Table of Contents (2024)

I found myself thinking about which parts of the TNP system need to be finalized and bolted into the documentation, so I figured a good way to go about listing the missing parts is by listing what's already there. So here's an overview of where the system document currently stands, and how it is structured:

1. Basic Mechanics

• TN10 and TN20
• Mastery and Combat Mastery
• Advantage and Disadvantage
• 5 basic rolls and the 5 dice bonuses (overview)
• Skill Check mechanics
• Saving Throw mechanics
• Attack Roll mechanics
• Extra Damage mechanics
• Class Dice Bonus mechanics

2. Characters

• List of the 3 slates of classes
• Combat Roles (overview)
• Class Categories (overview and breakdown)
• Character Progression
• Core Skills
• Power Sources (knowledge skill progression)
• Skill Synergies
• Feats

3. Combat Mechanics

• Character Statistics
• Engagement, Surge Value, Reserves
• HP and Initiative
• Base Damage and Opportunity Damage
• Initiative mechanics
• Status Effects & Conditions (external doc)
• Actions in Combat (overview and list)
• Skill Checks in Combat
• Disengaging
• Standing Up
• Push/Trip/Shove
• 'No Action'
• Interrupts
• Getting Open
• Engaging
• Standard Actions
• Iconic Attacks, Melee Basic Attacks, Ranged Basic Attacks
• Ranged Attacks
• Melee Attacks
• Reach

So as you can see from this list, what needs to be implemented are (largely) the "DM-side" mechanics. Older drafts of the monster mechanics exist, and a cleaned up overview of those has also previously been posted, here on the blog. (One thing that was mentioned there which also needs to be added are the keywords for things like Forms, Summons, etc. which are interacted with by the archenemy monster type.) The other pillars of these mechanics are the campaign-building, including building of both combat encounters and non-combat encounters.

In the discussion of monster mechanics, the idea of how to handle minions/swarms (with regards to the card-based random generation for campaigns/encounters) basically ironed itself out. The mechanics for "winning" a social or an exploration encounter definitely need to be mapped out; as an adjunct to that, the rules document needs to include a detailed explanation of how Skills are meant to be used.

As you might notice from all the links in the preceding paragraphs, these ideas have already mostly been laid out in the blog -- it's just a matter of incorporating them into the main documentation, cleaning up and refining as needed, and then (hopefully) running everything through some playtesting.

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That's it for 2024! If there's anything else you think should be included in the TNP documentation in order to help you run or play the game, leave a comment below or join the discussion on Discord.

As mentioned previously, blogging is planned to resume sometime in the 2nd week of January.

Having Reservations (2024)

Let's talk a bit about reserves!

I'll start by saying that the baseline assumption I'm working from for the sequel designs, is that all characters just have 10 HP and 10 reserves; 10 is a nice round number, and 10 is the default target-number or "DC" in TNP anyway. But there are other sources to consider.

One of the games that I've played with a D&D group that I'm a part of is the Warhammer Quest: Cursed City board game. This game effectively has a "wounds" system, whereby being hit twice removes one of your four action dice; for all intents and purposes, this means that the player-characters each possess 8 HP. There is no consideration given to a Constitution score or racial/background bonuses. Early drafts of TNP had all monsters function almost as minions, dealing a fixed amount of damage (usually 1 point) which is similar to how monsters in Cursed City tend to work; this allows HP to be relatively low, compared to the 30ish you would start with in modern TNP (or 4th Edition D&D) for example.

Since in TNP, "everything is derived from the dice," earlier drafts had HP as a function of a rolled class die; this was pretty quickly revised to "maximum value of your class die" (producing a range from 4 to 12) but the obvious imbalance this created led to (effectively) a flat 20 HP being added to these numbers, to even things out a bit more. Naturally, monster math and mechanics had to be completely reworked to accommodate this.

However, since the sequel is expressly not built off of class dice, we can use something like a flat 10 HP to avoid all of the complexity that got built onto the original, simple TNP framework. Likewise, rather than needing to have reserves be "maximum of 2d4/2d6/1d8/1d10/1d12" so that all classes are more or less balanced, we can just give everyone 10 reserves and be done with it.

Now, a topic that I brought up in the Discord is the idea of a "TNP version 1.1" which would fall outside of the sequel designs, and be more of "the same" game, as TNP. In particular, one thing I brought up was the (often blogged-about) idea of per-day and per-encounter abilities. So let me break this idea down a bit -- hopefully without re-treading too much ground.

Basically, if the assumption is that "one reserve = one full heal-up" then the idea becomes something like, "if you have [a maximum of] 7 combats per day, you need 7 reserves for healing," meaning any extra reserves can be used to fuel your other class features. The basic idea is that TNP 1.1 would focus around properly implementing this idea.

To wit, a class with 8 reserves (i.e. 2d4 or 1d8 as their reserve calculation) would have 1 extra reserve not needed for healing, each adventuring day; the assumption would be that these classes would have a "once per day" reserve-burning ability. Likewise, a class with 12 reserves (2d6 or 1d12 calculation) might have a "once per encounter" reserve-burning ability.

So maybe the hierarchy ends up looking something like this:

• 8 reserves: 7 for healing + 1 per-day ability
• 10 reserves: 7 for healing + 3 extra healing
• 12 reserves: 7 for healing + 1 per-day ability + 4 extra healing -OR- 7 for healing + 5 for per-encounter abilities

In this case, extra healing might be for the character to top themselves up (if they are a tanky class that is expected to eat more damage than average, and therefore needs more healing) or to spend their own reserves to provide healing for allies -- such as in those situations where monster damage outpaces expectations. I'd like to have a cleaner method, such that the "10 reserve" builds could have more flexibility, but in a "dice determine everything"-paradigm like TNP, I'd rather be limiting these kinds of things to 1/day or 1/encounter, rather than have to somehow use the dice to justify a different limit.

To take things kind of full-circle, this brings into question the "sequel logic" of just having a flat 10 reserves for everyone; as with a few things already so far in these designs, the space for building mechanics around spending reserves for stuff other than healing is effectively lost by going to a flat math model. However, it's important to remember that the TNP "reserve-burning" mechanics are actually an attempt to unify 4th Edition's healing surge resource with (if not its per-encounter resources) its per-day resources. With that in mind, perhaps the solution as it pertains to the sequel designs is to re-adopt something akin to the 4e power progression, whereby (for example) per-encounter powers are gained at odd-numbered levels, and these are what essentially fuel your "d6 pool" features. So, reserves and "reserve-burning" abilities are no longer fueled by a unified mechanic -- but the upshot is that the numbers become easier to flatten out and balance.

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Alright! So with today's post being on-schedule, the final post of the year should be on December 10th or 12th, as previously planned. Check back then!

Construction Ahead! [2024-11-20]

Some minor updates were made to the wording, pertaining to the different action types. Now it should be more clear that while things that require 'no action' can be done on your turn or any other turn, interrupts can only be done when it is not your turn; Standard, Move, and Minor actions can only be done on your own turn.
I also realized that it might be worth making a distinction that 'no actions' cannot be used to interrupt enemy actions; for example, you see an archer take aim at you, and you decide to drop prone so that they have disadvantage on the attack. Should this be allowed, or should 'no actions' only be allowed to work as an "immediate reaction" but not an "immediate interrupt" (to use the 4e terminology) -- i.e. no actions might only be allowed to be used at the end of a turn, rather than at any point during the turn in question. If this is to be the case, I might also want to consider whether "no action, on your turn" should also be limited to the end of said turn.

In order to fix the Druid conundrum w/r/t starting roles, I think what I'll do is make the following changes to Disciple-category classes:

1. each gain one role at level 0
2. Class specialization (i.e. at level 1) changed to bonus power source of your choice; can be used to upgrade an existing power source
3. Class Category progression options (i.e. 1st, 3rd, and 5th levels) changed to the following:
• Bonus skill rank: Charisma, Intelligence, or Strength
• Bonus skillset training: Communication or Subtlety
• Gain an additional Role
4. Druids need to spend a reserve, when switching Roles, in combat(?)

Some things that need to be worked back into the rules from the older drafts are the keywords. To wit, if archenemy-type monsters in particular are able to turn off features with certain keywords, this will be important to iron out.
One of the key maxims in TNP is that benefits to you or your allies that you create are assumed to last until the start of your next turn, while penalties you apply to enemies are assumed to last until the end of your next turn. That being said, some such features may have the "sustaining" or "concentration" keywords; sustaining requires you to take a particular action to keep the buff/debuff going (typically the same action used to create the effect) while concentration effects are more "set it and forget it" and typically persist for longer than just one round. Some other important rules that keywords provide are the general mechanics around summoning, and also restoring or regaining HP.

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A bit of a brief update this go-around, due to being in something of a time crunch.
Since there are only two more blog posts planned for the remainder of 2024, it's clear that work on the "2024 edition" will continue, until it's finished. I'm fine with this, since the blog would likely continue on anyway, as the TNP Sequel (working title) is being developed in parallel to the main designs.

Next post is planned for November 30th, with the final post for this year expected either December 10th or 12th; after the winter break, blogging typically resumes around January 10th or 11th.

For full details, check in on the TNP Discord.

Unifying the Mechanics: Spell Dice

Following on from the previous post, let's try and extrapolate the math for weapon dice onto spell dice.

Now, the distinction would be that spells are expected to use either INT or CHA, but if they're using the same actual dice as weapons, then the modifiers might necessarily need to change. To wit, if the assumed "standard array" is +3/+2/+2/+1/+1 but a two-weapon routine is not assumed in the spell math, then we'll need to tinker a bit in order to create something comparable to the weapon dice math.

