Knowledge is Power! (Beta 4)

Further to the previous topic of skill difficulties, I've also been looking into Knowledge skills, Power Sources, and how those two things relate to each other in The Next Project.

I touched on it a little bit in a previous post -- specifically, the thought experiment of limiting playable classes based on power source, and how that might impact class design. In brief, I've decided that such limitations in this system should be done at the class slate level, rather than the power source level (I may go into this in greater detail in a future post.)

What this allows me to do is worry less about how a power source will lead to inclusion/exclusion of a class, and just use them to ascribe background details, as they are intended. With that being said, I've found that there are some tweaks that I might want to make, and that some mismatches currently exist in terms of Knowledge skills as they pertain to class design.

Having a skill like "Geography" strictly limited to Primal characters has started to seem out of place, and even though all classes get at least two power sources, Primal is more hard to come by than some others. "Streetwise" is in a similar spot, where it could/should be more broadly available without needing access to the Shadow power source. On the other side of the coin, a class like Druid not having access to some sort of medicinal (or expressly herbalist) skill kind of shows the cracks in the system.

I'm thinking the best solution to this is to first expand the number of skills on each Power Source's list; this may result in some skills appearing more often than others and leading to overlap. So, the second part of this fix is to simply allow characters to choose a number of skills from the power source lists that they qualify for. Currently, characters end up getting 5 or 6 knowledge skills, so I am leaning towards a straight "pick 5" rule for this. Since each power source will likely grow from 3 knowledge skills to 4, this would necessitate every character having skills from at least 2 power sources.

For character types that are intended to be widely knowledgeable or skillful -- such as the Sage, Bard, and Adventurer -- this can be reflected mechanically in a few ways. One option is allowing them to pick their power sources more freely; another would be letting them pick skills from more than just two power sources. I may still consider simply allowing them to gain more skills than other characters, but I think 5 is a lot to begin with, and I'd prefer to have a rule that is more uniform (particularly since "core" skills are already handled on a class-by-class basis.) Another lever that we can play around with, is granting classes Expertise on certain knowledge skills (or all of them.)

I was probably going to want to go through each of the classes and juggle or reassign power sources anyway. Now that I have a new framework in mind for their implementation, it gives an additional reason or consideration for when I set out to do the actual writing.

Skill Difficulties (Beta 4)

I'm slowly but surely going over the core components of the game, piece by piece; one of the things I wanted to touch on is the skill system, and how the difficulty should generally be approached.

There are essentially 4 different levels of competency that characters can have with a given Skillset/Basic Ability:

1. untrained: an unmodified d20 roll
2. expertise: a d20 roll where a 1 is treated as a 20
3. trained: a d20 roll, modified by adding a d6 roll
4. trained+expertise: a combination of both; a 1 on the d20 is treated as a 20, and a 1 on the d6 is treated as a 6, and both rolls are added together

A success is when the result is in the 10-19 range, with anything lower being a failure, and anything higher being a critical success, as outlined in the rules. However, on top of this, the "DM" needs to make additional considerations when asking for a roll -- which also brings up the key consideration that players should not just roll skills, unless prompted by the DM.

Essentially, the players should be describing a desired action or course of action to the DM; from there, the DM judges whether this aligns with a skill (or skills) and asks for a roll if one is necessary. How is that determination made? Well, generally there should be an understanding within the group of what level of "magic" or "fantasy" (or "realism") their campaign entails; depending on this, some actions may be trivially easy, challenging, or impossible. 

If something is either "trivially easy" or "impossible," then the DM should not ask for a roll, and should explain as such; a trivially easy task just succeeds, and an impossible one cannot even be attempted, or the characters know it cannot succeed, forcing them into an alternate course of action. Whether something is trivially easy (or challenging) can be weighed against a particular character's competency with an applicable skill. For instance, a character with both training and expertise in climbing may be able to treat that action as not requiring a roll (under certain circumstances) while an untrained character in the same circumstances must make a roll (as it is effectively "challenging" for them.)

The other consideration to make when asking for a roll, is whether failure is realistic or interesting, and what the outcome of the failure could (or should) be. If there is nothing "at stake" then there's no sense in rolling. 

