More False Choices

As I alluded to the other day in my post about Sneak Attack, the game includes a number of false choices. In 4th Edition, Weapon Expertise and Weapon Focus are a perfect example. Do you want a little better chance to hit or do you want to inflict a little more damage? Ostensibly, if you wanted to do a little more damage, you'd pick Weapon Focus because it grants a +1 to damage. But you don't inflict damage if you don't hit, so if you really wanted to inflict more damage, you'd need to select Weapon Expertise, which grants a +1 to hit. There's no reason to select Weapon Focus unless you already have Weapon Expertise.

The current D&D Next packet includes another egregious false choice. A first-level fighter gets two Expertise Dice (ED) that he or she can use to activate various class features. These ED are recovered after a short rest or an extended rest -- or, the player can spend an action to recover one ED. In almost all cases (unless, for example, the player's only option during a round is to move), the player would have a tactical option (such as making a standard attack roll) far superior to giving up an action to regain one ED. A fighter in D&D Next is a high-accuracy, high-damage character whose attack rolls play a large part in resolving the encounter, so I think we want to encourage players to be making as many attack rolls as possible.

I suppose it's good that this ED recovery option option exists for those rare cases in which it would be useful, but I would hate to see players falling into a round-by-round pattern like this: Action Using ED > Recover ED >Action Using ED > Recover ED > etc.