I think one of the most important parts of designing TNP (along with aiming to be accessible) is to make refinements and improvements upon the games that inspired it. In order to avoid being wholly derivative, you have to be able to identify weaknesses and problems in a system you personally enjoy, and actively work to iterate on its design. So today, I'm going to talk a bit about how TNP compares mechanically to similar d20 systems, and touch on where certain designs came from.
Off-Turn Actions
4th Edition D&D: Characters have a 1/round "immediate action" and a 1/turn "opportunity action"
5th Edition D&D: Characters have a 1/round "reaction"
The Next Project: Characters have a 1/turn "off-turn action"
To greater or lesser extent, this is sort of the "Goldilocks" approach -- not too hot, or too cold. Where I can understand 5e wanting to clean things up and reduce the frequency of characters acting out of turn, it simply reduces things too drastically. A defender who can only make an opportunity attack once per round (5e) is far inferior to one who can do it once per turn (4e).
Furthermore, the important thing to remember is that off-turn actions always have to be triggered -- if the trigger doesn't happen, then you don't get the action. This should naturally keep things in check, particularly if the DM is playing the enemies smart, and not choosing to make them provoke extra attacks. Unifying the mechanics (rather than cutting them to the bone) was the way to go, I feel.
5th Edition's design choice in this regard is particularly frustrating for a class like Fighter; you have opportunity attacks, the Protection "fighting style," and feats (which historically are their "thing") like Shield Master or Defensive Duelist, all competing for the same resource within the game's action economy. Meanwhile, something like the 5e Rogue's "uncanny dodge" is a reaction that is designed around being once per round -- it would be almost infinitely spammable if it were available more often.
By setting off-turn actions to once per turn, it also allows additional triggers to be a meaningful design space for class features. The more ways you can trigger this action, the more likely you'll be able to benefit from this boost in action economy, on any given turn.
Minor Action vs. Bonus Action
4th Edition D&D: On your turn, you have a Standard Action, Move Action, and Minor Action; Standard Actions can be traded down to Move Actions or Minor Actions, and Move Actions can be traded down to Minor Actions.
5th Edition D&D: If you have a feature that allows you to use a Bonus Action, you may do so once, on your turn -- otherwise, you effectively do not have this action type. You can move up to your speed, at any time throughout your turn.
The Next Project: On your turn, you have a Standard Action, Move Action, and Minor Action. You can perform any Minor Action or Move Action using a Standard Action; however, you cannot take the same Minor Action more than once on your turn.
I think the 5e approach is a reaction to the 4e char-op mentality: if you're doing anything less than using every action at your disposal to be dealing damage, you're being sub-optimal. This makes at-will minor action attacks valuable, because they are very repeatable within 4e's action economy. In both 5e and TNP, something like a two-weapon attack uses your "main" action and your "simple" action, so not being able to trade down movement for another attack creates the desired effect within the designs.
Actions in 5e are simultaneously the thing that does everything, and the thing that can't do Bonus Actions (which strikes me as odd.) TNP kind of tries to split the difference: Standard Actions can do any "smaller" actions, but Move Actions cannot be traded down.
It's also worth noting that where 4e would use minor actions for interacting with items or the environment (such as doors or levers) TNP eschews items altogether, thus not requiring an action to draw, stow, or use them. 5e has a sort of vaguely-defined "interact" action for these uses, which is limited to once on your turn. TNP does not have many "universal" minor actions; different uses for this action type largely come from class features.
As a side note, TNP navigates the Move Action vs. Move Speed divide, both by using its more abstract positioning scheme, as well as allowing movement as part of other actions (such as melee attacks and certain skill checks.)
Bonuses & Penalties
Generally speaking, 4e uses a +2/-2 or +5/-5 system for modifiers tied to either status effects, positioning, or powers. Some debilities imbue a -10 penalty to things such as Perception checks.
In 5th Edition, it's pretty much down to Advantage/Disadvantage, although there are a few interesting uses of proficiency bonus (which starts at +2) being halved or doubled, and then added to rolls where it would otherwise not apply. There's also bonuses from things like Maneuvers, Bardic Inspiration, or spells such as Bless, which add (or subtract) a dice roll to a result.
