Building out Class Features (2025)

At the risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I think the solution to the "cantrip problem" is to pivot the design space off of attribute mechanics. I started to think about it more as, "I use a spell, therefore I add 1d6 to the pool, for this attack." Now, as has been stated clearly before, not all classes/subclasses will get access to cantrips -- so what if we make having that specific class feature be the source of the 1d6 that we add to the pool? This lets us more easily differentiate Clerics from Paladins, and Druids from Rangers. (Another big distinction between spellcasters in 5e is ritual casting; this class feature is what I would argue is the main thing separating Sorcerers and Warlocks from being as high on my list as Druids or Wizards, in particular.)

Now that we've established what attributes won't do, we need to figure out what they will do, with regards to cantrips. If two-handed weapons are assumed to be getting a +8 damage mod, and two-weapon fighting will get +3 damage to each attack (assuming our standard array of +4/+3/+2/+1/+0) then we probably need to figure out something comparable to that, for cantrip attacks.

Would a single-target attack simply add both mental stats, as damage? Is there an easy way to balance out a "number of attacks" stat with the assumption that a "cantrip damage" stat will now likely be your highest stat? The problem is that if the only thing that "cantrip casters" care about is their mental stats, then suddenly everyone's got a +4 in one and a +3 in the other, and there's no variety. Maybe we still need to encourage spellcasters to have a +2 finger-waggling stat, after all. Do we simply treat (ranged) cantrip attacks the same way as (melee) two-handed weapon attacks, and add double the damage mod? How many attacks does an archer need to make, in order to be able to compete with that? This will take a bit more thought in order to flesh out, it seems. 

The other aspect of class features that I wanted to bring to the fore was the idea of "exceptions-based design." I touched on it a little bit (albeit ham-fistedly) in a recent post, where there are general rules, but then there are exceptions made to those rules. One example with the sequel mechanics is that the general rule (so far) is that we assume TWF will use the lower damage mod between STR and DEX. This would encourage a class like a Fighter to put high stats into both, in order to be good at TWF; it would also make it more expensive for spellcasting classes (who rely more on investment in mental stats) to also be good at TWF.

However, as an exception, we might allow the Ranger subclass to simply always use the higher of these two stats, meaning they don't have to invest in both -- or to simply override this rule and use a different stat, such as AGIL. If the assumption within the "lore" of the Ranger is that they are always scouting ahead and need to be able to react quickly, then incentivizing them to have a higher AGIL would reflect that in the mechanics, via having a higher initiative score. AGIL also being tied to stealth would likewise tie in to the presumption of Rangers as hunters and ambushers, stalking their prey from the shadows.

This also makes me ask, how should the Monk/Rogue class be designed? If the starting point is that Monks will probably get an INT bonus to their AC, my immediate thought actually isn't to slant Rogues towards CHA. Monk generally lends itself to being the multi-attack class, whereas Rogue is more of an "alpha strike" class, using sneak attack. If the general rule is that DEX (or AGIL?) is the "number of ranged weapon attacks" stat, the obvious exception to build in for Monks would be to allow them to also use this number for melee attacks (perhaps using their lowest physical stat as the damage modifier?) Or maybe it makes more sense to go with "highest physical stat" as number of attacks and "lowest physical stat" as their melee damage mod.

Likewise, if the Rogue's preferred damage mod stat is DEX, would it make more sense for their dice pool stat to also be DEX, or should it be AGIL? We definitely want Rogues to be the best at things like lockpicking, so leaning more towards DEX seems like the obvious move... but it really is a question of how to balance the two. Much like in 5e, this gives the Rogue the versatility to put any remaining stat points into whichever mental stat they choose, making it more of a decision around which skills to focus on, than purely a combat consideration.

Dovetailing into the Rogue idea, the mechanic of "finesse" weapons from 5e is something that I think could make an appearance, allowing either STR or DEX to be used for damage, when attacking with a one-handed weapon (and not doing TWF). To tie this back into the conceit of class features, perhaps the "one-handed weapon stat" could be a function of classes, rather than having a general rule. Or, say, the general rule is that STR is the default, but characters with "finesse weapon proficiency" can instead use DEX. So we would expect classes like Rogues or maybe Rangers to have this proficiency, but Barbarians likely would not. Maybe a benefit of being a Barbarian is that you could always use STR, when doing two-weapon fighting.