As an aside, I think that 4e D&D at least sets the bar for how we should think about spell damage. For example, a "close burst 1" attack would hit all adjacent enemies (for all intents and purposes.) Since we're talking about miniatures on a square grid, this means a 3x3 square, excluding the center square; in short, a maximum of 8 enemies could be targeted. Likewise, strategically, it might be reasonable to assume that a power such as this would not be used unless, say, there were at least 3 enemies adjacent. So in the paradigm of 1dX+mod, this gives us a range of that number, multiplied by [3,4,5,6,7,8]. You can easily see how multiplying (in particular) the modifier so many times can lead to massive spikes in the expected damage curve. Generally D&D (especially outside of 4th Edition) 'tries' to "balance" this by making such AoE spells limited on a per-day basis -- in other words, they make it apples and oranges, and hope nobody audits the math too closely.

If we're building from the assumption that spells are (generally, mostly) ranged attacks, then it would make sense to try and have them be at parity with ranged weapon attacks. In the previous post, we established that a 1d8 ranged weapon attack would add the higher of STR or DEX -- so a 1d8 ranged spell attack should do the same, albeit with INT or CHA. With a +3 mod, this gives an average damage of 6.8 (accounting for the d8 attack bonus math.)

Now, if we take an unmodified d4 attack and allow the spellcaster to make 3 of these per turn (i.e. a magic missile spell, that does "a number of attacks equal to the higher of your INT mod or CHA mod") this comes out to a total of 6.6375 average damage, including attack bonus. Already we can see that this damage almost exactly on pace with the d8; granting more than 3 attacks is probably not in the cards. (If anything, we might be able to do fewer attacks, but attach a small damage modifier to them.) It's probably worth mentioning here that 13th Age tends to use "1d3" for determining the number of targets on multi-target spells, and d4 serves this function in TNP sometimes, for similar reasons.

Finally, a d12 attack with a +1 modifier gives an average damage of 6.45, or a 7.15 average with a +2 modifier. This math is pretty easily attainable if we use our previous mechanic for the d4 two-weapon fighting, whereby the die uses the lower of STR or DEX (in the case of a spell, one assumes INT or CHA).

So, we can see already the framework starting to take shape. We've made attribute modifiers an important part of the math, but kept things relatively balanced within those parameters. I've always sort of liked the idea of having weapon dice function as spell dice; with daggers typically being d4 and staves being d8, I think this kind of thinking maps well to this sort of dice paradigm.

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A relatively short post today, but most of the groundwork was laid in the previous one.
Following post is due on Nov. 20th so check back then!

Unifying the Mechanics: First Attempt

I'm loathe to just post untested mechanics, because I often end up having to revise them later on. But right now, I'm just going to lay out the basic conceptualizations and math for what I think the weapon dice mechanics might look like, in the TNP sequel.

I had mentioned previously that weapon attacks would use either your STR mod or DEX mod as a damage bonus, but that the mechanics would try and steer d12 weapons towards favouring STR; for example, it might be the case that only classes with features that favour STR would get proficiency with d12 weapons, while other classes would not. I'm currently pointing the designs in a different direction.

So, the idea with the attributes currently is that you'll probably have one +3, either one or two +2s and the rest would be +1s (keeping in mind there are 5 attributes in total.)

My idea is this:

• d4 weapon damage rolls add the lower of your STR or DEX
• d8 melee weapon damage rolls do not add a modifier
• d8 ranged weapon damage rolls add the higher of your STR or DEX
• d12 melee weapon damage rolls add your STR

Now, in order for this to work, I've calculated the "weapon dice bonuses" as follows:

• d4: can be added to a miss; crit on a tie -- assuming +2 mod, average damage = 3.6625
• d8: can be added to a miss; crit on a tie -- assuming no mod, average damage = 4.4 (melee)
• d8: can be added to a miss; crit on a tie -- assuming +3 mod, average damage = 6.8 (ranged)
• d12: can be used in place of a miss; crit on a tie -- assuming +3 mod, average damage = 7.85

The idea was to have 1d4/1d4 two-weapon fighting be slightly worse (3.6625 * 2 = 7.325) than the d12 "two-hander" option, with 1d4/1d8 TWF being slightly better (3.6625 + 4.4 = 8.0625), and 1d8/1d8 (4.4 * 2 = 8.8) being outright better than d12 (albeit limited to very select classes.) Likewise, d8 ranged attacks were intended to be a little stronger than d8 or d4 melee attacks, but not stronger than d12 melee attacks. (Note: the assumption being that d4 weapons can be thrown, functioning as both "ranged" and melee weapons, and able to make 2 attacks in either case -- in practical terms, this is exactly how daggers function, in 5e.)

It's probably worth mentioning here, that the difference from this ethos compared to TNP, is that TNP assumes a baseline damage of 1d8 (or at least something in that ballpark) with 1 class die bonus being added to it; in the sequel math, the damage die and the bonus die are always the same die, meaning the base damage die isn't always the same, and thus the bonuses have to be calculated accordingly. So instead of one static baseline with multiple (5) possible modifiers, there are 3 static baselines but also 3 static modifiers.

Now, as you can see, the "unifying" aspect of these mechanics is that the weapon dice bonuses function off of the assumption of "crit on tie" being part of the dice trick, for all three. In TNP, the d4 could be added to a hit or a miss; this has been changed not only to make the math work (and to unify the mechanics a little better) but also because the assumptions are more like:

• weapon damage dice can "always" roll a number that will change a miss into a hit (or crit)
• the "d6 pool" mechanic does not have the above functionality, but it is going to be able to be added to a miss or a hit (much as the d6 bonus can, in TNP)

In this way, these mechanics (I think) serve to better compliment each other; the d6 pool is the more steady/reliable bonus, whereas the weapon dice bonuses are more for the "hail Mary" situations. I'm also leaning towards the idea that the weapon dice can always be used as damage and as an attack bonus, but a d6 that is used as an attack bonus cannot also be used as damage; the attack bonus would still be limited to one die (as in TNP) meaning you could not use both a weapon die and a d6 from your pool to modify the attack -- it would have to be one or the other.

The other aspect of these dice bonuses is that the overall hit/crit chances are fairly closely comparable, but not identical; working from the baseline of 50% hit/5% crit, these bonuses improve those odds, as follows:

• d4: 62.5% hit / 10% crit
• d8: 70% hit / 10% crit
• d12: 60% hit / 10% crit

You can kind of see from this that we end up with fairly balanced math, but a lot of the uniqueness of the class dice bonuses has been lost. You do kind of have the option of attacking more (d4), hitting more (d8), or hitting hardest (d12) -- all of the little fidgety bonuses are gone, so it's a lot cleaner, but also more... well, sanitary would be a good word to describe it.

Anyway, I had the idea to use the "STR mod as damage bonus" as the way of steering d12 towards favouring STR, and the rest of the experimentation and resulting math just sort of flowed from that assumption. Hopefully this will help the rest of the system to likewise come into focus. I may also apply similar ideas towards spell damage, offering different bonuses whether INT or CHA is used.

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That's all for October! Assuming we get back on track, the next post is scheduled for November 10th.

Construction Ahead! [2024-10-22]

I somewhat recently did another small pass, tidying up the class documents; this was sort of necessitated by me adding the class category descriptions to the main TNP document. While trying to make a comprehensive, cohesive, and coherent summation of the class categories and their progressions, I came to realize that some streamlining was still warranted.

Some of these changes resulted from holdovers, going back to before the class categories were finalized (i.e. when Paladin was still going to be a Disciple, along with Occultist and Druid; this has since been swapped so Warlord is now the 3rd Disciple class.) Specifically, Disciples gain a bonus attribute rank at level 0, but the choices are limited to STR, INT, and CHA; originally I had Warlord with the option for STR or CHA, Occultist with the option for INT or CHA, and Druid with the option for STR or INT -- but when writing an overarching description for this class category, unifying the options just made more sense than not.

Another thing that I believe was cleared up in this pass is that Disciples (through their 1st/3rd/5th level class category progression) can also gain an additional trained skillset, but only have the option to pick Communication or Subtlety.

In hindsight, the Druid not getting their combat roles (i.e. forms) until level 1 feels a little off, especially for the Shapeshifter. That being said, swapping out either their level 0 perk (bonus attribute rank) or one of their 1st/3rd/5th level features (bonus power source, or Communication/Subtlety training) in order to put a combat role in at level 0, would leave their level 1 "class specialization" feeling kind of wimpy. It also would feel weird to give them a role feature at level 0, and then have their "specialization" (at level 1) be... you gain a different role feature; that seems unintuitive.
This is somewhat negated by the other perk of Disciples, namely that (unlike other classes) they are free to change their subclass, by spending a reserve. So a Druid might start off as a Summoner, but then switch to a Shapeshifter at level 1, when their forms kick in.

All told, I may still have to revisit this.

An interesting wrinkle, that I think is worth mentioning:

• 'core' progression only provides feats at level 3 and 5
• Skill Expert, Jack of All Trades, and Disciple classes can take the Bonus Skill Training feat
• Skill Experts gain a bonus trained skillset or attribute as their class specialization (i.e. at level 1, but not as part of their 1st/3rd/5th level class category progression)
• Jack of All Trades classes can gain an extra feat at any of 1st/3rd/5th level, as part of their class category progression -- but Bonus Skill Training is a feat that can only be taken once

...so potentially, a Skill Expert can have 4 trained skillsets/attributes by 3rd level; a Jack of All Trades can get up to 3 trained skillsets/attributes by level 1. By contrast, a  Disciple can also have 3 by level 1, but the 3rd has to be either Communication or Subtlety; however, at level 3 or 5, they can potentially take the Bonus Skill Training feat, to boost that number to 4. It's also worth pointing out that at 1st/3rd/5th levels, a Jack of All Trades can take the same type of upgrade (but not, for example, double up on the exact same feat) whereas Disciples have to take a different upgrade at each of these levels. I think all in all this does a good job of making the Disciple not step on the Skill Expert's toes, while also not making them just "Jack of All Trades, again" either, despite sharing many similarities (both having the combat role feature mechanics, in particular.)

