Weapons & Armor (2025)

Carrying on with the sequel mechanics discussion, there are a few things that the previous post made me think about, that I'll talk about today.

When trying to balance out spells vs. weapon attacks, if there are to be only two spellcasting stats, it might be harder to make the "cantrip dice pool" stat be any lower than +2; to balance this out vs. weapon attacks, I had talked about spells not adding a modifier to damage. In this specific paradigm, it means cantrip spells would have a better chance to hit (with a pool of 4 dice rather than 3) but the damage would be more random (2d6 as compared to 1d6+mod, usually a +3).

That might be workable enough, especially considering that the alternative is bolting an entire 6th attribute onto the system...

In the previous post, I hinted at the idea of "proficient" weapons applying a 1d6 bonus to your pool. There might also be other benefits we could apply. For example, as an alternative to using 2d6 for two-handed weapons, I had suggested that instead the system could use 1d6, but you might be able to add double your STR modifier to the damage roll; this could be a benefit you only gain from using a two-handed weapon with which you have proficiency. Likewise, the attempts at balancing out two-weapon fighting vis-a-vis two-handed weapons has so far been assumed to revolve around using a lower stat for the damage modifier; this could similarly be made contingent upon whether or not you are proficient with suitable weapons for two-weapon fighting.

This is sort of a milieu that I had used in one of my previous attempts at RPG design, whereby the math was derived from 3 unnamed stats, but certain qualifiers would specify whether a particular mechanic would use the highest, middle, or lowest of your 3 stats. Most of the feats that were purely math boosts were typically, "use your highest stat for this mechanic [instead of your lowest or middle stat.]" Assuming there is a cap on the possible values that your stats can be, this likewise places a ceiling on how high your modifiers for any mechanic can go; it helps create a framework for contextualizing all of the other math and mechanics in the system.

Bringing this back to our example, an "untrained" character doing TWF probably would add no modifier to their damage rolls, whereas a "proficient" character might add the 'middle' modifier, between STR, DEX, or AGIL. Similarly, we need to think about what the upshot to doing a single, one-handed weapon attack would be (if the ethos is basically, "well, anyone can attempt to do TWF," such as is the case in 5th Edition D&D.) The obvious thing that comes to mind is that such an attack would almost certainly have to use your highest stat, but also that your loadout could then include a shield. With the defensive bonuses meant to be fairly few and far between, my first assumption would be that shields are a flat +1 to "AC" (per se) for a proficient character, and provide no benefit if not proficient.

At some point I'll have to really drill into the math, and determine what the "correct" numbers are for AC bonuses -- particularly if we're assuming that "Monks add WIS to AC" will be a mechanic in the game (putting aside for the moment, whether or not WIS will be in the designs). It also begs the question of whether "flat modifiers only, for defense rolls" really makes sense for player-characters. This gets back into what I said about Eldritch Horror, and keeping the mechanics simple and unified... But, perhaps things like a Shield spell or a Rogue's evasion ability make more sense as "dice pool bonuses" to defense, or as rerolls. If such mechanics are meant to be in the game, it makes little sense to have them function as a +1 bonus; if we know the attack and defense results, then we'll know whether a +1 will make a difference, often leading to such abilities not being useful. Off the top of my head, I think this is why Bless in 5e is +1d4 instead of +1 (as in 3.5 D&D.)

Somewhat related to this topic (if I've mentioned it before, I'll say it again, but...) my intention is that there will be no "AC stat" the way that (by and large) DEX is the AC stat in 3.x and 5e D&D. My feeling is that this only serves to arbitrarily raise the floor on all of the math, and I don't think it needs to be there in order to make the stats useful. AGIL probably tracks closer to something resembling an AC stat in the TNP ethos, and the intent so far is that this would instead be used for initiative -- something I feel is impactful enough, on its own. I've also hinted that AGIL might be the "number of attacks"-stat for ranged weapon attacks in particular, if indeed this is needed as a balancing mechanic (i.e. sacrificing "+mod to damage" in exchange for hitting more targets.)

