Combat Expertise


Skills & Feats


Is it me, or is Combat Expertise too watered down? Why is it now based on intelligence? Most fighters do not have a high intelligence, so that now limits their ability to increase AC?

I never saw a problem with allowing a character, weather it be a fighter type or not, to taking up to a -5 penalty on their attacks to boost their AC by +5.

To me this is too drastic of a change.

Other than that, GREAT WORK!! Thanks Paizo!


They are making te combat expertise feat follow the same formula as the other feats that are similar. Which is unfortunate in the case of combat expertise, but since your high attack bonus people aren't losing everything they can spare to power attack, they can spare the 1 or 2 points to get a little more AC. I personally think all the stat based -tohit for +something should have an improved version that lets you take -2X for +2X.


Probably to do with 'Improved' or 'Superior' Combat Expertise, which lets a Fighter dump all his BAB for AC. You're right, though, this version is a bit on the harsh side.


I would still prefer for it to contain an option to double your AC bonus from fighting defensively, so +4 AC instead of +2 AC for the -4 penalty. It would also need to work with Total Defence in similar way. This could make ranks in tumble too powerful, so another solution would be an extra +2 bonus to AC when fighting defensive or Total Defence.

As it is, the party of 7 I am running have all ignored it, where as in 3.5 at least 2 or 3 of them would regularly take it. Even the fighter with 14 intelligence has removed it from his feet list when they converted across from 3.5 and he has bags of feats.


Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I am generally not in favour of exchanging AB for AC on a 1:1 basis (I'm looking at you, Shock Trooper), but it does seem like Combat Expertise is getting the short end of the stick here.


Matthew_ wrote:
Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I am generally not in favour of exchanging AB for AC on a 1:1 basis (I'm looking at you, Shock Trooper), but it does seem like Combat Expertise is getting the short end of the stick here.

Agreed. I have played almost exclusively as a fighter since back in the days of 1st Ed (I know, I'm a glutton for punishment). The term "Combat Expertise" means exactly that- he is an expert at his form of combat, not that he relies upon mental processes to fight more defensively, which is what this new take on the feat does.

Muscle memory plays the main role in most combat maneuvers, one of the main reasons why the spell-casting classes have--and rightfully so- much slower BAB progression- they rely upon intellect, wisdom or force of personality rather than their muscles or reflexes. At the very least; I suggest making the limit dependent upon your Strength or Dexterity bonus, whichever is the greater of the two. At worst, return it to its original wording.

On the other hand, I have always thought that having to take another feat (Improved Combat Expertise) in order to make this feat worth using at higher levels as needless further punishment (see Fighter lack of skills and class abilities)for not choosing a Rogue or Barbarian to be your main physical combat class. My suggestion is as follows:

Combat Expertise [General]
Prerequisites: Str or Dex 13
Benefit: When you use an attack action or the full attack action in melee combat, you may take a penalty up to as much as your Base Attack Bonus + your Strength or Dexterity modifier (whichever is greater) and add the same number to your Armor Class. The changes to attack rolls and Armor Class last until your next action.


I am not happy with the bonus to AC and penalty to attack being set at the Intelligence bonus. A character cannot choose to take a lesser penalty. The character also MUST be using a melee weapon, which needs to be clarified to include touch attacks and unarmed attacks.

I would prefer to have a set penalty/bonus (-4/+4, fo example) for the feat. The same goes for Power Attack.


I'm still of a mind about Combat Expertise, Power Attack, etc., that:

A) You shouldn't be forced to take the maximum bonus/penalty with the Feat, you should be able to select a bonus/penalty up to your maximum.
B) The ability score restriction should be reverted to the 3.5 versions of the Feats.

The 3.5 Feats weren't broken. There's nothing to fix. It's groovy. Why are we mucking about with them?


Probably because not everyone agrees. For instance, I don't agree; I think the D20 1.5 version of Power Attack is lame and completely unbalanced. If enough people take that view and the designers are minded to listen and agree with them, then Power Attack will be altered for PathFinder.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

Personally, I'm not in the least convinced by the changes to Power Attack or combat expertise...I thought one of the aims of Pathfinder RPG was to ramp up old core to the 'current' level of power creep. Dropping the effectiveness of one of the fews bits noncasters have seems rather contrary to that aim. Considering most Fighters (et al) won't have anything spare to put more than a low Int (the Combat Expertise users in my current group all have 13 Int), the feat becomes basically pissing in the wind beyond about the first few levels.

And nevermind Power Attack is kind of crucial for melee fighters since it is about the only thing they can do at higher levels to compete with spellcasters is ramp their damage output - or use Tome of Battle.

If you're looking at backward compatibilitly with 3.5, it's worth noting degrading Power Attack means that the melee type's damage output drops right off compared to the Warblade (who presumably, you want to get closer in to terms of power); as it stands, the Warbalde's damage output is comparible to the Barbarian's; and most of that is from Power Attack.

Basically, you're downgrading the effects of the feats significantly which is bad because it's always been held that feats < spells. (Unless of course the spells are being downgraded as well, but that then defeats the object of increasing the power levels, doesn't it?)


Remember the limit to Power attack was put in place to protect the players from dragons and outsiders with lots of base attack and multiple attacks.

How often have your high level characters faced a dragon of appropriate challenge rating, that has only missed on a roll of the one, while still taking 30 points of power attack? A dragon buffed in the correct way can do this fairly often. At least the cap on strength for power attack keeps this reasonable.

That is why I am in favour of strength as a cap.