Another change that was implemented was to make sure every domain granted a bonus knowledge skill rank:

• Life domain grants a rank with one Divine or Primal knowledge skill
• War domain grants a rank with one Martial or Shadow knowledge skill
• Divination domain grants a rank with one Divine knowledge skill
• Enchantment domain grants a rank with one Arcane knowledge skill
• Misdirection domain grants a rank with one Shadow knowledge skill
• Blood domain grants a rank with one Primal knowledge skill
• Stone domain grants a rank with one Martial knowledge skill

I thought this was sort of an important thing to add, not only to make sure that the Ideologue category (i.e. the domain classes) really emphasized having knowledge skills -- and adding some flavour to those subclasses -- but it's also important for the Blade Master classes, which have the option to borrow from these domains (as well being an option for Bards.) In this regard, I feel like the Cleric's Life domain is sort of doubling as the "Nature" domain, while War is doubling as the "Death" domain, to explain the extra options that these ones provide. (Also worth noting, the Sage and Guardian domains each grant a bonus rank to a skillset or attribute; to balance this out, Cleric gains a bonus rank to Charisma -- which Paladins also get.)

Another insight that I took away from these updates is that the skill rank limitations might need to be more clearly spelled out. To wit, with a core skill, the idea was that you could gain one rank in it from the skillset for that skill, and one more rank from the attribute for that skill; it might not be clear that a "skillset" rank bonus from a domain and a "skillset" rank bonus from a feat (just for example) should not be able to stack. The intent has always been to encourage broadening your skill competencies, rather than endlessly doubling-down on one or two skills.

Conversely, after going over the text, it almost seems like knowledge skill ranks are given out like candy (particularly to the Ideologue classes.) While these ranks are currently capped at 1+level, I think that might not be necessary. Oddly enough, with "flavour" or "ribbon" abilities such as knowledge skills, I'd actually lean more towards encouraging people to pick a lane and stick with it, rather than dabble in all 10 skills. That all being said, I do think a final cap of 6 ranks is probably reasonable (and needed) if the ceiling on knowledge skill ranks per character is somewhere around 10.

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That's all the new updates for today's post. Check back by October 31st for the next one!

Comparing Dice Mechanics (2024)

Continuing on with the ideas behind the planned TNP sequel, I've been giving some thought to how the old mechanics compare and contrast with the new.

By necessity, TNP has 5 different "class dice bonuses" that are all meant to be roughly mathematically balanced with each other; some dice can be added to a hit, a miss, to damage, or some combination of all 3, and the d12 even has its own unique jumble of mechanics.

The idea with the sequel would be to pare this down, so that instead of rolling 5 different dice and "reading the tea leaves" to determine how to assign the bonuses, you might (for example) roll up to 5 d6s, using the highest as an attack bonus, and all of them as a damage bonus. (Another way to do it might be to use one for an attack bonus, and the rest for damage, but I digress.) A couple of problems arise with this.

First, I find it kind of bland, compared to the sort of "emotional rollercoaster" effect you can potentially get from the various class dice bonuses. Secondly, it doesn't really play nice with the idea of "weapon dice" as I've put forth previously. As extra damage, the d6 mechanic works fine, but when it comes to attack bonus, the weapon dice and d6 pool are stepping on each others' toes. The idea behind the weapon dice was to keep the uniqueness of some of the class dice bonuses (in particular, the d8 mechanic of "add to a miss, crit on a tie" as well as the [current d10/proposed d12] mechanic, which is a roll that replaces the d20 result) rather than just have bonuses that are strictly "+math" types of things.

So the question is, to keep the mechanics from overlapping, what do you do?

I think that a purely d20/d6 based system could be interesting, and might have some merit. As I've mentioned before, you could revert skill checks back to d20 rolls from d10, by allowing "attributes" to provide a negative skill rank bonus, instead of always being a minimum of "+1" -- although I generally find this clunkier than the "d6 pool" skill bonuses of TNP. The other problem is, if class dice bonuses are considered the "USP" of The Next Project, then excising weapon dice from the sequel designs would eliminate a significant portion of that DNA.

I'm really of two minds about this. I do think that the current weapon dice model is neat, because of how it streamlines the particular design space from other D&D games, but also adds it to TNP where it didn't really exist before. I also like how it allows the d12 mechanic to really be unique and shine, rather than in the TNP iteration where it is fairly limited and has to fall in line, so to speak. I also don't think it really makes sense to do a rework to the tune of, "it's TNP, but actually d10 isn't a class die anymore."

If that were the case, the combinations would be reduced to 6:

• d4/d6
• d4/d8
• d4/d12
• d6/d8
• d6/d12
• d8/d12

Coincidentally, if we're considering possibly only including 6 classes, that might not be the worst thing... But does it even make sense to have d6 as a "class die" if the "d6 pool" mechanic is going to be the new standard? Or should that standard just be thrown out, in favour of 4 class dice? Does d10 become the generic "extra damage" mechanic, in that case?

I feel like I'm chasing my tail a little bit, but basically there seems to be a bit of a schism forming, within the intended new designs. Should weapon dice just be damage, and let "d6 pool" handle the attack bonus and extra damage function? The reason weapon dice was proffered as an attack bonus to begin with is that the "d20 vs. DC10" standard felt like it wasn't hitting enough -- but only getting an attack bonus when you have a damage bonus (i.e. d6 pool) doesn't feel right, either. One idea I had suggested was, ok, maybe you always use your STR or DEX d6 pool for weapon attacks, but then your class features/special abilities/teamwork bonuses could add d6s to that pool (such as a CHA bonus for Paladins, as an example.) I think there's some merit to that idea, but it comes back to, is the d6 pool mechanic just too bland? It certainly doesn't feel engaging, the way that the class dice mechanic potentially does. Should the whole system use d20/d6, and the attributes be reworked accordingly?

Really what it boils down to is does the "design space" of weapon dice (and hanging onto some vestige of the old "class dice bonuses" in this particular guise) really add something of value? To wit, part of the fun of class dice bonuses is the picking and choosing aspect; weapon dice don't really do this, since you're only ever going to be using one per each attack. Again, the problem is, do you shift to a "weapon die or d6 pool" standard for the attack bonus? It feels sort of clunky and kind of a "worst of both worlds" solution.

Suffice it to say, this is kind of a mental exercise which hasn't led to me any concrete conclusions. But it has given me more of an appreciation for the certain 'it' factor that the TNP mechanics have.

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A bit of a delay in the scheduling, but expect the next post on October 19th or 20th.

Filling in the Grid (Part 2) -- The Sixth Class?

Carrying on from some previous posts on this topic (as it pertains to the TNP sequel) I think it might be pertinent to mention that I've recently (just) dipped my toe into the Shadowdark RPG, which has managed to shape my thinking a little bit.

To wit, their designs started out with the "core 4" classes (named Fighter, Priest, Thief, and Wizard, in the game's materials) but a successful stretch goal was unlocked to design a 5th class; my understanding is that Bard and Ranger were both neck and neck in the preference for what this class would be -- and the designer(s) ended up just doing both.

So what is a Bard? Is it a Wizard that is also a healer? Is it a spellcaster that is also a skill expert -- but not an expert with the same skills as a Rogue? Is a bard a performer, or are they a 'lore master'? I think the fewer classes you have, the more things a given class can be.
Likewise, the question was raised as to whether the Ranger should just be an archer, or a two-weapon fighter, or both; the extent to which the mechanics allow TWF at all can have a huge impact on that decision, and Shadowdark opts not to have it as an option.

The obvious 5th class always seems to be either an archer class, or a "Charisma caster" of some sort. The thing I've come to ponder is, should Bard be the "6th class" for the TNP sequel? The first 5 classes are kind of set, so let me expand on why Bard might be the 6th.

Part of the lore of 4th Edition D&D's development, is that it was kind of rushing to make deadlines, and so the design team was split into two groups, with (if memory serves) Rob Heinsoo and James Wyatt's team focusing on the PHB1 classes (such as Warlord) while Mike Mearls and his team worked on the PHB2 classes (such as Bard.) As you might have guessed, there was some noise made about the Warlord infringing on what was supposed to be the Bard's shtick; ultimately in the 4e designs, I would say the Warlord is more about granting attacks to allies, whereas the Bard is about repositioning enemies. In the more TNP-like paradigm, you could see how such a narrow distinction could just as easily be built into subclasses for a single class -- if the mechanics even warranted that level of segregation. (Worth mentioning: Arguably, the 4e Shaman class is a WIS-based off-shoot of this same general mechanical niche.)

So if the starting 5 classes for the TNP sequel are: 

• Cleric/Paladin
• Rogue/Monk
• Fighter/Barbarian
• Ranger/Druid
• Sorcerer/Wizard

...two obvious questions arise: (as this compares to the 5th edition D&D roster)
Where does the Bard fit in?

What even is a Warlock, anyway?

Obviously, my answer to the first question skews towards the idea that maybe (instead of bolting Warlord-isms onto the hypothetical Fighter/Barbarian class, and shoving Bard in with the "divine healer" Cleric/Paladin class) there ought to be a Warlord/Bard class. Both used charisma in 4e; Bard is the INT side of that coin, with Warlord being the STR side. But that also begs the question (albeit possibly somewhat reductive) of, if a Warlord is a STR/CHA martial (melee) healer class... how is that not a Paladin? If your attributes don't include a WIS stat, what's the difference between a Cleric and a Bard?

As for the Warlock...?
Some would argue that they should be a "pet" class -- but clearly they don't fit under the Druid/Ranger umbrella. With 5th edition's adoption of cantrips (an idea implemented in 4th edition, among other places) and its spell slot mechanic (itself a derivative of an optional mechanic for 3.5) the Warlock shtick of knowing fewer spells, but doing them all day is a niche that has been stepped on by basically every full-caster -- and short rest mechanics w/r/t spells isn't really a thing in the TNP paradigm. I think the Occultist (effectively the Necromancer/Warlock class of TNP's designs) is unique in its own ways; do I think it stands out enough, to be a "Top 10" class, apart from a hypothetical Sorcerer/Wizard class? That, I'm not sure of.