Part of figuring out how the pieces come together is a question that was brought up in Discord, as to whether the assumption of "1 weapon = 1 attack" for melee really makes sense, or if a better assumption would be that, say, a large weapon can attack in a sweep, or that a lighter weapon can attack fast enough to hit multiple targets in a comparable time frame. I don't generally work from a paradigm of "TTRPGs should have weapon-speed mechanics," but it's not as if this is an unknown concept in the RPG space -- indeed, the entire conceit of "DPS" tracks back to the need to make an apples-to-apples comparison between weapons of varying attack speeds, a concept that I think most people of my vintage would attribute to being pioneered by World of Warcraft. It might be the case that in a design ethos like the TNP sequel (where the expectation is that there will be push-button, dice pool bonus, massive "finishing move"-type powers) it makes sense to have the "at-will" combat abilities be a little more flashy and showy than just "1 weapon = 1 attack."

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Alright, that wraps up posting for this month. Expect the next post to be up on October 10th.

Building out "2d6 + pool" and other Sequel stuff (2025)

Let's talk sequel mechanics.

Say you're making an unarmed strike. The basic idea would be that you would roll 2d6 vs. the defender also rolling 2d6. On a success, you would deal damage equal to your STR "modifier" -- so, if that number is +1, it would be 1 damage, or 3 damage if the modifier is +3. Now, add onto that, using a proper/proficient weapon for your character would add 1d6 to the pool for this attack; what this means is that you would instead roll 3d6, selecting 2 dice for the attack result and 1 die for the damage result (to be added to the STR mod.) The defender would then roll their 2d6, after attack dice have been assigned; if you're having flashbacks to the RISK episode of Undergrads, you're not alone.

Now, I received some specific advice (from the people who brought you Strike!) that, "a 2/3rds accuracy [means] If you attack 4 times, you'll miss 3 or 4 of them 1/9th of the time." In other words, without constant luck-mitigation mechanics, 66(ish)% hit rate means that someone will have a very boring time in combat, for 1 out of every 9 combats. As such, I've decided to tune the hit chance for the TNP sequel slightly up, from this number. By setting a baseline of 3d6 vs. 2d6 (and where attacker succeeds on a tie) we achieve a 72.42% hit rate, if the calculation is assuming that the attacker simply takes the 2 highest dice every time (which is about the easiest way I know how to calculate it, in anydice.) Now, that's not to say that we couldn't tinker with this, by adding modifiers to the defense; I just felt it would be easiest on the DM to not have to assume they will always be adding something to the defense roll, which they would need to look up or otherwise memorize.

The other thing we need to assume is that the attacker will regularly be adding dice to the pool, either via encounter/daily type powers or "teamwork bonuses" (as I tend to refer to them) such as flanking, Bless spells, debuffs to enemies, etc. As such, the DM doesn't necessarily have to feel bad if they do beef up enemies defenses a little bit, since the party should have tools to overcome them mathematically.

The other side of the coin is, if enemies are assumed to not have access to the attack-buffing utility that the players have, to what extent should the players' "armor class" get buffed beyond a simple 2d6 roll? At first glance (with flat bonuses being such a potentially big shift in the math) it seems like only the heaviest armored PCs would get even a +1 bonus... possibly a +2? But then this bends back around to the question of, "if a Monk doesn't cast spells, do we let them use their WIS stat as a bonus to AC?" Would that potentially make them the hardest character class to hit? The knock-on problem with that is the presupposition that in the sequel, ALL characters have 10 HP (maybe letting them add their STR, since there are no plans for a Constitution attribute.) I can say with a high degree of certainty, that a character with 2d6+3 AC and only 10 HP is a lot more unkillable than one with 2d6+1 AC and 13 HP.

Now, bringing things back to the example from the start of this post, the conundrum I run into is, "well if adding a die to a melee attack is dependent upon using a weapon," then how do we make this math work, with spells? The example keeps breaking down for "basic attacks" whenever I come back around to applying these mechanics to spells. Do we just say, "actually, screw it, spells are just a 3d6 pool by default, for no reason" or should this be keyed to something like lowest mental stat? It almost feels like (particularly assuming 2 mental stats, and not 3) that we'll end up with the lower stat applying to basic attacks, and the higher stat effectively being the "dice pool stat" for encounter/daily powers.