That does not change the way that combat expertise works.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

Won't make a lot of difference to the larger dragons, actually. Given how crazy their strength is, not letting them PA to crazy numbers doesn't matter; it just means that all of their attacks will hit anyway. If you want to stop Dragons being stupidly overpowered, you need to fix dragons (although I could buy a maximum limit to PA being +/-10 or +/-20 as fair; calcs in the Power Attack thread I just did seem to suggest PA much more than that isn't worth it unless you have very low AC targets).

Personally, I always thought dragons were very badly designed in 3.5 anyway since they seem to ignore pretty much all the sane rules about Epic progression.

Anyhow, Combat Expertise is a bigger problem though, since them as most like t' use it is aren't going to be able to sink ka-trillions of points into Int. (And look, monsters again get the most benefit with their higher ability scores; esepecially the aformention dragons. Bad thought; with new rules, our scaly friends can take a piffling penalty to attack (with both PA and CE) and still do stupid amounts of damage and worse, boost their AC sky high. Before they might be less inclined to do both, since they could shunt more into the former, but no there'd be not reason not to, numerically; as they really, really won't miss now, it's daft not to use that excess attack bonus for something...) PC fighters, on the other hand, are liable to be stuck with +/- 1 or 2 (Roy aside, how many high-Int fighters do you know?)

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16

I mentioned a similar complaint against the revised Combat Expertise in the Alpha 1 boards. The only one who can gain any real benefit from Combat Expertise is a wizard currently, while everyone else is going to be shafted badly. Combat Expertise was mad mainly for the smart nimble light armor fighters and they're going to give minimal benefit since most are only going to have a 13 Int, maybe 14.

In general they might as well go the Dodge feat tree instead it will get them about the same bonus anyways.

I have no problem with the revised PA, its lack of limitations in 3.5 was a problem.


Aaron Armstrong wrote:
Matthew_ wrote:
Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I am generally not in favour of exchanging AB for AC on a 1:1 basis (I'm looking at you, Shock Trooper), but it does seem like Combat Expertise is getting the short end of the stick here.

Agreed. I have played almost exclusively as a fighter since back in the days of 1st Ed (I know, I'm a glutton for punishment). The term "Combat Expertise" means exactly that- he is an expert at his form of combat, not that he relies upon mental processes to fight more defensively, which is what this new take on the feat does.

Muscle memory plays the main role in most combat maneuvers, one of the main reasons why the spell-casting classes have--and rightfully so- much slower BAB progression- they rely upon intellect, wisdom or force of personality rather than their muscles or reflexes. At the very least; I suggest making the limit dependent upon your Strength or Dexterity bonus, whichever is the greater of the two. At worst, return it to its original wording.

On the other hand, I have always thought that having to take another feat (Improved Combat Expertise) in order to make this feat worth using at higher levels as needless further punishment (see Fighter lack of skills and class abilities)for not choosing a Rogue or Barbarian to be your main physical combat class. My suggestion is as follows:

Combat Expertise [General]
Prerequisites: Str or Dex 13
Benefit: When you use an attack action or the full attack action in melee combat, you may take a penalty up to as much as your Base Attack Bonus + your Strength or Dexterity modifier (whichever is greater) and add the same number to your Armor Class. The changes to attack rolls and Armor Class last until your next action.

There is an argument about the more intelligent fighters having combat advantages, and I see this as a more tactical feat. With that said, I don't think the trade of ratio is that good, and at higher levels I have seen this feat (more often than not) ignored and tossed off the the wayside to be robbed by rogue goblins. Personally I think that a 1:2 ratio would be more of a long term solutions, but may be overpowered at lower levels (thus a need for a scaled feat or level/training restriction).


This seriously gimps both Expertise and Power Attack. Take them both back to 3.5 ruling. As they are I wouldn't take them unless they were a pre-req for something else.

If it isn't broken don't try to fix it.

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 16

Commodore Jones wrote:

This seriously gimps both Expertise and Power Attack. Take them both back to 3.5 ruling. As they are I wouldn't take them unless they were a pre-req for something else.

If it isn't broken don't try to fix it.

Well, I disagree with the Power Attack, the fighter and barbarian were still very keen on taking it still. There high Strength still gave them some serious benefit from the feat.

On the otherhand not a soul is interested in Combat Expertise.

Liberty's Edge

I mainly saw rogues take this feat in 3.5, but I talked with my players and they are loathe to take Combat Expertise now.

I say take it back to BAB or double the bonus.


The problem with making it ability based is that it does not scale well. I think that is one of the main design considerations with Pathfinder. If the feat is only really going to be good at low levels all but fighters are going to avoid it. If a 1st level fighter with the same STR as a 10th level fighter are equally good at sacrificing attack power for AC then what is the point?


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
MaxPowers wrote:

The problem with making it ability based is that it does not scale well. I think that is one of the main design considerations with Pathfinder. If the feat is only really going to be good at low levels all but fighters are going to avoid it. If a 1st level fighter with the same STR as a 10th level fighter are equally good at sacrificing attack power for AC then what is the point?

The point is its more consisent with other feats. The 1st level character gets as much benefit from dodge as a 20th. The same goes for mobility, improved bull rush, persuasive, alertness, etc.

I'll admit. I like the Alpha 1 version, with no BAB statement in the benefit text. Though in the longer term I see that as a negligible change.


After reading through this thread, I think the feat could be better served if it is based on DEX instead of INT. Then you have the heavy hitting characters (barbarian, 2-handed fighter, paladin types) inclined to take power attack, and the light fighters (rogue, ranger, swashbuckler types) inclined to take combat expertise.

As a side effect, it supports (and actually enhances) the differences of each fighting style by the game mechanics.

Also, as a general rule of thumb, I think it might be best if feats that would be appealing to physical (non-magical) combat should be designed around STR, DEX, and CON.

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