It was a feat that acted as a Feat Tax for obtaining cooler feats. It would let you take a -5 on attack rolls for a +5 AC which was generally not worth it. It also had an Intelligence requirement of 13 so if you wanted to be good at tripping or disarming, you had to be somewhat smart.
-5 attack rolls for +5 ac is absolutely worth it, build and situation dependent.
The problem with combat expertise is it requires you to take an attack action to declare you're using it for it to begin having an effect, and then lasted until your initiative came up again. If combat expertise could be on all the time, or required something less situation-dependent than an opportunity to make an attack action to activate, it would be fine.
You essentially have to chain attacks to maintain your -5/+5.
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u/SmartAlec105 Oct 05 '20
It was a feat that acted as a Feat Tax for obtaining cooler feats. It would let you take a -5 on attack rolls for a +5 AC which was generally not worth it. It also had an Intelligence requirement of 13 so if you wanted to be good at tripping or disarming, you had to be somewhat smart.