Expertise Dice Not Necessarily Fighter Exclusive

[triqui]

In a sense, you could say "channel divinity uses" are already a form of CS dice.

Let # uses channel divinity = CD dice (ie CS dice)
Let CD dice be used to power channel divinity maneuvers (pre-req cast divine spells) or basic martial maneuvers or add to healing.
etc. etc.

Then a cleric could be built more battle cleric by using CD dice to power melee abilities like the fighter or more laser cleric by powering attack spells or more hreals with direct addition of healing.

Channel divinity uses aren't CS dice, because CS dice replenish each round. Every class is going to have some kind of "resource" to manage, but vancian spells, chanel divinity, bard songs, and barbarian rages are, and should always be, different in nature and in mechanics. Barbarians will have rage, which might be as cool or even cooler than Fighter's Combat Superiority, but it will be *different* than Combat superiority. And that's the point, actually.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Channel divinity uses aren't CS dice, because CS dice replenish each round. Every class is going to have some kind of "resource" to manage, but vancian spells, chanel divinity, bard songs, and barbarian rages are, and should always be, different in nature and in mechanics. Barbarians will have rage, which might be as cool or even cooler than Fighter's Combat Superiority, but it will be *different* than Combat superiority. And that's the point, actually.

But isn't the fact that CS dice are every encounter and Channel Divinity every day kind of nitpicking? They're both a small resource you use to power some ability. If we wanted, we could just replace the CS dice with the Barbarian's Rages (if we assume for the moment they work as they have in the past-- a couple rages per day) and the mechanics are pretty much are exactly like Channel Divinity. Barbarians/Clerics have a finite number of Rages/Channels per day with which to power an ability. You use the Rage/Channel and you get to either do more damage (Rage via higher STR) or recover from some damage (Channel via healing) What's the big difference in mechanics here? I don't really see any. It's all just which way the numbers go.

However, it's the STORY about what is happening that really sets the two apart. It's the fact that one story is all about "going into a berserker rage and swinging a massive weapon" that is layered on top of moving some numbers upwards versus "using positive energy from the gods to knit bones and close wounds" that is layered on top of moving some numbers downward. THAT'S where the difference comes in. And the fact that they both have the same mechanic for the number of uses and when they can be used is secondary.

If anything... 4E taught us that. It showed us that if you relegate the story down to single line of italicized fluff text near the top of a power block and the rest is nothing but game mechanics... something gets lost. And it doesn't matter how well the mechanics work or how individual or unique those mechanics are... if the story does not have a place of prominence, the game just does not seem to work as well.

 

[jrowland]

I don't know what it is with this push in D&D that everything has to be unique or available to everyone, as if there was no middle ground. Classes cover a range of abilities, dividing the roles, niches, and responsibilities of the various D&D genres among them. There is overlap, and there is distinction.

I agree. I only quote because in terms of the Melee Combat (ie swing a weapon, hit/miss/do damage), everyone already has access. Spellcasters get a monopoly on spells i.e. wizards can always swing a weapon, but fighters can't ever cast a simple spell (class only here, ignoring multiclass, specialties, or other "add-ons" here).

In this regard, expertise dice represent a *better* (ymmv) approach to Melee Combat and should be adopted "universally" (if you agree its better). Does this mean that wizards should get expertise dice? No. They get the lame basic attack with weapon. Suck it spellcasters!

In this viewpoint, expertise dice are an analog to spellcasting. Each attack can be unique and flavorful just like spells are unique and flavorful, and spellcasters can be locked out.

I get the issue people have with fighters not having a unique "schtick". But with expertise dice, the problem is narrowed and rather than look at fighter Vs. spellcaster, we are comparing fighter Vs. rogue. I think that's a step in the right direction. Just as Clerics and Wizards are different despite both being spellcasters, we still need a clear, sharp line between Rogue and Fighter despite both being "Expertise users".

Personally, I would do something like:

Rogues have less expertise dice than fighters (since rogues get more skills)
Rogues can apply expertise to skill rolls.
Rogues can only use expertise in combat when they have Advantage.

Fighters have the most expertise dice.
Fighters can use expertise dice any time (including on anothers turn, see below)

There would be Basic Maneuvers (available to all with expertise dice), Fighter only maneuvers (class features) - Many of these would be reactions like 4E to help allies, block attacks, etc
Rogue only maneuvers (class feature) - Many of these would be for added movement such as hide, or move through enemy squares, etc.