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Slightly off topic, but bringing things back to Eldritch Horror... One of my complaints with the game is how some characters are more about their items than their intrinsic abilities. While this is also a complaint I've had about D&D, it's significantly worse in a game where world-events regularly cause you to lose possessions at random. I do appreciate the conceit of reusing existing in-game items as a way to equip the starting class features for characters, but this style of game in particularly causes the weakness of item-dependent characters to be laid bare. The classic D&D comparable is when the party is captured and stripped of their belongings, imprisoned, etc. This is why TNP and the sequel generally focus on treating everything as a class feature -- even things that could reasonably be represented as items. In this way, they are part of the character at all times, and not something that can be taken away from them; they are just always assumed to be part of what the characters can do.

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This post is a little bit ahead of schedule (or "on time," as far as our most optimistic forecasting is concerned...) Next post will likely be up by November 19th, at the latest -- but possibly even by the end of next week, depending on how things go.

Powers vs. Power Strike: Fishing for Crits (2025)

I'm sure I've mentioned it before but let's examine the difference in ethos between 4e and Essentials a little bit.

With an attack power in 4e, generally you declare that you're using it, then the button gets pushed, and you roll dice to determine if you hit. This means that (hit or miss) the power is expended, assuming it is a Daily or Encounter power. In Essentials, the Fighter class instead functioned off of confirming a hit with a melee basic attack; after the hit was confirmed, they would then push the Power Strike button (an encounter power) to deal additional damage. (The Paladin in Essentials got a similar mechanic, and the Scout subclass for Ranger also got access to Power Strike.)

What this meant was that you never had to "waste" your encounter powers, on a miss. It also meant that you could choose to use it only when you scored a critical hit, thus maximizing the damage effectiveness even further. It's also worth mentioning that since attacks like Charge or opportunity attacks also functioned off of melee basic attacks in 4e, buffing such attacks with Power Strike was also possible. In the 2014 version of 5e, this is also true of the Paladin's Divine Smite ability, because it is cued off of scoring a hit with a melee weapon -- so this could be done with each attack made on your turn, in addition to opportunity attacks (as long as you have the spell slots to burn.) Similarly, the Battle Master in 5e keys its maneuvers off of scoring a hit first, and then expending superiority dice after.

So, how will this work for the TNP sequel mechanics?

Well, the ethos of "2d6 + pool" implies that all of the dice will be in the pool, before the roll is made. This means that we're going to be declaring which power we're using, first -- much like in 4e. However, since adding dice to the pool increases our chances of hitting (while also increasing damage) we end up getting a benefit similar to the "Power Strike"-style of mechanic, but without the two-stage confirmation system being applied to the roll.

This begs the question of whether there should be a mechanic for critical hits, in the sequel. If we take 1/20 as our baseline (5%), then saying "11 or 12 on 2d6" would give us a 2/36 (or 1/18) crit rate, which is pretty comparable. However, we need to keep in mind that the assumption is that the attacker will always be rolling at least 3 dice; scoring at least an 11 on "highest 2 of 3d6" already boosts that to almost 1/5 -- whereas a 12 is only 7.41%

An interesting quirk of the pool system is that damage potential also increases hit potential. This also means that as your crit chance goes up, your crit damage is going up; rolling 5d6 gives almost a 1/5 chance of scoring a 12 on the attack roll, but having 3 dice of crit damage is also going to do a lot more than only having 1 die (particularly if crits are handled by say, using the rolled damage but also adding the dice's maximum value, as in TNP.)

A third thing I've been thinking about is whether there should be a flat number of "daily" power uses, or whether this should be tied to attributes in some way. In previous RPG designs that I've done, I had encounter and daily resources keyed off of stats, so the idea of doing it that way is not completely foreign to me. I was thinking of it in terms of utilization, with my classic example being the Paladin. You're going to want STR for damage, and CHA as your pool stat... but then what? We've got at least 3 other attributes to account for, and we don't want to end up with the default "dump everything into AGIL because it's initiative."