For TNP I went with Advantage/Disadvantage (which is functionally analogous to the +5/-5 from 4e) and use Expertise as my "+2" allegory. There are also bonus dice used for some features, but they all function off the conceit of "class dice" so as to make things a little more uniform.
Generally larger penalties are just a way of saying "don't even try it," so in this regard, I've followed 4e's lead, and instead used penalties to action economy -- requiring "bigger" actions to complete the same task, or requiring a successful skill check in order to do it quickly.
Durations
4th Edition D&D: Generally the duration for an effect is defined as either "until the start of your next turn," "until the end of your next turn," or "save ends" (meaning the effect can be saved against once per round, generally at the end of the effected creature's turn.) Some feats or similar features allow you to "save" out of an effect at the start of your turn. Things such as zones often have a "sustain minor" clause, allowing you to extend their duration by spending a minor action.
5th Edition D&D: Generally you save against an effect when it happens, but sometimes you must roll a save on each of your turns to continue trying to shake it off. Concentration abilities require a constitution save from the character creating the effect, if they take damage, and you can only maintain one spell with this keyword at a time.
The Next Project: In the latest revision, the "Sustaining" keyword basically specifies that if the feature bestows a benefit, it lasts until the start of your next turn; if it bestows a penalty, it lasts until the end of your next turn. These features can be "sustained" by repeating the same action once your turn comes around again.
Within the 4e char-op circles, effects that lasted for one round (i.e. until the end of your next turn) were found to be the most powerful and reliable, since they could not be saved out of. Since saves in 4e were generally a coin-flip, the chance that you wouldn't get more than a round out of a "save ends" effect was pretty high.
TNP gets rid of the mechanic of saves altogether, instead allowing you to maintain these abilities reliably -- so long as you're willing to pay the action economy cost. It also has less-painful debilities, overall.
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This post has already gotten a bit long, so I'll cut it off there. I still have a few comparisons I would like to touch on, so that may appear in a later post.
I'm also going to try and find time to work on updating another slate of classes, with Druid as the first priority.
Check back May 5th!
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Functioning As Intended? (2018)
I wanted to take this post to go over some of the (seemingly) more odd-ball mechanics that are in the game, and outline some of the thought processes behind them.
Combat Skills
One of the rule changes that came out of playtesting, was to limit each character to one skill check per turn. The reason for doing this ties into how the mechanics behind intimidation work.
The baseline rule that I came up with was that you can intimidate an immobilized enemy into surrendering; this causes them to be "dropped" and therefore removed from combat. The rationale for this was that I wanted a mechanic whereby the enemy has to be in a vulnerable position before they'd consider surrendering (from a narrative standpoint) but also mechanically, I didn't want it to completely invalidate combat.
The problem cropped up with classes that either get to make grapple or intimidate checks as a minor action (since grappling is the main way to immobilize an enemy.) This creates a scenario where, by succeeding on two checks on the same turn, a player can remove an enemy from combat without a fight. This doesn't really conform to the narrative intent, nor the mechanical assumption of fights typically lasting for three rounds.
To compensate for removing this combo, some classes were given the ability to intimidate enemies who are bloodied (or who are immobilized.) This keeps a feature like being able to intimidate as a minor action still useful, while also requiring the players to engage in the combat mechanics.
Similarly, elite monsters were made stronger, by requiring that they be both bloodied and immobilized before they can be intimidated into surrendering.
Inspiration & Restoration
I specifically went out of my way to not use the terminology of "healing" within the rules; rather, restoring HP is meant to be as abstract as possible.
It's generally accepted that HP itself is an abstraction, often combining wounds, stress, and the will to fight (among other things.) Using the terms "inspiring" or "inspiration" for most of the HP restoration mechanics serves to highlight the "will" part of the equation. It also makes it easier for non-magical/non-medical characters to have abilities that restore HP.
This brings me to another point: what is the role of "healing" within combat?
As mentioned before, since the earliest designs, there hasn't ever been much in the vein of "combat healing" in The Next Project. The idea behind spending reserves is that it should be a way of returning your HP to its maximum, once combat has concluded. This is more of a DM-side contrivance, because it then allows all encounters to be balanced around the assumption of "all PCs will be at max HP, at the start of every combat." (It should be noted that this is also true of 4th Edition D&D.)
