Design Origins -- Part 3: The Monster Roll

May is Monster Month! (...I've decided, retroactively.)

Today I'm going to do an "origins" post, talking about where the Monster Roll came from; if you're not familiar with this mechanic, it's in the new Monster Workshop doc which was featured in the previous blog post.


Reverse Engineering
Back in about... some time prior to 2013, I briefly took over DM duties for the 4th Edition group I had been playing with. I kind of liked homebrewing monsters (once I had gotten into it) with the help of the guiding formula provided by Blog of Holding, known as "Monster Manual 3 on a Business Card."

The core component of the monster math for 4e, as broken down in their post, was this:

• Attack roll: d20+5+level
• Average damage: 8+level

I decided pretty early on that I wanted to make a universal dice expression to represent this math, so that I could use it for any monsters that I was controlling as the DM (instead of having to refer to a half-dozen different stat blocks, for weapon damage.)

What I came up with was this:

• Attack roll: d20+d8+level
• Average damage: 1d6+1d10+level

To further streamline, I integrated "recharge" and "when first bloodied" mechanics into the d8 roll (using roughly appropriate percentages from the source material, for this conversion) as well as using it for situational +4/+5 bonuses; the most common example I can refer to would be instances of bonus damage for being hidden, or bonuses to AC against opportunity attacks while charging.

The damage would be scaled up, per tier -- adding an additional 1d6+1d10 in place of every 10 levels of flat damage bonus.

Making it Your Own

Around the same time, I would be working on my previously mentioned Unnamed RPG, which was essentially a change from my earlier tabletop designs (more rooted in "Diablo 2"-style skill trees and classes) to something that was a bit more "lego-bricking" in character-creation -- but with 4th Edition as its basis for things like movement, area, and powers. Those who have read about this RPG before, will know that it used 1d6+1d10 for its resolution mechanic, as well as using only d6 and d10 for its damage rolls.

After a few iterations, some critical analysis from the outside, and an abortive playtest, I decided to abandon this project and move onto the next. It was around this time that 5th Edition D&D had come out, and so the designs therein had started to shade and shape what I wanted to include in this game.

Whose Roll is it, Anyway?

In the early playtesting for TNP, the PCs had one die worth of HP; this meant that monster damage had to be relatively low. In order for it to be balanced across the classes, I kept it to 1 point per "hit" (or maybe 2, for stronger/solo monsters.)

Now, this is where I should mention how 5th Edition (along with my own DM experience) were influences on the design. The DM has a lot to do, so I wanted (as much as possible) to download some of the mechanical "heavy lifting" onto the PCs. This idea was meant not only to ease the workload of the DM, but to also keep players engaged during their off-turns. 

So I looked at 5th Edition's design: some attacks are rolled, but others call for a "save." (In 4th Edition, the rule is "attacker always rolls.") I realized that a way I could achieve my goal was to simply make all monster attacks trigger a "save" -- this would be called the "Defense roll" in TNP. Conversely, when the PCs attack, they make an attack roll.

What we end up with is a consistent rule, albeit one different from 4th Edition:
"PCs always roll"

This goes against the convention in D&D (generally) of monsters and PCs being built the same way, and using the same mechanical framework. The problem that then presented itself, was that if monsters were to use skills, they still needed to make a roll (since the core mechanic for skills is the flat "DC10" rule, and because generally skill checks are not made in opposition to each other.)

The Witch's Hammer

So as the design evolved, it was decided that PCs should be given more HP. The natural progression of that line of thinking, was that monster damage needed to be increased, too.

This is when monsters started to move away from 1 or 2 points of damage, and minions took up that design space. I had always liked using homebrewed "2-hit minions" in 4th Edition, so the opportunity to build them into the design from the ground, up (rather than have them as a work-around) was an exciting prospect --  a chance to put more tools in the DM's hands.

Somewhere along the way, the idea of taking the "universal roll" (used in both the Unnamed RPG and my own 4e monster homebrews) and applying it to the monster math just sort of came together. It was probably around the time I was making the first monster math posts, and I realized I needed to put pen to paper on how I wanted things to run, and what the mechanics should look like.

With the 1d6+1d10 mechanic, I had a damage expression I could build around, as well as a resolution mechanic for skills -- which worked within the existing framework. It was a unified mechanic, in the sense that regardless of which action the monster took, the dice that the DM needed to roll for them remained the same; if the PC's Defense roll was successful, the result of the monster roll would simply be moot. It also opened up a new design space for monsters: the potential for deciding their action after making the roll.

A roll of 10 or higher would mean a significant amount of damage... but only if the Defense roll failed. However, if used to make a skill check, that result would be a guaranteed success. This makes for some interesting choices to be had. It also lets the monster's actions be a little more scripted, in the case of lower rolls; a roll that has no chance to succeed as a skill check will invariably be used as a damage roll. The hope with this is that it can speed up turn-taking for the DM; a big complaint about 4th Edition was the length of combat, and since the DM operates the largest number of combatants, I figured it was the side of the table where the most headway could be made, in that regard.

In Conclusion...

So now you know the "how" and "why" of the Monster Roll. Since I'm currently focusing my efforts mainly on monster-building tools for TNP (at least when I'm not playing D&D, or making new characters) I'm hoping that all the aspects mentioned in this posts will continue to be further refined and sharpened, in the very near future.

Check back May 25th for the next post!