So do we make something like INT the "per day" stat (for Paladin, at least?) that governs the number of uses of your "dice pool" stat? This would necessitate your INT and CHA stats both always being at least a +1, which ties into the idea I had presented previously that your class might prescribe which of your attributes has to be a +0. This also (aside from the obvious) highlights that a "flat 10" number of points to be spread across 5 attributes would probably be a little high, if the assumption was that the Paladin only really needs meaningful numbers in 2 of those stats... particularly if the max in any stat is expected to be +3 and not +4. I do like the idea of a +4/+3/+2/+1/+0 as the "standard array" for a loadout with 5 attributes, so maybe that just solidifies it.

Now, what this does is create some interesting choices. Do you want to "pool" harder, but less often? Do you want to do it weaker, but more often? Do you want to just swing your sword harder (knowing that you're getting double your stat as damage, on a two-handed weapon) and let the pool just be a nice cherry on top, once or twice a day? Naturally, there will be ways to optimize it, but then we also have to think of how our attribute choices impact skills, and not just combat -- which I think would tend towards a heavier focus on CHA, for our Paladin. From a design perspective, we also should give some consideration to, "if our pool button can only get pushed X times per day, then how should that number line up with our crit math?" while keeping in mind the fact that pushing the button is also what increases those odds.

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Bit of a broad discussion in today's post, but hopefully the ideas flow together well enough for the readers out there.

November's scheduling is a little bit in flux, but I would expect the next post to be up by November 13th, so check back then!

General vs. Specific (2025)

At the risk of harping on attributes a few too many times, I think it's worth discussing whether the sequel designs should use "general" rules, and whether there can be exceptions to those.

The best examples of "specific beats general" that I can think of are both from 4e D&D. The general rule was that you could shift one square, as a Move action; the mechanic specific to kobolds was that they could instead do this as a Minor action. Likewise, using your 2nd Wind was generally a Standard action, but dwarves could use theirs as a Minor action.

Also worth mentioning in this discussion is how 4e handled class-specific combat mechanics (i.e. powers.) Most classes fell into one of two paradigms: you had one attribute which determined your attack (hit chance) and damage modifier, and had 2 you could pick from for your "effect" riders, or; you had 2 attributes used for attack and damage (depending on the power), with one obvious attribute for riders. Generally, these were referred to as "A-shaped" and "V-shaped" builds, respectively (some people would instead refer to V-shaped as "Y-shaped.")

So far in the sequel mechanics, we have a few general assumptions:

• TWF will use the lower of STR or DEX for damage mod
• cantrips will use the lower of INT or CHA for dice pool bonus
• AGIL mod will be the number of ranged weapon attacks, per round

The question I found myself asking initially is whether the AGIL stat should serve the same function for spells as it does for weapons, thus negating the temptation to add a 3rd mental stat. And then I started thinking, "well if DEX is the finger-waggling stat, that seems like it could be used for doing somatic components for spellcasting..." This ties back into what I was saying about 4e, where Sorcerers sort of had STR crowbar'd in as their 3rd (2nd?) stat; this kind of setup was particularly important, given that 4e had your defenses use the higher of two paired stats, so every class needed to emphasize one of STR/CON, INT/DEX, and WIS/CHA.

I think part of the problem is that having the dice pool stat be the higher of the spellcasting/mental stats is unintuitive to most people; the obvious thing to do is to put your big numbers in the thing you're using all of the time (i.e. your cantrip stat), but the restriction requiring the numbers to balance off of each other throws a wrench into all of that. However, if we allow for a 3rd stat to give additional attacks, that might make it easier to balance, while giving a bit more variety.

Specifically, you might be balancing a +2 cantrip stat against the ability to only attack once with it vs. a +1 cantrip stat but the ability to attack twice with it. The question then is, do we apply a "general" rule for the "cantrip attacks per round" stat, or do we make that a "specific" rule, based on class or subclass? The latter seems to be preferable, because then we can also use that to reinforce which skills (if any) we would prefer those subclasses to be good at. For example, if Intimidation is a STR skill, we might actually want that to be "attacks per round" stat for Sorcerers; if the expectation is that Wizards are better at opening doors, that might point to DEX (i.e. lockpicking) as their stat.