This is not well-thought out, but just a brainstorm of what is possible.

 

[triqui]

But isn't the fact that CS dice are every encounter and Channel Divinity every day kind of nitpicking? They're both a small resource you use to power some ability. If we wanted, we could just replace the CS dice with the Barbarian's Rages (if we assume for the moment they work as they have in the past-- a couple rages per day) and the mechanics are pretty much are exactly like Channel Divinity. Barbarians/Clerics have a finite number of Rages/Channels per day with which to power an ability. You use the Rage/Channel and you get to either do more damage (Rage via higher STR) or recover from some damage (Channel via healing) What's the big difference in mechanics here? I don't really see any. It's all just which way the numbers go.

Combat superiority is renewed every ROUND, not every encounter. And yes, that make it a very different kind of resource than an daily Channel Divinity. It's on a whole different level. Just like Vancian Magic and Spell Points and Daily-Encounter Power are all of them resources, but very different kind of resources. A spellcaster with at-wills, encounters, and dailies, is not the same than a spellcaster with Vancian magic or spell points.

And Combat Superiority, renewed round by round, is completelly different than Channel Divinity. Both in fluff, and in mechanics.

 

[Vikingkingq]

Wow...this thread exploded while I was asleep. Some thoughts:

• First, I think assuming that all martial classes are going to tap into CS is mistaken. We already know how Rogues work, Paladins historically have divine magic abilities and the Design Goals on Paladins only re-emphasize this, and Barbarian Rage is too much of a sacred cow to kill. So at most, we're talking about at most Fighter, Ranger, Warlord, and Monk.
• Since mechanics create a feel, classes should have mechanics that are suited to their their class concept. A round-by-round refreshing dice pool doesn't suit the Ranger very well - Rangers are wilderness warriors, hunters and stalkers, and guerrilla fighters, so a building mechanic would work much better than a steady-state mechanic. Likewise, I think we need to be very careful to distinguish between the Fighter and Monk, since they're both "masters of combat" style classes; different mechanics would help with that. Perhaps an Opener-Bridge-Finisher Combo System for the Monk?
• in terms of the failure of the Fighter class, I think one bit of evidence is that apparently something like 80% of the playtesters hated the original classic-flavor Fighter.

 

[jrowland]

Channel divinity uses aren't CS dice, because CS dice replenish each round. Every class is going to have some kind of "resource" to manage, but vancian spells, chanel divinity, bard songs, and barbarian rages are, and should always be, different in nature and in mechanics. Barbarians will have rage, which might be as cool or even cooler than Fighter's Combat Superiority, but it will be *different* than Combat superiority. And that's the point, actually.

I was saying you *could* not that they *are*. I also added keeping a firewall between spellcasters and melee types is fine. I don't care to make Channel Divinity into expertise dice. So in that, I agree with you. But that is simply a manner of resource replenishment.

The *mechanic*, as it were, is "use a resource to fuel effects". And a lot of D&D uses that mechanic. Fighters have been missing it. Expanding expertise dice to other classes that are primarily non-spellcasters in order to provide a more robust resource mechanic that can be dialed down to nothing easily (ie, add these dice to damage) is a good thing if those classes need it.

Someone above mentioned monk. Not a bad idea. Monk expertise dice could tap into crazy jumps and such. Barbarians and Paladins are probably fine, but perhaps Paladins use expertise dice to fuel spells rather than a separate spell list, giving them more flexibility as befits their hybrid nature.

 

[Vikingkingq]

I get the issue people have with fighters not having a unique "schtick". But with expertise dice, the problem is narrowed and rather than look at fighter Vs. spellcaster, we are comparing fighter Vs. rogue. I think that's a step in the right direction. Just as Clerics and Wizards are different despite both being spellcasters, we still need a clear, sharp line between Rogue and Fighter despite both being "Expertise users".

Personally, I would do something like:

Rogues have less expertise dice than fighters (since rogues get more skills)
Rogues can apply expertise to skill rolls.
Rogues can only use expertise in combat when they have Advantage.

