The fact you can get to level 15 on a FoV character is pointless in helping with the difficulty at the start of FoV, since I think you need to be level 38 before you can even go to level 12 (or maybe 13) in the weapon Expertise skills.
Unless you set it as a new FoV character at the time your character is generated. Then you can set it to 13 immediately. After the game starts, then the usual limits apply.
