Scattershot (2023)

 Just a few short little things today:

1. Advantage
After typing out the whole post on the double roll mechanics, I'm leaning more and more towards stripping out Advantage for base damage and initiative bonus. This would leave it only being able to apply to checks (skill checks or initiative checks) which is a lot cleaner. It would also remove the need for the specific double-roll mechanic, for advantage on 2dX base damage/initiative bonus expressions. Basically, what I'll have to do is go through the existing drafts for the classes, and see how many times these mechanics were actually used, and then decide if they should just be replaced with mastery, or with some other kind of dice bonus. (This may lead to some pondering over whether HP and initiative should still be linked.)

2. Class Slates & Power Sources
I should probably lay out what the actual "class slate" compositions are. It's also worth noting that each slate will contain one class from each "class category" -- the idea being that this allows classes within a category to have easily-comparable mechanics, but also so that each slate can be used to compose a party consisting of one member from each category, without the need to borrow classes from other slates. That being said, since slates are focused around power sources, getting every power source (and therefore, training with all of the knowledge skills) will be a lot easier for a party if they mix and match classes from more than one slate. Although each slate focuses on 2 power sources, most classes will have access to at least 3 power sources, and I've tried to sprinkle the power sources "evenly" when all 3 slates are taken on the whole.

• Slate 1 ("Martial or Divine") - Cleric, Paladin, Fighter, Acrobat, Warlord
• Slate 2 ("Arcane or Shadow") - Sage, Rogue, Bard, Occultist, Spellbinder
• Slate 3 ("Martial and/or Primal") - Druid, Guardian, Ranger, Adventurer, Barbarian

3. Tumbling

It sort of occured to me that there might be justification for having 3 tiers of "disengaging." For starters, the obvious baseline for such mechanics is the "5-ft step" (3.5) or the "Shift" (4e) which allows you to move 5 feet / 1 square (respectively) without provoking, but this effectively ends your movement. In my head, I've kind of extrapolated this out in TNP terms to equate to "disengaging from 1 enemy" which should take a Move Action, without requiring a check; to "disengage from 1 enemy" as a Minor Action, would require a Tumble check (however that ends up being adjudicated.) 

With that baseline in mind, it then stands to reason that "disengaging from 1 maelstrom" as a Move Action would require a Tumble check (but would not require one, if done as a Standard Action), and that "disengaging from all enemies" could be done as a Standard Action requiring a Tumble check -- then it's just sort of a matter of "filling in the grid" so to speak.

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Going to keep it short this time, as I've been in kind of a crunch lately.
Check for the next post on the weekend of May 5th-7th.

Party Composition (2023)

So, building off of the earlier posts on role mechanics as well as class categories, I felt that party composition was something I should touch on for today.

Generally speaking, TNP is built around the idea of having a party of 4 characters. This sort of leans on roles, and sort of leans on class categories... but not really. So let's get into it.

The basic idea for party composition in TNP is that, in its totality, the party should have training with each core skill, twice over. That is to say, at least two members of the party (mixed and matched) have training with each core skill. Each class will have training with 2 attributes/skillsets, with 'skill expert' classes gaining a 3rd, plus 'skill expert' and 'jack of all trades' classes having the option to take a feat granting an additional trained attribute/skillset.

Going the route of having both a 'skill expert' and 'jack of all trades' in the party, (and taking this feat twice, as a group) a party of 4 characters can end up with 11 instances of skill training, covering the 5 skillsets/attributes. This means there is a little bit of wiggle room, since at a minimum, a party of 4 would still have 8 instances of skill training, meaning most skills should be covered at least once.

Just as not every class category is covered by a party of 4, this also means that not every role or 'role mechanic' would necessarily be covered either. This is why it is useful having these mechanics as something that certain classes can toggle on or off; 'jack of all trades' classes and 'disciple' classes both have the option to select a different combat role at the start of each combat, essentially allowing such classes to plug different gaps in the party.

