Updated Mechanics: Double Rolls, Advantage, Disadvantage (2023)

In previous iterations of the designs, advantage and disadvantage were nested under the idea of "double rolls" -- which seems reasonable enough, given that in those instances, you're rolling the same die twice. One of the added mechanics that TNP was using pertains to what would happen if you rolled doubles (i.e. a tie) on a double roll; specifically in the 2018 draft, "if a double roll results in a tie, you can redo the roll, or treat one of the dice as having rolled its maximum value."

Generally speaking, the reason for adding in this rule was because you always feel kind of robbed when advantage turns up the same result on both dice. Since disadvantage would always use the lower result, this added rule didn't impact the result of a tie with disadvantage, unless you chose to reroll.

Since the designs are moving more towards the "2dX" expression (rather than describing those as being some sort of double roll) as well as moving towards class dice bonuses and away from advantage, things have been reworked in the latest designs.

Specifically, advantage is only going to be applicable to certain types of rolls:

• Initiative Checks (d20)
• Skill Checks (d10)
• Base Damage (class dice)
• Initiative Bonus (class dice)

Now, since the class dice expressions mentioned here can use 1dX or 2dX, in order to have advantage work as a generic bonus that can be applied to these rolls, the old double roll mechanic has been broken down into its composite parts. Essentially, when advantage is applied to a 2dX expression, the "treat one of the dice as having rolled its maximum value"-rule is used, on a tie. Part of the rationale for doing it this way is that, interestingly enough, 2d4 with advantage and 1d8 with mastery produce the same average result as each other (about 5.375) as do 2d6 with advantage and 1d12 with mastery (about 7.42). This is potentially very helpful in ensuring that base damage expressions (as well as initiative bonuses) remain reasonably balanced with each other.

The idea with allowing advantage to be applied to initiative bonuses was meant to create another little piece of design space to work with, in terms of class features. With advantage on initative checks being more of a specific, situational bonus (as mentioned in the previous post) I didn't want to have class features tinker with the checks themselves, too much.

In order to streamline things (and make some of the calcuations a bit simpler) the option to reroll on ties has been removed. Also, as a general rule, disadvantage will override advantage; this means that if both would apply to a roll, only disadvantage is applied. This makes sense in the context of skill checks in particular, where training with a skill gives you advantage, but debilities to skills are intended to give you disadvantage -- whether you have training or not.

To avoid any further confusion with the 2dX mechanics, there is no applying disadvantage to base damage or to initiative bonus, within the new designs; generally speaking, disdvantage will only be applied to:

• Attack Rolls (d20)
• Saving Throws (d20)
• Initiative Checks (d20)
• Skill Checks (d10)

Generic double-rolls do still exist within the mechanics, and always use the mechanic for ties. This is typically utilized where a specific number range is meant to be produced. For example, the Sage's magic missile ability targets a number of enemies equal to the stacked value of the double roll (effectively, 2d4 number of targets, taking into account the mechanic for ties.) and each missile deals damage equal to the lower of the two double-rolled dice (i.e "lowest 1 of 2d4") The result is that the number of targets will be from 3 to 8 (skewed towards the average of 5.375) and the damage of each missile will be from 1 to 4 (skewed towards the average of 1.88).

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A fairly brief topic for today, but I figured it was one worth touching on.
Hopefully I can get us back on schedule going forward; next post is planned for April 5th.

New Mechanics: Status Effects, Conditions, and Initiative (2023)

I'm choosing to not call this post an overview, because some of the information presented here isn't completely instituted into the game, and I expect some of it to change with playtesting. Where status effects and conditions intersect with initiative, is when you try to sort out the notion of "surprise" rounds or a "surprised" mechanic/condition; that will be touched on towards the end of the post.

Laying the Groundwork
As one might expect, when looking for inspiration, the first thing I did was make up a spreadsheet to help me compare conditions from 4e/Essentials with those in 5e. In my opinion, the conditions in 5e are poorly constructed and underutilized in the designs; that's not to say 5e added in a bunch of unneeded conditions, just that they didn't execute on them. (It has been hinted at that 'One D&D' will rework things to make status effects actually line up with spell effects, something I think potentially could be a big improvement.)