The specific example that often comes to mind is "picking a locked door." If the characters are being chased, there is a time pressure; failure to pick the lock means the protagonists have lost time, during which their pursuers have gained ground on them. If the characters are trying to be subtle, then a failure to pick the lock means that the door must be broken down -- this solves the problem in a way that can increase the odds of detection, either by being loud, or the prospect of leaving behind evidence of their presence (in the form of the destroyed door.)

So where does this leave having Advantage on a roll? 

Well, the intention of this mechanic (as it pertains to skill checks) is to provide characters an opportunity to spend a limited resource, and gain a better chance of success on a skill that their character would normally not perform well at. Narratively, this can be described as a feat of superhuman perseverance, sheer willpower, adrenaline, magic, or just plain luck -- as the player sees fit. Mechanically, using Advantage on a skill roll should not cause an adjustment of the difficulty, once it has been established that a roll is needed for success. Advantage (statistically) has a comparable success rate to making a trained skill check -- the difference is in the chance for critical success, which is much more likely on a trained check.

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As an aside, the classes from the slate "Heroes of the Wilderness" (that use a class die other than d6) were all given additional skill mechanics, utilizing their class die -- either instead of, or in conjunction with their "training" die. Since this slate of classes is more narrowly focused in terms of theme (and therefore skills) I felt it was fair to give them a little extra boost to their skills. I had already worked out most of the math for these mechanics, so I wanted to use them somewhere, and this seemed like a reasonable fit. If there is negative feedback about the resulting mechanics, I will probably just take them out.

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Schedules are a little disjointed as of late, but I'm still hoping to get 3 posts in this month; next post will be in 7 or 8 days, most likely.

Subtypes (Beta 4)

Probably for the next big revision of the game, I will want to look into changing the jargon pertaining to character options. Here's the current wording, explained:

• Subclass: "mandatory combat role" is how I generally refer to this. At the start of combat, you have to pick one, or else your class doesn't function. Examples: Druid [Shapeshifter/Summoner], Guardian [Shaman/Warden], Mystic [Necromancer/Warlock]
• Path: essentially your "mandatory Archetype." Paths are generally distinct classes that have been put under the umbrella of a single class, for different reasons. Examples: Cleric [Crusader/Invoker], Sage [Monk/Wizard], Rogue [Assassin/Sorcerer]
• Archetype: these basically serve to narrow a class down into a more specific "flavour" or niche; currently, Archetypes are not mechanically necessary in order for classes with them to function. Some classes can choose an Archetype in addition to a Subclass, Path, or Role.
• Role: this hews fairly close to the 4e D&D combat roles. Similarly to Archetypes, it is not mechanically necessary to pick one; they narrow the focus of your character, and can be selected at the start of combat. Currently, the following roles are used in the text: Defender, Striker, Controller, Support.

Archetypes and Paths are both locked in at character creation; Paths are mandatory, Archetypes are not.
Roles and Subclasses are both selected at the start of combat; Subclasses are mandatory, Roles are not.
It's also worth noting that Paths, Roles, and Subclasses do not overlap each other, on any class; classes with these options may, however, also have Archetypes.

I think the problem is that each of these keywords seems to convey a sense of permanency, but only two of them actually are (and one of those is optional.) "Subclass" is the word that seems the biggest misnomer. At one point, "Archetype" covered what would now include Archetypes, Subclasses, and Paths (and all were mandatory); "Subclass" was just a placeholder that was used to pull those specific options out from under the larger umbrella.

Should Subclasses be merged into Roles? It seems like one of the simpler options -- Roles would have to become mandatory to facilitate this, though, which would increase some of the complexity for those classes (Fighter, Warlord, Bard, Adventurer, and Barbarian.) The problem then becomes that the existing Subclasses don't feel like "Roles" so a new piece of jargon may need to be invented to replace them both.

Should Subclasses be reclassified as "Combat Paths" and Roles as "Combat Archetypes"? It would be nice to have one word for "mandatory" customization, and one for "optional" that could then each have a "combat" or similar tag added, to specify when those options could be invoked.

I'm going to give this all some serious consideration, and see which loadout I like most. Then, that will make its appearance in the next iteration of the rules text.

Getting Back on Track (Beta 4)

I'm about a month behind schedule on updating the blog, but now that the days are getting shorter again, I think it's time to get back to working on TNP. I might not continue with posting three times per month, but I'd like to keep it to at least twice.

