Expertise Dice

[UngeheuerLich]

I have a feeling, that we may see hit dice and expertise dice combined.

If you think about it, expertise dice and hit dice are two sides of the same medal. One enhances attacks, the other enhances defenses. And with this combination, you would save one entry.

Maybe the fighter may not use all his hit dice for damage and devides them equally over attack and parry, while the rogue can go all in and can use all of his hit dice when he utilizes a sneak attack...

 

[erf_beto]

The trouble with not reflecting the size of the damage dice you're using is that there becomes very little reason to wield anything other than a one-handed weapon. The d12 you might get for a two-handed sword rather than the d8 for a longsword doesn't seem worth the extra damage when you're spitting out 3d10 on top - you'd rather have a shield.

Agreed, unless some maneuvers state you get more/bigger dice if you're wielding a two-handed weapon. Or maybe some powerful maneuvers are restricted to weapons with a minimum dice size.
If there's no such thing, then you're 100% correct.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Maybe two handed weapons should just add +1 to hit or increase expertise dice by one step.

Maybe two weapon fighting could allow for two attacks with -2 modifier, gain no damage bonus from stats and you need to split your expertise dice...

 

[Li Shenron]

The only light for me in this article is that at least they realize that the Fighter once again is in need of a unique feature.

I shuddered when they mentioned giving the Paladin expertise dice. The last time they mentioned him his defining characteristic was Smite. If they give him Expertise dice just put him out to pasture along with his mount. The Paladin is defined by his Divine Power source. Keep him out of the Expertise pool. He's Faith-driven, not powered by Expertise.

This is an interesting consideration.

And since divine powers are magic and even imperscrutable, daily abilities represent them just fine.

If I now recall that the archetypal power of the Barbarian is Rage, and that has always been fatigue-based at least in concept, then we could have something like this:

Fighter -> at-will based warrior
Barbarian -> encounter-based warrior
Paladin -> daily-based warrior

Sorcerer -> at-will based arcane caster
Warlock -> encounter-based arcane caster
Wizard -> daily-based arcane caster

This covers the three overall playing styles, and multiclassing covers the players who want a mix of two or three styles.

All that is needed beyond this, is rules or at least guidelines to swap the flavors across the classes.

 

[Falling Icicle]

For all the talk of flatter math, they've just replaced attack bonus bloat with hp and damage bloat, which I think is even worse. Expertise dice right now scale to a ridiculous degree. The result is quadratic fighters and linear wizards. It's okay for the fighter to get a damage bonus. It's not okay for a fighter to do 4x (or more) as much damage per hit as a wizard or cleric.

And no, daily spells do NOT make up for the extreme difference! Only a wizard's highest level spells compete with the regular damage output of a fighter. And wizards are only getting a couple spells per day of each level. A 10th level wizard has 10 daily spells. The rest of the time, he's shooing a crossbow or using an at-will cantrip for pitiful damage. That is not okay. That is not fun. I do not want to play a spellcaster who is useless except for a few times per day.

The scaling of expertise dice needs to be cut back considerably, not just to maintain a semblance of balance with classes that don't have it, but also so that things like weapon choice and magic weapons aren't trivial in comparison.

 

[Blackbrrd]

If they keep the expertise dice mechanic for the martial classes, I want less overlap, more unique maneuvers and possibly different mechanics for gaining expertise dice. For instance it would feel logical for a rogue to get additional expertise dice if flanking or catching the opponent flat-footed.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

For all the talk of flatter math, they've just replaced attack bonus bloat with hp and damage bloat, which I think is even worse. Expertise dice right now scale to a ridiculous degree. The result is quadratic fighters and linear wizards. It's okay for the fighter to get a damage bonus. It's not okay for a fighter to do 4x (or more) as much damage per hit as a wizard or cleric.

And no, daily spells do NOT make up for the extreme difference! Only a wizard's highest level spells compete with the regular damage output of a fighter. And wizards are only getting a couple spells per day of each level. A 10th level wizard has 10 daily spells. The rest of the time, he's shooing a crossbow or using an at-will cantrip for pitiful damage. That is not okay. That is not fun. I do not want to play a spellcaster who is useless except for a few times per day.

The scaling of expertise dice needs to be cut back considerably, not just to maintain a semblance of balance with classes that don't have it, but also so that things like weapon choice and magic weapons aren't trivial in comparison.

Or spells need to scale better once again...

No one wanted to listen to me, when I told you that the wizards at-will magic missile needed to scale up with level to let him be baseline competent...

the magic missile of playtest packet 1 in fact would be a great at-will spell for the wizard to use when not using dailies...

And maybe spell progression for the wizard needs to be differently too... I would like to see a system where his low level spells become at-wills and he only has to manage his slots of the two or three highest levels...

 

[ren1999]

Every spell and maneuver should be unique.

Wizard spells should do more damage than fighters because wizards need a trade off for having lower hit points.
Fighter XD increases should be lowered.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I liked how in 4e the "striker" classes did more damage, but not so much more than other classes that they felt useless. Rangers and warlocks got +1d6 damage from their striker abilities, IIRC. Rogues got +2d6, but that was to make up for their situational sneak attack and weaker weapon selection. And those bonuses didn't increase until levels 11 and 21, and the increases were quite modest.

Say whatever you will about 4th edition, but at least it was mathematically solid and very well balanced. Even the worst math mistakes of 4th edition (like the expertise tax) are tiny in comparison to the enormous balance problems in Next. The damage potential of various classes isn't even remotely balanced. Spell damage is all over the place. At-Will Spell damage is pitiful, as is the damage of things like alchemist's fire. Monster HP seem to be completely aribitrary and contrived.

They really need to sit down and think this through.

 

[Li Shenron]

For all the talk of flatter math, they've just replaced attack bonus bloat with hp and damage bloat, which I think is even worse.

I think there is plenty of room for debate here.

With flatter attack/AC math and larger damage/HP spread, a kobold is never a life threat to high-level PCs, but is always a penalty for them (by grinding their HP a little).

Consequences of this are that tossing a kobold into an encounter always makes a difference, small but totally under control, hence you can (if you want) still feature kobolds in your game at all levels. Second consequence, lots of kobolds together can become also a large threat (but here I want to see how they manage to make the encounter easy to run... probably mob or swarm rules at some point).

The opposite approach: large attack/AC spread and small damage/HP spread. This leads to kobold forever being a life threat (they can kill you in one or few blows) but more and more rarely (need a roll of 20 to hit).
Consequence is that probably encounter design is more difficult... if you toss a kobold or two into a high-level fight, it's not so easy to predict their effect.

However D&D was never this second case. There has always at least be a large HP spread (even in old D&D, although HP at some level go up very slowly, but still this is only after level 10) so typically both the attack bonus/AC and the damage/HP spreads have been large. WotC just wants to avoid having this because it makes monsters obsolete early in the game.

It's okay for the fighter to get a damage bonus. It's not okay for a fighter to do 4x (or more) as much damage per hit as a wizard or cleric.

In a combat-centric game yes, especially if combat is usually reduced to attrition, but on a game that features the other pillars on par with combat, or at least a game where combat is more dynamic and damage is just the simplest tactic but often not the best, then even a 4x damage output can be fine.

I wouldn't have a problem with such large numbers for ED, if it was only the Fighter: it's the most combat-focused class so it allows someone to be extremely good at fighting at the cost of lacking in everything else. I am instead not so much in favor of damage boost to spells and abilities of all the other classes.