Daily Mechanics (2023)

Continuing on from where the previous post left off, if we assume average card-dealing results, the most number of reserves a character will need to spend recovering from combat will be 7 (during the 5th level "adventuring day") -- leaving quite a wide amount of flexibility in how to use the remaining reserves.

Getting back to some of the basic mechanics, as mentioned before, the dice have to do everything. Naturally, this means that the number of reserves a character class gets is based off of their class dice; in order to raise the floor on this number, d4 classes will always be treated as having (at least) "2d4" reserves -- a total of 8. Some d6 classes/subclasses will still only have 6 reserves, but most will have 2d6, i.e. 12.

So what does this mean, in its totality? Well, if we are to balance around the assumption of needing 7 reserves to heal up from combat, the remaining number of reserves (which can be used for other purposes) are as follows:

• 1d6 reserves: (-1)
• 2d4 or 1d8 reserves: 1
• 1d10 reserves: 3
• 2d6 or 1d12 reserves: 5

These numbers sort of point me towards the idea that 2d4/1d8 classes could have a "1/day" reserve-burning mechanic, whereas 2d6/1d12 classes could have a "1/encounter" mechanic. Now, this wouldn't expressly imply any sort of "short rest" refresh mechanic; in this context, the 1/encounter is meant only as a limit to its uses, with the number of daily reserves being an additional hard limit. The 1d10 classes would land somewhere in the middle of these two distinct paradigms, and so might need to be taken on a case-by-case basis.

This ties back into the idea of "class categories" sharing some sort of similar progression or mechanics. The "Disciple" category in particular is one which I am considering giving a mechanic which would allow them to switch their subclass once per day, at the price of a reserve.

With the Occultist being a 1d10 class in the Disciple category, it might make sense for them to have one additional per-day ability, while the Druid and Warlord (both being 1d12 classes in the same category) could potentially have per-encounter abilities, in addition to their per-day category ability.

Now, for particularly tanky 2d6/1d12 classes (who are expected to absorb a lot more punishment and therefore need more healing) perhaps only a 1/day reserve-burning mechanic would be more reasonable for them to have. On the other hand, a 2d6 subclass like the Sorcerer would very likely have a per-encounter mechanic.

An example of one of the ideas I'm toying with is for the Barbarian (d10, d12) class, with regards to their Rage mechanic. Probably they could enter a rage to gain 1d10 extra damage to their melee attacks; burning a reserve would increase the damage by 1d10, perhaps limited by their level -- burning 5 reserves at level 5 to add 5d10, for example. Should they be able to enter a rage once per day? Or once per encounter?

The Campaign Trail (2023)

One of the ideas that I’ve been conceptualizing behind the scenes is how to randomly generate a campaign, from scratch. I decided to start with a standard deck of cards (52 + 2 jokers) since I felt that something so ubiquitous would lend itself to the overall ethos behind TNP. One benefit of doing it this way, is that you have a definite end point -- a campaign consists of 54 encounters, of various types. (This addresses something I hear from people new to D&D; they often ask, "So, how do you win?" or, "When is the game over?" or some variation of those questions.)

The basic idea with using a deck of cards is that the suit would determine a type of encounter:

• Combat ♣
• Exploration ♦ 
• Social ♥ 
• Subterfuge ♠ 

Face cards would be the exception to this; all face cards would be combat encounters (regardless of suit) with each card type corresponding to a different enemy type. For example, Jacks would respresent "standard" monsters. The Jokers are meant to represent campaign-level threats ("archenemy") and one would be shuffled into the deck before dealing the encounters for level 2, and the other shuffled in for level 4 -- alternatively, these cards could potentially be inserted directly into the "hands" for levels 2 and 5.

Dealing the Deck
If we take the 54 cards and split them into levels of progression, we end up with something like this:

• 4 encounters at level 0
• 6 encounters at level 1
• 8 encounters at level 2
• 10 encounters at level 3
• 12 encounters at level 4
• 14 encounters at level 5

Now, the idea is that non-combat encounters would be handled as "skill challenges" -- requiring a certain number of checks before continuing onward. Since we'd only be using the numbered cards for these types of encounters, we can also use them to help scale the "DC" of the challenge. My idea is that either the face value of the card, or the number of encounters for that level (whichever is lower) would be the DC.