So here are the thoughts that I have been kicking around, as of late:
I never completely finished crunching out the math for all of the classes that are currently in the game, because myself and (probably) a few of my followers were super hyped just to see the system in action, so I went ahead with some playtests. And largely, what that testing seemed to indicate was that the d4 classes in particular were underperforming, in terms of damage. (As a side note, the Sage was pretty thoroughly crunched out, and subsequently beefed up -- but was not playtested.)

Part of the problem (it seemed) was having so many classes meant that some got the "really good" mechanics, and others were missing out. There was some consideration given to paring down the class slates (from 3 to 2) and what shape that would take, but I wasn't really satisfied with those options. Instead, I am going to try and focus on fixing the underlying math, and coming up with more mechanics, so that each class is unique and interesting.

Ultimately, the problem with the d4 paradigm is trying to hit all the damage benchmarks (specifically, an average DPR of 15, with a cap of 24.) And, compounding that challenge, is trying to do so without needing to make excessive numbers of dice rolls. The results of trying to address this can be seen in the "4.1 version" of the Druid; this introduces the "Druidic Focus" mechanic, which is essentially a banked 2d4 roll, that is reused for a wide majority of the class' abilities.

With this in place, I went on to look at the Acrobat. Currently, they have an AoE ability, which does a number of attacks equal to the result on a d4 roll, each dealing 1d4 damage. When I crunched this out, it's easy to see that the damage is too low -- but, a connection was made. Essentially, the formula needs to be closer to this:

[1d4 attacks * 2d4 damage] or [2d4 attacks * 1d4 damage]

This gives us a maximum of 4 * 8 = 32 damage. While we want the cap to be 24, I'm already making allowances for d10 classes to cap out at 30 (for obvious mathematical reasons) with d6 classes given similar leeway (since they too are intended to be damage-stacking classes.) As usual, things like Expertise and "double roll" mechanics can be used to tinker with the averages for this d4 formula. It also avoids the problem of having massive crits, from using d20s to supplement damage rolls.

With that in mind, I had a thought for another mechanic that could be unique to d4 classes:
auto-damage.
The current math essentially filters all damage through a 60% (for basic attacks) hit-rate, requiring a bunch of d4s in order to hit the benchmarks. If that mechanical restriction is removed, it makes it easier to achieve those same results, with fewer dice. For example, we can roughly hit the average DPR and the cap by simply using 6d4 or 1d4+1d20 for damage, where filtering through hit-rate math would require closer to 11d4 of damage.

For an iconic ability such as Magic Missile, auto-damage is a historical fit; that ability may be changed to use this new mechanic, instead of its current setup. The current Magic Missile mechanics would then be freed up, to be hung onto other classes.

To Be Continued?

I'm already a little behind on my final post for this month, so I'm just quickly writing to say that it'll be a while before the next update. Life's been busy as of late, the rules for Solo monsters aren't quite ready yet, and I was planning on taking a break from the blog in July anyway.

I've done a little bit more playtesting, and it's clear that some classes still need some work, or possibly that the damage math as a whole needs to be retooled. Hopefully it is something that can be solved, but it may mean a major overhaul (and a redraft of the rules is probably overdue, anyway.)

I will be aiming to have another post ready sometime in August, but if things go better than expected, I may be able to squeeze one out before the end of July.


Take care!

Monster Math -- Part 3: Standards & Elites

Standard Monsters

When building an encounter, your standard monster should have about the same HP as a PC would; this gives us a range between 24 and 32. However, in terms of budgeting, we should use two standard monsters per one PC; as such, we can adjust the HP of standard monsters up or down. For example, you could have one monster with 20 HP and another with 36 HP to account for the encounter budget value of one PC.

Standard monsters will use the "monster roll" of 1d6+1d10 for damage, but this damage can be split across two "attacks" i.e. triggering two separate Defense rolls from the PC target. Standard monsters also use 1d6+1d10 for all of their rolls.

As touched on in a previous post, we can customize different monsters by applying bonuses or penalties to different rolls (skill checks, initiative checks, damage, and opportunity attacks.) This is how our monsters will primarily set themselves apart from one another.


Elite Monsters

An elite monster should have double the HP of one PC. Elites gain Advantage on damage rolls; this functions similarly to the "double roll and stack" rule, except that both dice can be treated as maximum value. While it shouldn't be necessary, the DM can choose to "pull punches" and only maximize one (or neither) of the dice.