The goal within combat is to simply survive until the end, at which time you are then safe to heal up. In-combat healing is meant to be about on-par with "striker"-level damage; it's something that helps the party to better survive until the end of the fight, while also being a mechanic which is in keeping with a particular play-style, but without being a further tax on limited resources (i.e. reserves.) This is one of the ways that healing operates differently from 4th Edition.
All that being said, HP is further abstracted in TNP by effectively folding the design concept of "temporary hit points" into it. The whole "not real hit points" distinction is sort of meaningless, in a concept already so abstract -- so we junked it. When you receive "healing" in combat, it is allowed to increase your HP above its maximum; any excess is lost at the end of the encounter, however. Likewise, spending reserves after combat cannot increase your HP above its maximum.
What this serves to do is functionally increase the times when it is "appropriate" for a support class to use their restoration ability. In 4th Edition, generally the right time was whenever an ally's HP was down below their surge value, since the standard "leader" heal was usually [surge value + an ability modifier, or 1d6]. Further to this, the "bloodied" mechanic being a condition which all combatants were aware of (once someone had that condition on them) was an effective way of signposting to the support characters, when someone needed to be healed.
Because of how TNP handles HP and in-combat healing, you may very well consider "inspiring" an ally before they have taken any damage, since they will still receive the extra HP (and it may very well make sense, if they're a class who you can expect to soak a lot of damage; if they don't end up taking the damage, it'll have been a waste of one of your actions, so choose carefully.) It also avoids the pitfalls of 5th Edition D&D, where the only time to restore someone's HP is when they're at zero (because damage so drastically outpaces healing, you really only use it to prevent death and/or loss of actions.)
Also, by going with the "once per ally" model for these abilities (akin to the Healer feat, in 5th Edition) rather than the "twice per encounter" model from 4th Edition, these abilities effectively scale to fit a party of any size. However, once a party's size exceeds the typical number of rounds a combat is expected to take, choosing who to heal (and when) suddenly becomes a tactical consideration once again. Overall, I think this framework allows for more interesting decision-making options for the healer "role" and I quite like that outcome.
---
Check back April 24th for the next post!
Combat Skills
One of the rule changes that came out of playtesting, was to limit each character to one skill check per turn. The reason for doing this ties into how the mechanics behind intimidation work.
The baseline rule that I came up with was that you can intimidate an immobilized enemy into surrendering; this causes them to be "dropped" and therefore removed from combat. The rationale for this was that I wanted a mechanic whereby the enemy has to be in a vulnerable position before they'd consider surrendering (from a narrative standpoint) but also mechanically, I didn't want it to completely invalidate combat.
The problem cropped up with classes that either get to make grapple or intimidate checks as a minor action (since grappling is the main way to immobilize an enemy.) This creates a scenario where, by succeeding on two checks on the same turn, a player can remove an enemy from combat without a fight. This doesn't really conform to the narrative intent, nor the mechanical assumption of fights typically lasting for three rounds.
To compensate for removing this combo, some classes were given the ability to intimidate enemies who are bloodied (or who are immobilized.) This keeps a feature like being able to intimidate as a minor action still useful, while also requiring the players to engage in the combat mechanics.
Similarly, elite monsters were made stronger, by requiring that they be both bloodied and immobilized before they can be intimidated into surrendering.
Inspiration & Restoration
I specifically went out of my way to not use the terminology of "healing" within the rules; rather, restoring HP is meant to be as abstract as possible.
It's generally accepted that HP itself is an abstraction, often combining wounds, stress, and the will to fight (among other things.) Using the terms "inspiring" or "inspiration" for most of the HP restoration mechanics serves to highlight the "will" part of the equation. It also makes it easier for non-magical/non-medical characters to have abilities that restore HP.
This brings me to another point: what is the role of "healing" within combat?
As mentioned before, since the earliest designs, there hasn't ever been much in the vein of "combat healing" in The Next Project. The idea behind spending reserves is that it should be a way of returning your HP to its maximum, once combat has concluded. This is more of a DM-side contrivance, because it then allows all encounters to be balanced around the assumption of "all PCs will be at max HP, at the start of every combat." (It should be noted that this is also true of 4th Edition D&D.)
