Combat Expertise for Fighters

Some people worry about fighters not being interesting enough. One of the many solutions suggested is increasing their damage output.

I use a simple damage table for monsters based on their hit dice: 1d6 for creatures of 1 to 4 hit dice, plus 1 point of damage per hit die thereafter, or a full die of damage per 4 hit dice. I’ve been tempted to apply something like that to fighters, but felt it lacked something. But this looks like a viable solution.

Fighters can use any weapon of any of type: bows, melee, thrown, pole arms, and miscellaneous others. Each fighter has expertise in one of those types and does +1 damage with that weapon at 1st through 5th levels, At higher levels, they do an additional +1 damage every level. Convert every 4 points of bonus damage into a standard +1d6 damage. This translates into the following table.

Level	Damage
1 to 5	1+1
6	1+2
7	2-1
8	2
9	2+1
10	2+2
11	3-1
12	3

It’s possible to add expertise in additional weapon types beyond the first at great expense, or even to add unusual combat skills to weapons fighters already have expertise in. Rather than muck everything up with feats or abilities gained at specific levels, just use the training rules to add as many combat skills and expertise as desired, limited only by time and money.

This is all in addition to the multiple opponent rule:

When facing multiple normal opponents of 1 or 1-1 hit dice, fighters make a single attack against a number of targets equal to their level, doing the same amount of damage to all targets. For weaker creatures (1-2 hit dice or less,) they attack twice as many targets. All targets have to be the same kind of creature, and cannot be magical, supernatural, or have levels in a character class. Armor type must be the same, or optionally the attack is rolled against the target with the best armor type.

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