I had previously mentioned in the Discord that a standard array might consist of something like +4/+3/+2/+1/+0 (and for the record, a +4 two-hander stat still balances fairly well vs. a +3 TWF stat, in case anyone was wondering.) This gives us a total of +10, which is nice; I had intended that perhaps a floating +1 from class/subclass might be in addition to that. However, it seems like a pool of +10 (with a subclass-specific "locked in" bonus being deducted from that that total, rather than added to it) is more likely to produce the sort of balanced array that we're angling for. In this way, I think a simple rule such as, "you cannot have more than a single +0 attribute," or "all attributes must be at least +1" will be sufficient to keep people from min-maxing their stats, without having to put an actual ceiling value on stats. It might even be the case that your +0 stat is a sort of "specific" rule, for each class/subclass.

The other exception that has been hinted at before is that the Warlock subclass might not have a dice pool stat per se, but that they can use CHA as their cantrip stat -- even if it were to be their highest mental stat, thus giving them more potent cantrips than what other classes could achieve. I think this is fairly in line with the general 3.5/5e mechanics of Warlocks. Likewise, we could have the Necromancer subclass use INT as "number of summons" that they can have under their control at any time, rather than give them a "cantrip stat" at all.

The other thing to remember is that classes like Paladin and Ranger will no doubt use "spellcasting" stats for dice pools and/or other functions, but they won't have a cantrip stat to balance off against. It stands to reason that if STR is the Paladin's "weapon stat" of choice, and CHA is their "dice pool stat" the obvious 3rd choice would be to bump AGIL (the initiative stat) -- but what if a wrinkle of the system would be that Paladins are required to use a +0 AGIL stat? That might be punishing, but it also makes things interesting by eliminating the "obvious" answer from the equation. You could even incentivize this, for example by granting a bonus to AC for doing so; this is reminiscent of how Monks are given certain unique abilities when not wearing armor in 5e, or similar restrictions that Barbarians have while raging.

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I'm running a bit behind on posting this month, but hopefully we can get back on track now.
One more post before October is out, so check back on (or just after) the 31st; the plan for November would be to post on the 10th/20th/30th to round out the year.

Standard Array (2025)

So, what should the attribute numbers look like, in the sequel?

I've been working from the assumption that the ceiling would be +3, but the paradigm has shifted so many times, it's probably worth reexamining. In a previous post, we've established that the baseline hit chance for weapon attacks is expected to be 72.42% -- so with a two-handed attack adding double STR (+3 * 2 = +6) mod, the [lowest 1 of 3d6] roll (2.04) computed through the hit chance produces a 5.822568 DPR result. Now, if we take the same roll and hit chance values but use only a +2 mod, we get 2.925768 -- which when doubled results in 5.851536, representing a two-weapon fighting routine. This is a great starting point, as these values are very close to one another.

So if the desire is to get the "TWF stat" to always be a +2, it probably stands to reason that it should be something like "lower of STR or DEX" allowing those stats to be either +3/+2 or +2/+2. The other way to do it might be "middle of STR/DEX/AGIL" which also has implications for spellcasting.

If the idea is to balance 3 stats against one another, that likely indicates that the idea is to make the lowest stat a +1, rather than a +2/+2/+3 array. This would be necessary for spellcasting, if the idea is that the "cantrip stat" should always be a +1, for example. This means that the overall array would consist of a single +3, a single +2, and then +1s for the remaining four attributes -- because this assumes 3 spellcasting attributes, and thus 6 attributes in total. We've mentioned before that maybe having +2 be the "minimum" spellcasting stat could be an acceptable quirk of the system, if the alternative is to crowbar in an entire 6th attribute.

Should we complicate the matter by having separate pools of attribute points for physical stats and for spellcasting stats? This actually seems like it would work better for producing the desired results, while allowing for more than just a single +3 and/or +2 stat. Something like a floating +1 based on class/subclass would be a mechanic that works well, for this conceit. If we go with these ideas, it seems like you'd have 3 points to split between 2 spellcasting stats, and 5 points to split between 3 physical stats -- in addition to that floating +1.

