Constitution -- Part 1: Reserves (2018)

I've been meaning to give this little subsystem a good old-fashioned number crunching for a while now, so that will be the topic of today's post.

When I first set about implementing Reserves into the designs, one of the basic intents was to provide a structure for the length of an "adventuring day." Essentially, when you run out of Reserves, you need to take a rest and replenish them, in order to continue adventuring. As with most things in TNP, I wanted to use Class Dice in some sort of permutation, to dole out Reserves. Using 4th Edition as a comparison -- 6 to 10 Healing Surges as a base (depending on your class) plus your Constitution modifier -- the easiest way to approximate that range of numbers was simply "maximum value of your Class Die."

I also wanted to have Reserves be closer to a full heal-up. I liked how 4th Edition's handling of bloodied value and surge value worked, but just as a matter of personal taste, I wanted to avoid any division or rounding in my designs (even though HP values in TNP are a lot easier to work with, in that regard.) Subsequently, I came up with the idea of having "maximum Class Die value" as effectively being your "surge value" in the sense that it was the guaranteed amount of HP you would regain from spending a Reserve. Using a d20 roll meant that this mechanic now had a ceiling, to go with its floor.

So with the onset of the 2018 Edition of the game, I figured the rules surrounding Reserves needed a closer look. Since most of the playtests only lasted a few encounters (rather than a whole adventuring day) it made sense to check the math, and ensure Reserves were of roughly equal utility between the various Class Dice. I had already figured out early on that d12 classes would need other things to spend reserves on (since they got so many) but I also had a feeling that d4 classes would not have enough "healing."

Many gamers' experience with the shortcomings of Hit Dice in 5th Edition D&D has pointed some in the direction that out-of-combat HP restoration should essentially come in the form of a pool of HP you can draw from -- and that this amount should be roughly equal for all classes. I started to look at Reserves from that angle, and crunched out how much HP you're actually able to get from spending one:

• d4 -- 4 reserves, 4-20 HP restored per = 16-80 HP
• d6 -- 6 reserves, 6-20 HP restored per = 36-120 HP
• d8 -- 8 reserves, 8-20 HP restored per = 64-160 HP
• d10 -- 10 reserves, 10-20 HP restored per = 100-200 HP
• d12 -- 12 reserves, 12-20 HP restored per = 144-240 HP

As you can see from the numbers above, there is a wide gap in the utility of Reserves, depending on your class die. So, taking that into account, I set about trying to narrow the ranges a bit. The precedent of d4 or d6 classes doubling their maximum Class Die value for both their number of daily reserves and for minimum HP recovery already exists as features for some classes/subclasses, so I decided to work from there. After looking at the numbers a few times, doubling the number of reserves for d4 classes and doubling the minimum recovery for d6 classes appears to be the way to go.

Also, if we assume an adventuring day consists of 5 encounters, and that our d12 classes will take advantage of their reserve-burning abilities in each of those, they will effectively have 7 reserves to spend on healing, per adventuring day. Similarly, we probably need to ensure d10 classes have something they can spend reserves on in combat, a few times per adventuring day; for the sake of this exercise, we'll assume it's used 3 times.

With all of these ideas implemented, we get this:

• d4 -- 8 reserves, 4-20 HP restored per = 32-160 HP
• d6 -- 6 reserves, 12-20 HP restored per = 72-120 HP
• d8 -- 8 reserves, 8-20 HP restored per = 64-160 HP
• d10 -- 7 reserves, 10-20 HP restored per = 70-140 HP
• d12 -- 7 reserves, 12-20 HP restored per = 84-140 HP

The ranges are much narrower now. We also still have the design space of "double reserves" for d6 classes and "double minimum HP recovery" for d4 classes, both available for use as class features. Also, since the amount healed skews towards the minimum, the average "daily" HP recovery for each die being used ends up being very close.

Now, I should point out that this is essentially intended (more or less) as a balanced control from which to do playtesting. It may turn out that d4 classes have enough defensive tools that they don't need to also have an equal amount of HP recovery available to them; likewise, classes with higher maximum HP values may need bigger reserves to keep themselves topped up. If these changes are found not to be needed, then we have the previous iterations to fall back on.


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So for the next post in the "Constitution" series, I'm going to talk a bit about HP -- where the numbers come from, how this compares to other games, etc. I also will touch on "Constitution as an Attribute" a bit, and why it hasn't figured into the designs (and some times when it did.) Overall, it will be sort of a hybrid "retrospective" post; there's not much that I expect to change regarding HP in the upcoming rules draft.

Once February is over, I'm hoping to get some more design work done, and the blog content should reflect that; I don't expect to talk about "Constitution" for more than these two posts.

Check back February 20th!