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.