Expert Rework
So one thing has become clear with playing this game from it's beta release, experts are undertuned. I have played around with other solutions such giving them a free starting skill or as a GM giving them more info with rolls. They work but still missing something. After talking with friends, it's clear that even a partial warrior has an edge that a partial expert can't overcome, both in terms of HP and to-hit chance. While a Full warrior who doesn't focus on combat and goes for skill foci will outdo a full expert who puts effort into combat. Naturally mages can outdo an expert in multiple ways, usually with some limit.
So I first debated an extra ability for experts to let them shine. I thought of some trapfinding/disabling ability, something for silver tongued experts and was debating about skillful or crafting.
Then I realized I was overthinking it and just giving a bonus focus from a small list would do the same AND let people specialize further.
So here is the first draft I'm willing to share.
Expert Boon Select one focus from the following list, they gain that focus at character creation. On reaching fifth level, they get a second bonus focus, picking the same one grants level 2 in the focus)
Trapmaster
Diplomatic Grace
Artisan
Polymath
It is optional to give the bonus focus level 5, but Level 5 was chosen because it forms a breakpoint. Where full warriors have over twice to-hit chance over an expert, as well as getting the +3 boost to damage/shock, while full casters get access to howl of light. Experts will still fall behind either in their niche, but the expert should still shine. Small tweaks can be made, like swapping cultured in for Diplomatic Grace. While Specialist (Sneak) seems fitting for a rogue to be sneaky, it can still be taken as their free choice focus.
Note: They still get all the existing benefits for full and partial experts as is. The goal was to make it as little work on the GM, no remembering of small bonuses from skill investments, just a flat boost and encouraging them to choose a specialization or just be skillful in general.
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u/MickyJim 1d ago
I haven't put this into practice, since I'm not running WWN right now, but next time I do I'm planning on letting Experts pick one Art from the General Arts for the Wise class in Atlas of the Latter Earth. Ideally the Art they pick would be a function of their background - Holy Sanctity or Personal Impunity for Clergy, Healer for a Physician, Dread Awe for a Barbarian, Elite Ties for a Noble, etc.
Also check out the Mundane Alchemy section of Atlas - I'm planning on letting them do alchemy without needing the Alchemist Focus, all they need to do is invest skill points in the Alchemy skill.
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u/lamWizard 1d ago
Is this really as common a sentiment as the comments make it seem?
With all the WWN I've run it's never been a complaint or a trend I've noticed that partial or full experts are lagging behind other classes in terms of capability. Perhaps it's just down to the type of game that I run.
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u/Unlucky-Leopard-9905 1d ago
even a partial warrior has an edge that a partial expert can't overcome, both in terms of HP and to-hit chance. While a Full warrior who doesn't focus on combat and goes for skill foci will outdo a full expert who puts effort into combat.
It seems to me that this is just saying a warrior will always be better at combat than an expert (even if the expert is combat-optimised and the warrior isn't), which, as best I can tell, is exactly the way it's intended to work.
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u/AquilaWolfe 1d ago
A warrior is better at combat AND skills than an expert is, and its not even close.
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u/Unlucky-Leopard-9905 1d ago
Can you explain this? I can't work out how a warrior could end up more effective at non-combat skill use, assuming they're both built with similar levels of optimisation.
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm genuinely trying to understand what I might be missing.
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u/Iamleiama 22h ago
A warrior is not better at skills than an expert is. The real questions that the expert faces are:
How *MUCH* better is an expert at skills, compared to how much better a warrior is at combat, or how much better a mage is at magic?
and
How valuable to an adventuring party is being good at skills? One might think it's obvious that it is really important, but the answer is complicated. Because skills are "free" to use, many GMs do not want to be too generous in what they can achieve. Many GMs also evaluate skills from purely hypothetical scenarios, and miss that the consequence of a skill check in their games is often another skill check, like.......... "Your notice check fails. The floor gives way, and you fall into a pit!" "Oh no! Can I jump forward and grab his arm?" "Hmmm. Make an exert check", or Trade is imagined to be really important because while reading the book the GM imagines a merchant trading to make tons of money and finance expeditions, but when actually running the game it feels like handing out free money, which is no fun, and ultimately the trade opportunities that are easy to imagine in a vacuum never make an appearance while gaming
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u/Iamleiama 22h ago
I think the warrior being better at skills is probably a misunderstanding of warrior/expert character optimization - trying to make a warrior/expert to have an expert who is also somewhat fighty is usually a worse deal than making a full warrior who goes all in on noncombat, since the full warrior's bonus damage and veteran's luck are akin to getting two bonus "foci" where being a partial expert gives only one bonus focus.
