Combat Expertise

[Blindhamsterman]

Hi folks, just a heads up that Combat Expertise isn't supposed to remain on whilst casting spells, nor is it supposed to remain on when using ranged touch attacks. Currently it does both. The worse of the two is ranged touch attacks, which do not suffer the attack penalty from Combat Expertise Right now.

As well as the above, you're not allowed to switch Combat Expertise on and off between attacks to gain the benefit of the AC without the penalty to your AB.

Doing either of the above is an exploit.


Currently, a fix to ensure that these cannot be done is being brainstormed, for now, please refrain from doing either of the above.


Thanks for your time.

[hollyfant]

Does the same thing apply to shields? I frequently raise or lower those depending on the tides of battle, though I don't think it'll work between attacks.

[Blindhamsterman]

shields dont trade attack bonus for armour class (except tower shields).

Tower shields would be another matter I guess, would need to ask Admins about that. But Combat Expertise, it's an exploit of the engine (wouldn't work in pnp, and only works in engine if you perfectly time your on and offs of the mode)

[Basilica]

Just a thought --

If this is intended to be an official/enforced decree, it would be helpful to have those in a unified place. As a player it's sometimes difficult to know what's allowed and what isn't, as there are posts all over the place (often-times contradictory) to that nature (no guarantee that anyone will find the right post).

[Blindhamsterman]

Will ask NES to update the Players Guide. Seems a good idea to have this noted somewhere players should (in theory) look

[Basilica]

The player guide doesn't really notify you when something has changed (and I doubt that most of us regularly re-read the entire thing through, there are navigation issues with that too).

Perhaps a single unified forum that notes critical (rules-impacting) updates to the player guide would be appropriate in addition to updates to the player guide. (Both are important; new players won't want to sift through a bajillion forum posts, whereas existing players won't want to re-read the entire volume and are likely to miss the gist of what has changed even if they did given the amount of text there.)

If we had a general (relatively low-traffic) announcements forum, we could use that for this sort of notification.

As an example, I am hoping we can avoid a continuation of the confusing mess of "Invisibility is always banned! Sometimes. Maybe. Depends on the DM. It's okay in some circumstances..." threads that we still have, with different answers replicated to various threads in different forums.

[hollyfant]

shields dont trade attack bonus for armour class

No, they trade two-handed strength bonuses for AC. Or two-weapon attacks.

[Blindhamsterman]

then perhaps there is a discussion there, I don't know.

However, combat expertise is written in the PHB as allowing you to exchange AB for AC with an attack action and not working with ranged weapons. It's only for attack actions. not spellcasting or ranged touch attacks. If the player abuses the system to get the bonus AC but doesn't pay the Attack penalty, they're abusing the system. As that isn't possible in pnp.

Already discussed this with DMA and with Ronan (whom will be doing the fix)

[rorax]

The question in this situation is what would be of the all characters that took this feat because they assumed it should work in the way it worked so far. Obviously , this is a very serious change, specially for warlocks(like my character) who took that AC modification for obvious. There is a very reasonable chance that if people knew the feat is going to behave like it is now they would not have taken it.

I think it would be fair to allow people who relayed on that feat to function as it did in the past to rebuild their characters.

Thoughts?

[Blindhamsterman]

if the feat wasn't taken on level 1, and the player is on BG, I can fix that. if it was at level 1. Would need to ask a DM. However... to think it's okay to get a bonus to your AC but take no penalty on those ranged touch attacks is perhaps a little niaeve. Nobody seemed to even know warlocks didnt take the penalty till a week ago (Ronan even thought it dropped when spells were cast)

[Zelknolf]

The cooldown as it is implemented currently in our game engine is not a realistic fix for this. For users of combat expertise, the (relatively-frequent) errors with the cooldown timer will certainly cause character deaths-- either from inability to reclaim the proper attack bonus or the inability to reclaim the proper AC, and they'll be all the more likely when they're associated with scripted togglings of the combat modes (as we currently see with subdual damage).

In terms of this sort of ruling, is there an admin saying this somewhere? If not, I do believe that the PHB is a poor source for this; combat expertise is worth 1-5 points of AC (up to the user's BAB) at the user's option according to the PHB, and I also notice that you're not on here declaring that everyone who fails to drop 250 gold upon every casting of stoneskin is exploiting the engine. (indeed, I daresay that I'm likely to get a speech about how that's a totally different thing-- while every level 7+ wizard stoneskins entire parties and further exaggerates our game's HP inflation)

It's easy enough to verify a bug, that is the absence of an attack penalty applied to the ranged touch attack-- which we can (should) indeed fix. But if there's some sort of intent of implementing all of the PnP restrictions to combat expertise, I would also like to get all of the PnP powers of combat expertise.

[Ronan]

Can anyone tell me how to reproduce the cooldown timer bug? I can't seem to break it and can't seem to find anything on Google (cache, since the old boards are down, sigh). BHM, when I told you it could be fixed, I didn't know of this problem.

The simple fix for the ranged touch attack AB is to remove combat expertise when a spell is cast (in the spellhook). As BHM states you'd normally need a to use a full-round attack action to take advantage of CE in PnP. Obviously we can't (and shouldn't) enforce this restriction, but casters casting in CE is pretty obviously uber. The feat is made to trade offense for defense, and if its used while casting it just gives you more defense with no cost. Its like 3 dodge feats - but better.