Speaking of which, I suppose the next question that arises is:
Will the sequel have 8 classes? 10 classes?

A loose range of "minimum 5, maximum 12" has been pretty well-established at this point. If Warlord/Bard and Necromancer/Warlock end up being the 6th and 7th classes, then what's the 8th? If D&D 2024's martial subclasses are any indication, maybe the answer is some kind of a Psionic class -- again, assuming such a thing even makes sense, within a TNP-like ethos.

As I've mentioned in at least one other post, the original slate of 5 classes for TNP left so much out, that a 2nd slate was almost an inevitability (Druid, Monk, and Warlord being the more obvious candidates, not unlike the "2nd slate" of classes for 13th Age) -- and as soon as the 2nd slate was completed, I already had ideas for 2 more classes (Fighter, and Archer) so a 3rd slate became inevitable, too. Sometimes you don't realize what's really left out, until you've put the work in and finalized the things you've already planned to keep in. So whatever the 8th through 10th (or 12th) classes end up being, those answers might not be fully fleshed out until much later into the development process.

...

Work has been continuing behind the scenes, as updated (infrequently) in the Discord server.

Check back here on October 10th for the next scheduled blog post.

Deep Dive: Combat Encounters (2024)

There's a lot to cover when it comes to enemy/monster mechanics, so I'm going to stick with "napkin math" for most of this post. 

Standard & Elite

I'll start off by saying that player-characters can have between 24 and 32 HP, and Standard monsters are meant to have HP in that same range. However, in the encounter budgeting, there should be 2 standard monsters per 1 PC. The baseline assumption is that with one class dice bonus, a character can do about 7.3 DPR on a single attack, but when going through the class mechanics, it was found that most characters will be attacking at least twice per round. This means that a single standard monster with 28-30 HP can be killed in about two turns; if every PC "spawns" two standard monsters, that effectively translates to 4 rounds of combat. (Another thing to account for is that 'extra damage' is not factored in to this equation.)

Now, when standard monsters target the PCs, they use the usual monster roll (1d10 and 1d6) but only use the higher die for their damage. Elite monsters use the same roll, but add the damage together. Generally it is assumed that elites will be specialized for one type of combat (either melee or ranged) and they should have advantage when dealing damage with that method; for monsters this means using the percentile dice instead of just straight d10, and using the higher result. The system also allows for special ability uses/recharges if the d6 and d10 on the monster roll is a tie, meaning advantage (i.e. such as Elites would have) gives another chance to create such a tie. Each elite uses the encounter budget of 1 PC (i.e. 2 standard monsters) and has double the HP of a standard monster. 

Quick napkin math: Standard monsters should average about 6 damage per attack, but only "hit" 45% of the time (assuming no save bonuses for the PCs). This means between about 9-12 attacks to take down a PC, or about half that many rounds of combat (since there will be 2 standard monsters in the budget, for each 1 PC.) Worth mentioning here is that combat mastery (such as from being hidden, or attacking prone targets in melee) would apply to all damage dice that the monsters are rolling, making them just that much more deadly, if they play tactically.

Minions & Swarms

Minions on the other hand just automatically deal damage, as I'll explain. I always enjoyed the mechanics of how minions worked in 4th Edition D&D, and I had fun homebrewing some ways to make "2-hit" minions fit into the game; generally, I had it so that hitting with a critical hit, an encounter power, or dealing damage (even on a miss) with a daily power would take them out. But the system broadly wasn't built from the ground up with this in mind, so there were always messy edge cases. The general idea was to make it so that an attack that dealt more than one weapon die (the [W] expression, in 4e) of damage, would kill 2-hit minions outright. In TNP, this idea is expanded upon, by giving minions "hit dice"; effectively, this means that you need to deal a number of damage dice equal to their hit dice in order to take them out. So for example, a basic attack + 1 class die of bonus damage would take out a minion with 2 HD. In terms of encounter budgeting, each PC can generate 10 HD worth of minions or swarms.

When a minion makes an attack, they deal damage equal to their current HD; when using skills, they also use a skill rank bonus equal to their current HD, but by default have disadvantage on skill checks (to prevent dog-piling.) This means that minions become less deadly the more damage they take. Also, any effect which would impose disadvantage on an action or skill check, causes minions to be unable to use that action or skill check. For example: disadvantage on ranged attack rolls for having an enemy adjacent, would translate to the minion not being able to make ranged attacks at all. If a particular skill is meant to be iconic to a given minion type, the expectation is that they would "buy off" the disadvantage with that type of check, rather than bump straight to having advantage with it.

Swarms function similarly to minions, in that both creature types bypass saving throws and simply deal damage equal to their current HD, with their attack actions. For this reason, minions are meant to be limited to a maximum of about 4 or 5 HD; swarms should have more HD than minions, but not more than 10. This means that a 10 HD swarm which can focus on a single PC will be able to take them out in typically 3 rounds of combat. To balance this out, swarms have several special rules that make them different than minions, particularly the rule that they must spread their damage between all PCs in their maelstrom. It does not have to be spread evenly, however it's probably best practice to try and do so. When a swarm is open, it counts as multiple enemies, making it easier to target; if the swarm enters a maelstrom, it only counts as one enemy for targeting purposes, meaning abilities that require you to target different enemies could now only target the swarm once. For the purpose of disengaging, swarms always count as multiple enemies. Swarms can never make ranged attacks, as they are generally assumed to be beasts or insects, which have no such weapons.

(Note: capping minions at 4 or 5 HD means their skill rank bonus is also capped at 4 or 5, keeping this number in line with what PCs are realistically expected to be able to achieve.)

The Big Bad Evil Guy

The final two enemy types are solos and archenemies. In the random campaign generation rules, it is assumed that archenemies will appear twice out of the 54 encounters in a campaign (about half of which are combat encounters.) For this reason, archenemies are allowed to shut down abilities with certain keywords; re-reading this has reminded me that I need to do another editing pass and make sure the appropriate keywords are included in the character feature descriptions.

Some example keywords:

• Form: covers fighting styles for the Fighter, as well as Druid abilities
• Concentration: buffs such as Bless
• Teleport: features allowing movement via teleportation
• Restoration: features that restore HP (i.e. healing)
• Summon: features that add allies to the combat (features for Warlord, Druid, Ranger, Occultist, etc.)
• Sustaining: generally penalties to enemies or bonuses to allies that can be maintained by repeating the appropriate action each round

Now, the idea is not that the archenemy would shut down all of these keywords, but that each given type of archenemy might have one or two, that are specific to the campaign, or to the party members. The original idea was that these abilities could only be shut down if the PC being targeted is bloodied, but you could also invert that idea by saying the abilities are shut down until the archenemy is bloodied. Likewise, I had written in that an archenemy should be able to do multiple skill checks on its turn instead of just one, and be more easily able to do interrupts; in order to get the same effect (but also limit the power of action denial abilities) it might be simpler to just give the archenemy as many turns in initiative as there are PCs in the encounter.

Similarly, the idea with solo monsters is that they would be one large creature with several independent parts -- each being represented mechanically as an individual monster (either standard monsters or elites, but possibly minions as well.) The example that I used in a playtest was a kraken attacking a ship, with its multiple tentacles; if there are 4 PCs, that would translate to 8 standard monsters, representing 8 tentacles, with maybe an elite monster as the head to top things off, and make it a more challenging encounter. Similarly, the other example I would use as a solo monster is a dragon, where the head does a fiery breath attack, but it also has claws, a tail that can do a swipe attack, etc. In order to encourage tactics other than just focus-firing on one part of the monster, a rule is in place giving disadvantage to each part's monster rolls once it is bloodied.

Sidebar

One note on the 'sustaining' keyword, is that I had pretty much always conceptualized it as "benefits to you (or your allies) last until the start of your next turn, while penalties to enemies last until the end of your next turn." This is based off of the optimization notion from 4e, that effects which last one round are better/more reliable than ones that are "save ends" (i.e. 50/50 chance that they end before you can get any use out of them, on your next turn.) This leads into the idea of archenemies being able to shrug off or otherwise end such effects early, particularly if they are given multiple initiative turns, and a penalty is assumed to only impact them for one of those turns.

...

Anyways, hopefully that's a giant enough wall of text to generate some discussion, until the next post.
Check back on September 30th for that!

Construction Ahead! (2024)

Today I'll just do an update post, laying out some of the work that has been going on behind the scenes.

A couple of editing passes were made to the existing class documents. Previously, these were split between 2021 and 2023 versions; there are now 2024 versions of all 15 classes.

Some changes/updates that were recently made:

• any instances of "advantage on base damage" were removed, and replaced with "mastery on base damage" -- the only exception is to the Barbarian's base melee damage
• any instances of "off-turn action" were replaced with "interrupt"
• most features that referenced "no action on your turn, or as an off-turn action if it is not your turn" were just changed to "no action" since this has been clarified to be an action type that can be done on- or off-turn
• current "Brawl" mechanics are now using the terms "trip" (i.e. knock prone) and "shove" (i.e. push away); instances of the term "push" were left in, but the core rules were updated to explain that a push can be either a trip or a shove (as intended)
• class stat layouts were re-structured; HP & initiative are now linked in the layout (instead of HP & engagement) while Surge Value, Reserves (per day), and Engagement are now all de-linked; some features which only improved HP will now also improve initiative bonus die
• added Prone Shooter and Brawler feats; prereqs for feats were adjusted to fit the changes to class categories
• Withdraw/Shift/Tumble have been clarified and greatly streamlined; "Disengaging" status now protects against all enemies in the encounter
• Progression chart (which was instituted in the previous draft) has been added to the current draft of the rules; this also included the caveat capping knowledge skill ranks at 1+level

And, a couple of changes that are being debated:

• reducing the overall power source options for classes, to be more "flavourful" or "thematic"; this may take the form of pushing some to the background, rather than outright disallowing them (i.e. presented as a 'slate' option, rather than a class option)
• (speaking of backgrounds) possibly renaming power sources to 'backgrounds' or something similar
• bringing back Skillset bonuses based on power sources (Shadow power source grants a skill rank in Infiltration, etc.)
• more feats! suggestions needed/wanted
• renaming Adventurer to 'Traveller' or something...