As such, while the class categories used in TNP are grouped by slate (and slates are loosely based on power sources) this is not analagous to 4th Edition; class category does not determine your class' combat role within its slate / power source. Instead, it is more of an indication of which "pillar" your class focuses on:

• Skill Experts focus on core skills, and generally have the easiest access to Infiltration skills
• Ideologues focus more on knowledge skills, and generally have access to more knowledge skill ranks than other categories -- but they also tend to specialize, rather than generalize, in this regard
• Jack of All Trades classes are the most customizable, and meant to fill gaps within parties through bonus feats and their access to role mechanics
• Blade Masters are (obviously) melee classes, and so generally focus on combat, of the melee variety -- either tanking/defending, or as melee strikers (and within that, they're more of a 'skirmisher' or 'brute' role rather than a 'lurker')
• Disciples are...still kind of a mixed bag, at this point.

So that sort of begs the question...
...if skill expert is the Subterfuge (♠) category
....and blade master is the Combat (♣) category

...does that make 'jack of all trades' the Social (♥) category?

...should the Exploration (♦) category be the Disciples, or the Ideologues?

A compelling argument could be made that Warlord should be the Social disciple, and Druid should be the Exploration disciple, leaving Occultist as (probably) the obvious Subterfuge disciple. But I would be remiss if I didn't also acknowledge Warlord as basically a literal "disciple of Combat" (duh)

Knowledge skills (i.e. ideologues) tend to lean towards exploration skills, but they do have some social applications as well (specifically the Local, Streetwise, and Nobility & Royalty skills.)

If we're looking at the 'jack of all trades' category, Fighter is the obvious Combat class; Bard (Scholar) could be Exploration, and Bard (Performer) could be Social, with Adventurer (Scout) being Exploration and Adventurer (Skald) being Social... then is Exploration or Social the obvious secondary pillar, for the Fighter?

Circling back to roles, I should reiterate that most "support healing" in TNP does not spend reserves. The rationale being that we do not want that role to create an additional drain on reserves -- as was the typical knock on 'leader' classes in 4e. (Some people people have argued that "Damage is King" and healing is wasteful and unnecessary, but I can't say I've lived that experience.) Part of the reason for doing it this way is so that you can better compose your party to the tastes of your players, without necessarily needing to fill every "role" in combat. This (hopefully) allows people to play more to their preferred style, rather than tailoring to some real or perceived necessity, within the party composition mini-game. And it certainly isn't mandatory to have one of each "category" in every party, or that you shouldn't double up on a given category, either.

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Alright, I'll leave it at that for today. Next post will be aiming for April 25th or 26th, so check back then!

Role Mechanics (2023)

I'll begin this post with a bit of a disclaimer. As touched on in the overview of subclasses and categories, not all classes will have "roles" (in terms of the TNP mechanic) while some classes will have roles baked in as part of their subclass and/or specialization. That being said, I'm going to touch on what I would consider to be role mechanics, even if a given class does not necessarily derive those mechanics from a role.

Perhaps it'd be best to start off by qualifying what a role is, in TNP. In earlier drafts, it was usually referred to as a "combat role" and (in short) it was a feature or set of mechanics that helped a class to fulfil a particular job or play-style, during combat. The most obvious example is whether a Fighter is going to be playing the "tank" or the "DPS" in a given encounter. Classes which have the option to select a role at the start of combat (i.e when initiative is rolled) will typically get one role at 1st level, with the ability to gain more roles as they progress.

If we look back to 4th Edition D&D (and particularly, pre-Essentials) a class was quite clearly defined as the intersection of one role with one power source; the Paladin was a Divine Defender, while the Fighter was a Martial Defender. The roles included defender (i.e. tank), leader (i.e. healer), striker (i.e. DPS), and controller. (Probably worth mentioning that I've heard cases of people having weird hangups with the term "leader" -- such as assuming that those were the only classes allowed to lead the party.) As 4e progressed into Essentials, the striker role became more gated towards melee, while ranged characters were funnelled into the controller role. At any rate, TNP follows more or less the same formula, with a few wrinkles.