If spellcasting is to function off of the lower/higher of two mental stats, the class bonus would help to differentiate builds a little bit, i.e. if a Sorcerer is assumed to get a +1 CHA while a Wizard gets a +1 INT. Similarly, if a Paladin's "dice pool stat" is CHA, they might get a bonus to that stat, requiring them to focus their physical stats more on one mode of combat; by contrast, a Fighter might get a boost to STR or DEX, allowing them to be equally at home with two-handed weapons or TWF.

Is there room for a +0 stat, in the array? Well, if there is, it seems like it would only fit into the physical stat side of things (regardless of how many mental stats there ends up being.) Much like how attributes contribute to skills in TNP, it might be easiest to assume that everything starts at "rank 1" and then increases from there. So far, I haven't come across anything to suggest that the cap needs to be higher than +3... 

Really, the question then becomes whether the dice pools will consist of 1 stat or 2; some of the earliest theorycrafting for "d6 pool" suggested a normal melee attack would add +STR number of dice to the pool, and a Paladin's Smite ability would also add +CHA number of dice to the pool. With the designs migrating to "2d6 + pool" I feel like the necessity for double-stat pools has gone away. Worth mentioning here, I've also floated the idea that "daily" powers might allow all dice in the pool to contribute towards damage; this means you could put your highest 2 dice towards the attack roll (ensuring the best chance of hitting) without missing out on those dice, for their damage potential. This is something that harkens back to the "class dice bonuses" in TNP, most of which can be used for attack or damage, but some of which can also be used for both.

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I should have a bit more free time coming up later in the month, so expect the next post to be out by October 21st at the latest. A third post will also be out before the end of this month.

Weapons & Armor (2025)

Carrying on with the sequel mechanics discussion, there are a few things that the previous post made me think about, that I'll talk about today.

When trying to balance out spells vs. weapon attacks, if there are to be only two spellcasting stats, it might be harder to make the "cantrip dice pool" stat be any lower than +2; to balance this out vs. weapon attacks, I had talked about spells not adding a modifier to damage. In this specific paradigm, it means cantrip spells would have a better chance to hit (with a pool of 4 dice rather than 3) but the damage would be more random (2d6 as compared to 1d6+mod, usually a +3).

That might be workable enough, especially considering that the alternative is bolting an entire 6th attribute onto the system...

In the previous post, I hinted at the idea of "proficient" weapons applying a 1d6 bonus to your pool. There might also be other benefits we could apply. For example, as an alternative to using 2d6 for two-handed weapons, I had suggested that instead the system could use 1d6, but you might be able to add double your STR modifier to the damage roll; this could be a benefit you only gain from using a two-handed weapon with which you have proficiency. Likewise, the attempts at balancing out two-weapon fighting vis-a-vis two-handed weapons has so far been assumed to revolve around using a lower stat for the damage modifier; this could similarly be made contingent upon whether or not you are proficient with suitable weapons for two-weapon fighting.

This is sort of a milieu that I had used in one of my previous attempts at RPG design, whereby the math was derived from 3 unnamed stats, but certain qualifiers would specify whether a particular mechanic would use the highest, middle, or lowest of your 3 stats. Most of the feats that were purely math boosts were typically, "use your highest stat for this mechanic [instead of your lowest or middle stat.]" Assuming there is a cap on the possible values that your stats can be, this likewise places a ceiling on how high your modifiers for any mechanic can go; it helps create a framework for contextualizing all of the other math and mechanics in the system.

Bringing this back to our example, an "untrained" character doing TWF probably would add no modifier to their damage rolls, whereas a "proficient" character might add the 'middle' modifier, between STR, DEX, or AGIL. Similarly, we need to think about what the upshot to doing a single, one-handed weapon attack would be (if the ethos is basically, "well, anyone can attempt to do TWF," such as is the case in 5th Edition D&D.) The obvious thing that comes to mind is that such an attack would almost certainly have to use your highest stat, but also that your loadout could then include a shield. With the defensive bonuses meant to be fairly few and far between, my first assumption would be that shields are a flat +1 to "AC" (per se) for a proficient character, and provide no benefit if not proficient.