If the intention is that the plinking stat always needs to be a +1, that further inclines the designs towards having 3 mental stats rather than just 2 -- otherwise you'd naturally expect all spellcasters to put a +2 in one spellcasting stat, and a +3 in the other. This might be workable, after all, so maybe you just say "spellcasters have a dice pool advantage over martials, but they don't get to add their modifier to damage rolls," or something. This has a very 5e vibe to it, where spells generally only deal dice damage, with no modifiers. Also, having to rig the math so that "basic spell attack bonus" is always your +1 stat, and can never be higher...? It ends up feeling gamey and arbitrary -- one of those moments when you can look at the game and all you see is the design spreadsheet, instead of the immersion you should feel, when playing.

The problem with saying "X mental stat does at-will damage, Y mental stat does encounter/daily damage" is you end up with the problem of every spellcaster putting a +2 in X and a +3 in Y -- assuming they all get at-will spells... This would mean things potentially get to be very "paint by numbers." This creates a potentially interesting design space, though. To wit, in 2014 D&D (5e), the "half-caster" classes expressly don't get cantrips (i.e. at-will spells) so it's not as if the idea of siloing off these sorts of mechanics is particularly new. There's also the possibility of say, having the Cleric/Paladin type class use only weapons for attacks, and their spells are only used to heal rather than do damage. This would beg the question of, "OK, so is every Cleric and every Paladin just going to max STR, and then one puts WIS as their 2nd stat but the other makes it CHA" and there's no real difference? Or do you let the Cleric have cantrips, so that they at least put a +2 in both/all mental stats? Ultimately part of the question is how much utility there is to be gained, by hanging the mechanics for both classes off of one chassis in the first place. (TNP succeeds at this by using class dice; regardless of subclass, you're using the same dice, so the mechanics will at least have that much in common.) Maybe the distinction can be as simple as all Cleric healing can be done at range while all Paladin healing must be done from melee/touch distances. 

It seems more and more obvious that the applications of mental stats in spellcasting will be class and/or subclass specific; if there is to be a difference between a Wizard and a Sorcerer, the obvious one would be that the offensive punch would come from INT and CHA, respectively, for those classes. Likewise, it might be the case that a Warlock uses CHA offensively but a Paladin uses CHA defensively. You can also build in some exceptions-based design, like maybe "Warlocks always use CHA for offensive spellcasting [even if it isn't their lowest mental stat, i.e. for at-will spells]" with the tradeoff being that they don't get per-day spells, as such -- again, this is sort of the conceit of the Warlock in any D&D edition besides 4th, but it carries a decidedly more 5e vibe to it.

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Harkening back to the Eldritch Horror boardgame, one of the things that I dislike about it mechanically is that it is such a mishmash of mechanics. Normally you succeed on a 5 or 6, but Bless increases that to succeeding on a 4, whereas Bane reduces that to only succeeding on a 6. The game also has mechanics that let you reroll one of the dice in your pool, but also to add dice to the pool after the fact. In my opinion, it could benefit from picking one of these mechanics and sticking to it -- as you might guess, my preference would be to just expand the dice pool. A similar train of thought came up with regards to the sequel mechanics; if a mechanic allows for a bigger pool of dice for the damage... should we simply say, "You can also use the attack roll dice as damage roll dice [as is possible with some of the class dice bonuses, in TNP]"? Or should the attack dice always be excluded from the damage roll, but the dice pool should be made even bigger?

If the attack dice are allowed to be used as damage, this would incentivize putting the highest possible rolls towards the attack -- which removes some of the gambling aspects of using an "average" attack roll, to try and boost the damage roll higher. That is to say, it essentially works against the spirit of what the dice pool mechanic is trying to do, so my instinct would be to simply expand the pool instead. This kind of tilted me towards using the "attack as damage" mechanic sparingly, if at all -- such as, maybe only having it apply to daily powers. This mechanic would, however, interact in interesting ways with a "power attack" mechanic, which might stipulate having to use your lowest die from the pool as one of your attack dice, in exchange for adding 1 die (or more) to the pool; it sort of brings that gambling aspect back to the table.

