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.

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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.

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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

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