The short version of this comparison:

• 4e does not have a Poisoned, Frightened, or Incapacitated condition
• 5e does not have a Slowed, Dazed, Surprised, Helpless, Removed from Play, Weakened, or Insubstantial condition

Breaking down these outliers is probably a helpful place to start, in explaining why or why not to keep a condition in the game.

Poisoned: disadvantage on attack rolls and ability (i.e. skill) checks
This always struck me as weird, since such a generic debuff is tied to such a specific flavour of damage. For TNP, we're going with Exhausted as "disadvantage on all skill checks," while having "disadvantage on attack rolls" end up elsewhere.

Frightened: disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is in line of sight, and cannot willingly move closer to the source of the fear

I feel like this is one of those seminal control-type abilities in RPGs, and I genuinely think it's pretty well-written in 5e. We're keeping Frightened in TNP, but it's beefed up to more of an "action denial" effect, rather than just disadvantage on rolls.

Incapacitated: cannot take actions or reactions
My own DM'ing experience has led me to decide pretty early on that this type of effect wouldn't be in TNP. If you want to be really mean in combat, what you can do is combine more than one action denial effect; in 4th edition, dazed (can only take one action) and prone (needing to use your move action to stand up) was a pretty good example that I came up with.
I tend to refer to this condition as "lose a turn" -- and oddly enough, the 4e condition "Removed from Play" does exactly that; Stunned in 4e does the same, and Surprised is effectively "stunned during the surprise round." Suffice it to say, there's a lot of verbiage being thrown around on a concept that I ultimately wasn't going to use. Instead, if you are surprised at the start of initiative in TNP, you are Shocked, which is similar to 4e's Dazed condition -- limiting how many actions you can take, but not denying you the ability to act, outright. The term "Incapacitated" in TNP is instead recycled as the generic debility, granting you disadvantage on attacks and saves, and granting your enemies combat mastery against you -- while you yourself are unable to gain combat mastery against enemes (that last bit was something that was ultimately added in to the Blinded effect, in Essentials.)

Slowed: your speed becomes 2, do not pass 'Go', do not collect $200
This one from 4e was pretty hard to mimic in a more-abstracted movement ethos. Effectively, this is absorbed into the Immobilized condition, which restricts all forms of movement except for teleportation or forced movement. 'Restrained' is a bit of a sticky wicket; in 5e it reduces your movement speed to 0, whereas in 4e it adds that you can only move by teleportation. Both also effectively give you a penalty while granting enemies a bonus to attack you. In the current draft, Restrained in TNP makes you Immobilized, Incapacitated, and unable to move or be moved by any means, in addition to disadvantage on certain skills (i.e. Weakened.) Grappled is essentially "Immobilized while the grapple is maintained" so as such, it seemed reasonable to make it a little stronger than just regular immobilization; in the current draft, this translates to also applying disadvantage on off-turn actions.

Helpless: you grant combat advantage

Now, specifically the only time this condition is used in 4e is when you're unconscious, although the Essentials text more or less says the DM can slap you with this if you're tied up real good, or similar. It's also the prerequisite for a coup de grace in 4e (if memory serves.) Suffice it say, we're not using this in TNP. If a creature is Dropped (i.e. surrenders or drops to 0 HP) they fall Prone -- which is an effect that grants combat mastery in melee.

Weakened/Insubstantial: you deal/take half damage (respectively)

I just never like the mechanics of doing half of anything, and having to round up or down. Effectively, hitting or being hit 50% less often mimics the same effect, and so that's where the disadvantage mechanic is a handy catch-all. Again, this is not used in TNP.

Rounding Out the List:

Now, at its core, the status effects in TNP (aside from those based on positioning in combat) are all designed off of a few basic building blocks:

• Combat Mastery
• Incapacitated
• Shocked
• [disadvantage on skills]

As said earlier, Exhausted grants disadvantage on all skill checks. Weakened grants disadvantage on Strength and Athletics checks; this effect is nested into Restrained, in the current draft. Dazzled is simply disadvantage on Detection skills; the Dazed and Dominated conditions have Dazzled nested into them. Likewise, Frazzled is disadvantage on skill checks using Subtlety (i.e. Stealth) and Communication (i.e. Intimidation); the Fazed and Frightened conditions cause the target to also be Frazzled. (Alliteration is fun!)