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A fairly long post today, albeit mostly speculative. Hopefully this will bring some results in the near future, and I can start to narrow down the designs and bring things into sharper focus.
Next post is planned for September 30th, so check back then!

An Aside About: 4th Edition D&D

For some reason or another, I recently found myself thinking about (of all things) Skill Powers, in 4th Edition. These are essentially universal Utility powers, with the prerequisite that you need to have training in the associated skill; you are then able to take the skill power in place of one of your Utility powers, in the normal manner within character progression.

For those unfamiliar, your attack powers were either at-will, encounter, or daily powers, and were given out a prescribed levels -- this was uniform for all classes, until Essentials. Utility powers, however, were simply doled out at specific levels, but whether they were at-will/encounter/daily could vary; it was sort of a way of tuning more useful powers up or down. The first problem with utility powers is one of "scope creep." 

The example I use off of the top of my head is that a "heroic tier" Ranger utility power from the first PHB would do something like, say, let you add your WIS modifier to an ally's skill check. Later on, the Invigorating Stride utility power was added for Rangers, which allowed you to move up to your speed (typical of a move action) and to spend your 2nd Wind (typically a Standard Action) all as a single move action. This basically made it too good to pass up, but it also demonstrates the shift in scope; utility powers started off as feeling like more of a replacement for spells, with regards to non-combat applications. Eventually they ended up as just "stuff you do in combat, that isn't attacking." I think this is important to point out, because for all the talk of how "4e nerfed my wizard!" at one point it did seem like there was an attempt within the designs to keep the wizard's... well, utility, by having utility powers.

Getting back to skill powers, the problem with the design of these is that because they were universally available, their effectiveness seems to have been deliberately tuned downwards. It's bad enough when something overpowered is available to only one party member, now imagine if ALL party members had it. The result is that skill powers ended up being a bit tepid, and no one really used them; as someone who played healers a lot, the option to take a Religion skill power for that one extra heal per day was nice to have... But sometimes less is more, and I think this whole mechanic probably could've been done without, or just done better.

In a lot of ways, the design of 4e is an attempt to reign in the worst excesses of 3.x D&D -- in particular caster supremacy, and multiclass monstrosities. The other thing is that by making 4e's combat be expressly about HP attrition, you necessarily end up having to make every character class function within the realm of HP damage. Now, you do get controllers and support characters and such that focus more on zones and debilitating effects and so forth... but at the end of the day, the intimidate option was basically non-functional, the result in gameplay is that "dead" was the only status effect that won fights. So, though 4e took away the spellcaster's ability to rewrite the laws of the universe, or just turn themselves into a better fighter than the Fighter, between utility powers and other considerations (like Ritual spells -- which mechanically are the polar opposite of rituals in 5e...) casters were still meant to be able to use magic to contribute meaningfully, inside and outside of combat. That seems fair enough, to me.

As for multiclassing, 4e didn't do away with it entirely... but it ends up with the same problem that skill powers have. There was a sense that multiclassing was overpowered, and also statistically it would basically be impossible to ever balance all of the millions of combinations that were possible. So what 4e did was make it so that you could spend a feat to swap one of your powers, for one power from another class. Now, specifically, you could only do this with Encounter, Daily, and Utility powers (each one costing their own feat) but you're essentially paying 1 power slot and 1 feat slot, to gain... 1 power. It should be obvious to anyone why this was almost never a good trade. (And for completeness, I should mention that if you took all 3 feats, you could unlock the option to swap one of your at-will powers too... if memory serves, and without going to my books to verify.)

Now to be sure, there was always the possibility that One Weird Trick would unlock a broken or overpowered build this way, but... for all intents and purposes, I feel like 4e's version of multiclassing was a token gesture, which was never meant to be actually good. (As an aside to this whole aside, my understanding is that multiclassing in 13th Age originally put your character behind the curve to the tune of losing +1 to attack, as its balancing mechanism -- which is obviously a lot more punishing in the long run than the cost of a few feats. I can't recall if this was changed, later...)