At some point I'll have to really drill into the math, and determine what the "correct" numbers are for AC bonuses -- particularly if we're assuming that "Monks add WIS to AC" will be a mechanic in the game (putting aside for the moment, whether or not WIS will be in the designs). It also begs the question of whether "flat modifiers only, for defense rolls" really makes sense for player-characters. This gets back into what I said about Eldritch Horror, and keeping the mechanics simple and unified... But, perhaps things like a Shield spell or a Rogue's evasion ability make more sense as "dice pool bonuses" to defense, or as rerolls. If such mechanics are meant to be in the game, it makes little sense to have them function as a +1 bonus; if we know the attack and defense results, then we'll know whether a +1 will make a difference, often leading to such abilities not being useful. Off the top of my head, I think this is why Bless in 5e is +1d4 instead of +1 (as in 3.5 D&D.)

Somewhat related to this topic (if I've mentioned it before, I'll say it again, but...) my intention is that there will be no "AC stat" the way that (by and large) DEX is the AC stat in 3.x and 5e D&D. My feeling is that this only serves to arbitrarily raise the floor on all of the math, and I don't think it needs to be there in order to make the stats useful. AGIL probably tracks closer to something resembling an AC stat in the TNP ethos, and the intent so far is that this would instead be used for initiative -- something I feel is impactful enough, on its own. I've also hinted that AGIL might be the "number of attacks"-stat for ranged weapon attacks in particular, if indeed this is needed as a balancing mechanic (i.e. sacrificing "+mod to damage" in exchange for hitting more targets.)

Part of figuring out how the pieces come together is a question that was brought up in Discord, as to whether the assumption of "1 weapon = 1 attack" for melee really makes sense, or if a better assumption would be that, say, a large weapon can attack in a sweep, or that a lighter weapon can attack fast enough to hit multiple targets in a comparable time frame. I don't generally work from a paradigm of "TTRPGs should have weapon-speed mechanics," but it's not as if this is an unknown concept in the RPG space -- indeed, the entire conceit of "DPS" tracks back to the need to make an apples-to-apples comparison between weapons of varying attack speeds, a concept that I think most people of my vintage would attribute to being pioneered by World of Warcraft. It might be the case that in a design ethos like the TNP sequel (where the expectation is that there will be push-button, dice pool bonus, massive "finishing move"-type powers) it makes sense to have the "at-will" combat abilities be a little more flashy and showy than just "1 weapon = 1 attack."

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Alright, that wraps up posting for this month. Expect the next post to be up on October 10th.

Building out "2d6 + pool" and other Sequel stuff (2025)

Let's talk sequel mechanics.

Say you're making an unarmed strike. The basic idea would be that you would roll 2d6 vs. the defender also rolling 2d6. On a success, you would deal damage equal to your STR "modifier" -- so, if that number is +1, it would be 1 damage, or 3 damage if the modifier is +3. Now, add onto that, using a proper/proficient weapon for your character would add 1d6 to the pool for this attack; what this means is that you would instead roll 3d6, selecting 2 dice for the attack result and 1 die for the damage result (to be added to the STR mod.) The defender would then roll their 2d6, after attack dice have been assigned; if you're having flashbacks to the RISK episode of Undergrads, you're not alone.

Now, I received some specific advice (from the people who brought you Strike!) that, "a 2/3rds accuracy [means] If you attack 4 times, you'll miss 3 or 4 of them 1/9th of the time." In other words, without constant luck-mitigation mechanics, 66(ish)% hit rate means that someone will have a very boring time in combat, for 1 out of every 9 combats. As such, I've decided to tune the hit chance for the TNP sequel slightly up, from this number. By setting a baseline of 3d6 vs. 2d6 (and where attacker succeeds on a tie) we achieve a 72.42% hit rate, if the calculation is assuming that the attacker simply takes the 2 highest dice every time (which is about the easiest way I know how to calculate it, in anydice.) Now, that's not to say that we couldn't tinker with this, by adding modifiers to the defense; I just felt it would be easiest on the DM to not have to assume they will always be adding something to the defense roll, which they would need to look up or otherwise memorize.