As I've said previously, the "character options" are more or less feature-locked; I'm not really looking to add anything, just making sure everything is using the same jargon and playing nice together. Likewise, most of the designs/mechanics are locked, it's just a matter of putting those to paper.

Having taken a chance to read through the classes, I'm really happy with how most of them turned out. I also like some of the ways the classes go off the beaten path:

• the Occultist -- the new roles in particular making it more like the Darkest Dungeon class than a D&D Warlock or Diablo Necromancer
• the Paladin -- leans more into the Diablo 2 version while still feeling pretty unique
• classes that are typically complicated (like Sage or Bard) are pretty simple, while classes that are typically pretty simple/boring (like Barbarian or Fighter) have a lot more moving parts
• still some complex classes (like Cleric and Druid)
• some simple classes get a lot of customization options (like Warlord and Adventurer)
• other simple classes are very straight-forward and unassuming (basically any of the Skill Expert classes)
• still some that fit somewhere in the middle (Spellbinder, Guardian) -- a little bit of variety within the class, but very straight-forward subclasses

...

A relatively short post (by my normal standards) but hopefully it's enough to tide everyone over until September 20th. Check back then!

Deep Dive: Skills (2024)

Rather than get bogged down in the dice mechanics and such, I want to break down what skills are actually included in TNP, and what they should be used for.
One thing I should add is that the general advice I would give if a specific skill doesn't accurately describe an action, fall back to the closest skillset first, and then fall back on attributes 2nd; for these purposes:

• Strength is generally meant to use the arms and/or upper body
  
• Agility is generally meant to use the legs
• Dexterity is generally meant to use the hands/fingers
• Intelligence is how knowledgeable you are about things
• Charisma is how knowledgeable you are about people

(P.S. this is why there isn't a distinct Swim skill: so that you can use whatever attribute you see fit, for that.)

Brawl (Athletics or Strength) is your general purpose skill for grapple, shove, trip, etc.
Climb (Athletics or Strength) is pretty straightforward; in the rules it is one of the methods of gaining high ground provided by "infrastructure." The other method is Jump (Athletics or Agility)
Break Objects (Infiltration or Strength) is meant as the equivalent to "Bend Bars/Lift Gates" from earlier versions of D&D, but in combat is meant specifically to destroy infrastructure that may be providing cover and/or high ground (at the DM's discretion.)
Acrobatics (Athletics or Agility) is meant to cover skills/actions likes Balance, Escape (Artist), or Tumble (i.e. moving without provoking opportunity attacks) as well as landing on your feet when falling, and doing a kip up.

Intimidation (Communication or Strength) probably needs no explanation, but under certain circumstances in combat it can be used to get enemies to surrender (which is mechanically just as good as being at 0 HP) in order to make this option appealing, but also potentially to speed up combat.
Decipher Script (Communication or Intelligence) is meant to be used when reading text that is written in a language foreign to you, or to crack coded messages; likewise Linguistics (Communication or Intelligence) is mean for speaking other languages and understanding the spoken word, in other languages; the general assumption is that your character would use this for languages they aren't fluent with.
Persuasion (Communication or Charisma) is sort of the opposite of Intimidation; you try to get people to go along with your line of argumentation through general positive reinforcement and the force of your personality (rather than threats.)

Lockpicking (Infiltration or Dexterity) does what it says on the tin; for more complex mechanical devices or traps, you may need to use Disable Device (Infiltration or Intelligence)
Similarly, the Forgery skill (Infiltration or Intelligence) is about creating false documents of a sufficiently convincing quality -- oddly enough, this is something I would class as a "social" skill, because it effectively is used to interact favourably with people, rather than with 'things.'
In that same vein, Disguise (Infiltration or Charisma) involves both creating and using a convincing disguise, and giving an effective portrayal of the person you are impersonating; Bluff (Subtlety or Charisma) is more about telling a convincing boast or recounting of events, that are untrue. You may very well need to make such checks while using a disguise, but you can make them under other circumstances as well.
Sleight of Hand (Subtlety or Dexterity) involves pick-pocketing or otherwise snatching items without arousing suspicion, but can also be used for planting contraband or incriminating items onto other people without them noticing.
Stealth (Subtlety or Agility) is your general 'hide' and/or 'move silently' skill.

Rounding out the list are the Detection skills.
Search (Detection or Dexterity) is meant to be used for finding things by your sense of touch, especially your fingers; the example I always think of is trying to quickly find the right coin or key, in a stuck drawer -- where you can fit your hand in, but can't actually see the contents.
Investigation and Perception (Detection or Intelligence) are lumped together here, largely because there is no 'Wisdom' attribute in TNP, but also because they seem to often be used interchangeably in 5e. Perception from 4e onwards has been the combination of 3.5's 'Listen' and 'Spot' skills; Investigation... well, it isn't quite 'Appraise' or 'Search'... but it seems to be "solve puzzles/riddles through brain power rather than sensory input."
Insight (Detection or Charisma) is your lie-detector and/or 'Sense Motive' skill -- pretty standard.

As for the knowledge skills, they're kind of a mixed bag of knowledge/exploration skills, as well as kind of a sub-set of social skills:
Arcana (Arcane power source) is your general knowledge of magic and the occult, other planes, spellcraft, etc. As in 4e, this would be the skill check you make to 'detect magic'
History & Geography (Martial power source) is your knowledge of pertinent historical events and places of particular significance; in 3.5 this was (as you might guess) two separate skills, but I felt it was worth combining them together.
Religion (Divine or Arcane) is generally associated with monster knowledge about the undead, but could also apply to demons/devils; deities, mythology, religious traditions and ceremonies, etc.
Wilderness Survival (Primal power source) generally covers any uses of 'Survival' (including the Use Rope skill) or the Nature skill, as it pertains to things other than animals/beasts... Animal Handling (Martial or Primal) involves using, training, or communicating with animals (whether through basic verbal or visual cues, or magical/telepathic means) including using them as a mount (i.e. the Ride skill)
Dungeoneering (Arcane or Shadow) typically involves knowledge of caves and caverns, but often is about places like the Underdark, and its denizens.
Medicine (Divine or Primal) generally functions like the Medicine skill in 5e, or the Heal skill in 4e or 3.5; this would likely also cover your 'Detect Poison & Disease' spell/ritual.
Streetwise (Shadow power source) essentially functions like your 'Gather Information' skill, when dealing with the (figurative) underworld; Local (Martial or Shadow) functions similarly, but for commoners or "middle class" people and societies; Nobility & Royalty (Divine power source) is essentially the upper-class version of this sort of skill.

It's probably worth mentioning who got these as 'class skills' in 3.5:

• Local -- Bards, Rogues, Wizards
• Gather Information -- Bards, Rogues
• Nobility & Royalty -- Bards, Paladins, Wizards

• Handle Animal -- Barbarians, Druids, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers
• Ride -- Barbarians, Druids, Fighters, Paladins, Rangers
• Nature -- Bards, Druids, Rangers, Wizards
• Survival -- Barbarian, Druids, Rangers
  
• Use Rope -- Rangers, Rogues

• Heal -- Clerics, Druids, Paladins, Rangers
• Religion -- Bards, Clerics, Paladins, Wizards

• History -- Bards, Clerics, Wizards
• Geography -- Bards, Rangers, Wizards

• Arcana -- Bards, Clerics, Monks, Sorcerers, Wizards
• Dungeoneering -- Bards, Rangers, Wizards

Meanwhile in 4th Edition (sorting the PHB1 & PHB2 by power source)...

• Arcana was extended to Druid (primal), Invoker (divine), Shaman (primal), Warlock (arcane)
• Dungeoneering was extended to Rogue (martial), Sorcerer (arcane), Warden (primal)
• Heal was extended to Barbarian (primal), Bard (arcane), Fighter (martial), Shaman (primal), Sorcerer (arcane), Warden (primal), Warlord (martial)
• History was extended to Druid (primal), Invoker (divine), Paladin (divine), Shaman (primal), Warlock (arcane), Warlord (martial)
• Nature was extended to Barbarian (primal), Shaman (primal), Sorcerer (arcane), Warden (primal)
• Religion was extended to Invoker (divine), Shaman (primal), Warlock (arcane)
• Streetwise -- Bard (arcane), Fighter (martial), Rogue (martial), Wizard (arcane)
  

In TNP, classes generally lean towards one or two power sources, with a choice of another (Acrobat is the only class that sort of fits into any of the 5 power sources)

• Paladin (Divine/Martial; Arcane or Shadow)
• Cleric (Divine; Martial or Arcane)
• Druid (Primal; Arcane or Martial)
• Rogue (Shadow; Arcane, Martial, Primal)
• Warlord (Martial; Divine or Primal)
• Spellbinder (Arcane/Martial; Divine or Shadow)
• Occultist (Arcane/Shadow; Primal)
• Adventurer (Martial/Primal; Arcane or Shadow)
• Barbarian (Martial or Primal)
• Bard (Arcane/Divine; Martial or Shadow)
• Sage (Arcane/Primal; Martial or Shadow)
• Ranger (Martial/Primal; Shadow)
• Guardian (Martial/Primal; Arcane or Shadow)
• Fighter (Martial; Divine, Primal, Shadow)

So if we were to, for the sake of argument, combine the 4e and 3.5 class skill lists, and try to represent them in TNP, a few examples would be:

• Paladin: Divine (Nobility & Royalty, Medicine, Religion) + Martial (Animal Handling, History & Geography)
• Cleric: Divine (Medicine, Religion) + Martial (History & Geography) + Arcane (Arcana)
• Druid: Primal (Wilderness Survival, Animal Handling, Medicine) Arcane (Arcana, Religion) + Martial (History & Geography)
• Barbarian: Martial (History & Geography, Animal Handling) + Primal (Wilderness Survival, Animal Handling, Medicine)
• Ranger: Martial (History & Geography, Animal Handling) + Primal (Wilderness Survival, Animal Handling, Medicine) + Shadow (Dungeoneering)
• Fighter: Martial (Animal Handling) + Primal (Medicine) + Shadow (Streetwise)

...