So, for example, if you were dealt a 10 of diamonds at level 0, instead of having a DC10 Exploration skill challenge, it would be a DC4.

This would work similarly for combat encounters resulting from being dealt a club; effectively these numbered cards would be "Minions or Swarms."

In the previous draft of the monster-building guidelines, minions would have between 1 and 4 hit dice, whereas swarms would have between 5 and 15 hit dice. Since the numbers of encounters per level range between 4 and 14, I'm inclined to use those numbers as the "maximum number of hit dice" which can be used when building swarms and/or minions into combat encounters, at each level. This would mean that swarms could appear in combat as early as level 1, so some other limitation might need to be implemented, as well.

What is an "Adventuring Day"?
Another thing that I immediately start to notice is that the number of encounters very closely maps to the number range of reserves that the PCs will have -- between 6 and 12, to be specific. If reserves are assumed to be a per-day resource, then this begs the further question: Should you gain a level after each adventuring day? If so, then clearly, an "adventuring day" (if it is to be called that) would likely last multiple days of in-game time.

Let’s go back to the cards for a moment; the basic idea would be that each type of face card would represent a different enemy type, but otherwise the suit would determine the type of encounter (with clubs being combat encounters, as touched on earlier.) This would mean that the cards 2 through 10 of the remaining three suits would be non-combat encounters -- 27 cards out of 54, exactly half.

Now, translating that information back into the schema for reserves, if we’re assuming you’ll need 1 reserve to heal up from each combat encounter, then a class with 12 reserves would (on average) be using 7 reserves to heal up, through their 5th level “adventuring day” (consisting of 14 encounters, in total.) This means they would have about 5 reserves available for other uses, even at the most difficult stages of the game.

This begs a question of how to "win" or "keep score" when it comes to non-combat encounters. Should there be a reserve cost, to failing at a skill challenge? Or, instead, do you simply create a "failure" pile and a "success" pile with your non-combat cards, and tabulate whether the overall campaign was a success, once all's said and done? If non-combat encounters are NOT meant to burn reserves, this means that there is more design space left open within character classes for in-combat, reserve-burning mechanics.

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Next post is due up by January 31st, so check back then!

The Role of the Dice (2023 Edition)

 As we harken back to the previous post with this title, it is important to remember that each die within The Next Project has to serve multiple different functions. It isn't just about weapon / spell damage -- the dice have to do everything.

Setting the Criteria
With that in mind, today we're going to talk about how the class dice are going to be used as bonuses to attack and damage. When working on the previous slate of bonus mechanics, their utility was evaluated/balanced by using a score, which was generated by calculating the total hit chance that the bonus provided, plus triple the crit chance it provided (since crits were assumed to do roughly 3x the damage of a regular hit.) 

When evaluating the updated mechanics (which will be presented here today) I instead calculated the expected damage output of the bonus, based on the average rolls of the damage dice; a “base damage” of 1d8 was used as sort of a placeholder, just to crunch everything out. For context, by using this metric, each bonus produces an average damage of roughly 7.3 (taking into account hit chance and crit chance.)

• d4 bonus: 7.33125
• d6 bonus: 7.2875
• d8 bonus: 7.275
• d10 bonus: 7.29
• d12 bonus: 7.325

Axing Advantage
There were also two things that I identified from previous drafts, which I wanted to change.

Firstly, the existing class dice bonuses didn’t provide as big of a boost as Advantage did. Secondly, I wanted to remove Advantage from the designs as much as possible, including axing it for attack rolls at a bare minimum.

Basically, the interaction between stacking and/or cancelling one or more instances of Advantage or Disadvantage can become a confusing mess (for some people) which I just wanted to avoid. I also wanted more of a unique mechanic, rather than just continuing to borrow 5e's shtick. As such, in order to get rid of Advantage, you need to have a competitive replacement, which is why the class dice bonuses were beefed up. Further, having a bonus and a penalty that don’t directly interact or cancel one another is something I saw as a valuable improvement. By having class dice as the bonus mechanic and Disadvantage as the penalty mechanic, there is no longer a question of which one overrides the other -- both can always be applied.

Dealing the Dice

Another reason for building around bonuses that use class dice, is to encourage diversification within party composition. One of the early comments that TNP received was, “Well why wouldn’t everyone just play d12 classes? They’re obviously the best!” So, if you’re allowed to have 5 class dice bonuses, but only one of them is allowed to be a d12 bonus, you have an incentive to balance your party around being able to get as many different bonuses as possible.