The goal within combat is to simply survive until the end, at which time you are then safe to heal up. In-combat healing is meant to be about on-par with "striker"-level damage; it's something that helps the party to better survive until the end of the fight, while also being a mechanic which is in keeping with a particular play-style, but without being a further tax on limited resources (i.e. reserves.) This is one of the ways that healing operates differently from 4th Edition.
All that being said, HP is further abstracted in TNP by effectively folding the design concept of "temporary hit points" into it. The whole "not real hit points" distinction is sort of meaningless, in a concept already so abstract -- so we junked it. When you receive "healing" in combat, it is allowed to increase your HP above its maximum; any excess is lost at the end of the encounter, however. Likewise, spending reserves after combat cannot increase your HP above its maximum.
What this serves to do is functionally increase the times when it is "appropriate" for a support class to use their restoration ability. In 4th Edition, generally the right time was whenever an ally's HP was down below their surge value, since the standard "leader" heal was usually [surge value + an ability modifier, or 1d6]. Further to this, the "bloodied" mechanic being a condition which all combatants were aware of (once someone had that condition on them) was an effective way of signposting to the support characters, when someone needed to be healed.
Because of how TNP handles HP and in-combat healing, you may very well consider "inspiring" an ally before they have taken any damage, since they will still receive the extra HP (and it may very well make sense, if they're a class who you can expect to soak a lot of damage; if they don't end up taking the damage, it'll have been a waste of one of your actions, so choose carefully.) It also avoids the pitfalls of 5th Edition D&D, where the only time to restore someone's HP is when they're at zero (because damage so drastically outpaces healing, you really only use it to prevent death and/or loss of actions.)
Also, by going with the "once per ally" model for these abilities (akin to the Healer feat, in 5th Edition) rather than the "twice per encounter" model from 4th Edition, these abilities effectively scale to fit a party of any size. However, once a party's size exceeds the typical number of rounds a combat is expected to take, choosing who to heal (and when) suddenly becomes a tactical consideration once again. Overall, I think this framework allows for more interesting decision-making options for the healer "role" and I quite like that outcome.
---
Check back April 24th for the next post!
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
The Moment You've All Been Waiting For! (2018)
It's finally time for me to officially release the 2018 rule-set into the wild!
This has actually been ready since just after the previous blog post (and I've distributed it to a few, select places) but now it is out to a worldwide audience. I've added a link to the sidebar, so it'll be on the front page of the blog, going forward.
First things first
So what is this document, exactly? Well, I'm calling it a "playtest" version, because it is sort of the bare-bones minimum needed to run the game, from the player-side; I still need to do up a "monster math" compendium, with some DM rules/advice, in order for everyone to really be able to run it. (That being said, the pertinent info on monsters is on the blog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)
I had mentioned previously, that I was writing down the rules section by section, but in light of recent D&D-related considerations, I felt it was finally time to make a (rough) full assembly of what I've got so far. Really, the only things that are missing (in terms of player content) are the rules for character re-specs, and a list of skill descriptions.
Updates
A lot of this will just be re-stating things that have been mentioned in the blog (or planned for) previously. Anyway, here's a loose outline of the changes:
Double Rolls have been rewritten for clarity, and to feature more prominently in the text; "trade-off" has been removed from the jargon.
Bloodied Threshold has been changed to function as it does in 4th Edition D&D.
Surge Value is a new piece of jargon, used to describe the minimum HP restored when spending a reserve; for most classes, this is still "maximum value of your class die."
Subclass replaces the "Path" subtype from Beta 4
Combat Role replaces the previous subtypes of both "Role" and "Subclass"
Specialist Class replaces the term "Archetype" from previous iterations (abbreviated as "Spec")
Knowledge Skills/Power Sources have been implemented as described here.
Attack Types have been more clearly explained, i.e. Iconic vs. Basic Attacks, melee vs. ranged, etc.
Stacking rules have been cleaned up a bit; only one die can be added to a d20 roll, but there is no limit to stacking of damage dice.
Power Attack/Counter-attack have been changed to no longer use "trade-off"
Opportunity Attacks have been changed to use a standard-style attack roll, and have also been clarified a bit further.