I also didn't want the bigger/badder conditions to simply be a combination of smaller conditions -- otherwise, you don't need to make a new condition, you can simply mix and match the smaller ones to get the same effect. So for the higher-end effects, there's also usually a little something extra:

• Dazed creatures are Dazzled, Incapacitated, and unable to see
• Fazed creatures are Frazzled, Incapacitated, and unable to hear or speak
• Dominated creatures are Dazzled, Shocked, and cannot attack or disengage from the source
• Frightened creatures are Frazzled, Shocked, and "Cannot take movement actions except to disengage from the source, or to take cover"

Beyond all this, there are things like cover, high ground (as it has been called in earlier drafts) or altitude (as it's tentatively called in the current draft), as well as being Hidden (covering both the Stealth skill as well as any magical forms of invisibility) and the 4e-staple Bloodied condition.

The trickiness with some of these is the mechanic of "players always roll" rather than enemies attacking players, bringing into question whether or not a particular condition should always apply "evenly." In other words, should an effect that grants disadvantage on saves (i.e. to players only) make the target also grant combat mastery to those targeting it (something that can apply to players, and monsters)? This uneven application can potentially lead to a double-penalty where one is not intended -- theorycrafting doesn't always catch everything, so this is where playtesting has to step in and find issues.

Surprise! Roll for Initiative
I mentioned in earlier posts that initiative checks will be it's own "thing" rather than piggybacking off of skill checks. This is because the change to skill check dice (i.e. no longer using d20) produces a flatter result, meaning the initiative numbers would be clustered together, when in practice it's better if they're spread apart. The question becomes, how do you determine who has surprise? It doesn't make sense to just go by highest/lowest initiative, but we also can't simply compare opposing initiative checks, since they are no longer skill checks.

What I'm considering is this (and admittedly, this is clunky and might bog things down):
Whenever you're out exploring, and danger may arise, each player should choose whether they're sneaking, on lookout, or taking a 'balanced' approach (snazzier terms for these, TBD.)

• If you are sneaking, you roll stealth: on a success, you are Hidden at the start of combat; on a failure, you have disadvantage on your initiative check (i.e. only the d20 component of the roll.)
• If you are on lookout, you roll perception: on a success, you gain advantage on your initiative check (again, only for the d20 component); on a failure, you are Shocked at the start of combat.
• If you are taking a balanced approach, you do not need to make a skill check; you do not gain any of the possible penalties or benefits to initative/at the start of combat.

By structuring it this way, we get the benefit of the 5e approach (where there is no 'surprise round' per se) while making it more clear as to who has the jump on who -- since it can be adjudicated on an individual basis, rather than... whatever the hell 5e is trying to do. (I find the idea of "group checks" to be a bad mechanic, just generally.) It also sort of lines up with the 4e notion of surprise, where the ambushers get a round to take limited actions, while the "surprised" get to do nothing; instead, in TNP you have the ambushers able to act fully and with a bonus (i.e. combat mastery from being Hidden) while the "surprised" are limited in their actions, and have a penalty (granting combat mastery from being Shocked). I also like the structure of having Shocked be an in-combat status as well as the one used to model surprise -- rather than 4e having two different statuses that are functionally the same thing.

Teaser:
The other application to consider is whether certain effects should be 'at-will' while others require you to burn 'encounter' or 'daily' powers -- or whether burning reserves can upgrade effects, along a certain track. It's definitely something that will need to be worked into the overall designs.

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Well, it's anyone's guess when the next post will be out; hopefully March 26th, at the lastest.

Overview: Subclasses & Categories (2023)

Thinking about it recently, I realized that the classes and subclasses (which are included in/planned for TNP) isn't something I've laid out succinctly, or in detail -- probably since the current slates were finalized, way back when. Today I'd like to remedy that, and just give a general, overall update on where class designs are at.

