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!