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!
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