The other thing 4e did was essentially eliminate "dead levels." Between feats, powers, ability score boosts, and even just half-level scaling being applied to everything, every character is gaining something at just about every level. This also is a point in favour of not needing multiclassing in the designs; a lot of times (in my 5e experience, anyway) the best timing for a multiclass dip is when the next level of your current class doesn't really give you anything. If one of the big complaints against multiclassing is that thematically or narratively you end up with characters that make no sense, then one workaround is to design your character progression such that it incentivizes keeping to one class -- because then, your flavour remains consistent.

One of the other benefits is that 4e can do things like let Rangers pick their fighting style at level 1, and shower them with bonus feats that reinforce that style, without any worry of 5th level Fighters dipping 1 level into Ranger and just getting that boatload of benefits for themselves. I think for all the attempts at hamstringing multiclassing, 5e doesn't really get around the core problems; Fighter and Rogue are still the go-to 1- or 2-level dips, precisely because all of their key mechanics are still frontloaded, with no allowances to prevent poaching them via multiclassing. Indeed, 3rd party designers of 5e classes often specify that you cannot use their classes to multiclass.

This "no multiclassing" ethos from 4e does two things in my mind, which are sort of inter-related. First, if we take the frontloading of features to its logical conclusion (such as by also paring down dead levels) it seems obvious to me that the result should be a scaling down of character levels. Particularly when you go from the ethos of feats being bite-size (4e) to being a suite of features (5e) you can more easily compress progression into fewer levels -- probably less than 20, but certainly not 30. The second, related thing is how this makes characters more closely resemble pre-built ones, like you would see in games I've mentioned before, on the blog: Warhammer Quest: Cursed City, Eldritch Horror, and Betrayal at Baldur's Gate.

It's interesting to me how despite being introduced to those games long after getting into D&D, the character design for TNP essentially picks up where 4e left off, but arrives at something so closely resembling the board games' characters.

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Well, I hope that was an interesting trip down memory lane, and that I managed to paint a picture of why 4e was the way it was, and where I think that design ethos was taking the genre.
The next post is planned to be up sometime between September 19th-21st, so check back then!

Leveraging Synergies (2025)

A recent topic of discussion on the TNP Discord was how D&D 2024 compares to TNP, in terms of what it's doing with skills.

In 5e, you have a proficiency bonus that scales up as you level (starting at +2) and generally speaking, you get proficiency with 4 skills -- 2 from your class, and 2 from your background. Certain features (such as Jack of All Trades, for the Bard class) let you add half of this bonus to your skill checks; other features allow you to add double this bonus, a mechanic which is typically referred to as "expertise." Barring these outliers, your proficiency bonus will scale up to +6 and your ability mods will cap out at +5; a +11 modifier effectively means a 10% success rate against a DC30 (i.e. only a d20 roll of 19 or 20 would succeed.) Most DCs in 5th Edition are done in increments of 5, with each increment representing a 25% swing in difficulty; with advantage, a d20 roll with no modifiers vs. a DC10 is equivalent to about a +5 bonus, or about 25% (coincidentally).

As you can probably guess, this leaves 5e with a fairly narrow band of DCs it can meaningfully use. So with the 2024 rules, they've tried to crowbar in advantage, if/when you can reasonably argue to the DM that proficiency bonuses from a skill/tool/etc. would overlap for a given action; instead of stacking/doubling these proficiency bonuses, the DM is instead encouraged to grant advantage on the check. The problem is that not all skills have a tool which makes an obvious pairing with them, causing a difference in effective DC of potentially 25% (the difference between advantage vs. a straight roll.) In short, this is an afterthought, and that's why it's mechanically/mathematically unsound.

If we go back to 3.5, there was a system for "skill synergies" whereby 5 ranks in a given skill granted a +2 bonus to a related skill. Even this was a very "pick & choose" kind of affair, where it was not universally applied. By contrast to what 3.5/5e D&D are trying to do, both TNP systems have skill synergies built into their baseline assumptions. Every "core" skill falls under an Attribute and a Skillset; what this means is that adding bonuses to a skill always increases the bonuses to the other skills that are related to it.

