DogBackward
First Post
Personally, I'm a big fan of Expertise Dice, but I do agree that they could use some work. What I'd like to see is Expertise Dice given a baseline ability: if you have Expertise Dice, you can spend them when you hit with an attack to deal bonus damage. No need for a maneuver to allow it, that's just what they do on their own.
From there, it seems like the best way to keep things different and interesting would be to vary the tables for Expertise progression. This can, I think, give a lot of extra flavor to each class that uses them without having to do a lot of extra work. And, for the sake of this suggestion, I actually would like to see all Expertise users get maneuvers as a default (because that's important for reinforcing the Rogue's niche).
The Fighter should be the king of Expertise, and start with higher dice (1d6 instead of 1d4), and stay a bit higher in die size. He gets the biggest Expertise Dice, and perhaps could be the only class whose Expertise Dice can be d12's. Fighters are just The Best at fighting; a Fighter's maneuver is just, at the basic level, better than the same maneuver used by someone else. They're Fighters, it's what they do.
Rogues could get more maneuvers known. That's what Rogues do; they have a never-ending bag of tricks. So while the Rogue would have lower Expertise dice than the Fighter, they'd have more different things to do with them. And, of course, their maneuvers would be less overt smash-your-face maneuvers, and more things that take advantage of weak points... or create weak points. The Rogue could have some maneuvers that are better, but only in specific situations.
Other classes could use other twists on this. The Monk, for example, could get more Expertise dice of a lower value. Where the Fighter has 3d12 at level 10 (I know it's 3d10 right now, but with the Fighter die-bump above, it would be 3d12), the Monk might have 5d6. If they both blow all their dice on damage, then the Fighter wins out by a bit. But the Monk, being the classic swift-as-the-wind type, will be able to use more different maneuvers in a single round. The classic trade-off of sheer numbers vs. versatility and options.
The point here being that locking the Expertise progression into a single table used for all classes is actually severely limiting the chances for variability among the classes. With a system like Expertise, you can accomplish a lot of flavorful stuff just by changing up who gets how many dice, how big they are, and when they get them.
From there, it seems like the best way to keep things different and interesting would be to vary the tables for Expertise progression. This can, I think, give a lot of extra flavor to each class that uses them without having to do a lot of extra work. And, for the sake of this suggestion, I actually would like to see all Expertise users get maneuvers as a default (because that's important for reinforcing the Rogue's niche).
The Fighter should be the king of Expertise, and start with higher dice (1d6 instead of 1d4), and stay a bit higher in die size. He gets the biggest Expertise Dice, and perhaps could be the only class whose Expertise Dice can be d12's. Fighters are just The Best at fighting; a Fighter's maneuver is just, at the basic level, better than the same maneuver used by someone else. They're Fighters, it's what they do.
Rogues could get more maneuvers known. That's what Rogues do; they have a never-ending bag of tricks. So while the Rogue would have lower Expertise dice than the Fighter, they'd have more different things to do with them. And, of course, their maneuvers would be less overt smash-your-face maneuvers, and more things that take advantage of weak points... or create weak points. The Rogue could have some maneuvers that are better, but only in specific situations.
Other classes could use other twists on this. The Monk, for example, could get more Expertise dice of a lower value. Where the Fighter has 3d12 at level 10 (I know it's 3d10 right now, but with the Fighter die-bump above, it would be 3d12), the Monk might have 5d6. If they both blow all their dice on damage, then the Fighter wins out by a bit. But the Monk, being the classic swift-as-the-wind type, will be able to use more different maneuvers in a single round. The classic trade-off of sheer numbers vs. versatility and options.
The point here being that locking the Expertise progression into a single table used for all classes is actually severely limiting the chances for variability among the classes. With a system like Expertise, you can accomplish a lot of flavorful stuff just by changing up who gets how many dice, how big they are, and when they get them.