Sustaining keyword has been greatly overhauled, to help make its intended implementation more clear; essentially, effects with this keyword last one round, unless the appropriate action is taken to continue them.
Combat Skills were cleaned up a bit, giving a better idea of which skills can be used with which actions, and under what other qualifiers.
Positional Rules have been revised a bit. Rules for "reach" and "high ground" have been clarified; "Adjacent" replaces "Engaged" to allow allies to group up more easily, and to have more distinct wording from the "Engage" action; "Open" replaces the sort of non-jargon of "unengaged"
Other minor changes can be found throughout, so give it a good, solid once-over!
---
Upcoming Content
I recently came up with a rough timeline of blog posts, specifically pertaining to actual-game content (i.e. playtest versions such as the one posted today, as well as updated versions of the remaining character classes.) Basically, I should have already been doing some playtesting by now, so hopefully that will get rolling soon. Additionally, if the 2018 Edition is to be completed... in 2018, then the next slate of classes will need to be out very soon -- hopefully within about a month. So stay tuned for that!
As per this year's blog schedule, the next post should be out on April 14th.
This has actually been ready since just after the previous blog post (and I've distributed it to a few, select places) but now it is out to a worldwide audience. I've added a link to the sidebar, so it'll be on the front page of the blog, going forward.
First things first
So what is this document, exactly? Well, I'm calling it a "playtest" version, because it is sort of the bare-bones minimum needed to run the game, from the player-side; I still need to do up a "monster math" compendium, with some DM rules/advice, in order for everyone to really be able to run it. (That being said, the pertinent info on monsters is on the blog: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.)
I had mentioned previously, that I was writing down the rules section by section, but in light of recent D&D-related considerations, I felt it was finally time to make a (rough) full assembly of what I've got so far. Really, the only things that are missing (in terms of player content) are the rules for character re-specs, and a list of skill descriptions.
Updates
A lot of this will just be re-stating things that have been mentioned in the blog (or planned for) previously. Anyway, here's a loose outline of the changes:
Double Rolls have been rewritten for clarity, and to feature more prominently in the text; "trade-off" has been removed from the jargon.
Bloodied Threshold has been changed to function as it does in 4th Edition D&D.
Surge Value is a new piece of jargon, used to describe the minimum HP restored when spending a reserve; for most classes, this is still "maximum value of your class die."
Subclass replaces the "Path" subtype from Beta 4
Combat Role replaces the previous subtypes of both "Role" and "Subclass"
Specialist Class replaces the term "Archetype" from previous iterations (abbreviated as "Spec")
Knowledge Skills/Power Sources have been implemented as described here.
Attack Types have been more clearly explained, i.e. Iconic vs. Basic Attacks, melee vs. ranged, etc.
Stacking rules have been cleaned up a bit; only one die can be added to a d20 roll, but there is no limit to stacking of damage dice.
Power Attack/Counter-attack have been changed to no longer use "trade-off"
Opportunity Attacks have been changed to use a standard-style attack roll, and have also been clarified a bit further.
Sustaining keyword has been greatly overhauled, to help make its intended implementation more clear; essentially, effects with this keyword last one round, unless the appropriate action is taken to continue them.
Combat Skills were cleaned up a bit, giving a better idea of which skills can be used with which actions, and under what other qualifiers.
Positional Rules have been revised a bit. Rules for "reach" and "high ground" have been clarified; "Adjacent" replaces "Engaged" to allow allies to group up more easily, and to have more distinct wording from the "Engage" action; "Open" replaces the sort of non-jargon of "unengaged"
Other minor changes can be found throughout, so give it a good, solid once-over!
---
Upcoming Content
I recently came up with a rough timeline of blog posts, specifically pertaining to actual-game content (i.e. playtest versions such as the one posted today, as well as updated versions of the remaining character classes.) Basically, I should have already been doing some playtesting by now, so hopefully that will get rolling soon. Additionally, if the 2018 Edition is to be completed... in 2018, then the next slate of classes will need to be out very soon -- hopefully within about a month. So stay tuned for that!
As per this year's blog schedule, the next post should be out on April 14th.
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