For example, in 3.5 having 5 ranks in Bluff gives you a +2 to Diplomacy and Sleight of Hand checks. In TNP, if you increase your Subtlety skillset, that would increase both your Bluff and Sleight of Hand skills; likewise, increasing your CHA attribute would increase both your Bluff and Persuasion skills. Because all core skills fit somewhere on the grid, this built-in system for synergy works across all core skills; the skillsets effectively serve as another vector (in addition to attributes) by which thematically-linked skills are able to be synergized. In TNP, you can gain training and/or a bonus rank in either the attribute or the skillset for a given skill; instances of overlapping training do not stack, but they do provide the "mastery" bonus to such skills. In the sequel, each bonus to a given skill's attribute or skillset would add an additional d6 to the pool for that type of skill check.

Now, admittedly, where this idea falls short in the TNP systems is with knowledge skills; although they are grouped by power source (and only half are unique to a given power source) power sources are not given a "score" nor do knowledge skills have "skillsets" or any other such 2nd vector to group them together. In TNP this is somewhat remedied by additional ranks (beyond 3rd) being more readily available, for knowledge skills. As for the sequel mechanics, those details are still being worked out.

I think a strength of the 2d6 ethos for the sequel is that every die you add into the pool has the potential to matter. One complaint I've heard about older versions of the World of Darkness system is that it's still all down to random chance; you roll X number of d10s, and need a 10 to show up, in order to succeed. Likewise, when I play Call of Cthulhu-based boardgames, you end up needing a 5 or a 6 on a d6 in order to succeed; if you fail, you spend a token and gamble again. In both cases, your previous failures don't get you any closer to success. (Worth mentioning here, most newer versions of Axis & Allies, including some 3rd-party off-shoots, allow for previously-failed technology rolls or "tech tokens" to accrue towards eventual success at such research.) With the sequel mechanics, the fact that you are always adding 2 dice together, means that you avoid the pitfalls of the WoD and CoC systems, because low rolls are still potentially useful and therefore worth something. The other thing is that having 2d6 as the DC provides some variability in which results will succeed, as well; obviously, high rolls always have a better chance at success, but nothing is out of the realm of possibility in an "opposed roll" paradigm.

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Running a few hours behind schedule, but managed to stay caught up for August.
Look for the next post around September 10th.

Conventional Wisdom -- Part 2: Class Breakdown (2025)

Just to give some context, I feel it's helpful to recap what the projected class list for the TNP sequel is shaping up to be:

1. Cleric/Paladin thing
2. Sorcerer/Wizard thing
3. Druid/Ranger thing
4. Monk/Rogue thing
5. Barbarian/Fighter thing
6. Necromancer/Warlock thing
7. Bard/Warlord thing

So, specifically, how does this relate to our question of "WIS stat: yes or no?"

The first thing I think of is, if we're structuring mental stats sort of like the physical stats, then it might be the case that there's one stat for offensive spells, one for healing spells, and one for determining the number of targets of your spells. If class #1 and class #7 are meant to be healing classes, then the obvious solution is for them to use CHA as their healing spell stat, since that stat would be somewhat ubiquitous to those archetypes. Ok, so what about class #3? You could possibly make an argument for INT being their healing stat, but WIS is clearly the more obvious choice.

This is where we get into the problem of, "the Wizard is the best at Religion, because the Wizard is the best at INT." How do we solve for this? Do we make the spell functions of the attributes be class-specific? Do we make the knowledge skills for each class function off of their key mental stat? Do we do both? Really, when trying to make attributes work properly, we need to use them in ways that work mechanically, but also reinforce the expectations that the lore and the archetypes impose on the game. And it must be said, that in a non-multiclassing paradigm, it is much easier to fiddle with these levers.

As a bit of a sidebar, this also brings up the lack of utilization of the INT stat, in modern D&D. Without going into detail, this stat has lost features from 3.5 to 4e, and from 4e to 5e. It's only used as the spellcasting stat for Wizards (and later, Artificers) as well as Eldritch Knight (the Wizard version of Fighter) and Arcane Trickster (the Wizard version of Rogue.) So is this something we should try and "balance out?" It seems that the Necromancer half of class #6 could possibly focus on INT; Druid and Ranger could utilize it more, and maybe Cleric, too? What about for class #7? It feels like you could almost do something with keying certain class features of theirs to the INT stat, but not outright spellcasting. How does class #4 fit in? Is Rogue the INT version and is Monk the WIS version?

