Class Showcase: Acrobat, Bard, Sage (2023)

For today's post, we're going to look at 3 classes that have sort of been tangled and disentangled from each other, at various points in the development.

• The Acrobat (d4, d8)
• The Bard (d8)
• The Sage (d4)

When I had first set about making a d4 Monk class (at the start of doing the 2nd full slate of classes, if memory serves) there was essentially a "mundane monk" subclass (the Martial Artist) and a "magical monk" subclass (the Ki Master). Later on, when I got around to doing a 3rd slate of classes, one of the ideas I started off with was to add an archer, as a "2d4" class. Eventually, the archer and the "mundane monk" got stapled together to form the Acrobat. Although not mechanically inspired by the Avenger or the Executioner from 4th Edition, the idea is that with different power sources (such as Divine or Shadow, respectively) the Acrobat can be used to approximate the flavour of such classes.

Likewise, the Sage started off as the d4 Mage class. In early iterations, the "INT Mage" was the wizard subclass, with the "CHA Mage" being the bard subclass. Later, that would change to Wizard and Swordmage being the Mage subclasses (with Bard and Sorcerer being subclasses for the "Trickster" -- kind of a de facto "CHA Mage" class.) With the big remix that came out of the 3rd slate, the "magical monk" got stapled onto the wizard subclass, to create the Sage class. As such, the Wizard is kind of the "mental Sage" whereas the Monk is the "physical Sage" in terms of their skills.

By recombining the subclasses this way, both the Acrobat and the Sage end up with a melee subclass and a ranged subclass. The Bard would eventually get spun off into its own class, as would the Swordmage (expanding to include the Hexblade subclass, under the banner of the "Spellbinder" class.)

As a side note, the general realignment that came with the expansion to a 3rd slate of classes was meant to organize the slates more around power sources.

If you look at the 4th Edition books...

• Martial characters were in PHB1, and Heroes of the Fallen Lands
• Divine characters (specifically Cleric and Paladin) were in PHB1, Heroes of Shadow, Heroes of the Fallen Lands, and Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms
• Arcane characters were in PHB1 (Wizard, Warlock), and PHB2 (Bard, Sorcerer), with variants and subclasses for those spread across all of the Essentials books
• Primal characters were in PHB2, PHB3 (Seeker), Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms (Sentinel Druid, Hunter and Scout Rangers), and Heroes of the Feywild (Berserker Barbarian, Protector Druid)

The original slate in TNP was meant as more of a classic/"greatest hits" compilation (Mage, Rogue, Ranger, Paladin, Barbarian[-ish]) but when the roster expanded to 3 slates, it became more of an exercise in answering the question, "How would the 4e classes have been grouped, if we started with all of them and worked backwards [rather than start with the 8 classes from PHB1, and expand outwards]?"

With the Ranger class moving from "Martial" in PHB1 to "Martial and Primal" in Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, and Rogue being a good candidate for the underdeveloped Shadow power source, this left the Martial roster for TNP a little thin; the obvious way to fill it out was to combine Martial and Divine into one slate, consisting of the Acrobat, Fighter, Cleric, Paladin, and Warlord classes.

An "arcane and shadow" slate drawing from the Wizard, the "magical monk", the Rogue, the Sorcerer, the Bard, the Swordmage, the Hexblade, the Warlock, and the Necromancer would have more than enough material to flesh it out. Likewise, a combined "primal, or primal & martial" slate including all forms of Ranger, Druid, and Barbarian, as well as 4e-specific classes like Warden, Shaman, and Skald seemed to cover enough ground as well.

To sum up, the idea was that each TNP "book" (i.e. slate) would revolve around one or two power sources, and have all of the classes (and other materials) related to those power sources included. It's meant as sort of a refinement of the 4e ethos, where each "PHB" seems to have a primary power source (but also secondary and tertiary ones) as well as each power source having one or more "players' option" splat-books... to say nothing of the Essentials or post-Essentials books.

...

Anyway, that's all for this month.

Check back on October 10th for the next post!

Class Showcase: Adventurer, Barbarian, Guardian (2023)

I've been a little bit overly scrambly lately, so I'm going to use this post to release some of the updated classes. Hopefully this will produce some conversation and feedback, on the chance that any changes or tweaks need to be made. I decided to go with these 3 classes in particular, because the Barbarian borrows its class specialization options from the other two.

• The Adventurer (d6, d8)
• The Barbarian (d10, d12)
• The Guardian (d4, d6)

If you click into the links, you'll see that these are the "2021" versions of these classes. Most classes that have been completed since the 2018 version are referred to this way; the classes which are still being worked on will be referred to as "2023" versions.

The Adventurer arguably has changed the most, going from previously using a d10; for a two-weapon fighting class, d8 weapons seem like a better fit, and d6 for an extra damage die seems more appropriate for a subclass (Scout) that often lends itself to being more like a rogue.

The Guardian split into the Warden (defender) and Shaman (support) subclasses, borrowing from the 4e classes of the same names. The Guardian class essentially uses animal spirits to bestow supernatural powers; the Warden bestows those powers on themself, whereas the Shaman causes these spirits to possess an ally. The idea is that the Shaman is a support class more in the vein of a Warlord or Bard in 4e, using their allies as a conduit for attacks and such.