The other thing we need to assume is that the attacker will regularly be adding dice to the pool, either via encounter/daily type powers or "teamwork bonuses" (as I tend to refer to them) such as flanking, Bless spells, debuffs to enemies, etc. As such, the DM doesn't necessarily have to feel bad if they do beef up enemies defenses a little bit, since the party should have tools to overcome them mathematically.

The other side of the coin is, if enemies are assumed to not have access to the attack-buffing utility that the players have, to what extent should the players' "armor class" get buffed beyond a simple 2d6 roll? At first glance (with flat bonuses being such a potentially big shift in the math) it seems like only the heaviest armored PCs would get even a +1 bonus... possibly a +2? But then this bends back around to the question of, "if a Monk doesn't cast spells, do we let them use their WIS stat as a bonus to AC?" Would that potentially make them the hardest character class to hit? The knock-on problem with that is the presupposition that in the sequel, ALL characters have 10 HP (maybe letting them add their STR, since there are no plans for a Constitution attribute.) I can say with a high degree of certainty, that a character with 2d6+3 AC and only 10 HP is a lot more unkillable than one with 2d6+1 AC and 13 HP.

Now, bringing things back to the example from the start of this post, the conundrum I run into is, "well if adding a die to a melee attack is dependent upon using a weapon," then how do we make this math work, with spells? The example keeps breaking down for "basic attacks" whenever I come back around to applying these mechanics to spells. Do we just say, "actually, screw it, spells are just a 3d6 pool by default, for no reason" or should this be keyed to something like lowest mental stat? It almost feels like (particularly assuming 2 mental stats, and not 3) that we'll end up with the lower stat applying to basic attacks, and the higher stat effectively being the "dice pool stat" for encounter/daily powers.

If the intention is that the plinking stat always needs to be a +1, that further inclines the designs towards having 3 mental stats rather than just 2 -- otherwise you'd naturally expect all spellcasters to put a +2 in one spellcasting stat, and a +3 in the other. This might be workable, after all, so maybe you just say "spellcasters have a dice pool advantage over martials, but they don't get to add their modifier to damage rolls," or something. This has a very 5e vibe to it, where spells generally only deal dice damage, with no modifiers. Also, having to rig the math so that "basic spell attack bonus" is always your +1 stat, and can never be higher...? It ends up feeling gamey and arbitrary -- one of those moments when you can look at the game and all you see is the design spreadsheet, instead of the immersion you should feel, when playing.

The problem with saying "X mental stat does at-will damage, Y mental stat does encounter/daily damage" is you end up with the problem of every spellcaster putting a +2 in X and a +3 in Y -- assuming they all get at-will spells... This would mean things potentially get to be very "paint by numbers." This creates a potentially interesting design space, though. To wit, in 2014 D&D (5e), the "half-caster" classes expressly don't get cantrips (i.e. at-will spells) so it's not as if the idea of siloing off these sorts of mechanics is particularly new. There's also the possibility of say, having the Cleric/Paladin type class use only weapons for attacks, and their spells are only used to heal rather than do damage. This would beg the question of, "OK, so is every Cleric and every Paladin just going to max STR, and then one puts WIS as their 2nd stat but the other makes it CHA" and there's no real difference? Or do you let the Cleric have cantrips, so that they at least put a +2 in both/all mental stats? Ultimately part of the question is how much utility there is to be gained, by hanging the mechanics for both classes off of one chassis in the first place. (TNP succeeds at this by using class dice; regardless of subclass, you're using the same dice, so the mechanics will at least have that much in common.) Maybe the distinction can be as simple as all Cleric healing can be done at range while all Paladin healing must be done from melee/touch distances. 

It seems more and more obvious that the applications of mental stats in spellcasting will be class and/or subclass specific; if there is to be a difference between a Wizard and a Sorcerer, the obvious one would be that the offensive punch would come from INT and CHA, respectively, for those classes. Likewise, it might be the case that a Warlock uses CHA offensively but a Paladin uses CHA defensively. You can also build in some exceptions-based design, like maybe "Warlocks always use CHA for offensive spellcasting [even if it isn't their lowest mental stat, i.e. for at-will spells]" with the tradeoff being that they don't get per-day spells, as such -- again, this is sort of the conceit of the Warlock in any D&D edition besides 4th, but it carries a decidedly more 5e vibe to it.

