Level Up (A5E) Expertise Dice Replacement - Any ideas out there?

[LostEventide]

So myself and my DM started really hitting the books now that they've dropped, and we really love basically everything in there, with the one exception being the expertise dice system. It's definitely cool in theory, but it just doesn't work well for our table because we play in Fantasy Grounds so there's really not an easy way to easily track them, and also tracking down where people are getting expertise dice is just a lot to track for individual rolls--especially in the middle of intense RPing and all that.

Just figured I'd fish around and see if anyone had any ideas, because it's looking like we're going to likely be using something of a hybrid O5E/A5E system in our personal games (Maneuvers and Exploration Knacks are awesome). We've been workshopping an idea that a reference to expertise dice just translates to a static 1d4 or +1 or something on top of whatever expertise/proficiency you have, but was curious if anyone else had the same feeling and was also looking at ways to kind of untangle the expertise dice from the rest of all the real cool stuff in here!

 

[Horwath]

original expertise

 

[LostEventide]

Oh yes, of course, but a lot of abilities and such add expertise dice in a lot of different areas xD Our other debate was just removing those specific abilities entirely, but people walking around with 6 RAW expertise skills is also not the ideal XD

 

[Composer99]

Maybe go with a straight up +2 bonus for each expertise die to a cap of +6?

 

[Stalker0]

Maybe go with a straight up +2 bonus for each expertise die to a cap of +6?

This is what I will probably do myself as I think the extra dice rolling does slow the game down a bit. +2 per level is quick,easy, and maintains the general math that LU seems to go for, though the +6 might be too much compared to the d8

 

[WanderingMystic]

The most accurate would be a +3 with an additional +1 for each extra expertise dice. Usual if you had 3 expertise you would roll a d8 for an average of +5.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

The simple answer is usually the correct answer: static bonus as describe by others before me.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Yeah or +2/+2 for your first two expertise dice and then +1 after that. If that's too hard to remember (I don't think it's too bad, but YMMV) then I'd go with +3/+1/+1 like Wander says.

 

[ART!]

Yeah, expertise dice are similar enough to the DMG's proficiency dice variant (+2 proficiency = +1d4, +3 proficiency = +1d6, etc) that you could just do the reverse with expertise dice.

 

[JLtheking]

Personally I’m considering converting the expertise dice system to the boons system from Shadow of the Demon Lords:

Expertise dice are all d6s, and you can have as many of them as you are granted. When you roll your d20, you roll all your expertise dice (if any) alongside, and you take the highest value d6 rolled.

This keeps the bonus from expertise dice bounded as well as introducing a decreasing marginal benefit for stacking expertise dice. It is also a simpler concept to understand than having stacking expertise dice increase their sizes in steps.