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

[niklinna]

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.

This is a super solid idea. Too bad they didn't consider this earlier!

 

[Stalker0]

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.

So mathwise, here is what that would look like:

Current Model
d4 - +2.5
d6 - +3.5
d8 - +4.5

D6 model
1d6 - +3.5
2d6 - +4.33
3d6 - +4.75

 

[niklinna]

Without accounting for swinginess, I'd actually say I prefer the current model for averages. But then I've always been fond of skewed bell curves, so even though the highest-d6 model caps at 6, you're more likely to get bigger bonuses with more dice.

Combining the two would be madness, of course!

 

[Stalker0]

Without accounting for swinginess, I'd actually say I prefer the current model for averages. But then I've always been fond of skewed bell curves, so even though the highest-d6 model caps at 6, you're more likely to get bigger bonuses with more dice.

Combining the two would be madness, of course!

If you wanted to "blend" the two, you could go with the d6 model - 1. Aka roll the d6s, take the highest, subtract 1.

That works well for the first two dice, providing you almost the same average as the core model. It starts to change more on dice 3+.

 

[rules.mechanic]

If you want a pocket full of caltrops you can use d4s instead of d6s. Our current expertise-like system (for AC) uses d4s to level 8 and then d6s from then.