The Missing Expertises

[SabreCat]

I'm no fan of math-tax feats, so for most of my current campaign I've done the following:

• Disallow Expertise feats and Paragon Defenses
• Give characters a free +2 to their weakest NAD at 11th level
• Reduce monster defenses and non-AC attacks by 1/tier

Now that the offending feats have been spiced up in the Essentials, though, I'm tempted to re-implement them. There are actually interesting decisions to be made: Master of Arms, or Expertise for each weapon type you use? Place your ability scores to qualify for Superior (defense) feats, or take Improved Defenses and be done with it? It's not the ideal situation, but at least many of the feats are fun to take now.

There's one problem, though: in my current group, I have two characters who wouldn't have an interesting Expertise available to them, since such feats haven't been published yet and may never be. One's a Bard|Psion who uses musical instruments; the other's a Warlock who uses pact blades. For these folks, the best pick they have is Versatile Expertise, which is still old-style blah.

So if you were to create an Essentials-style Expertise for these implement types, what would you have them do beyond the +1/2/3 to attacks? Some ideas...

Musical Instrument Expertise

• One ally who can hear you regains 1/tier HP when you hit with an attack using the implement
• Shift 1 as free action when you hit with an attack using the implement
• ???

Pact Blade Expertise

• Don't provoke opportunity attacks when making ranged/area attacks with this implement (like Staff Expertise)
• +1/tier damage to enemies within 5 squares of you
• ???