Fighters have the most expertise dice.
Fighters can use expertise dice any time (including on anothers turn, see below)

There would be Basic Maneuvers (available to all with expertise dice), Fighter only maneuvers (class features) - Many of these would be reactions like 4E to help allies, block attacks, etc
Rogue only maneuvers (class feature) - Many of these would be for added movement such as hide, or move through enemy squares, etc.

This is not well-thought out, but just a brainstorm of what is possible.

I'm glad you brought this up. Combat Maneuvers represent years and years of training in martial combat - those are years and years of training that Rogues don't have, because Rogues were busy learning to be stealthy, to pick locks, to con people, to be good at skills, and because Rogues aren't stupid enough to stand toe-to-toe with people trying to kill them.

I think Rogue Schemes are a much better, more evocative mechanic than re-flavoring CS dice.

By contrast, a Warlord having some form of CS dice, albeit a completely different kind of dice that involve empowering others, makes sense. Warlords are also trained warriors, albeit they're officers trained in directing combat, and would have picked up how to adapt quickly in the middle of the fray.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Given unlimited druthers, I'd break it down this way (with perhaps one or two additional categories that I'm missing at the moment):

• Arcane power - Vancian wizard spells, new sorcerer mechanics, etc.
• Divine power - spontaneous cleric casting, analogous spontaneous mechanics for other "channelers".
• Skills and Skullduggery - rogue schemes, ranger woodlore, etc.
• Refined weapons and martial combat skills - Combat superiority, enhanced armor usage, ki, etc.
• Primal power - rage, shapechanging, etc.

And just like there can be basic weapon and skill use across the categories, there can be basic uses of the other types across categories too (e.g. minor and narrow arcane, divine, or primal magic where warranted for a class). The categories are for the major pieces.

So no class that wasn't built primarily around the idea of "refined weapons and martial combat skills" would get CS. But not every class within that group would necessarily get it, either, or to the same degree. If you had a class that was a true hybrid (say a paladin class deliberately built as 50/50 divine/martial), then it might or might not get CS, but would get some of one of the mechanics reserved for "martial". And then a multiclass character across categories would do the same thing.

Whether CS specifically expands to be analogous to "spellcasting" with subdivisions of distinct mechanics underneath, or stays small to be one of the specific martial mechanics, I don't really care.

Those categories become ways of siloing "major class feature" the same way that background and specialty are siloing skills and feats. Minor, more niche distinctive class features are embedded into the class directly.

As far as the surface resemblance to past versions, I'll note that between them background, specialty, and class features are going a long way towards replicating the good parts of 4E roles (and some 3E elements as well) without necessarily keeping all the baggage. The above is an attempt to continue that progression, in the Next spirit--guiding a player towards an effective character, but not forcing it.

 

[KidSnide]

What makes CS a clever mechanic is that they provide a scaling mechanism for trading off damage vs. effects. A knockdown from a 3rd level fighter costs a d6, but a knockdown by a 10th level fighter costs a d12. This is important because it preserves the interesting choice. If both fighters traded 3 hp of damage for a knockdown, the 10th level fighter would knock down opponents at every opportunity.

CS really boils down to an effective way to allow characters to trade off between damage-based maneuvers (like Deadly Strike, Jab and Parry) and non-damage based maneuvers (like Knockdown, Push and Tumble). Almost all of the "Fighter-ness" in CS is in the set of maneuvers that fighters get (Deadly Strike, Parry and the Fighting Styles), not in the CS mechanic itself.

If Warlords also get a pool of CS dice with a different set of maneuvers, Fighters don't become less special. (Maybe Warlords get more dice of lower magnitude, so they can hand them out to more allies?) They simply share a common mechanic for martial combat training. If the classes share a few maneuvers, it will be like wizards and sorcerers sharing a spell list.

To be honest, I think having a partially overlapping set of maneuvers would be advantageous for both classes, as it gives each maneuver an in-game reality. I like the idea that "Cleave" is a mechanic shared by everyone who can cleave, in the same way that "Fireball" operates the same way for everyone who can cast that spell.

And if a common CS mechanic makes multiclassing between the martial classes easier, then so much the better.

-KS

 

[Plane Sailing]

I think its fine for martial classes. Just like wizards use spells for more *BOOM* tm and clerics for more *Ahhh*,

Have you ever seen Firestorm/Destruction/Implosion/Blade Barrier