Change Log [2017/02/25] (Beta 4)

A couple more updates:

• [Core Rules] Power Attack can now only be used on Basic Attacks that are made as a Standard Action (Bard's Sword & Sorcery may end up changing to Iconic Attacks due to this, but for right now I'm leaving it as Basic Attacks)
• [Core Rules] Added explanation of Subclass/Archetype/Role into the text.
• Wizard can now make ranged basic attacks as a minor action
• Monk can now make melee basic attacks as a minor action, which deals additional damage; Monks gain advantage on melee basic attack rolls
• Bard's Sword & Sorcery now grants advantage to one of the attacks, instead of advantage to one and disadvantage to the other
• Fighter wording altered to grant Fighting Styles without needing an Archetype
• Some Archetypes renamed to "Subclasses"; wording on Roles altered; Domains, Disciplines (i.e. Sage schools), and Totems are now treated as "Archetypes"
• Adventuring Skills renamed to "Core Skills"
• All class backgrounds adjusted to accommodate Power Sources
• Re-worded the Domain riders on Cleric's Bless ability; War Domain's rider changed to only work on Basic Attacks
• Paladin wording altered to grant Trained Skills and Power Sources without needing an Archetype
• Bard background benefits tweaked; added INT skills as a Scholar option
• Fighter's Two-Weapon Whirlwind clarified w/r/t making Brawl checks; also changed this ability to use a double roll instead of a Trade-off, using one roll for the number of attacks and the other roll for the damage (similar to the Monk's Flurry of Fists; the distinction between Trade-offs and similarly-functioning double rolls will be ironed out in later updates)
• Increased Fighter's number of Reserves

Background Skills (Beta 4)

I've gone over the current classes, and revised all the "Background" sections to incorporate the use of Power Sources, for determining your Knowledge skills. (Follow the links to the classes, in the Core Rules document on the sidebar.) I wanted to touch on my ideas about those skills a bit here today.

Generally, I've found knowledge skills to be a bit situational, and so I don't want them to be "bought" with the same character-generation currency as "core skills" i.e. those which can be more actively used in encounters (particularly combat skills.) As I had mentioned in a previous post, most classes will have 2 sets of core skills; likewise, most classes will have 2 power sources, each granting them a set of 3 knowledge skills.

Here's the current list of knowledge skills I've decided to put into the game, along with which power sources grant you training in that skill:

• First Aid (Martial): allows you to treat basic injuries and identify common wounds
• Medical (Divine, Shadow): more complex medical knowledge, such as identifying remains, as well as diagnosing and treating poisons or diseases.
• Local (Martial): basic knowledge of settlements and their customs; deals with common people
• Streetwise (Shadow): pertains to the underworld within civilized locales; deals with lower-class people
• Royalty & Nobility (Divine): connections to people within high society, political structures, etc.
• History (Martial, Arcane): information about significant events of the past
• Arcana (Arcane): identifying and understanding sources of magical power
• Religion (Divine, Arcane): knowledge of deities, religions, cults, etc.
• Geography (Primal): knowledge of terrain features and landmarks
• Nature (Primal): surviving in the wilderness, knowledge of animals and plants
• Dungeoneering (Primal, Shadow): surviving in underground locations, such as ruins or caves; knowing about creatures or societies that live in such places

Now, at first glance, it might seem that these skills aren't very well-distributed. However, it is important to remember that each character will have 2 power sources, granting them a total of 5 or 6 knowledge skills.

I didn't feel it was wise to have knowledge skills tied to Basic Abilities (as Core Skills are) nor to have "knowledge" as a skillset (though that was the case in previous iterations.) In fact, a lot of times when I am tinkering with house rules for existing D&D rulesets, I often decouple knowledge skills from ability scores, in some fashion or another.

Conversely, I wanted to keep Performance skills linked to Basic Abilities. On the other hand, I didn't necessarily want to have each class that gets training with a Basic Ability to necessarily be good at the Performance skills that are tied to it. As such, the wording in the core rules has been clarified a bit to allow for this distinction. Essentially, your class' Background will specify whether you have "access" to the Performance skillset; if so, any training or Expertise you have with Basic Abilities is also applied to Performance skills that fall under those abilities (i.e. STR, AGIL, DEX, and CHA.) Some classes/archetypes may also be granted training in the entire Performance skillset (such as the Performer archetype, for the Bard class.)

Power Sources, Knowledge Skills, and Performance Skills are the pieces that compose your character's Background. Mechanically, they are less important than "core skills" or combat abilities, but they can be a good starting point for those who like to approach character creation from a more narrative angle. Similarly, characters can potentially grow from having just a background and a class die, into a fully-fledged character (if a DM and their players choose to start out at a lower power level.)

Scattershot (Beta 4)

I'm a little behind on my blogging, but I don't really have enough material on any one topic to make a solid post, so I'll just touch on a handful of things instead. Hopefully they can each be expanded upon down the road.


Subclasses/Archetypes
In the interest of allowing classes to be broken down into smaller bites, and thus less front-loaded, I've been making some tweaks here and there regarding Archetypes. Wherever possible, I'm making it so that choosing an Archetype is optional; where this does not work as well, I've changed the archetypes to instead be called Subclasses, which are mandatory.

This leads to the classes being somewhat asymmetrical, but also kind of gives a clearer indication as to which ones are straightforward, and which ones have more customization.


Combat Math (roughly)
The basis for the damage/HP calculations roughly originated from one of my earlier playtests. I hadn't crunched the numbers that closely, but expected classes to do around 10 damage per round (DPR). In practice, they were doing closer to 15 DPR, so that's been the benchmark for average damage, that I've been aiming at.

With the intent of keeping damage roughly equal, the smartest thing was to work from the biggest class die (d12) and see how best to fit the other dice into it. The best starting point was to assume that d12 classes would be doing 2d12 of damage on their turn (a maximum of 24) which obviously is hard for d10 classes to fit under. This is alright, since d10 and d6 classes are expected to have a slightly higher damage output; essentially we want each class to have a maximum damage output (aside from critical hits) in the 24-30 range. This gives us a couple of possible expressions for each class die:

• 6d4, 7d4, 1d4+1d20, 2d4+1d20
• 4d6, 5d6, 1d6+1d20
• 3d8, 1d8+1d20
• 3d10, 1d10+1d20
• 2d12

So using things like Advantage, Expertise, and "double roll and stack," we can bump the average damage of individual dice without increasing the maximum range. (This is something that D&D typically doesn't dabble with, instead using +1s to increase minimum, average, and maximum damage.)

For example, the Acrobat gets to double roll and stack the damage of their specialty basic attacks (and basic attacks also get Expertise.) So by being able to make basic attacks as both a standard action and a minor action, they're effectively doing 4d4 damage (before adding in things like Power Attack.) However, their average will be much higher than a Wizard doing four individual 1d4 attacks with their Magic Missile iconic attack, because the Acrobat is more likely to do maximum damage with each die.

I'm in the process of slowly crunching out the actual DPR of each class' attack sequences, to make sure they actually hit that 15 DPR benchmark; as such, some classes have already been given a few damage perks or additional attacks.

Housekeeping

I'm still going to try and keep up with posting 3x per month. I've been keeping a change log of any edits to the classes and core rules, so I'm hoping I can use that as the 3rd post of each month.

The remaining posts due for this month will hopefully be able to be done on time.