Sigh. I understand how statistics work. The whole point of statistics is that it is reliable. This message brought to you by the Manhattan Project, casinos, lotteries, insurance companies, and on and on and on.
I'd encourage you to take a basic stats class. Or talk to a professional statistician and ask him if he is worth what he is paid, if statistics are so unreliable.
My point is, since you don't seem to be grasping it, is that the d20 ceases to actually matter if you allow feat bonuses to stack. You only miss on a 1. Grab the handful of encounter reroll powers you need from items. You now hit 99.99% of the time, every time. Which means the probability of you not winning is roughly equivalent to that of a nuclear bomb not going off due to a chain reaction. Which, as I pointed out, has never happened. For good reason, the reason being that probability is reliable.
OK. Not 100 d 100 million, but certainly 1000d1000, or 1d1000000. Roll a million and get superpowers. Anything else you die. +10, +20, +100? You are still going to die. A hugely greater chance of surviving means nothing if the chance of surviving is infintessimal.
Let us stick with what we have. Using d20, if you have a 50% chance of success, +1 makes that 55% and +5 makes that 75%. Hardly auto anything.
Sure, if you get to run the combat 100 times and take your average result, you'll (probably) win, but you are stuck with whatever you roll next.
Statistics are reliable in big repretitions. These are not big repetitions.
You have no clue what you're talking about, in regards to 4e. First of all, the base assumption the game was designed with was 55% accuracy @16 stat. Most people will have an 18. Then you have class features, perma-CA, etc. 95% accuracy (i.e., you hit on anything that isn't a 1) is more than possible, though right now it is only possible for a smaller subset of builds. Feat stacking would allow it for everyone. Add in rerolls for when those 1s happen. Grats, you cannot miss. Or, to continue the analogy, you miss as often as nuclear weapons don't work (i.e., never).
Now if you wanted to argue that a party that never misses (because they won't) can still lose, that'd be one thing... but there is no serious argument there either.
Ok, sighing is still rude and you do not have a clue what I am talking about because you are not listening/reading what I am writing and understanding it.
If you are right and most people hit with 95% accuracy, or even that that is possible for certain builds, well, something is very wrong with the whole system. It certainly is not my experience that you can not miss.
I'm also not suggesting, if you look, that we just let feats stack, I'm suggesting that SOME feats should stack, an the ones that should stack, or be considered for stacking, are the situational ones that you can not rely upon. If you look at the rules, it says that feat bonuses do not stack unless 'otherwise noted'. We should note it as otherwise more than we do.
Maybe the problem is that we are so good at minimaxing characters that we can not see another way of doing it. I'm more interested in the drama and the story. If you hit all the time anyway, feat stacking shouldn't matter, in fact it would be counter productive. You would be better spending your feat allocation on something that actually made a difference.
Sigh. Your opinion on whether sighing is rude or not is fascinating. Baseless, but fascinating.
I am right. Thank you for admitting you have an insufficient knowledge of 4e to have an opinion.
No. Actually the opposite is true, several feats that are untyped that stack is part of the reason some builds can achieve 95+% accuracy. You just want to compound the problem.
Drama and story are not related to mechanics and there is no better investment of resources than damage. Standard practice in any exchange of force, "Kill the other guy first." If you have achieved the point where the other guy never gets to become a serious threat (which is quite possible, particularly with party-op) then you're done. Game is over. Again, this is already possible with a variety of builds, but it is a small sub-set of the total builds in 4e. Your idea would make it the reverse, where it was possible with nearly every build in 4e.
wow.. and while sighing at someone in a face to face discussion may be rude.. mom always seemed to think it was, typing a word.. well...
I'm also not suggesting, if you look, that we just let feats stack, I'm suggesting that SOME feats should stack, an the ones that should stack, or be considered for stacking, are the situational ones that you can not rely upon. If you look at the rules, it says that feat bonuses do not stack unless 'otherwise noted'. We should note it as otherwise more than we do.
SOME feats do stack. Some provide a feat bonus, some may provide a Power Bonus, some may provide an untyped bonus. These stack. The game dictates that like bonuses do not stack for a reason. Otherwise, you end up with someone taking Heavy Blade expertise, Weapon Expertise [Heavy Blade], and Versatile Expertise where heavy blade is chosen, for a net of +3 to attack. And there are people that would take advantage of this if it were the case.
As for the above comment about LFR. It's true. in LFR (and other sanctioned games), DMs are pretty limited in what they can throw at a party. It's not like in a home game, where you can pit level 10 monsters against a level 5-6 group (and often have to) in order to even out the math.
It's fine to have an opinion that some rules should be broken, but experience dictates otherwise.
"Five million Cybermen, easy. One Doctor? NOW you're scared!" - Rose Tyler
Well, the point he was making was that he didn't see a problem when "you always get +1 to hit" stacks with "you get +1 to hit during a lunar eclipse". There are some fairly edge case feats that foolishly grant feat bonuses that are pointless to take because expertise feats exist.
However, while some of these Feats could probably be rendered into untyped bonuses, it's hard to be certain which ones- there are builds that can create the circumstances necessary to claim just about any bonus you could think of.