Anyways, this is getting long-winded and ramble-y. But hopefully that illustrates how skills are supposed to be used, and how I've tried to recreate the class skill lists from D&D, while coming at it from a slightly different angle. Things have been expanded a little bit where I felt it was needed, but I've tried to more or less be faithful to the "source material." With 4e including skills like History for Warlords and Paladins, it made sense to me to put that as a Martial skill, for example (even though Fighters for some reason didn't get History, but I digress.) Likewise, being able to mix Primal skills with Arcane and/or Martial skills goes a long way in making TNP classes like Druid and Guardian feel like the ones they're inspired from.

Next post is due up on September 10th, so check back then!

Taking Shape (2024)

With the onset of "D&D 2024," I've been following some of the content explaining the changes that are forthcoming. When I learned what the changes to the Monk's mechanics were, I just thought, "They gave the Rogue's Cunning Action to Monks, and slapped ki enhancements on top of each of the options." Now, those who have followed my journey through 5th Edition may have heard my opinion that Monks are too combat focused, and needed to either get some utility cantrips, or they should be made into skill experts (like Rogues or Bards.) This latest edition change just sort of cements the fact (to me) that Monk works best as a specialist Rogue; you could even give the class both Stunning Strike and Sneak Attack, but limit them to using one or the other, once per turn.

Since my designs for the "TNP sequel" are leaning towards a tighter, focused slate of classes, I think this is probably the direction that I'm going to go with Monks, insofar as they are included at all. Likewise, I don't think there will be distinct Fighter and Barbarian classes, or Ranger and Druid for that matter; there will likely be some form of subclass or possibly "talent tree" system that will gate off certain mechanics, in order to emulate such classes. I think a game like Diablo 2 (as is often the case) would sort of be the obvious inspiration for how to execute "broad classes that specialize into narrow classes" but to be honest, World of Warcraft might be a better example of this.

Now, tentatively, I've decided on how I want the attributes to function, with regards to combat. Put simply, you will be able to use STR or DEX with any weapons (d4, d8, or d12 -- melee or ranged) that you are proficient with -- but not all classes will be proficient with d12 weapons, and those that are proficient will favour STR. Likewise, caster classes will be able to use either INT or CHA as their spellcasting stat, but certain classes may use one over the other, when it comes to their actual class features. Agility (the 5th attribute) will be the initiative stat.

With that in mind, I'm thinking that attribute scores will also be used as damage modifiers for weapons (and maybe spells) but not as attack roll modifiers. I like the idea of using the "weapon die" as the attack modifier, but I think for class features and/or "teamwork" abilities, the highest d6 in the pool should be able to be used either: a) as an attack and damage bonus, in addition to the weapon die, or; b) instead of the weapon die, but allowing all bonus d6s to be used as damage. The former would lead to more-but-smaller crits, whereas the latter would lead to more-but-bigger normal hits.

So, for example: using a d12 weapon, with a 3d6 bonus...
a) would let you add the highest d6 to the (d20) attack roll; you could also use the d12 in place of the d20 [d12 attack bonus may have other functions]; your damage would be the 1d12 + the highest 1d6 + STR mod, and a crit would add 18 damage to that
b) would let you either add the highest d6, or use the d12 in place of the d20; your damage would be 1d12 + 3d6 + STR mod, and a crit would add 30 damage to that

In terms of the actual numbers for attributes themselves, I'm still thinking of keeping with them all starting at +1 -- which means we're assuming 1d10 for skill checks, and not 1d20. Then, your class would most likely dictate a +2 to one attribute and a +1 to another (or possibly just a +3 to one) with an additional floating +1 to be added freely wherever you'd like -- including to a stat that already gets one of your class bonuses. I think the bump from 2d6 to 3d6 math is compelling enough, but getting a 3rd stat from 1d6 to 2d6 is also worth it, if you prefer to spread your skills around a bit. If anything, I think I may revise this down to "two fixed +1s/one fixed +2, and one free-floating +1." And I think there's certainly room for mechanics that are "+X when you Y" such that the bonus is only applied to skills and not to combat uses of attributes, if desired.

I've essentially mentioned 3 classes so far, that I would intend to include. The others would obviously be some sort of Priest/Cleric/Paladin mashup, and some sort of magic-user. The question would be whether there are any other meaningful archetypes to cover, or if the subclasses of these 5 starters would cover the rest of the design space. If the assumption is that your magic-user is an amalgamation of Wizard/Warlock/Sorcerer (and perhaps the Bard fits somewhere under the priest banner, as a healing class)...? Well, at that point we've accounted for all of the design space of the core 12 PHB classes in 5th Edition D&D. But that feels like a topic that deserves its own deep-dive, at another time.

...

Next post is due up on August 31st, so check back then!

Math-o-logical (2024)

As mentioned in the previous post, TNP does not use any static modifiers. This is one of the rules which bound the system (another being that all character statistics must be derived from class dice.) Part of the reason for this is to simplify some of the math, but also to encourage "teamwork bonuses" for increasing your chance to hit, in combat.

That all being said, I feel like the flat 55% success rate just doesn't cut it; I've even heard that some D&D-alike systems have chosen to eschew attack rolls altogether. As such, one of the things I've been juggling with my future project, is having a simple attack bonus to increase the hit chance -- namely, the weapon dice mechanics, as well as the d6 pool mechanics which I've touched on in recent posts. So it's probably a good time to look at the math a little bit.

Sticking with a DC10:

• 1d20+1d4 gives us a 50% hit chance, and 17.5% crit chance
• 1d20+1d6 gives us a 50% hit chance, and 22.5% crit chance
• adding the higher of 1d4 and 1d6 to a d20 gives us a 50% hit chance, and 24.58% crit chance
• adding the highest 1d6 out of 5d6 to a d20 gives us a 50% hit chance, and 32.15% crit chance

So what does that mean, in practical terms? Well, one thing I've always talked about within the designs of TNP is that the math should have a "meaningful" chance of failure -- a number I've typically pegged between about 15%-20%, particularly for skills. If we're incorporating these sorts of bonuses into the designs of the combat math, we can see that we're rapidly approaching that threshold for failure chance; we can't really increase hit chance much higher, particularly if "teamwork bonuses" are meant to be over and above what's accounted for here.

The knock-on effect is that it brings into question the idea of using 1d10 for skill checks. Apart from the ergonomic value of using percentile d10s for an advantage mechanic, if the combat system is using d20, and is based around the assumption of a hit rate in the range of 67.5%-82.15%... then why not just go back to using d20 for skills, too? With the idea being to unify all of the dice bonuses into d6 pool mechanics, this would have the added benefit of allowing attributes to be +0 or even possibly go into negatives, while still allowing the skill math to work properly. The only big sticking point (for me) is deciding what (if anything) a critical success on a skill check should do; using a d10 vs. DC10 system neatly side-steps this consideration.

The other question is whether this scale makes more sense than the d10 skill check math:

• 1d20-1d6 = 37.5%
• 1d20+0 = 55%
• 1d20+1d6 = 72.5%
  
• 1d20+[highest 1 of 2d6] = 77.36%
• 1d20+[highest 1 of 5d6] = 82.15%

Another thing I'm considering is that while most special abilities will be keyed off of attributes (for example, a +2 DEX providing a pool of 2d6) the flat modifier for those attributes might also be used as a damage bonus, just to improve the "oomph" of basic attacks. Another use for flat modifiers might be a sort of 'mastery' mechanic, whereby a die result cannot be lower than the modifier, or could be rerolled if lower/equal to the modifier.

If we're sticking with the 5 attributes of TNP (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma, Agility) and we're assuming the d6 pool will consist of one attribute, plus any "teamwork bonuses," then it stands to reason that our attributes shouldn't really exceed 3 (working from the TNP cap of 5d6 "extra damage" as our baseline.) So how many "points" should we be able to spread, between our attributes? Assuming a minimum attribute of +1 and maximum of +3, we could use 10 points to give us an array of +3/+3/+2/+1/+1. I almost wonder if the better alternative is to start with +1 to all, and then have class/background/whatever give you a +2 to two stats (as in 4e) or +2 to one and +1 to another (as in 5e). I think it'll really come down to what "feels" like the "right" amount of points.

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That wraps up another meandering post, for now.
Check back on August 21st for the next one.

Outlining the Mechanics of TNP (2024)

I felt this would be a useful time to sort of recap the structure of TNP's current designs, such as they are.

The general conceit is that each class is based off of one or two dice, referred to as class dice. Within those designs, each class has two subclasses, but may also have additional methods of character customization (such as roles or domains.) But what does this really mean? Which mechanics are based off of the class dice?

Each class has 3 damage expressions: melee, ranged, and opportunity damage. Each of these will be represented using the class dice for that class, and there may be some variance from one subclass to another within each class.

In addition, reserves, surge value, and your engagement capability are all functions of the maximum value of a class die. Your initiative bonus (and by extension, your maximum HP) is also determined using class dice. Reserves are a resource you use to restore HP, typically outside of combat; surge value determines the minimum amount of HP you regain from spending reserves (under taxing circumstances.) Engagement determines the number of "open" enemies which you can group into a maelstrom, keeping in mind the abstracted positioning which the combat system uses.

