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.