The Barbarian is meant to be more akin to the Berserker class from 4e -- but not entirely mechanically similar. The general idea being that rage is effectively "striker mode" while not raging is closer to "defender mode." As a d12 class, the Barbarian is focused on melee combat, while as a d10 class they're also potentially a very heavy hitter.

...

Anyways, that's all for today. If I stick with the format of releasing 3 classes at a time, that would mean 5 posts like this in total, taking us to the end of October. If I have the handful of remaining classes finished by then, we'll be in good shape.

Check back September 30th for the next post!

Are Old Mechanics the Next Mechanics?

As things crystalize and start to be narrowed down, I'm beginning to think back on some of the dice mechanics that have been shed from TNP (that, and the possible rework to class dice bonuses, that I mentioned in my previous post.) Specific to that, I'm wondering if the "d6 and d10 as extra damage, only" (mixed with beefed up bonuses for the other dice) could constitute the basis for a different game.

All in all, it sort of got me thinking back to some mechanics that have come and gone. At one point, there were no "opportunity attacks" just "opportunity damage" -- no attack roll needed; I wonder if, within the paradigm of two class dice, this is still necessary. Similarly, there used to be a "reliable" property, whereby if a basic attack missed, it would deal damage equal to the missed attack roll (i.e. a number between 1 and 9.) This didn't make a lot of sense, in a paradigm where the base damage of a successful attack might be 1d4 or 1d6, so it only ended up being used on classes which would use bigger dice for damage -- effectively creating a "rich get richer" kind of situation, leading it to eventually be scrapped. I've never liked using half-damage (or half-anything, for that matter) in my designs, so this was my attempt at a simple, streamlined "damage on a miss"-mechanic. If there's anything to be learned from this experiment, it's that damage on a miss should only ever be 1d4, or maybe 1d6?

Another big mechanic that has disappeared is stuff happening when you roll doubles; for advantage and disadvantage on d20s in particular, this was meant to remove the frustration of rolling twice but only getting one result. When it comes to damage dice "treat 1 die as having rolled its maximum" on a tie is sorta just like, "expertise, again" albeit less useful the higher the tie is. It's another way to boost damage, but it's not particularly... slick, really. It's also a bit trickier to calculate the math for "roll two and take the highest, but also" than it is to just do without that extra wrinkle.

Basically, the alternate class dice mechanics I was testing boiled down to this:

• add the d4 to the attack
• add the d8 to a miss
• use the d12 in place of the attack roll

Now, to boost up the damage output, I revised the basic concept of these bonus dice from "attack OR damage" to "attack AND damage." The other universal (sort of) perk, was how a tie between these bonus dice and the attack roll (d20) interacted. In short, when you roll a d20 with any other, smaller die (or along with another d20) the chance of a tie is 5% -- this mechanic is used on the existing d8 mechanic, to produce additional crits. The idea here was that this would also be bolted onto the d4 mechanic (as well as treating that die as max value, for the damage component only.) The idea with the d12 would be that (at least) if the result was a tie and both values would be considered a hit, the attack would be treated as a crit, and (possibly) that any other ties would be treated as a hit.

Overall, I think "use the d12 roll in place of the d20 roll" is a really slick mechanic within a DC10 paradigm, assuming you don't have to bog it down with a bunch of other baggage. I'd really like to use that somewhere, and in fact it'll probably appear on one or more of the d12 classes. I also think it might be interesting if these stripped down d4/d8/d12 mechanics could be used for saving throws (instead of d6 bonuses.)

One underused mechanic that I brought up ages ago is using things like "surge value" or "current number of reserves" as hard-number modifiers for class mechanics. In particular, one thing I thought of lately was using the max value of 1d8 or 2d4 (such as from its use as a surge value) as a replacement target number. Changing the DC from 10 to 8 would effectively boost the hit chance on an unmodified d20 by 10% -- and would also provide some neat interactions with the tying mechanic of the d8 bonus, since that die could effectively cover the entire "miss" range that way. I haven't incorporated this in any classes previously, but there may be some implementation of it for the unfinished classes -- I may even go back and relook at some of the others, particularly in cases where 1d8/2d4 is paired with one of the 'striker dice' (d6 or d10.)

One of the main mechanics in earlier drafts was "trade-offs" which... apparently some people thought was a misnomer? Essentially, it was a double roll, whereby you'd use one roll as a bonus and the other as a penalty; apparently, this does not describe a trade-off, but whatever. This worked a lot better in the paradigm of a single class die; nowadays when it is used in the text, which die to use for the double roll has to be specified every time, rather than just saying "using your class die." It's a bit tedious.

As I've said before, I really like the "percentile as adv/disadv" for its ergonomic qualities; it's also handy because a tie on 2d10 ends up being a 10% possibility. I've combined this mechanic with a d6 roll for both the (post-d20) skill mechanics in TNP, as well as the monster roll mechanic. The other thing with d10s is that expertise increases the chance of a 10 (i.e. succeeding at a DC10) by 10% as well. Hopefully, this kind of illustrates why I think this mechanic has some potential, if there is to be a "next next project."

---

Check back for the next post on September 20th!