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.