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You all know the theme. Combat Expertise is a boring feat, underwhelming, and people only take it to get to other feats. It's a PITA for fighters that don't want to spend a lot of points on Intelligence. It blocks rogues from playing with maneuvers right out of the box, which you might think fits the whole idea of dirty fighting. So here's my idea for a fix:
Prerequisites: NONE
Benefit:You can choose to take a –1 penalty on melee attack rolls and combat maneuver checks to gain a +2 dodge bonus to your Armor Class. When your base attack bonus reaches +4, and every +4 thereafter, the penalty increases by –1 and the dodge bonus increases by +2. You can only choose to use this feat when you declare that you are making an attack or a full-attack action with a melee weapon. The effects of this feat last until your next turn.
All feats with Combat Expertise AND Int 13 as prerequisites, now have Combat Expertise OR Int 13 as prerequisites.
I think this would be better because:
* People can choose between also taking Int 13 or spending a feat more* Feat-starved classes that thematically should have maneuvers (Rogue!) now get them.
* CE is good enough that you might want it for its own sake, rather than as a prerequisite. I don't think it's too good now; just in line with Power Attack and Deadly Aim.
In addition, I'd extend the more flexible prerequisite to the feats hidden behind Power Attack;
All feats with Power Attack AND Str 13 now require Power Attack OR Str 13
It will make maneuver feats more accessible, and the flavor fits for me. If you're strong, you can easily train to be good at bull rushing. If you're not so strong, maybe you first need to learn how to hit harder than you normally would (Power Attack) before figuring out Improved Bull Rush.
I'm not sure I'd do the same for the Improved Unarmed Strike-followups, because many of those are pretty based on actual unarmed combat.
Thoughts?