The other consideration was just that rolling 1d20 to hit, and dealing 1dX or 2dY for base damage simply would not output enough DPR. The base of 55% hit rate (or 60% with mastery) just wasn’t going to cut it; both the hit chance and the damage needed to be beefed up. With the designs moving more towards "roll X and keep 1" mechanics, I didn’t want unused attack bonus dice going to waste; letting these dice be added to damage would also help with the overall objective of raising the damage benchmarks.

For example, using standard monsters with 28 HP, applying any one of these dice bonuses would result in the monster being dropped to 0 HP by the 4th round of combat:

(7.3 damage/round) * (4 rounds) = (29.2 damage)

By getting the party to stack multiple bonuses, the number of rounds can be reduced even further.

Attack Bonus vs. Damage Bonus
Now, the important thing to remember is that even though there can be up to 5 bonus dice applying to each attack (one for each class die) only one of those dice may be used to modify the actual attack roll. The general rule is that the die which is used as the attack bonus cannot also be used as a damage bonus -- but there are exceptions, as will be laid out below. The player is allowed to roll all bonus dice alongside the attack roll, and choose which bonus die to use as the attack bonus after seeing the result of all of these rolls (attack roll and bonus dice.)

(It's worth mentioning here that when Combat Mastery is said to apply mastery to the "attack bonus die" it is referring to whichever die is chosen to modify the attack roll; essentially, this only matters if one or more of your bonus dice rolled a 1 -- so keep an eye out for those.)

d4:

As an attack bonus: the d4 can be added to a miss (1-9 on the d20) or a hit (10-19 on the d20)

As a damage bonus: the d4 can be treated as having mastery (i.e. a roll of 1 is treated as a 4 for the damage bonus, but not for the attack bonus)

Special: the d4 result can always be used as BOTH an attack bonus and as a damage bonus

d6:

As an attack bonus: the d6 can be added to a miss (1-9 on the d20) or a hit (10-19 on the d20)

As a damage bonus: the d6 can be added as bonus damage

Special: the d6 result may be used as BOTH an attack bonus and as a damage bonus, only if the attack was a miss (1-9 on the d20)

d8:

As an attack bonus: the d8 can be added to a miss (1-9 on the d20)

As a damage bonus: the d8 can be added as bonus damage

Special: if the d8 result is equal to the result of the attack roll, you can treat the attack roll as being a critical hit; this counts as using the d8 as an attack bonus

d10:

As an attack bonus: the d10 can be added to a hit (10-19 on the d20)

As a damage bonus: the d10 can be added as bonus damage

Special: the d10 result can be used in place of the attack roll, if the attack was a miss (1-9 on the d20); this counts as using the d10 as an attack bonus (i.e. a 10 on the d10 can be used to turn a miss into a hit)

d12:

As an attack bonus: [none]

As a damage bonus: the d12 can be added as bonus damage

Special: on a critial hit, the d12 can be treated as having rolled its maximum result, regardless of the natural result of the die roll

Summation
As you can see from this, I sort of consider d4 to be the best “support” die -- it just always works. The d8 is another good support die; it's not as flexible, but it has a greater ability to turn a miss into a hit, just because it does have a bigger number range than the d4.

I tinkered quite a bit with the d10 before finally settling on this version. The 'special' feature seems a bit niche (indeed, it’s effectively a [10% chance on the d10] * [45% miss chance on the d20] = 4.5% increase in hit chance) but this little bump was needed to keep the damage math in line with other bonuses.

Now, I had wanted to have this sort of “use the class die in place of the attack roll” mechanic be part of the d12 bonus in some form. However, I just couldn’t get it to work without the overall bonus being too damn high. This would in turn require another round of increasing all of the other bonuses --  a task made nearly impossible by the fact that the d4 has effectively already maxed out its possible applications. After tinkering around with the numbers, I felt satisfied with using the bonus damage on a crit -- and allowing the d12 mechanic to just be something simpler than the others. These bonuses also serve to create a distinction in playstyle, between the "2d6" tanky classes and the "1d12" tanky classes, which I think is a valuable bit of design space to explore.

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Next post is scheduled for January 21st, so be sure to check back then!