The other question to consider is if certain spellcasting classes are meant to be completely shut out of healing, then does it really make sense to have 3 (potential) spellcasting stats? Does it make sense to split offensive and defensive spellcasting across 2 stats, to begin with? 5e D&D doesn't do this; each class uses one stat for all of their spellcasting (and often use the same stat for their class features, too.) So should the point of differentiating a Cleric as a WIS caster and a Paladin as a CHA caster lean more into differentiating their skills? In that case, it seems that the implication is that the spellcasting stat (if indeed there is to be only one) for each given class, should be the stat that most closely aligns with the expected skillset of that class.

Again though, this butts up against the problem of who's the odd man out, when it comes to skills like Religion: if you make it a WIS skill, Paladins become bad at it, and Rangers become good at it; if you make it a CHA skill, Bard/Warlord characters are suddenly good at it, but Druids are suddenly worse at it. I feel like the way to avoid this while keeping 3 mental stats, is to make each "class skill" from the knowledge skills just use your highest mental stat. The alternative is to see if we can pare the stats back down, and somehow rework the "power source" framework to be functional with the new implied math.

The other vector to approach it from (particularly if your "good skills" are supposed to use your highest mental stat) would be to ask, what are your "good saves" supposed to be? This harkens back to the previous post, where essentially we have to ask, "What does each save do?" If Paladins, Bards, and Warlords are meant to be good at CHA saves, does that mean their minds are hard to dominate -- or is that meant to be represented by characters with high INT? Or high WIS? The other question is, what else is a non-spellcaster (such as a Monk) getting out of picking one mental stat over the other? The classic answer would seem to be something like "add your WIS to your Armor Class," and particularly in a non-multiclassing system, that seems highly workable.

(I also find it slightly telling, that out of 7 classes, there are only 2 you could reasonably classify as purely martial; I feel like this is reflected in the class utilization of 2014 D&D as well as the reworks in 2024 -- which expands spellcasting for most classes that have it. Unlike 4e, where all classes have powers, 5e really is a return to all powers being spells, and so only spellcasters have real powers -- thus necessitating the overabundance of spellcasting classes.)

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We'll look to do one more post, by August 31st -- otherwise the intended 4th post for this month might have to be punted to later in the year.

Conventional Wisdom (2025)

I had mentioned in a previous post that I'd like the sequel to TNP to have a Wisdom attribute. So far, that hasn't managed to work itself into the designs, but maybe it should.

As far as the physical stats go, it's seeming like STR will be the two-hander damage stat; I'm moving off of the idea of adding dice for two-handed weapons, and instead leaning towards adding twice your STR mod to the damage roll. This would make it a little easier to balance against TWF, where maybe the damage mod would be the lower of DEX and STR (or you use STR for the mainhand, DEX for the off-hand?) The thing then is how to operate ranged weapons in this paradigm. The idea to this point is that they would have a low (or no) mod, but you could attack multiple times (likely a max of 3.) The idea being that this number of attacks would likely be based off of your stats -- either DEX or AGIL.

Where I've hit a snag is when trying to figure out how this translates to spells. Is there a "number of attacks" stat, or a "number of damage dice" stat? Should there be a stat that's only used for healing, rather than damage? Probably it would make sense for the stats to work differently for each of the spellcasting classes, so there would be no "hard and fast" rule for how the stats work, the way that there could be with plain old weapon attacks.

It almost seems like rather than just being a straight repurposing of TNP's 5 attributes, the sequel mechanics demand there be another mental stat. The case for this is also helped by the fact that "power sources" as a mechanic don't... quite function as intended; does each class have a 'score' with 2 different power sources, and that's how your knowledge bonuses are divvied up? The problem with that is it's effectively duplicating the mechanic of attributes, without the corresponding skillset mechanic to back it up.

So perhaps it makes more sense to reinvent the wheel, and slot the knowledge skills under attributes again, adding Wisdom back in as one of them. Then essentially what you end up doing is going, "well if X is the Cleric/Paladin spellcasting stat, then Religion should use X stat." The problem is that you end up with the Venn diagram where druids are probably supposed to be good at Religion, but also good at "nature" skills -- so do those skills all use the same stat?

