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!