Elite monsters cannot be Intimidated unless they are Bloodied. In addition, they do not take extra damage from attacks that are critical successes; these types of successes against Elites can still be "banked" for Advantage later in the same encounter.

Generally, DMs should use more than one elite monster in an encounter (if they are going to use them at all); PCs will often focus on the biggest, baddest enemy, so sometimes it's a good idea to make it harder to prioritize a single target. An elite monster uses the encounter budget value of one PC.

I wanted to give elite monsters a few more perks, so as a special rule, they do not roll for initiative. Instead, they simply act on the highest initiative rolled for the monsters, by the DM. This also serves to set a limit on elites in terms of encounter budgeting; there must be at least one non-elite monster in every encounter group (to roll initiative for any elites in the encounter.)


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Next post should be up on June 25th, where I hope to touch on Solo encounters, as well as polish up some of the monster rules a bit more.

Monster Math -- Part 2: Minions & Swarms

In a previous post (where I touched on encounter-building) I had figured out that the budget/ratio for minions would be about 10 HD per 1 PC.

We want to give the DM some tools with which to construct their encounters, so both minions and swarms will be built off of this same budget, but with distinct mechanics, to help differentiate them from one another.


Minions
One of the things that was touched on in the last Monster Math post was that we don't want "cheap" enemies (such as minions) to be able to overwhelm the PCs with skill checks. With this is mind, we're going to bend the core mechanics a little: instead of needing to roll a 10 or higher to succeed at a skill check, minions need to roll a number equal to or lower than their current HD. Their skill checks will still use the universal "monster roll" of 1d6 and 1d10.

When a minion takes the "Use a Skill" action, the DM makes a monster roll, and can then decide which skill to use. Minions will have their skills rated as follows:

• Poor: use the d10 result
• Fair: use the d6 result
• Good: use either die result for the check

With this setup in mind, we'll want to cap the number of HD that a minion can have. For example, a 6 HD minion would succeed at a "Fair" check without needing to roll. As such, minions should have less than 5 HD; minions with 5 or more HD will be treated as swarms.

In terms of damage, minions do not roll, but instead simply deal damage equal to their current HD (meaning they deal less damage as they take damage themselves.) Further, when minions target a PC, it does not provoke a Defense roll; the damage is simply automatic, to facilitate faster DM turns. Notably, minions will only deal damage to a single target, and they will be treated as one enemy for the purposes of PC attacks.

Swarms

So while they will essentially be minions of 5 HD or more, swarms will operate a little differently than their minion counterparts. Firstly, they will use the same skill mechanism as Standard or Elite monsters; roll 1d6+1d10, and succeed on a 10 or higher. Also, swarms will be limited to using only melee attacks.

Where swarms really set themselves apart from minions is in targeting:

For the purpose of PCs using attacks:

• unengaged swarms count as multiple enemies
• swarms that are part of a maelstrom count as one enemy

For the purpose of dealing damage:

• unengaged swarms may deal their damage to a single target
• swarms that are part of a maelstrom must split their damage amongst PCs in that maelstrom

What this does is that it makes loose swarms more dangerous in terms of their ability to "focus fire" but also makes them easier to deal damage to; swarms that are part of a maelstrom are harder to damage, but are less deadly to a single target if the party chooses to gang up on the swarm. We also need to cap the maximum number of HD that swarms can have; I think that 10-15 is a good range, if we reverse-engineer from the HP of our PCs. 

Encounter Guidelines

While we have established that 1 PC = 10 HD worth of minions or swarms, we need to further cap this number in terms of the numbers used to build an entire encounter. The reason for this, is because of the nature of minions and swarms dealing damage automatically.

Since PCs cap out at 32 HP, this means we should never have a combined number of enemies with more than this number of HD in an encounter; we don't want minions or swarms to be able to focus fire and kill one or more PCs before they can even act. The general expectation I have set for myself when building monsters, is that an "average" fight should be able to take the PCs down to half their maximum HP (around 15.)

This sets a good range for us: 15 to 30 HD. Since we know minions and swarms get weaker as the fight goes on (and they take damage) we can skew "hard" encounters towards the higher end of that range, but keep easier fights at the lower end.

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Next post should be about Standard & Elite monsters, so look for that on (or after) June 15th!