It should be noted that in order to balance out the math and general utility of the class dice, 2d4 and 2d6 are used for some of these expressions (damage, reserves, surge value, etc.) in addition to 1 each of the 5 class dice.

Another cornerstone of ths sytem is using class dice as an attack (and damage) bonus. One each of the 5 class dice may all be applied to any given attack, but only one may be used to modify the roll; dice not applied as an attack bonus are not wasted, however, as they can still be used for bonus damage.

That all being said, saving throws and skill checks do not use class dice for their bonuses, instead using d6 pools; this is part of the reason why future designs are going to be pivoting towards using d6 mechanics for other functions (such as attack and damage bonuses.) Also, as you might have guessed from the context above, I'm leaning towards standardizing on something like 10 reserves, and possibly doing something similar for HP.

Characters start at level 0 and progress up to level 5, with two separate progression tracks, basically mapping to your core competencies plus combat mechanics, and to non-combat skills, respectively. The idea generally has been that a campaign would consist of 54 encounters (using a standard deck of cards, with jokers, for randomization) spread across the 6 levels (4/6/8/10/12/14 encounters at the appropriate levels, ideally.)

The "core mechanic" is that of a DC10, sometimes known as TN10 (target number) whereby the player-characters succeed at an attack roll (d20), saving throw (d20), or skill check (d10) by achieving a result of 10 or higher. Most notably, the mechanic of "players always roll" means that the designs are sort of incongruous; monsters do not roll to "hit" (only to deal damage) but rather the players must roll to be "missed." Under certain circumstances, opposed skill checks (rather than vs. a DC10) may be used. Monster/enemy types are planned to consist of minions and swarms (both of varying numbers of hit dice) as well as standard, elite, solo, and "archenemy" villains.

In addition to various additive and "pooled" dice bonuses, disadvantage is used as a penalty, with advantage being used as a bonus for checks (skill checks and initiative checks, only) and "mastery" being used in lieu of rerolls; this mechanic allows a roll of 1 on any given die to instead be treated as whatever is the highest number on that die. TNP does not use static modifiers (+2, -1, etc.) of any kind in its mechanics.

As you can probably gather, the system has sort of outgrown its simplistic beginnings, in order to provide a broader number of possible classes to play, while maintaining mechanical and mathemathical balance between those options. This is why it has become my intention to do some sort of a followup game, which manages to strip things back down and simplify them for ease of use. It has been my intention that the current designs of TNP will be compiled and formalized before the end of this year, but no real new development is taking place on its designs; all new ideas will be part of my future project(s).

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So, the intended schedule for this "semester" of the blog looks like this:
August: 1st/11th/21st/31st
September-November: 10th/20th/30th
December: 10th, ish (to make up for the missed post from May)

Re-iterating the Designs (2024)

The current designs for attack bonuses focus on the "class dice" with the bonus essentially being a non-stacking "typed" bonus. What this means is that while you might have one of each class dice bonus (and you can roll all of them) you only actually use one of these dice as your attack bonus -- the rest are used as a damage bonus.

The way I've decided to iterate on this idea (for whatever follows after TNP) is to instead use d6s for this bonus; only the highest d6 would be used as the attack bonus, but all of the d6s will be used as a damage bonus. With the designs pivoting towards d4/d8/d12 as the "weapon damage dice," I am also considering using this roll as a bonus to the attack roll, which can be used instead of the d6 bonus. The basic idea would be a stripped down version of the TNP class dice bonuses: the d4 would be added to the attack; the d8 would be added to a miss, and; the d12 would be used in place of the attack roll (and probably crit if both the attack roll and the d12 would 'hit'.)

Now, a while back, I was looking at potentially replacing the d20 mechanic with a 2d6+mod system. The interesting thing with this, is that it essentially required that all of the modifiers be positive, in order for the mechanic to produce suitable ranges under a DC10 paradigm. This sparked a connection in my brain, since the skill mechanic in TNP essentially has "skill rank bonuses" that likewise have to be positive -- but they're a d6 bonus, rather than a flat modifier.

Building off of this idea, and porting this latest d6 mechanic onto it, I got an entirely new idea rolling. Generally skill ranks were capped at 3, but in some cases it might be possible to get it as high as 4 or even 5 (particularly with knowledge skills.) In the ethos of "extra damage dice," TNP was likewise capping at 5d6 or 3d10, both with a maximum of 30 damage.

What if we devised a system where the skill rank bonus and the attack/damage bonus were keyed off of the same modifier?

For example, a +2 DEX attribute would let you roll 2d6 and keep the highest, as a bonus to your skill checks (1d10) using that attribute. However, a Rogue might also get a perk when using suitable weapons/attacks, where they would be granted a d6 'sneak attack' bonus based on their DEX attribute; +2 would grant 2d6, with the highest roll being added to the attack roll, and both dice being added to the damage. Barbarians could do something similar with their STR attribute while raging, as another example.

I quite like how this design ethos is shaping up. The one misgiving I have is whether weapon damage dice are a meaningful enough design space, or whether the whole thing could fire off of d6 and d20 alone; would we even need/want to keep d10 for skill checks?

I also think by breaking out of the "class dice" paradigm, it allows this kind of a system to be a lot slicker, more unified, and potentially run a lot faster. I think it would benefit from standardizing on something like 10 reserves for each class, and possibly even 10 HP per character (if enemy damage is scaled back accordingly) -- rather than necessitating that these things be extrapolated off of class dice, or a constitution score. This also allows for the possibility of unifying under d6 as being the bonus die for all rolls (attacks, saves, checks, initiative, and damage) rather than having a mix of d6, d10, and class dice, as in the current ethos; this seems like a meaningful quality-of-life improvement, especially if this can all be neatly tied back into attributes.

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Time for summer break! This blog should return by the start of August, or possibly sooner (as mentioned in the previous post.)

Collaborative Storytelling?

I don't know who needs to hear this, but I have some bad news for you:
D&D is not a collaborative storytelling game.

At its roots, the mechanics of D&D are that of a wargame, in most respects; the more I watch of The Players Aid, the more convinced I am of this. What this means is that it comes from an ethos of there being some amount of balance between the opposing sides, but that ultimately there are winners and there are losers. This is something which is sorted out by the rules of combat and the rolls of the dice. To wit, whether or not your character lives or dies at the end of a combat has nothing to do with what is "narratively" or "thematically" appropriate; the sport of D&D combat is the only determining factor in your survival.

Now, I've heard of RPGs where characters only die when they "want" to (such as when it is narratively appropriate, a meaningful sacrifice is being made, etc.) But I don't even need to go that far; I can point to something as simple and mechanically D&D-like as Knights of the Old Republic to give an example of the PCs basically never dying. One could similarly point to the Mass Effect franchise as an example of party members only dying when it is narratively "earned."

D&D doesn't do this at all. And I'm not even necessarily saying that it should. What I am saying is that unless a system mechanically supports character death as being narratively driven... it won't be. So, if you're expecting D&D to be a game where you build grand narratives with your party members, then at best you're likely going to have to fudge things in order to make it so.

I guess this is all to say that, you can reduce the lethality of a D&D-like game, in order to improve the longevity and consistency of a party, so that collaborative storytelling can take root... but you do so at the risk of losing any sense of stakes, or at least create the necessity of coming up with better, more meaningful stakes than just "live or die [and respawn with Jimmmmm, the Fighter, at the next town.]"

I also think that in pursuit of accessibility and simplicity, D&D fails at being a sport -- and collaborative storytelling suffers as a consequence of that. When combats seem abritrary and unfair, death seems cheap and meaningless (and don't get me started on traps). I really think in a lot of ways, that D&D has lost its direction, because it has no identity; it can't decide what it does or does not want to be, because it wants to be everything to everyone -- and fails.

And this is why I've always felt that the focus on mechanics is so important, when it comes to TNP. The combat in the game may feel more like a pro-wrestling match than an actual fight, or even a team sport -- but it should ultimately be challenging and fun, and punctuate some of the drama. The DM shouldn't have to feel like they need to pull punches in a fight, for the sake of the narrative (nor should they feel like they need to punish in-character or IRL actions with things that happen in combat.) This is why I think that the idea of a "collaborative storytelling" RPG is sort of... aspirational? Because the mechanics just have to work, if you want to have any of that other stuff just work, too.

I've never looked at systems that are purely narrative and really felt like I was playing a "game" when I did it; if anything, it felt like a "choose your own adventure" where you inevitably have very bad things happen to you (with little or no agency over them) because that's what's deemed to be "dramatic" or "interesting" or what drives the story forward: failures, shortcomings, debts, etc. It always feels weird, and unheroic. And frankly, I come to TTRPGs from the Diablo 2 paradigm, of basically being a huge badass; playing as a shitfarming peasant just isn't want motivates me, in the RPG space -- never has, and possibly never will.

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Anyway, I guess that's a topic that's been on my mind, as I play through my 5e campaigns, in what clearly is the twilight of this edition. I hope some of you are at least able to gain something from my occasional rambling post, such as this one.

Next post should be up sometime after the 25th but before the end of June; I may do one post near the end of July as well, but we'll see.

Filling in the Grid: Roster Construction (2024)

A topic that came up in the TNP Discord recently (piggybacking off of the last blog post) was how to determine the roster construction in an RPG. In my previous designs, there were effectively 6 "classes," built off of a chassis of picking whether you were a (martial) warrior or a (spell) caster, crossed with whether you used light, medium, or heavy "armaments" (effectively, armor, in a damage-reduction role.) This mapped pretty closely to the vanilla World of Warcraft classes, but was actually built off of the classes I had sketched out for a presumptive (at the time) Diablo 2 follow-up; Mage, Warlock, and Cleric being the light, medium, and heavy casters (respectively) with Rogue, Hunter(? I think?), and Knight being the warrior classes.

