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 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 break out the knowledge skills into attributes again, and add 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 they 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.

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 more 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 where 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.

Sequel Mechanics: Initiative (2025)

I know I had said previously that I would be interested in trying to make initiative checks back into a form of skill check, but I've since realized that's a bad idea.

The whole point with a d20 initiative roll is to actually provide some dispersion of the numbers, so there's less worrying about tie-breaking, or everyone's numbers being bunched up together. If you're doing a d6 pool and taking the highest 2, you're actually getting the opposite effect; similarly, this is why TNP still uses a d20 initiative roll, rather than a d10+d6 skill check.

Since the default mechanic for most rolls in the sequel will be some variation on 2d6, my first intuition is to have it so that initiative checks start with 2d6, and then add 1d6 "per plus" of Agility, to the pool. So a character with a +3 Agility would roll 5 dice, and the total of all of those 5 dice would be their initiative count. I feel like this would be a good compromise, providing the desired variance while also giving a tangible benefit to having a higher attribute.

The interesting thing with that idea, is you could then use the attribute as a tie-breaker if needed. For example, if someone with a +1 Agility rolls 18 on 3d6, and someone with a +3 Agility rolls 18 on 5d6, then the person with the +3 would win on the tie-breaker. It also makes my brain tingle a little bit, because instead of everyone randomly rolling a number between 1-20 and slapping a modifier on it, your attribute effectively determines the ceiling for how well you could possibly roll; a +0 would cap out at 12, while a +3 would cap out at 30.

Initiative sort of naturally avoids the pitfalls of needing a "release valve" for excessive dice, since the number can basically go infinitely higher. This makes it easy to have any initiative bonuses just add dice to the pool, rather than use something like advantage on a d20 roll, for example. Likewise, with 2d6 as the minimum roll, it's easy enough to have a -1 dice pool penalty as a baseline mechanic.

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Another relatively short post for today, since it's a pretty quick topic.
In the background, I'm still working out ways to get the other mechanics ironed out w/r/t weapon dice and spells and attributes and such.

Next post will hopefully be on or before June 17th, with one more post before the July break.

Balancing Act: Combat Attributes (2025)

I mentioned previously that the relationship between the d6 pool and "weapon dice" could be one where 2-handed melee weapons add 2d6 whereas 1-handed melee weapons or ranged weapons only add 1d6. The question is how to balance out the utility of these different loadouts. Obviously, there are a few assumptions we need to start from, in order to lay the groundwork; probably there will only be one of your five attributes going as high as +3 (with likely a single +2, and either two +1s or two +0s to round things out.) The other thing is that the baseline assumption of the math is that you will always use your two highest dice for your attack roll; this means that your damage roll will consist of the remaining (i.e. lowest) dice in the pool.

Without accounting for hit chance, the lowest 2 of 4d6 (i.e. two-hander) averages to 4.66
Similarly, if we take two swings with a one-hander (i.e. two-weapon fighting, lowest 1 of 3d6) the average is 4.08

However, when we account for the dice pool attack vs. a 2d6 defense roll, the two-hander is actually going to hit about 10% more often -- meaning the damage modifier needs to bring the TWF routine up to a damage number that's about 10% higher, in order to be comparable in utility. When we factor in a +2 damage modifier for both attacks, the damage is still behind the two-hander (assuming it's at a +3 damage modifier) -- 8.08 vs. 7.66, without factoring in hit-chance. So, that might need some more fine-tuning.

The initial idea I had for balancing out ranged attacks was to use the lower modifier (between STR and DEX) for damage, but allow a number of shots based on Agility mod. The question really then becomes, how do spells even work? Is it just INT mod for number of attacks, and CHA for damage? Is it class/subclass dependent? Is one stat used for damage and one for healing?

This is actually a thing I had narrowed down (somewhat) in my previous RPG designs; basically, weapon-users could attack twice, and magic-users could target one square and all adjacent squares to it. Maybe that'd have to be sort of a class-level of feature, since not all casters are "blasters" per se. The other thing was that I had weapons be sort of an extension of spells, so if you used a dagger or wand, it'd be 1d6 and greater targeting capacity, but if you used a full length staff, it'd be 2d6 with more of a one-target aim. Maybe the baseline for spells in the TNP sequel need to start from something similar?

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Bit of a shorter post today, as things are a little busy lately.
Hopefully June will be a bit closer to the planned blogging dates; check back on the 5th or 6th.

Power Sources: The 6th Attribute?

I've been giving some thought to how TNP compares to D&D, as it pertains to skills.

If you think about how skills work in 3.x, 4e, or 5e D&D (the versions I'm personally familiar with) there are two main components: ability score modifiers, and skill points/skill training/skill proficiency, respectively. In TNP, skills are linked thematically along two vectors (Attributes, and Skillsets) whereas in D&D skills only share ability modifiers in common, whereas the remaining skill math varies completely independently; the exception to this would be skill synergies in 3.x, where 5 points in [skill X] provides a +2 bonus to [skill Y].

That all being said, where TNP veers off from this structure is with Knowledge skills. Where D&D uses INT (and sometimes WIS) for its knowledge skills, TNP instead keys them to Power Sources: Arcane, Divine, Martial, Primal, and Shadow. But with TNP having only 5 attributes instead of 6, I've been starting to wonder (particularly in the context of the sequel mechanics) could power sources be treated as a "6th attribute" for your character? (i.e. 5 universal stats and 1 variable one, rather than 6 that are universal.)

The quirk with knowledge skills in TNP is that they are grouped together, like a skillset (sort of) but they lack that 2nd vector linking them to anything else... aside from other power sources; each power source consists of one unique skill, and 2 other skills that are each shared with different power sources. Coming back to sequel mechanics in particular, with the core skills having both an attribute bonus and a skillset bonus to their dice pool, how would you do something similar with knowledge skills? My first thought was that since in TNP, all classes basically have 2 power sources, you could just... do that again. The problem is not all power sources overlap with each other, and unique knowledge skills don't overlap at all; in short, the extra math has to come from somewhere.

So should power sources be linked to skillsets? There's some synergy between the two in TNP, so maybe power source and skillset could be the two vectors linking knowledge skills together. For example, with Infiltration linked to the Shadow power source, a +2 Infiltration skillset bonus could be applied to Streetwise, Dungeoneering, and Local knowledge skill checks. Because of unique skills being their own thing, it seems that power sources would need their own bonus -- but then you end up with all skills in that "set" having the same bonus. However, if it is assumed that all characters have two power sources (say, one with a +2 and one with a +1 bonus) that could at least give the shared knowledge skills some variance. The issue with that being, now we're talking about a "7th attribute" and not just a 6th.

I came into this talking point from a place of trying to cram knowledge skills back into an "ability score" framework, after TNP successfully extracted them from that. And I feel like I'm not any closer to solving that puzzle. It doesn't make sense to give all knowledge skills a flat bonus, but it also doesn't seem to make sense giving all knowledge skills within one power source the same bonus; it seems like the more "a la carte" approach of TNP is all that works. We'll have to see how thing go, as the design process carries on.

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I've got one more post planned for May, so check back by the end of the month for that.