Getting back to Essentials
Now, this may come as a shock to some people, but I don’t distinctly think of TNP as being a “spiritual successor” to 4th Edition D&D. In fact, I’ve previously described it on this very blog as being “sort of a love letter to Essentials” much the same way that the designers of 13th Age describe their game as “a love letter to D&D.” Perhaps a more accurate way of putting it, is that TNP is meant to be something like “what (I think) Essentials should have been.” All this is to say, there was consideration given to including as many of the classes as possible from 4e, in some fashion or another -- such as by using subclasses. (5th Edition follows this same route; the easiest example I can think of is how the 'Favored Soul' class from 3.5 was folded into being a Sorcerer 'Divine Soul' subclass in 5e.) If you want to read into which classes have been left out, along with some context as to why, check out this post right here.

In alphabetical order, I'm going to start with the classes which are considered "playtest ready" (although, as you might infer from a previous blogpost, the overarching design ethos for the reserve mechanic is still subject to change -- which would have knock-on effects w/r/t daily or encounter powers being added to classes.)

The Acrobat (d4, d8) -- Skill Expert
This class came about from my idea to include a simple archer class in the game; this was around the time that there were two full slates of classes, with Fighter (being split off from 'Warrior') and Archer being the beginnings of the third slate at the time. A bunch of classes were rejuggled and the slates were realigned a bit once all 3 started to take shape, part of which involved combining the Archer with the Martial Artist (formerly a Monk subclass) to create the basis of the current Acrobat class. Ultimately, this creates a rogue-ish skill expert class that comes in a melee flavour and a ranged flavour -- a recurring theme you'll see, as we continue through the list.

Since the Acrobat is meant to be more of a simple/generic class that you can reflavour however you'd like, one thing that makes it unique is that ir's the only class which can pick from any power source. Part of the intent with that is to cover the design space of some of the classes that didn't make the final cut -- such as the Executioner and the Seeker. To that end, I'm considering giving the Acrobat some different/special mechanics depending on the power source chosen; this would be another feature to make the Acrobat unique among other classes. As of this writing, that is not yet included in the 'playtest-ready' version.

The Adventurer (d6, d8) -- Jack of All Trades
When this class was originally introduced as "The Warrior" (not to be confused with the earlier Warriors, which eventually morphed into the Barbarian) it was essentially the result of attempting to spin off the Scout subclass into its own class. Earlier in the designs, it had moved around from being a Rogue subclass and a Ranger subclass -- ultimately the Scout is sort of the two-weapon fighting version of both/either; in Essentials, it was a Ranger subclass, and in 3.5 it was (effectively) an alternate Rogue class. With the slates being restructured around power sources, the Primal/Martial (i.e. 3rd) slate needed a social-focused character option; this is when the Skald was spun off from the Bard. Being a class in the post-essentials book Heroes of the Feywild made it not so much of a stretch as a candidate for a slate with this kind of focus. Building out the Skald as a two-weapon fighter makes it a bit distinct from its 4e inspiration, but leans into other origins (such as the Barbarian shouts, from Diablo 2) as mentioned in the linked post.

The Barbarian (d10, d12) -- Blade Master
This is one of the simpler classes within the designs. As such, the Totemic Warrior is more or less the 'tank' subclass, and the Berserker is the 'striker' subclass. One thing I decided to do with classes in the Blade Master category, is to let them borrow from other classes in their slate, for their class specialization at level 1. As such, the Barbarian has the option to take a (modified) Guardian domain, or an Adventurer role as their specialization, allowing them to lean more heavily into tank/striker, or dabble between the two. This idea of "class = role, but also role = role" can be seen a little bit in the Strike! RPG, which also owes a bit of parentage to 4th Edition D&D.

The Bard (d8) -- Jack of All Trades
Subclasses for the Bard amount to specialization in either knowledge/mental skills (Scholar) or physical and social skills (Performer). As a "jack of all trades" class, I wanted there to be sort of a trade off between the two disciplines, rather than being potentially great at almost everything -- which is more in line with a skill expert class. Essentially, it's a split between the "bardic knowledge" sort of bard, and the musician/acrobat sort of bard. The roles for the bard class essentially provide a signature combat spell, to diversify things a little further; the bard (like most classes in its slate) will also be able to dabble in the Sage domains, if they wish.

