I'm loathe to just post untested mechanics, because I often end up having to revise them later on. But right now, I'm just going to lay out the basic conceptualizations and math for what I think the weapon dice mechanics might look like, in the TNP sequel.
I had mentioned previously that weapon attacks would use either your STR mod or DEX mod as a damage bonus, but that the mechanics would try and steer d12 weapons towards favouring STR; for example, it might be the case that only classes with features that favour STR would get proficiency with d12 weapons, while other classes would not. I'm currently pointing the designs in a different direction.
So, the idea with the attributes currently is that you'll probably have one +3, either one or two +2s and the rest would be +1s (keeping in mind there are 5 attributes in total.)
My idea is this:
- d4 weapon damage rolls add the lower of your STR or DEX
- d8 melee weapon damage rolls do not add a modifier
- d8 ranged weapon damage rolls add the higher of your STR or DEX
- d12 melee weapon damage rolls add your STR
Now, in order for this to work, I've calculated the "weapon dice bonuses" as follows:
- d4: can be added to a miss; crit on a tie -- assuming +2 mod, average damage = 3.6625
- d8: can be added to a miss; crit on a tie -- assuming no mod, average damage = 4.4 (melee)
- d8: can be added to a miss; crit on a tie -- assuming +3 mod, average damage = 6.8 (ranged)
- d12: can be used in place of a miss; crit on a tie -- assuming +3 mod, average damage = 7.85
It's probably worth mentioning here, that the difference from this ethos compared to TNP, is that TNP assumes a baseline damage of 1d8 (or at least something in that ballpark) with 1 class die bonus being added to it; in the sequel math, the damage die and the bonus die are always the same die, meaning the base damage die isn't always the same, and thus the bonuses have to be calculated accordingly. So instead of one static baseline with multiple (5) possible modifiers, there are 3 static baselines but also 3 static modifiers.
- weapon damage dice can "always" roll a number that will change a miss into a hit (or crit)
- the "d6 pool" mechanic does not have the above functionality, but it is going to be able to be added to a miss or a hit (much as the d6 bonus can, in TNP)
- d4: 62.5% hit / 10% crit
- d8: 70% hit / 10% crit
- d12: 60% hit / 10% crit
You can kind of see from this that we end up with fairly balanced math, but a lot of the uniqueness of the class dice bonuses has been lost. You do kind of have the option of attacking more (d4), hitting more (d8), or hitting hardest (d12) -- all of the little fidgety bonuses are gone, so it's a lot cleaner, but also more... well, sanitary would be a good word to describe it.