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 their 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.

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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.

Keywords & Archenemies (2025)

One of the things that the last post reminded me I need to work on is fleshing out archenemies. A few design cues have come to light over the course of past discussions on the topic.

Firstly, rather than being a blob of HP that can be easily stun-locked, it occurred to me that it probably makes more sense for the archenemy to act on multiple initiatives (i.e. likely as many turns as there are members in the party.) This way, you can build debilitating abilities such that they shrug one off at the end of their turns. It also opens up the idea that the archenemy can just straight up be multiple entities, rather than just one individual.

The simple rule that I had in mind was that any negative effects on enemies (that you impose) would continue until the end of your next turn (meaning you can potentially benefit from them on your following turn) whereas benefits to yourself or your allies would end at the start of your next turn; as an adjunct to this, the "Sustaining" keyword was meant to allow for such effects to be continued by simply taking the same action that initiated them -- but in hindsight that seems sort of unnecessary and redundant. 4th Edition D&D has the "Sustain Minor" keyword, meaning that you can sustain an effect of a given power by spending your minor action on subsequent turns; adopting something closer to that might be more reasonable. I'll have to go through and see where the keyword is being used, where it should be being used, and make a judgment call on how it should work, going forward. Archenemies also beg the question of whether certain effects should last until the end of an enemy's turn only, or if this enemy type should just be the exception to the general rule.

Now, I mention keywords in the same post as archenemies, because it is assumed that their One Weird Trick (Heroes hate it!) is that they could shut down one (or possibly more) keywords, in combat. This might be something they can do from the start, and lose once they are bloodied -- or something that triggers after being bloodied. I'll have to give it some thought, and come up with some samples, to at least get the creative juices going for DMs.

So what are the other keywords?

• Restoration: pretty straightforward, any feature that restores lost HP should have this keyword
• Teleport: again, any feature that allows teleportation; generally these are assumed to not allow for gaining Altitude but otherwise let you reposition freely, without provoking opportunity attacks.
• Concentration: these are all buffs, with the stipulation that each character can only produce or benefit from one concentration ability at a time. The barbarian's Rage is one such ability, cleric's Bless, spellbinder's sigil or hex, etc.
• Form: Guardian, Druid, and Fighter all use forms; for Fighter in particular, I wanted a simple unified mechanic for swapping weapons (in the guise of Fighting Styles) so the Form keyword serves this function quite well. The general rule being that you can take a move action to activate or change the form you are in, but also that you can activate a form as part of your initiative check.
• Summon: These are abilities that let you bring pets or other allies into the fight. Presumably powerful enough archenemies would be able to banish them to other realms, for a duration.

So as you can see, some of these keywords are just groupings of similar features, while others are shorthand/jargon for small bundles of mechanics, that are consistent anytime that keyword shows up. I know previously I had intended for summons to all function off of the same, generic mechanics -- but across the different classes and dice, it just became necessary for each instance to explain how the HP or HD of summons were determined; if anything, HP summons were meant to be limited to certain action types, and I believe earlier versions only allowed them to make melee attacks. But with the addition of a sidekick-wielding archetype for the Warlord, that last restriction might not intuitively make sense.

The other thing of note is that generally, most classes will only be using one of these keywords -- meaning generally shutting down one keyword shouldn't shut down a whole party. Likewise, Fighters can still fight without their fighting styles, Barbarians can still fight without rage, etc. Characters with the Disciple category also have the ability to change their subclass in the middle of combat, meaning a summoner Druid could change to a shapeshifting "Form" Druid (or vice-versa) to mitigate an archenemy's ability.

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Summer break for the blog starts now!
Check back August 1st.

Campaign Generation: Card Mechanic for TNP (2025)

Alright, so by request on the Discord, I'm going to do my best to break down how to use a deck of cards to help randomly generate a campaign, for TNP -- hopefully without having to straight up reproduce the whole rules documentation on the subject.

I've done a random draw of cards, with a little help from Random.org, which I'll be using to aid in this explanation. First step in this process is to take a standard deck of cards, leaving out the jokers for now; because a standard deck + 2 jokers is 54 cards, this has been split evenly across the 6 levels of play (0 through 5) increasing by 2 cards each level -- starting with 4 cards at level 0 and ending with 14 cards at level 5.

Alright, so we refer to the deal for each level as a "hand" just for simplicity; in our random example, the first 4 cards that were dealt are:

• 2 of hearts
• 8 of clubs
• Ace of spades
• King of diamonds

Numbered heart cards correspond to a social encounter; since there is only 1 such card in this hand, this level will have one social encounter, of the lowest complexity. Essentially, this means the party must pass 4 checks related to the social encounter in order for it to be a success; if they fail 2 checks before getting 4 successes, the encounter is a failure. The narrative must be moved forward, but in terms of "scoring" the campaign, the failure counts against the party's total.

Numbered club cards are used to generate minions or swarms; the number on the card indicates the maximum number of HD that minions or swarms can have, in any combat encounters for this hand. Minions should cap out at 4 or 5 HD, while swarms should have 5-10 HD, thus the numbering on the card is significant mechanically (unlike with non-combat numbered cards.) I should emphasize that this number is meant to be the maximum, so you can use minions or swarms with fewer HD -- meaning that 1-HD minions are always an option, even if the card is a 2! Rather than have the card dictate that an entire combat encounter should consist of only one type of enemy, most combat cards let you use the relevant type of enemy for any encounters within that hand.

