Codifying Conditions (2020)

A short post today, since I haven't been able to really sit down and work on things a whole lot...


By the standards of D&D, there aren't that many "status effect"-type conditions used in The Next Project. The idea was to sort of streamline things into a few broad categories. These could then be widely applied to fit any number of different mechanics, without needing to care too much about the fluff that might be attached to them. Also, some statuses tend to just be too punishing (such as being stunned) so I wanted to leave that on the cutting-room floor.

However, I had an idea for how I might be able to expand the list a little bit, so I wanted to share that with the reading audience; this isn't fully-formed, by any stretch, so I'll try and expand as much as I can, while I'm writing this out.

I was thinking about a condition like "blinded" -- a staple for most RPGs, but not something I have in TNP as it currently stands. I figured, probably this would give you disadvantage on perception checks, and maybe some other penalty (typically in D&D, this would be to attack rolls, just as an example.)

But that sort of got me thinking, a bit. What about this:

Make it so that giving someone disadvantage on perception checks is the mechanic, with the other penalty being tied to having disadvantage on that type of check -- rather than having a blinded condition that gives you those penalties.

Admittedly, it's sort of coming at the problem from a different direction, while achieving the same result. But if the entire subsystem is built around this supposition, maybe it would be possible to blend the two ideas -- status effects, and skill penalties -- into a more unified structure. So what we should look at next, is the whole list of combat skills, as well as the existing status effects, and see where we might at least be able to combine them together.

Combat Skills:
Brawl (STR/Athletics)
 - used for grappling, shoving, etc.
Climb (STR/Athletics)
 - used to gain high ground
Break Objects (STR/Infiltration)
 - used to destroy sources of Cover or High Ground
Intimidation (STR/Presence)
 - used to cow enemies into surrender
Acrobatics (AGIL/Athletics)
 - used to escape grapples, balance when falling from high ground, as well as to Withdraw, or to stand from prone using a Minor action instead of a Move action
Jump (AGIL/Athletics)
 - used to gain high ground
Stealth (AGIL/Subtlety)
 - used to become Hidden
Perception (INT/Detection)
 - used to detect enemies who are Hidden

Status Effects:
Weakened
 - This is sort of a catch-all, disadvantage on skill checks; we may be able to keep it, or we may just break it down into its component parts; it might also make sense to use this terminology for disadvantage on STR checks
Immobilized
 - A bunch of action economy penalties, effectively limiting how you can move on your turn
 - The first obvious thing is that you cannot gain High Ground, which is typically associated with Jump or Climb; maybe this could be tied to disadvantage on Athletics checks
Incapacitated, Prone
 - Further action economy penalties, specifically Off-Turn Actions, as well as a penalty to "saves"
 - Perhaps this could be modeled as part of disadvantage on AGIL checks, harkening back to D&D 3.5?


I'll probably have to revisit this topic to give it a deeper inspection, but it seems like there's some hay to be made, particularly the idea of penalties to combat skillsets/attributes:
STR: Brawl/Climb/Break Objects/Intimidation
Athletics: Brawl/Climb/Acrobatics/Jump
AGIL: Acrobatics/Jump/Stealth

So, there might be space in the design for penalties to specific skills (Perception, obviously, but Stealth also sticks out as a good candidate) but penalties to groups of skills also probably has its place. The existing status effects are a bit clunky, and so trying to streamline them behind this structure instead, seems like it'd be a worthwhile quality-of-life improvement to explore.


...


Apologies for this post being a bit slapdash; check back on June 16th for the next update.
As always, suggestions for blog topics are welcome and appreciated.