The Fighter (d6, d12) -- Jack of All Trades
Originally conceived as a simpler class (alongside the Archer) and using only the d6, the Fighter morphed to include the d12 (eliminating the need for 2d6 mechanics) once classes started adopting a 2nd class die. The Brute is the high-HP/high-damage subclass, whereas Soldier is more the high-AC/weaponmaster subclass. Similarly to the Barbarian, roles allow this class the option to lean more heavily into one specialization or the other. Fighting styles add another layer of customization, letting you switch up tactics during combat.

The Guardian (d4, d6) -- Ideologue
Pretty straightforward, here: this class is built off of the Warden (defender) and Shaman (leader) classes, from 4th Edition. I view Shaman as almost a more-magical Warlord, and the TNP iteration leans into having them either cause spirits to possess an ally, or having the Shaman themselves doing the possession. Likewise, the Warden feels like a TNP Fighter (particularly being a d6 class) just with all the martial tinkering stripped down and replaced with more Primal mechanics. It's also worth mentioning that between Shaman and Skald, this slate ends up with two subclasses that can serve as the main healers.

The Paladin (d6, d10) -- Blade Master
I had a lot of fun playing/shoe-horning/turd-polishing the Blackguard in 4e, so I knew I was always going to include it in TNP. It was more a question of whether it'd be on the Divine slate or the Shadow slate (possibly under a Death Knight class, or something similar); it ended up being the former, as a subclass under the Paladin. Generally, the Paladin class in TNP is heavily influenced by Diablo 2 (albeit without the ethos of having 20 different auras to pick from.) The Holy Warrior subclass I'd say borrows ideas from the Hospitaler paragon path (4e) and is at least something of spiritual successor to the 'Oath of Devotion' (5e). For the Paladin's class specialization (as part of the Blade Master paradigm) they get the option to take either a Fighter role, or a (modified) Cleric domain.

The Ranger (d8, d10) -- Skill Expert
With the two-weapon Ranger effectively spun off onto the Adventurer class, the other obvious Ranger subclasses are the archery-focused Hunter and the melee-focused Beastmaster. This also leans into the idea of having only two subclasses per each class (while class specializations expanded, with most classes having at least two, but often 3 or 4.) Much like its Essentials namesake, the Hunter is something of a "martial-controller" build, but the overall Ranger class is geared towards the 'striker' role, particularly being a d10 class. If there's anything I might want to add onto the class, it'd be something like the 'Wilderness Knacks' of the Essentials versions.

The Rogue (d6) -- Skill Expert
At one point, the Rogue and the Trickster were separate d6 classes, with the latter being sort of a generic charisma-based spellcasting class -- having both Bard and Sorcerer as subclasses. With the dice being "cast" in certain "roles" (something I've done multiple posts on, over the years) it seemed obvious to move Bard off of a striker die like d6 and onto more of a support die, like d8. (In fact, at one point in the designs, Bard was effectively the "charisma subclass" of the d4 Mage class -- precursor to the Sage.) Suffice it to say, with all the reshuffling that went on, Sorcerer ended up paired with the Assassin, to make the current Rogue class. Within a slate based on magic and shadow, this seemed like a pretty good fit, with the Sorcerer as the 'AoE' or 'blaster' striker, and Assassin as the single-target striker.

Back in the 'beta 3' version, the Rogue had Scoundrel, Scout, and Assassin as its subclasses; effectively, the Scoundrel features were mostly subsumed into the base Rogue class. As such, I'm leaning towards renaming the Assassin subclass to Scoundrel, leaning on its usage in Knights of the Old Republic (and similarly derived Star Wars tabletop RPGs) as the name for its skill expert-type class.

The Sage (d4) -- Ideologue
In the original slate, "Mage" was the name of the de-facto Wizard class. Various subclasses have come and gone since then, including Swordmage and Bard. When the 3rd slate was finalized and everything was reshuffled to line up by power sources, Monk was stapled onto the Mage, which then morphed into the Sage. I felt that splitting the more magical, mystical "Ki Master" off from the Martial Artist made sense, and reimagining Wizard schools to also fit with the Monk worked pretty seamlessly. Again, this is a shining example where a class consists of a melee subclass and a ranged subclass, similar to the Acrobat.