4th Edition D&D started off with a similar ethos to where TNP is now, so let me explain that a bit. 4e was essentially trying to take the pre-existing D&D classes, and map them onto what I refer to as "the intersection of a role and a power source." So for example, Clerics (being a holy healing class, generally) were given the 'Leader' role and the 'Divine' power source.

(As I've probably said before, power sources didn't matter much, until you get into bolting specific feat perks onto your powers; generally power sources informed what your default trained skill would be, as well as your class skills -- this being more or less what got carried over to TNP, mechanically.)

So, with the first PHB, 4e introduced 3 power sources: martial, arcane, and divine. Since the book contained 8 classes, the intention was to (more or less) have 2 classes for each of the 4 roles; famously, this didn't work out because the "martial controller" was nowhere to be found in the designs (until the Hunter subclass, in Essentials.) But the formula for how to "fill in the grid" in 4e was already taking shape; PHB2 added the Avenger (striker) and Invoker (controller) classes to fill out the divine power source, which already included the Cleric (leader) and the Paladin (defender) from the first PHB.

The 2nd PHB also codified Druid away from being a "divine" spellcaster, making the 'Primal' power source its own thing, for really the first time in D&D. The design was kind of kludgy (owed mostly to the fact that Druid is kind of a hybrid, "do everything" class insofar as it's roots in 3.x editions of D&D) so pinning Druid down into the controller role felt sort of forced; to wit, the Essentials and post-Essentials versions of the Druid took the class into completely different directions and roles.

TNP essentially came at its roster construction from the same place as 4e: taking what came before it, and trying to fit it into a defined framework -- namely, class dice. With the earliest iterations of TNP, every class was based off of a single die (either d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12) meaning that a "slate" necessarily needed to have at least 5 classes (whereas every power source in 4e ostensibly should aim to have 4 classes, one for each role.) TNP pretty quickly expanded from one slate into two, and as soon as the 2nd slate was finalized, it began spilling into a 3rd. This is how we got to the current roster of 15 classes.

With the decision to implement a 2nd class die (instead of having just one, for every class) TNP would have had to either expand to a 4th slate, or contract down to just two slates -- in order to keep the class die utilization "balanced." Instead, one slate was kept as single-die classes, while the other two were used to make up all of the 10 combinations of class dice. Similar to 4e trying to fit Druid into a single role within the Primal power source, TNP ended up with "class categories" to try and fit classes into a 'role' within their slate -- which would then make for mechanics/progression that could be mimicked on classes within the same category, on other slates. For what it's worth, I think this works very well on the 'Skill Expert' and 'Jack of All Trades' categories, but is a little shakier for the others.

So why do I bring this up?
Well, it's beginning to seem more and more likely/obvious that there will be an "after TNP" game, in my design future. That said, I think it is worthwhile to ponder, what sort of constraints or framework should be used when deciding what classes to include or exclude from the designs.

TNP has 15 classes, and with subclass mechanics taken into consideration, it tries really hard to at least cover the design space of (if not necessarily faithfully reproduce or "pay homage" to) the 40-odd classes/subclasses presented across the span of 4th Edition (the Psionic classes being the notable absence, in TNP.) Compare that to 5th Edition, where they've started with 12 classes, and more or less just built onto those (adding the Artificer and Blood Hunter, later on) mostly with things that are recognizably prestige classes from 3.5, or (arguably, such as the sprinkling in of Warlord mechanics onto the Fighter class) inspired by 4e.

You can even go back to something as seminal as Final Fantasy 1, to get a sense that 6 classes is kind of the bare minimum; compare that with the "core 4" in D&D of Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and the 5e version of "essentials" making Bard the de-facto 5th class. (You could make a case that this maps to "one class for each ability score [excluding CON].") TNP, by its nature, necessitates 5 classes being the minimum -- although if the framework is shifted from class dice to anything else, this could quickly change.

The question I'm posing to myself is, how many classes would I want, in a follow-up to TNP?
I definitely (if I haven't made it clear in my last few posts on the subject) want to make something smaller in scale, so a straight reproduction/port of the TNP roster is probably off the table. Based on everything we've gone over in this post, 5 seems like the absolute minimum, with 12 probably being the ceiling; ultimately the framework (or "grid") will likely determine what the right fit is.

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Scheduling is a bit jumbly lately, but I would expect the next post to be between June 15th-19th, with the 3rd post this month coming after the 24th. Stay tuned!

Deconstructing the Dice: A "Generic" TNP? (2024)

One of the overarching conceits in TNP is class dice, and how they power all of the mechanics, for each and every class. But what if we were to take a more traditional "generic" D&D-style approach, particularly to the roles of the dice? This is an idea I've been pondering recently, and I've alluded to the general concept of it in at least one previous post.

Specifically, what I want to focus in on today is weapon dice, and how you might start from the general (particularly 5e-ish) D&D approach, and "TNP-ify" the concept. So lets get down to basics.

Broadly speaking, 5e has very few weapon damage die archetypes, with (usually) one obvious best choice out of the available options. Now, not every character is proficient with every type of weapon, but let's set that aside for now. Broadly, most thrown weapons do 1d6 damage, whereas thrown finesse weapons do 1d4; likewise,  'light' weapons (i.e. suitable for two-weapon fighting) do either 1d4 or 1d6 damage. For all intents and purposes, any other one-handed melee weapons cap out at 1d8; two-handed melee weapons are either 2d6 or 1d12, and polearms (i.e. 'reach' two-handed weapons) are 1d10. The 'simple' versatile weapons are 1d6/1d8, but the 'martial' versatile weapons are 1d8/1d10 (worth mentioning that in 4e, two-handing a versatile weapon simply gave it a +1 damage, rather than a different die.) Most ranged weapons are either 1d6 or 1d8, with the 1d10 option being a heavy crossbow, that really requires feat investments to be worth it, IMO.

What am I getting at with all of this? Well, what if instead of scaling the class dice bonuses back to just 1d4, 1d8, and 1d12, we instead scaled back the weapon dice to 1d4, 1d8, and 1d12? Since d6 and d10 are the de facto "extra damage" mechanic dice in TNP (despite also having class dice bonus mechanics available to them) it seems logical that if you were to "TNP-ify" weapon damage dice, you might exclude d6 and d10, for use with other mechanics.

For example:

1d4: thrown weapons, light weapons

1d8: one-handed melee weapons, ranged weapons

1d12: two-handed melee weapons

So, you're necessarily leaving out some of the more niche weapon properties, but if the idea is to strip things down and abstract them a lot, it makes some sense that this would be the way to go. You could even do something to prop up two-weapon fighting by saying that characters with martial weapon proficiency (or its equivalent) could use 1 light weapon and 1 one-handed weapon to do TWF (1d4/1d8, comparable to the typical 1d6/1d6 loadout of 5e) and have a feat that could bump that to doing TWF with two one-handed weapons (ie. 1d8/1d8, exactly as the 5th Edition feat does.) Another thing is you could keep the 'versatile' property by mixing in the +1 damage mechanic from 4e, and even potentially do something with 2d4 weapons(?)

So what would you do with the d6 and d10? Well, to me, the d6 has always been the go-to "extra damage die" because they are so ubiquitous and also ergonomic; if late-stage 4e was any indication however, the actual go-to was d8, but assumedly that boils down to that game's math. Anyway, I started thinking to myself, does the system really need two extra damage dice, if we're not in a "class dice" paradigm, and any character class can be using any die for their mechanics?

That's when it hit me. 

I'm sure I've said in conversation (when discussing the TNP skill mechanics) that the percentile dice actually make the most sense as a default advantage/disadvantage mechanic. In the new drafts of TNP, when making a skill check (or monster roll, as the DM) you can roll both percentile dice, and the "1s" die is assumed to be the "natural result" whereas the "10s" die is the disadvantage or advantage result (when/if applicable.) So what if we used the percentile dice in this fashion, but applied them as the bonus/penalty to a d20 roll? For example, have the "1s" die be disadvantage, and the "10s" die be advantage; applying this die to a d20 roll, vs. a DC of 10 produces comparable results (within ~5%) of the standard advantage/disadvantage mechanic, with just using a d20 (i.e. roll 2, take the highest/lowest, respectively.)

(The other angle to come at this might be to have the weapon die function as both the damage, and the attack bonus; that way you could potentially free up the d10 for one more weapon die, or switch the roles and have d10 be the "extra damage die" with d6 being the additional weapon die.)

If we're going to do a "generic" TNP (i.e. as a sequel, or follow-up project) and move away from class dice, it makes sense to keep some of the original DNA, by giving each dice these kinds of specific mechanics -- so that every die has a "role" (pardon the pun.) I do think you lose something by shitcanning the 5 class dice bonuses, but sometimes it's a case of addition by subtraction; to be fair, these mechanics have only really existed "in the ether" (something that came into the designs after the relatively-stable 2018 edition) but were meant to be the unique selling feature of TNP, going forward. Whether or not they carry over to a post-2024 TNP is yet to be seen.

I think there's a couple ways to do a proper followup to TNP: 

1) you go more traditional/generic with it, something that's more recognizably "D&D-ish", possibly with full-on ability score mechanics

2) you go back to my previous RPG designs, with (ideally) only two dice forming all of the mechanics, leaning heavily into modifiers, but stripping the classes down to the bare essentials

3) you make an ultra-lite mechanical system, that fires off of d6s only (and maybe a standard deck of 52 cards) that can easily be played on a bus, or out on a camping trip

I haven't settled on what the followup will be, but in the back of my mind I'm always trying to come up with fresh ideas for how to make a new TTRPG tick.

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Apologies for the delay(s)! If you ever need more updates, remember to check the Discord.
Next post is planned for June 6th; the scheduling pattern may change going forward, but I'll try to keep to the "3x per month" frequency (likely with a makeup post in December.)