I've always thought (particularly in a non-multiclassing system) that it'd make sense to just let each class use their highest mental stat for any knowledge skills on their "class skill list," so to speak. Is that a better way to handle knowledge skills, vis-a-vis attributes? Since there are only 10 knowledge skills, I think you could easily cover them between the 3 mental stats, without too much trouble; the outlier would be something like Animal Handling, which is meant to sub in for riding/using mounts -- something that maps more to Agility than to a mental stat.

The other thing that this gets into is whether the sequel will have traditional saving throws, or not. From the 3.x perspective, INT or CHA saves seem to make no sense -- so why does 5e have them? I agree that they're poorly defined. I also would take it a step further and say that I personally don't understand how WIS became the default mind-affecting/mind-controlling/Vicious Mockery-ing save. WIS being related to "will power" or a WILL save seems to have more to do with alliteration and inertia than anything else; CHA being an option for your WILL stat (in 4e) vibes with "force of will" or "force of personality" (if not outright "will power" -- the difference seeming academic) being tied to Charisma moreso than to Wisdom.

If INT is the go-to "big brain" stat, you could win me over with an argument that INT is the save used vs. mind control. Really, I find myself asking, "Why isn't everything an INT save or CHA save, instead of leaning so heavily on WIS?" If you start from the assumption that mind-affecting spells should either be INT or CHA, what does a WIS save even get used for? It's particularly hard to imagine any of the mental stats really being used for "saves as opposed checks" where you're not really saving out of a combat effect... but that begs the question of "isn't that just a skill check?"

Maybe if WIS is tied more to senses/perception, then WIS saves become more about saving against things like stunned/blinded/deafened; having WIS back in the lineup means skills like Perception and Insight don't necessarily have to be shoved under INT and CHA (respectively) either.

I'll have to sit down and really hammer out the details more. But overall, I feel like this would be one of those rare cases of "addition by addition." Hopefully working WIS into the mechanics solves more problems than it creates. In particular, I think it'll be interesting to iron out how having 3 mental stats will work, with regards to spell mechanics.

...

It's always rough coming back from a break, especially in summer when the weather is nicer -- hence the delay.
Next post should be between the 21st and 25th, with a 4th post before the end of the month. Stay tuned!

Where is D&D going?

The future seems to be in question.

For all the improvements that the 2024 version makes to D&D, it does also seem to have a lot of "unforced errors" which are keeping some players from moving over. Some people speculate that the current IP owners may just license the brand out, and stop printing the books themselves -- something that was almost unthinkable, within recent memory. But with the Warhammer IP seemingly being farmed out to whoever will pony up the cash, D&D might not be far off from heading in the same direction.

You also have to think of all the previous D&D authors, who either have already written their own systems, or are now working for competing companies. I think it's fair to say that being able to have the official D&D brand on your RPG system would increase the sales potential by an order of magnitude. Whether or not the price is right, is another matter.

But where does the game go, in terms of actual mechanics? The "feat + ASI" paradigm of 2024 seems popular, and advantage/disadvantage seems to have caught on (a departure from the earlier, wargame-ish stacking bonuses of 4e or 3.5) but tool proficiencies still seem like a mess, and the places where they were obviously going to overlap with skills...? I feel that's a problem that existed since 2014 with no real fix in sight.

The official virtual tabletop for D&D has been axed, as well. Alternatives exist, but I think this development sort of hints that D&D may still be a physical product, for longer than otherwise might have been predicted... or it might just indicate that there will be increased monetization, if there's ever going to be support for such a platform.

What's the next "big" thing in D&D? Do we see more crossovers (Magic: The Gathering, Rick & Morty...) or revival of more old settings? Is a space/future version of D&D in the offing, along the lines of Starfinder? I genuinely wonder if this formula for character advancement will last into another edition -- or do we see a split, like Essentials, where the game tries to break the current paradigm and forge its own path? For all the intricacies in the game, it does still feel very stripped down. In parts, it even feels bare-bones. It'll be interesting to see which parts of the game see the most effort and development, in the coming months and years.