Aces are wild! You can use this to generate any type of encounter, although in order for an even 50/50 split in the deck, aces should be used to generate a combat encounter. If used this way, you may pick any one type of enemy to add to the hand for this level. If you are adding (for example) a 2nd social encounter, the complexity of that encounter would go up one step; this means that instead of 4 successes vs. 2 failures, the encounter would require 6 successes vs. 3 failures.

Face cards (such as the King of diamonds) correspond to specific enemy types, other than minions and swarms. Kings generate a solo monster, which are meant to be a combat challenge for the entire party; as such, these types of monsters are not meant to be used in any/all encounters for the hand they are dealt. Instead, they strictly represent one combat encounter. Queens (Elite) and Jacks (Standard) allow their respective enemy types to be used in any combat encounters for this hand, similarly to minions or swarms.

Let's continue on!

• 9 of diamonds
• 4 of clubs
• 4 of hearts
• King of spades
• 8 of diamonds
• Ace of diamonds

Now, as you can see, we came up with 2 numbered diamond cards this time. This means we should have a "complexity 0" exploration encounter (4v2), as well as a "complexity 1" exploration encounter (6v3). If it's of any help, the complexity number is meant to correspond to the number of cards dealt at that level, i.e. the level 0 hand consists of 4 cards, corresponding to a complexity 0 encounter needing 4 successes, and so on.

Probably worth mentioning at this point in the discussion, is that the cards and their corresponding encounters are meant to be done in any order, within a hand. Maybe a harder non-combat encounter is done first, with an easier one later; maybe combat leads to exploration, or maybe it's the other way around. The idea is to give the DM (with player input welcomed, too) just a spark of imagination, a simple framework to hang their ideas and their stories on.

Alright, so we've dealt out the hands for levels 0 and 1. Prior to dealing the hand for level 2, we should shuffle in one of the jokers to the remaining cards of the deck. This card represents the archenemy of the campaign; as there are 2 jokers, the DM should be planning around the idea of the archenemy making 2 appearances, in terms of combat encounters (obviously, they may show up in-character in non-combat situations as well). The 2nd joker should likewise be added to the deck prior to dealing the hand for level 4; any easy way to remember this rule is that it happens on the even-numbered levels (after 0, of course.)

Level 2 hand:

• black Joker
• 6 of hearts
• 10 of clubs
• 9 of hearts
• Jack of spades
• 2 of spades
• 5 of spades
• King of hearts

So as we can see, there are multiple non-combat encounters to contend with at this level. The 6 and 9 of hearts mean that we will have 2 social encounters: a complexity 0 and a complexity 1. The 2 and 5 of spades mean that we will have 2 subterfuge encounters: a complexity 0 and a complexity 1.

(With multiple numbered club cards, the numbers are not additive, meaning the HD is always capped at 10 for swarms. Try and use both/all numbers as your HD cap across the various combat encounters for any hand with multiple minion/swarm cards -- but if you want to make things more deadly, you do have the option to default to the highest value instead. Just remember that each card generates one encounter; if you have 3 numbered clubs, that means 3 combat encounters, no matter what.)

To give some context, here are the suggested "core" skills for some of the different non-combat encounter types -- but remember to encourage your players to use their Knowledge skills as well!

Social: Bluff (CHA/Subtlety), Disguise (CHA/Infiltration), Forgery (INT/Infiltration), Insight (CHA/Detection), Intimidation (STR/Communication), Linguistics (INT/Communication), Persuasion (CHA/Communication)

Subterfuge: Bluff (CHA/Subtlety), Disable Device (INT/Infiltration), Disguise (CHA/Infiltration), Forgery (INT/Infiltration), Lockpicking (DEX/Infiltration), Sleight of Hand (DEX/Subtlety), Stealth (AGIL/Subtlety)

Exploration: Break Objects (STR/Infiltration), Climb (STR/Athletics), Decipher Script (INT/Communication), Disable Device (INT/Infiltration), Jump (AGIL/Athletics), Lockpicking (DEX/Infiltration), Search (DEX/Detection)

(And don't forget, Perception and Investigation checks are almost ubiquitous across non-combat encounters.)

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A couple other minor things, to note:

1. It might be possible for the archenemy to be defeated before the campaign ends. Think about how the story should continue! Or, if you prefer, don't feel like you can't fudge or otherwise arbitrarily pick the archenemy's appearances, to make things dramatically appropriate -- you're perfectly able to do this, in a non-randomly generated, curated campaign so it would be silly to say you can't do it with the cards as well.
2. One of the safety nets of the system to try and make sure things are kept interesting: if at any given level, the total number of non-combat cards (numbered spades, diamonds, and hearts) does not exceed the level number of that hand, the DM has the option to combine the number of non-combat encounters when determining complexity, rather than breaking them down by individual suits. So for example, if there was 1 non-combat card dealt from each suit in the 4th level hand, the DM could opt to have a complexity 0, 1, and 2 encounter (assigned to whichever type they prefer, or in consultation with the players) rather than simply having 3 encounters of complexity 0.
3. Another safety net in the rules: if a hand produces no combat cards (numbered clubs, face cards, jokers, OR aces) "the dealer should return the hand to the deck, reshuffle, and re-deal until a different result is attained."

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So, as you can see (hopefully) aside from the specific monster mechanics, this idea could easily be ported over to other systems -- possibly including the TNP sequel, of course.

I should have one more post before the end of June, but then I will be on break until the start of August.