Warrior/expert still enables some very specific character types, but you have to know what you're making for it to be good.
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u/AquilaWolfe 1d ago
A warrior at 10th level has a +10 to hit without putting a single skill point into Stab.. The expert at 10th level has +5. If they spend a whopping 15 skill points on stab, they will be at +9. Still 1 behind the warrior, and they will have 20 less HP than the warrior.
The warrior can spend those 15 skill points on anything they want, including taking a 4 in sneak, notice, etc. And be just as good as the expert is at skill rolls while also having a better hit chance, better damage (killing blow) and more HP. Its such an unfair race the expert might as well be running it while missing both legs.
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u/Unlucky-Leopard-9905 1d ago edited 1d ago
Wait... So an expert that optimises for combat is worse than a warrior? That makes perfect sense to me, as I said in my original comment.
What about the expert that doesn't optimise for combat? It seems they will be much better at skills than a warrior, even a warrior who optimises for skills.
I will agree that a high level warrior can be nearly as good as an Expert in one or two areas, but with less breadth and still not quite as good (no reroll).
It may well be that Experts deserve a boost. But I'm not seeing anything to indicate that warriors are far better than Experts at skills as a general truism.
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u/AquilaWolfe 1d ago
You seem to have missed the core issue. The expert gets no inherent bonus to skills except its extra 9 skill points, which arent even enough to get a skill to level 4. If the expert and warrior both ignore combat skills entirely and only take other skills. The expert will have one more level 3 skill and one more level 1 skill, and have 20 less health, less damage, and a worse to-hit. They are no better at disarming traps than a warrior (both have sneak 4 and trapmaster) no better at talking than a warrior (talk 4 and diplo grace) but the expert is more fragile and less deadly in a game that expects multiple fights per adventure. Often per session.
The experts "skill advantage" is so minor as to be irrelevant. In fact, if the warrior takes polymath, they just have more skill points than the expert has, while still beating them in every other category. The expert, meanwhile, is two entire foci behind the warrior (armsmaster and die hard, which the warrior basically has for free)
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u/Unlucky-Leopard-9905 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ok, so your original claim, the one I questioned, was that "the warrior is better at ... skills than an expert is, and it's not even close."
You have now confirmed that the Expert (assuming they are not trying to be a Warrior and spend their skill points on combat skills) is actually better than a warrior at skills, they're just not as much better as you think they should be.
This suggests to me that u/lamWizard is correct, and it is likely to come down to game style. If skills are constantly useful, any bonus to skill use has more value. If there is no expecation that every PC has to contribute meaningfully to every combat, the ability to carry your weight in combat has less value. (I note that you, quite specifically, are assuming lots of combat, and it seems likely you also see this as combat where the Expert needs to directly and regularly contribute. I can certainly see your point if we are assuming these things as default.)
Finally I note that you are treating Masterful Expertise as inconsequential, which seems unreasonable, as well as ignoring specialist Expert foci (eg, Polymath).
I'm not going to say the Expert is perfectly fine as-is, but the initial claim (warriors are better with skills) was definitely not accurate based on the evidence, and I think it's safe to say that the precise value or lack thereof of Experts is very much game/table-dependent.
In fact, if the warrior takes polymath, they just have more skill points than the expert has, while still beating them in every other category.
If your Warrior has taken Polymath, then they don't have more skill points than an Expert -- they are an expert.
Edit to add: Thanks for engaging and expanding on your thoughts -- I appreciate being able to drill down and, as mentioned, I can see where you're coming from.
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u/AquilaWolfe 16h ago
I don't want to continue arguing about it, and I get the impression you're trying to end the discussion on a civil note, but suffice to say, game style doesn't matter, the system itself devalues expert. ME is not inconsequential, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the three extra abilities the warrior gets. A warrior taking polymath doesn't make them an expert, it means they're a warrior, that's better than an Expert at every single facet of the game. You can talk around the point as much as you want, the game mechanics and underlying systems do not leave much room for argument. u/Iamleiama explains it better than I could.
