Backtracking (2020)

Today I'm going to touch on a handful of recent topics, just briefly.

Monsters
Looking back on the most recent post on the topic, one of the ideas with the monster roll is that the DM always rolls it, but can adjudicate the monster's course of action, post-hoc.

Within this post, the design space of the monster roll went even further in the direction of unifying its overall mechanics. So I want to sort of lay out the "manual of arms" for how the DM can use the monster roll to speed up encounters.

Firstly, the DM can pre-roll an encounter; essentially, you make the monster roll (either electronically, or manually) enough times to hopefully get you through a whole combat. Then, as each monster has a turn, you use the next roll in the sequence, and "cross off" the rolls as you go. This lets you have a bit of runway, since you know what the next roll "on deck" will be, and can adjudicate the monster's turn a little bit in advance.

Secondly (as I mentioned in the intro) the DM can choose the monster's action based on the result of the roll, rather than choosing the action and rolling afterwards. So for example, since a Standard Monster uses only the highest roll for damage, but would add the dice together to determine success at a skill check, any roll where the total is less than 10 would be used to deal damage (still subject to a failed "save" by the targeted character.) Likewise, if a minion's roll is less than 10, they can do their "auto-damage" attack instead; alternatively, a DM could 'program' particular types of minions to always attack (so they don't have to roll) whereas other types could use signature skills by default (if successful) and deal damage as their backup.

I realize this can seem like 'cheating' insofar as the DM gets to see the result, and then always choose the optimal course of action (something the PCs can't do.) But it's important to understand that this is a mechanical contrivance meant to facilitate speed of gameplay, from the DM side of the board. Since the DM always has to manage all of the opponents in a combat encounter, anything we can do to streamline and simplify their job should be considered. That being said, there's nothing stopping the DM from doing things the 'old-fashioned' way, if they feel this is too much of a detriment to the fun of their players, at the table.


Minor and Major Bonuses (d6)
Naturally, within a day or so of my post, lamenting how hard it has been to come up with d6 mechanics, I was able to come up with a solution:

always: if the d6 rolls its maximum value [i.e. 6] add it to the d20 roll
minor bonus: add the d6 to a miss
major bonus: add the d6 to a hit

I really like this. It's clean, slick. I like using the "max value" mechanic, since it would otherwise be underutilized. The major bonus has a 'score' a little bit above the guidelines (105, with the desired range being 100-103) but I think everything else it brings to the table makes up for this; the miss chance on the major bonus remains quite high, but it has the best crit chance out of the bunch, making for an interesting dynamic.


Work(shopp)ing Conditions
Another thing I hammered out since the last post, was a basic guideline for some status effects. This is just sort of to get the ball rolling, so I'll expand on these a bit as I get time/inspiration.

Since the handful of combat skills overlap quite a bit, with regards to Attributes/Skillsets, I quickly realized that I would not need to have 10 different penalties to cover everything. Here are the ones I settled on, with tentative naming conventions:

• Haggard: disadvantage on STR checks (Brawl, Climb, Break Objects, Intimidation)
• Staggered: disadvantage on AGIL checks (Acrobatics, Jump, Stealth)
• Winded: disadvantage on Athletics checks (Brawl, Climb, Acrobatics, Jump)
• Dazzled: disadvantage on Detection checks (would really only be Perception, in combat)
• Frazzled: disadvantage on Presence checks (would really only be Intimidation, in combat -- unless I decide to add some sort of morale system...)

Some additional thoughts:

Probably the 'staggered' condition will also impose some specific penalties to movement, within the action economy, unless the Immobilized/Restrained conditions are kept, and are used to cover that design space. I haven't fully decided if the 'dazzled' condition will also have an attack penalty, or if the combination of those two will be on a full-blown 'blinded' condition. Perception checks on their own aren't super important or common, unless you're fighting enemies that rely heavily on stealth, so it might merit having a little something else tacked on. On the other hand, the same could be said for the 'frazzled' condition; maybe the way to 'balance' these two conditions is solely against each other, with the other three conditions being sort of one "tier" higher in terms of balance/severity.

Slates

Finally, I want to go back and revisit the topic of class dice loadouts ("already?" you say; yes I know...)

After having looked at the loadout I published previously (as well as the 'Plan B' that went with it) I realized I still wasn't satisfied; there were too many weird fits and too many uses of the word "compromise" so I resolved to do some more juggling:

Acrobat: d4/d8 -- I think this one is just meant to be, dice "roles" be damned.

Cleric: d4/d10 -- Definitely like this a lot more than the alternatives, and I like these dice better here, rather than on Acrobat or Adventurer.

Paladin: d6/d10 -- Fits way better w/r/t the Cleric.

Warlord: d8/d12 -- About as good as d4/d12, and it just makes the rest of the slate work.

Adventurer: d6/d8 -- As said before, this is functionally like the 'light blade' loadout, from Essentials.

Ranger: d8/d10 -- I like this a lot more than d4/d8; honestly my 1st choice would be probably d6/d8, but a beefier Ranger relative to the Adventurer gives it the right feel, in terms of relative class balance.

Guardian: d4/d12 -- Swapped with Warlord; keeping in mind the proposed changes to Reserves, I think we can manage with this.

Barbarian: d10/d12 -- I've always wanted a smaller die for their ranged attacks, but otherwise I like this fit well enough.

Fighter (d6/d12) and Druid (d4/d6) remain unchanged

Overall, I like the loadout of the latter slate in particular. I think having the Adventurer, Ranger, and Barbarian each with a striker die + a different die type is a good fit for all three. This means there's a little weirdness with the Paladin (being striker/striker) but I think it's still s decent enough fit, especially with d10 being the iconically Paladin die.


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Next post is due out on June 26th, so check back then!
Just a reminder, that will be the last post before the July break, so if you have any topics you'd like covered before then, now is the time to get those in to me :)