways. Case solved.

There is something I really dislike about this approach, though - the game now has a mandatory feat. Most other feats, no matter how good, can at least be sometimes ignored, even if only by specific character builds. There is the rare Dwarf out there not interested in Weapon Training (being an implement user, of course). Not everybody can afford the hideously broken avenger multiclass feats. The closest I can think of, in terms of being universally taken, are the Superior Weapon Proficiency feats, though those are also ignored by implement wielders, and they are somewhat interesting because you do have a choice of different weapons to take. The only choice related to Expertise feats is 'when'. You might as well grant everybody a +1/+2/+3 to hit and remove one feat slot, and the effect would almost be the same.

The increased chance to hit is good for the game, and I welcome it, but by removing choice from one precious feat slot, building characters becomes less fun and varied. The problem becomes even worse for classes that usually benefit from multiple weapons, implements, or combinations thereof, such as Paladins, Bards, or Wizards taking the Second Implement feat, since they need multiple expertise feats in order to remain competitive. At least, as a partial patch, the Focused Expertise feat allows PCs using a single item as weapon and implement (Swordmages and Monks) to benefit from Expertise goodness with a single feat. To me, even that is too much - in order to get this needed adjustment, players shouldn't have to sacrifice anything.

My suggestion, then, is to give the bonus for free, without any cost to the players. I will show two ways of achieving this - one is what I would have liked to see in PHB2, and the other is a more practical way to implement it for your campaign.

The ideal solution

The game already had a proven method for dealing with the kind of adjustments that were needed for attack modifiers: Masterwork Armors had successfully solved this same problem, for Armor Class, in the first Player's Handbook. Why didn't the designers choose the same path for attack bonuses? It wouldn't have been difficult to create a series of masterwork weapons and implements that granted an extra bonus to hit, something like:

Magic Weapon/Implement
Level - Masterwork type - Hit bonus - Enhancenment bonus
1-5 - * - +0 - +1
6-15 - Masterwork 1 - +1 - +2
16-25 - Masterwork 2 - +2 - + 4
26-30 - Masterwork 3 - +3 - +6

I think this would have been a good patch to include in PHB2, but it isn't very practical if you intend to use it as a house rule. What kills it, for me, is the fact that it's currently impossible to add this kind of bonuses to a weapon or to individual powers in the Character Builder. Since I'm a Character Builder junkie, and I've become almost physically unable to write character sheets by hand (which led to great suffering with the Assassin release last month), I had to discard this solution in favor of a simpler, if less elegant, one.

The solution that works

This houserule lacks the beauty of the previous idea, but it has the advantage of actually working. It can be explained in two short steps:

- Step 1: Ban all expertise feats.
- Step 2: At level 5, grant all PCs as many Weapon Expertise and Implement Expertise feats as they need. Feel free to add more whenever they need it.

Adding extra feats on Character Builder is pretty easy to do. On the feats tab, above the list of chosen feats, there is a 'houserule' icon you can click to give the character additional feat slots. You can see it on the images below (click to enlarge).

Adding extra feat slots in Character Builder

Choosing feats for your additional slots