Stolen from the Apocalypse (Beta 4)

Continuing on the topic of how to group skills, if bonuses are to be doled out based on thematic groupings, then it seems like borrowing the idea of class-specific moves vs. "basic moves" might be a direction to explore.

General rules for using Combat skills might prescribe a Basic Ability and/or Skillset to use when taking a particular Combat action, such as Grappling, for example:

"When you attempt to bodily restrain an opponent, roll FORT"

"When you attempt to escape a grapple, roll AGIL" 

"When you attempt to initiate, reverse, or escape a grapple, roll Athletics" 

Likewise, so-called "Background Skills" could be made into class-specific moves:

Paladin: When you attempt to recall a piece of lore pertaining to Religion, Royalty, or Nobility, roll CHA

Cleric: When you attempt to recall a piece of lore pertaining to Religion, roll INT or WIS

Ranger: When you attempt to recall a piece of lore pertaining to Nature or Geography, roll WIS

Bard: When you attempt to recall a piece of lore pertaining to Geography or History, roll INT or Knowledge

Wizard: When you attempt to recall a piece of lore pertaining to Arcana or History, roll INT 

And so on, in that fashion.
Since we're using d20 math, I've decided to go with the following skill bonuses:

• Trained: roll 2d20 and use the higher result (i.e Advantage)
• Proficient: add 1d6 to the roll
• Expertise: (whether combined with either of the above, or not) treat any 1s rolled as maximum value on the die

Whether you are Trained or Proficient in a skill would be mutually exclusive; in the end, this all works out to give us some values that fall roughly in line with the established baselines, coming out of the Apocalypse. The use of a Proficiency die breaks from the idea of using Class Die + d20 for all of the mechanics, but it makes the math easier to keep consistent.

The ranges established in previous iterations of The Next Project are going to be used, and also follow from the d20 combat math:

• <10: bad
• 10-19: good
• 20+: very good

Most likely, in-combat skill usage will have 'bad' rolls and 'good' rolls just be normal 'miss'  or 'hit' (respectively) rather than have complications; outside of combat, skills can be made more involved. 

The next step is to add a bunch of words to all of these skills/moves. 

Skills set? (Beta 4)

The Next Project has never used ability scores, in the traditional sense (i.e. a numeric value from which you derive a modifier, which is then applied to both combat and out-of-combat statistics and rolls.) Instead, the combat has used d20 and Class Dice for its parameters. Skills, on the other hand...

In many ways, this and other games I've designed/hacked are attempts at combining a few different ideas to make something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

5th Edition D&D had the idea of being able to combine proficiency in a particular skill with any one ability score/modifier, as reasonable (although in the final product, the two end up more or less married together.) I liked that idea, but I think things need to be more defined than that.

The idea I came up with borrows from 4th Edition D&D. You'll notice that "fighty" classes have a few skills in common on their class skill lists, namely Athletics, Endurance, Heal and Intimidate. The problem is, each of these keys off of a different ability score, so it's hard for any of these classes to be good at all of these skills (even though it thematically makes sense that they would be.) Similarly, if you compare the class skill list of Rogue with that of Blackguard, you can start to see something resembling a formula, at work.

So from all of this, I came up with the idea of a skill, or skills, being Basic Abilities (ability scores, without the 'score' part) crossed with Skillsets. "Rogueish" skills fell under one skillset, so making a class rogueish out-of-combat was as simple as granting them a bonus to that skillset. Likewise, "fighty" skills were put under one Basic Ability, so that warrior classes could easily be made strong and intimidating.

The problem came with what eventually came to be known as "Background Skills." It still made sense to put performance-type skills and knowledge skills under Basic Abilities, in theory, but in practice it ended up shoehorning and pigeonholing classes in weird ways. The end result is that the elegant application of bonuses to either a skillset or a Basic Ability got broken into something more clunky and/or granular.


Now, one of the core aims here is to make sure classes have utility in all types of non-combat encounters. The grouping of skills into Skillsets and Basic Abilities doesn't actually ensure this, because both groups tend to include skills from two or more "pillars." An idea I had had previously (but never followed through on) was to instead group skills by the type of encounter they are used in. This would necessarily require some of the broad skills to be broken into multiple smaller ones; skillsets could still be used to link skills in some fashion, but it would probably be more logical to just abandon them. On the other hand, the elegance of the system would be lost, if skills were to be solitary and de-coupled, and then parcelled out as long Class Lists.

Another problem that presents itself is how Stealth and Perception factor in. Finding hidden things vs. trying not to be found is sort of a concept that almost constitutes its own type of encounter, but could also be tacked onto or worked into other sorts of encounters. This sort of has led me to conclude that these skills should sort of be its own "4th pillar" that can dovetail into the other three (Combat, Exploration, and Social.)

Doubling Down (Beta 4)

It was pointed out that rolling twice should be something that was highlighted in the rules a bit more, so that's going to be presented a bit more "front and centre" in the upcoming draft. I'm also working to make these rules more concise and formal; generally you won't roll more than 2 of the same die as part of any action.

Furthermore, with the Beta 3 changes to HP and the introduction of Reserves, I've found a few more knobs to fiddle with. Pertaining specifically to d4 and d6 classes, you can expect to see some double-dipping on class die, as follows:

• Basic Attacks: for some classes, these will deal 2 dice of damage, based on their area of specialty (as seen previously with the Archer as a ranged example, and the Swordmage for melee)
• Base HP and Reserves: expect classes that are focused on melee/taking a beating to have their class die values doubled, when calculating HP and Reserves

As you might guess, this blows the design possibilities for d4 and d6 classes wide open. However, a 2d4 class apes a d8 class, and a 2d6 class apes a d12 class. This is a positive development though, since it allows me to scale certain classes up or down, and thus better slot in the new classes that are on the drawing board.

In particular, I'm considering scaling the Druid down from d8; it might work as a d6 class, or a d4 class that gains its doubling perks while shapeshifted. Or, perhaps the Shaman archetype could be split off as a d4 class, since the Mage has shown us that it can be a good die for support and enabling. Similarly, an Invoker class that burns Reserves to fuel their combat effects might not work with just 4 or 6 Reserves at their disposal; doubling that amount, but keeping them as a smaller-die class could prove interesting.

I have already put a fair share of work into a d6 Fighter, that would be separate from the d12 Warrior class (which will likely change back to being named 'Barbarian'.)