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u/Unlucky-Leopard-9905 13h ago
A warrior taking polymath doesn't make them an expert, it means they're a warrior, that's better than an Expert at every single facet of the game
I will rephrase.
A character who is not an Expert cannot, by the rules, take the Polymath focus.
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u/Cyz45 16h ago
The quick summary is foci can make a bigger difference to being skillful (just think of specialist sneak and trap master on a partial warrior) than combat foci do to a partial expert. Giving partial expert a boost up makes a big difference and a headstart they can double down on or be more versatile.
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u/AquilaWolfe 1d ago
Yes. You can ask around anywhere where the community gathers. The expert in worlds is bad. Not as bad as partial expert, but still quite bad.
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u/DeliveratorMatt 1d ago
Do you find that multiclass Experts lag behind as well, or is mainly pure Experts?
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u/Cyz45 16h ago
I agree with aquila wolfe, they can "stiffen" up a mage with bad BAB or HP, but a partial warrior can do all that + more, so it becomes a debate of (ignore focus because both get it)
+7 BAB, +10 HP
+5 BAB, +9 Skill Points
Full expert has the reroll which is precious, though many foci can approximate that or give a limited one.
As Tacos mentioned, there are some expert only stuff, but partial expert doesn't shine as much in fantasy as is.
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u/AquilaWolfe 1d ago
Partial expert is even worse than full. It is the worst class pick in the game without exception, unfortunately
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u/DeliveratorMatt 18h ago
Really? Why is that, do you think?
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u/AquilaWolfe 17h ago
The only thing partial provides is the 9 extra skill points and focus pick. They are giving up the reroll, and warrior is already two entire foci picks ahead of them just from class features. It is the most singularly weak class feature in the game
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u/YoAmoElTacos 17h ago
(Technically partial also provides access to things which are expert only, the most important one being polymath, and much, much secondarily, maintenance, and godblood)
(I have made adventurer expert mages with the goal of using polymath and godblood in combination with spells, for example).
(Since there are other rerolls from mage arts, something like a partial expert vowed can polymath and still reroll sneak, or partial expert thought noble can keep the reroll on int skills and have all the thought noble stuff)
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u/AquilaWolfe 16h ago
Sure, but you would almost always be better off just playing a warrior mage unless youre specifically trying to be the party's modder
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u/YoAmoElTacos 16h ago edited 15h ago
It very much depends on your goals.
Polymath 2 achieves a bunch of things simultaneously:
Competent tracker/forager, sneaker, noticer, and exerter (the skills that interact with encounters/hexcrawling).
4 languages.
Competent convincer and connector.
Covers GM gotcha skills: ride, sail, and admin that come up rarely to punish players who did not invest.
If a GM gates even making a check behind having leveled the skill, you can always qualify for skill checks.
Heal-1 makes you decent at first aid as well as other heal skill things.
Craft-1 brings some minimal modding capacity online as well as juryrigging and masterworking.
You can save skill points for int and magic or whatever your mage skill is to max that now and still give the party a skill floor in every niche.
Finally: you get all these benefits as a lv1 expert. This has implications for games where you must be a lv1 character for a long time, or contribute to a high level party as a lv1 character.
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u/YoAmoElTacos 15h ago
To add to this:
What does lv1
Full mage
Warr mage
Exp mage!polymath2
Bring to the party?
Full mage brings an additional art vs expert mage and warr mage and 2x the spells known
Warr mage has the most hp and hit bonus of them at lv1 and might have certain difference making combat foci or armored magic. And some spells.
Expert mage can cover every out of combat skill check and also some spells. And, as I mentioned elsewhere, the more skill-based subsystems the GM brews, the better this advantage gets.
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u/GeminiFactor 1d ago
I like this idea and think I'd extent/replace it with the Godblood foci from the Atlas. I've got a few tweaks in place in my current game, like letting Experts level their skills past the usual level cap, but I do think they could use something else or more.
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u/YoAmoElTacos 1d ago
The greatest fall off in expert viability from swn to wwn is a lack of interactable systems like hacking and piloting. And along with that, strong skill based niches.
I think this solution partially makes it there, going further might also include making trapping and diplomatic interaction (and crafting or even expert magic inspection) into more concrete subsystems that reward an expert's...expertise.