The Sage is the only Ideologue class which has 3 domains to pick from; these options have always been there, basically from the outset of the designs, and I didn't see any sense in reducing it down to 2, just for the sake of uniformity. Also, because the Bard and Spellbinder classes are able to dip into Sage domains, it makes sense to have more variety rather than less.

Work in Progress
Now as I've said, the following classes are not playtest ready, and as such, features mentioned here are either not complete or not implemented at all -- and so while the stated intentions may be to do things a certain way, they may ultimately not turn out as such. So take this all with a grain of salt.

The Cleric (d4, d10) -- Ideologue
While not a direct descendant of the Warpriest, the Battle Priest is meant to be the archetypical melee Cleric. Likewise, the Invoker is meant more as a generic 'lazer cleric' -- although with the reworks of reserves still ongoing, there might be room to implement some of the unique mechanics the class had in 4e. Healing will be a baseline ability for the core Cleric class, so both subclasses will be able to fill that role. In the previous iteration, the Cleric also had domains (War, Life) as their class specialization, with their features gaining different riders dependent on (potentially) both their chosen subclass and their domain. This became a bit messy/clunky, so part of finalizing the class will be trying to clean that up, hopefully without sacrificing any functionality or interesting build options.

The Druid (d4, d12) -- Disciple
What started off as a generic "summoner" class (with essentially Druid and Necromancer subclasses) was eventually reshuffled into the Druid class, with Shapeshifter and Summoner as its subclasses. Like the Cleric, this class will also have healing as a baseline ability, but there will likely be some limitation to its use while shapeshifted. There was originally some thought given to structuring Druid similarly to Paladin or Barbarian (borrowing from other classes for their specialization) but eventually the Disciple category was reworked, to function off of roles. Druids "forms" will function as roles, gaining one as their specialization at 1st level, with the option to gain others as they level. I'm still debating if there might be something else to add onto the class. Also, implementing d12 into the class mechanics hasn't been done yet; that'll be a huge step, so hopefully it doesn't cause too many problems.

The Occultist (d10) -- Disciple
The previous iteration was a bit of a departure from what had come before it; I had kind of just said "screw it" and redid the designs more or less from scratch. What resulted was essentially an Occultist class, having Necromancer and Warlock as "roles" (providing different effects to cursed targets, and a few different combat actions) and with the class having both "Animate Dead" and "Eldritch Blast" as baseline abilities. With the whole design ethos pivoting towards all classes having two subclasses, I think I want the next rework to return Necromancer and Warlock to being subclasses, and layer on different role features (as a Disciple class) on top of that -- which may result in the different "spells" effectively becoming role actions, similar to how it works for the Bard. There's also a question of what "something else" the class might need to have, as is the case with the Druid.

The Spellbinder (d12) -- Blade Master
This class has always been a combination of magical swordmen, specifically the Swordmage (from 4e's Forgotten Realms Player's Guide) and the Hexblade (from the Essentials book Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms) Leaning into the spellbinder name, I also built in a focus on sort of hypnotizing and/or blinding opponents. When it came time to make a tanky, d12 class for the 'magic & shadow' slate, this type of class was the obvious choice (aside from possibly the previously-mentioned Death Knight idea.)

Looking at the previous draft, I think the class is (overall) more or less complete(?) and probably just needs to be updated to the current formatting. The only thing missing (to bring it in line with the other Blade Master classes) would be another specialization option; currently the Spellbinder only has Sage domains as their options, whereas the other two Blade Masters get to pick from domains, and one other thing. Maybe once the Occultist roles get worked out, those could be added in, here.

The Warlord (d8, d12) -- Disciple
Warlord is actually a class that is missing subclasses altogether. It has roles, and it also has the "something else" (namely, Combat Maneuvers) that other Disciple classes are missing. My intent is to add in a Tactician subclass (which is more of a frontline, melee-focused idea) as well as a Strategist subclass (more of a backline, support/commander sort of idea.) What form that will take in terms of actual class features is yet to be ironed out; I'll want to go back and mine the various 4e Warlord subtypes for ideas.

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Apologies for the delay in posting, but hopefully the deep dive makes up for it.
Next post is due on March 15th!