In my experience DMing, AC inflation is a bigger problem than HP inflation. The return for each point of AC is greater than the last, so PCs who maximize their AC can reap huge rewards. The return for extra HP is more or less constant.

If certain uses of CE are/were ruled to be illegal, I'd suggest we allow PCs to swap out CE for another legal feat (simple enough with Leto or console commands). So yeah, what Rorax said.

I'd welcome a stoneskin fix too, but the number of PCs who can cast stoneskin (mine won't be able to until 10, if he gets that high) is much lower than the number of PCs with CE. Hell, if its ruled legal to cast in CE I'm definitely taking CE and ICE! Any combat mage would be a fool not to.

FWIW, I believe we popped PCs out of CE when casting in NWN1 ALFA.

[Brokenbone]

Interesting topic.

I would suggest that if there's some way to maybe describe that "rhythmic" enablement/disablement of the CE mode, essentially doing some timing against your own melee attacks, yeah, that sounds completely exploitative. My PC has CE, I have never tried that, but I guess I can imagine that my guy could maybe take a swing at full BAB, then sorta "defend" with CE up for call it 5 seconds, and "drop CE" at around the 6th second, when I expect a next attack is going to bust out. At higher level with additional attacks, maybe the rhythm would change, I do not know.

That being said, bringing CE on and off line is something that I've certainly found is a tactical moment by moment decision in combat, period. Might walk into a fight with the highest possible AC, then realize you're fighting mooks who are unlikely to be hitting you anyhow, OR, you're fighting someone who has such a high AC that you can't stand the AB penalty, OR, whoever you're targeting has their hands full with a partymate, so you take full advantage and flank them, forget about CE, and go Power Attack or something with a 2H weapon. Basically, you've got a few tactical options at your disposal, and might find yourself "normal", "CE'd", "PA'ing", "shield down or shield up", all kinds of changes to tactics, especially in a prolonged fight!

I do not know how cooldown timers work, but I wonder what people would propose... something that still let you change your tactics round by round, perhaps something that really just inhibits the ability to go off/on "right before" you're due your next attack? Not sure how that would work, and your next attack comes quicker after your first 6 points of BAB, right? Would the timer have to account for that? Ugh.

Other than just publishing a rule about "rhythm" type manipulation of the feat being an exploit, are there softer technical solutions available? Recording how many times a PC went into CE mode in a fight or something at a log level, and DMs maybe inquiring if they see some number that causes raised eyebrows at their end?

***

Anyhow, as to the other thing about spellcasting still seeing CE "on", yeah that sounds ugly. As an arcane type with maybe awful BAB, why not penalize yourself for precious AC? Careful if considering "ability use turns CE off" I guess. Maybe there's a way to provide a sort of more universal "-3 AB" rather than what sounds like "-3 melee AB"... that is, it'd apply to stuff like ranged touch AB or even the occasional arcane or divine spell that has an attack roll associated with it.

Again... all kind of interesting. One behaviour sounds like it's a plain old "engine shortcoming" of -3AB not applying to some things that probably should be impacted, the other feels a lot more like engine exploiting, the "rhythm thing."

[Brokenbone]

Failed to mention a cooldown drawback: misclicks.

Just like people will accidentally Rest and blow all their buffs by hitting the wrong key... people might hit the "wrong mode" and then realize after that they do or don't need it, and may be unable to change. My "CE" is right next to my "PA", anyhow, take that for what it's worth.

[Zelknolf]

Few points to note--

Full attack action:
Not true. Both attack and full attack in the melee are explicitly listed as valid circumstances for the use of combat expertise
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#combatExpertise

Reproducing the bug:
Connect to a remote server; spam. You'll get it soon enough. If you're keen on finding people who've seen it in action, you can search our forums; it has been reported and re-reported here. Easiest to search for subdual or knockdown.

AC Inflation:
What's your benchmark for that? I'm not sure that this ominous AC inflation is all that present here, with the item standards being what they are. If we delve into the land of pen and paper, you could give me +2 gear and I could give you 36-38 unbuffed AC with just the content in the PHB/DMG; give me access to the certified Forgotten Realms canon sourcebooks that NWN2 uses and I'll make it 38-40; give me access to Complete Warrior and I'll make it 43-45 (buffs able to tack a few on, depending upon who's around and has spells left)-- does anyone in ALFA beat those numbers? I'm only aware of people who buff up to those PnP-style unbuffed numbers.

For HP inflation, the typical pen-and-paper level 10 fighter with toughness has 82.5 hit points (max hp at level 1, an average of 5.5 per roll of d10 thereafter; add 10 or 20 if the character has +2 or +4 con available). The typical NWN2 level 10 fighter with toughness has 130 (max at everey level, plus potential +con items, as above).

The rest of it:
My beef with this discussion is that it's going the route of the typical ALFA discussion wherein pen and paper rules are used as a rationale to remove utility from an ability in response to one person misusing it, but that same pen-and-paper reference isn't a rationale to give the feat the full capabilities described in the original source.