Support
First, in TNP the leader role is generally referred to as "Support" to avoid the aforementioned hangups. The core support mechanic is restoring HP -- typically referred to as "inspiring" allies, rather than explicitly healing them; this has to do with HP being an abstraction more generally, but also specifically with not wanting HP restoration to necessarily have to be miraculous or magical, in any way. Whereas 4e D&D would grant classes with this role a twice per encounter healing ability, I've gone in the direction of "once per ally, per encounter" so that it scales to party size a little bit better. Generally speaking, this HP restoration will not cost reserves, instead using dice mechanics. We kind of want the amount of HP restored to be in that 2d4 to 2d6 ballpark, so depending on the class using the ability, the healing may be keyed off of their own class dice, or use the higher of their dice roll or the target's dice roll. Many support classes will be able to use this ability as a minor action, or as a standard actions with some additional benefit.

Example classes: Cleric, Warlord, Bard, Druid, Adventurer (Skald), Guardian (Shaman)

Striker
Just as the striker role in 4e split off into ranged and melee variants (and I've often argued this was how a party of 5 was meant to be rounded out, within a paradigm of only 4 roles) TNP generally does the same. More specifically, the ranged striker role tends to lean towards d6 classes, while the melee striker role tends to be d10 classes. However, as mentioned in earlier posts, the "2d6" ethos allows for tanky (i.e. melee) characters, so this is by no means a strict rule. The reason for going with d6 and d10 as the "striker dice" is because d6 is so ubiquitous, it makes it an obvious choice to use for stacking multiple damage dice; likewise, a standard polyhedral dice set usually contains percentile dice (effectively, two d10s) and sets of multiple d10s (often used in RPGs such as the World of Darkness) have also become commonplace. The other reason for selecting these dice, is that there's actually a pretty obvious cap/balance point: 5d6 or 3d10, both producing a maximum of 30.
Again, while some characters will be strikers by virtue of it being a role option for their class, it'll be baked into some classes in other ways as well.

Example Classes: Fighter (d6, d12), Cleric (d4, d10), Paladin (d6, d10), Rogue (d6), Occultist (d10), Guardian (d4, d6), Adventurer (d6, d8) Ranger (d8, d10), Barbarian (d10, d12)

Defender
While 4e used marking mechanics, Essentials moved to the "defender aura" mechanic. As you might have guessed, TNP leans towards the latter, with a bit of the former sprinkled in as well. The drawback to the aura system is that forced movement can mitigate it to a great extent; a marking mechanic that does not require adjacency can potentially allow for punishments to be dealt from a distance (probably best demonstrated by the Paladin in 4e, but also the Swordmage.) To augment the mark-and-punishment mechanics, generally defenders in TNP will have beefed up "opportunity damage" expressions. There are also some incentivizing mechanics (i.e. encouraging enemies to target the defender and/or discouraging them from targeting others, using bonuses or penalties, respectively.) Another key defender mechanic is allowing them to make opportunity attacks whenever an enemy attempts to move away, including by methods which would normally not provoke such attacks.

Example Classes: Fighter, Paladin, Warlord, Spellbinder (Swordmage), Guardian (Warden), Barbarian

Controller
Often somewhat nebulous, and eluding a comprehensive or simple definition in 4e, this role is likewise broad in TNP. These classes will definitely do the bulk of the status effects / conditions (whereas such riders could be found within nearly any role, in 4e) as well as doing area attacks, and (specific to TNP) performing the role of summoning/controlling other creatures.

Example Classes: Acrobat, Cleric (Invoker), Warlord, Sage (Wizard), Rogue (Sorcerer), Occultist, Spellbinder (Hexblade), Druid (Summoner), Adventurer, Ranger

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Hopefully that all helps to provide a better overview of how classes can be expected to operate in combat. If you have any suggestions for blog topics, please comment below (or wherever you get your links to the blog.) Next post is due April 15th.