And at the point the game is at right now, added accuracy could be very damaging. I have seen level 8 characters with +18 to hit, who commonly can get bonuses to reach +23 to hit...at a level where even Soldiers have 24 AC. And don't get me started on Avengers...
The fact is, if you build to have accuracy, you can hit monsters fairly often. Thus Alcestis's point still stands- making it easier to have high accuracy, even in niche cases, can become a significant problem.
The key word is "can". Some game groups think you never need a starting attribute higher than 16, think a d10 damage weapon with +2 proficiency is "obviously better" than a d8 damage +3 proficiency weapon, and don't see a problem with taking Feats that "make sense for their character", such as Linguist. There's nothing wrong with this playstyle, as long as people are having fun- but such a group is less likely to notice the damage of letting Burning Blizzard stack with Implement Focus.
Bottom line, you can certainly try to allow circumstantial feats to stack with other feats, and it may make your game more fun- but there's a reason they don't do that, and it's a good one, even if you don't agree with that notion.
"You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." -The Doctor, Remembrance of the Daleks
Hello again. I'm new to these boards: I think this was my first post, but I'm a veteran of the boards over on the Hero system. I'm pretty astonished by Alcestis' attitude, which I do consider rude and confrontational, especially to a noob . Still, if that is the way things are done here, I can hold my own, and the occasional posters who get frightened away by the 'tude, well, that probably isn't going to encourage more people into the hobby. I meant my initial posts to be humourous rather than in-your-face, and re-reading them that seems to be how they come across. I certainly got tetchy later.
Maybe this is the wrong forum to have a debate about this on, like I say I am unfamiliar with this board (in which case someone please point me at the right place), but, I was trying to say - well I did say - that you should not be getting rid of the rule against bonus stacking, as a general thing*, but I can not see the problem with stacking bonuses from feats (or from any group) where those bonuses are situational. If you have four feats that each give you +1 in different circumstances and you can engineer things so that all those circumstances occur at the same time, good luck to you. Most GMs will be experienced enough not to allow the circumstances to coincide with any great frequency, or will rapidly become experienced enough not to allow it. Yes, it can be an edge case if the 'situation' is 'you have combat advantage' and you've built the character to almost always have combat advantage. It is not straightforward though.
It also seem to me that the system does allow stacking. I'm looking at Heroes of The Fallen Lands. If you have (say) Master at Arms you get a +1 feat bonus using all weapons. If you take Disciple of Inspiration, you get +1 to hit if you miss all your targets with an at-will attack power. Although they are both bonuses from feats, the latter is an Untyped (feat) bonus and (as far as I can make out) stacks with your M-A-A Feat bonus.
Interestingly, looking elsewhere, another group is 'Power bonus', defined as 'granted by powers and class features...'. Looking at the Slayer class in the same book, you can take (at first level) the 'Poised Assault' stance, which gives you a +1 power bonus to attack rolls, which is presumably meant to stack with the Weapon Talent, a class feature - otherwise there would be no point in taking Poised Assault. However, Weapon Talent is a class feature, which shouldn't stack with a power bonus - unless the Weapon Talent is an Untyped (Power) bonus, in which case they can stack.
More problematic (assuming that Untyped (Power/Class Feature) bonuses exist as a seperate category) is the Heroic Slayer class feature, which gives you a damage bonus (presumably Untyped (Power) as it does not specify a type) equal to your DEX modifier (let us assume that is +3 for argument sake). At the same level you get Power Strike which gives you extra damage. That comes from a power but is not specifically typed and adds +1W. Do you get the higher of +DEX or 1W for your damage bonus? OK, it doesn't say that is a bonus...but that is what it appears to be. Even if it is not a bonus, so we can ignore that example, look at the level 11 Mythic Assault ability: when you drop an enemy to 0HP in melee, you get +DEX modifier damage as a bonus to your next damage roll, so that is presumably an Untyped (Class Feature) bonus. Presumably that should not stack with your Heroic slayer Untyped (Class Feature), which means that one of the class features is pointless. That can not have been the intention, they are clearly meant to stack. Ditto the 'Fearless Slayer' Class Feature you get at level 16.
The difficulty here is that the rule sounds simple but has complex and confusing results. The books to not specify exactly what the bonus types are, for stacking purposes, and do not make it clear when they are exceptions to the normal stacking rules. Now it may be I've got the wrong end of the stick here. I've got a room full of sticks pointing the wrong way, but that is how it seems from here.
Another point worht making, looking at game design, whilst hitting most of the time may not be terribly realistic, it probably is a good thing: missing is really boring and frustrating, especially if you are blowing an encounter or daily power. I've had sessions, and recently, where the players seem to be rolling an inordinate number of 1s, and that can swing an encounter pretty rapidly from 'walk in the park' to 'I'll convert to your religion if you just sew that back on and make it work again'.
*Although if Alcestis ir right, stacking feats would be pointless if you are hitting 95% of the time without stacking anyway. An extra +2 or +10 is not going to impove your chances if you can autohit anyway. Moreover, if it is just SOME classes that can acheive this level of accuracy, the problem is not with the stacking of bonuses, it is with the structure of the class that allows that. GMs can also say 'No' to builds they do not want in their game. The power of No should never be underestimated.
