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I have two main thoughts in regards to Expertise feats, after seeing this article.

1. More than ever, it is clear that they probably should have been nothing more than a core rule update. Wizards of the Coast employees have said before that the reason they don't want to update the core rules like that is because they don't want to leave people that don't have D&D Insider out to pasture; this is poor judgement. Many of the people that don't have D&D Insider (or didn't, at the time of the PH2) don't have it because they don't care for the particulars of rules or therefore the particulars of more rules. Updates mean nothing to them. If rules updates mean something to the person, they must know there are rules updates to be had -- meaning they have some access to this information! End of problem for vast majority of people.

2. If the above never happens, Expertise feats should stop being feats and start being theme-like character choices. As the term "technique" and terms like "dueling" and "dwarven" start being inserted into the feat names, the more it seems like these are meant to represent how your character fights. Why not let this be an option for everyone at level 1 or beyond, like themes are? We'd call it an Expertise.

I dunno if there's much feedback I could give Wizards of the Coast that they'd listen to. If I were to tell them what I thought of this article, it'd essentially amount to "you have overcomplicated this concept for the past two years, and now it's beyond simple repair." And would they really take something like that to heart? They seem pretty dedicated to their current trajectory.

Aug 30, 2011 -- 2:50PM, LlamasNotsheep wrote:

Aug 30, 2011 -- 2:24PM, VampyresThrenody wrote:

Aug 30, 2011 -- 2:18PM, LlamasNotsheep wrote:

Incidentally, war wizard expertise + war wizardry + enlarge spell + coordinated explosion could end up being a pretty decent means of blowing up your friends without, you know, blowing them up too badly.  -4 to hit, half damage -8 (or more) vs. allies in paragon (-4 hit, half damage -12 or more in epic), coupled with +1 to hit, -2 per die vs. enemies with far greater freedom of targeting with large bursts/blasts.

Still niche, but it could be a pretty solid setup if you're going for a genuine blaster type character and have an up-close-and-personal party. 

That's wasting two feats on just not absolutely devestating your friends, and it barely affects it that. Most spells will be targetting an NAD and if your party is mostly melee at least one of them is bound to have that NAD as their lowest defense, meaning you're very likely to hit them despite that -4. Unless you can somehow keep your party with Resist for whatever damage type you're doing, no party will -ever- want to be in the middle of a constant AOE barrage. And if its not constant, and only a "sometimes" thing, why the are you spending four feats on it?

It'd be much better to simply have it give an awesome bonus like ignore one ally in the burst or some such, rather than reduce the damage by such a measily amount. 

Oh I agree it'd be much better to give it an awesome bonus.  Unfortunately, that's contrary to the power level they obviously decided on for the article.

Something I forgot to mention in reply to this: I really don't think you're wasting any feats.  You're going to take enlarge spell, period.  You're going to take some kind of expertise anyway.  War Wizardry is very handy for any blaster (it's rated blue in Nausicaa's handbook).  The only one that's at all questionable is coordinated explosion.  Take it or don't take it; it's not necessary in the mitigation side of things.  It's just potentially very useful if you're going to be throwing around a lot of party-unfriendly burst 3s and close blast 5s.

I do agree that the feat would be dramatically better if it applied to all party damage, rather than just on hits.  Or if it let you avoid hitting an ally, or at least give them some mobility.  But by itself, for large-area blasters, it's pretty decent as-is. 

Aug 30, 2011 -- 7:41PM, Scatterbrained wrote:

Guess I'm just feeling a little less critical about this than everyone else.  They're trying to make expertise have a flavor aspect so that its more noticable in battle than just "I hit better."  But those benefits need to be pretty small.

In short, a lot of builds that had to use VE are better off than these.  Are they solving the issue the way I would have?  No.  But it's more than we had a week ago.

The problem really is that several major single class builds are not better off. Was it really that difficult to make a flavorful feat pass through the editors that involved:
Pick options.
Try to belong to X
Gain an interesting, flavorful benefit to something that X would want, but Y might like.

Rather than:
Belong to X
Pick options that only belong to X.
Gain options that only a subset of people who belong to X might want.

As an example, how many artificers want to wield a hand crossbow and a wand over a bigger crossbow or a wand. How many Bards want to use just weapons or musical instruments with properties allowing them to be used as implements? How many Warlocks want to use just Pact Blades? When most of them probably greatly prefer the relatively flavorless White Lotus Dueling Expertise which gives them a flat-out +1 feat bonus to all arcane attacks, no questions asked?