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Harkening back to the Eldritch Horror boardgame, one of the things that I dislike about it mechanically is that it is such a mishmash of mechanics. Normally you succeed on a 5 or 6, but Bless increases that to succeeding on a 4, whereas Bane reduces that to only succeeding on a 6. The game also has mechanics that let you reroll one of the dice in your pool, but also to add dice to the pool after the fact. In my opinion, it could benefit from picking one of these mechanics and sticking to it -- as you might guess, my preference would be to just expand the dice pool. A similar train of thought came up with regards to the sequel mechanics; if a mechanic allows for a bigger pool of dice for the damage... should we simply say, "You can also use the attack roll dice as damage roll dice [as is possible with some of the class dice bonuses, in TNP]"? Or should the attack dice always be excluded from the damage roll, but the dice pool should be made even bigger?

If the attack dice are allowed to be used as damage, this would incentivize putting the highest possible rolls towards the attack -- which removes some of the gambling aspects of using an "average" attack roll, to try and boost the damage roll higher. That is to say, it essentially works against the spirit of what the dice pool mechanic is trying to do, so my instinct would be to simply expand the pool instead. This kind of tilted me towards using the "attack as damage" mechanic sparingly, if at all -- such as, maybe only having it apply to daily powers. This mechanic would, however, interact in interesting ways with a "power attack" mechanic, which might stipulate having to use your lowest die from the pool as one of your attack dice, in exchange for adding 1 die (or more) to the pool; it sort of brings that gambling aspect back to the table.

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A fairly long post today, albeit mostly speculative. Hopefully this will bring some results in the near future, and I can start to narrow down the designs and bring things into sharper focus.
Next post is planned for September 30th, so check back then!

An Aside About: 4th Edition D&D

For some reason or another, I recently found myself thinking about (of all things) Skill Powers, in 4th Edition. These are essentially universal Utility powers, with the prerequisite that you need to have training in the associated skill; you are then able to take the skill power in place of one of your Utility powers, in the normal manner within character progression.

For those unfamiliar, your attack powers were either at-will, encounter, or daily powers, and were given out a prescribed levels -- this was uniform for all classes, until Essentials. Utility powers, however, were simply doled out at specific levels, but whether they were at-will/encounter/daily could vary; it was sort of a way of tuning more useful powers up or down. The first problem with utility powers is one of "scope creep." 

The example I use off of the top of my head is that a "heroic tier" Ranger utility power from the first PHB would do something like, say, let you add your WIS modifier to an ally's skill check. Later on, the Invigorating Stride utility power was added for Rangers, which allowed you to move up to your speed (typical of a move action) and to spend your 2nd Wind (typically a Standard Action) all as a single move action. This basically made it too good to pass up, but it also demonstrates the shift in scope; utility powers started off as feeling like more of a replacement for spells, with regards to non-combat applications. Eventually they ended up as just "stuff you do in combat, that isn't attacking." I think this is important to point out, because for all the talk of how "4e nerfed my wizard!" at one point it did seem like there was an attempt within the designs to keep the wizard's... well, utility, by having utility powers.

Getting back to skill powers, the problem with the design of these is that because they were universally available, their effectiveness seems to have been deliberately tuned downwards. It's bad enough when something overpowered is available to only one party member, now imagine if ALL party members had it. The result is that skill powers ended up being a bit tepid, and no one really used them; as someone who played healers a lot, the option to take a Religion skill power for that one extra heal per day was nice to have... But sometimes less is more, and I think this whole mechanic probably could've been done without, or just done better.

In a lot of ways, the design of 4e is an attempt to reign in the worst excesses of 3.x D&D -- in particular caster supremacy, and multiclass monstrosities. The other thing is that by making 4e's combat be expressly about HP attrition, you necessarily end up having to make every character class function within the realm of HP damage. Now, you do get controllers and support characters and such that focus more on zones and debilitating effects and so forth... but at the end of the day, the intimidate option was basically non-functional, the result in gameplay is that "dead" was the only status effect that won fights. So, though 4e took away the spellcaster's ability to rewrite the laws of the universe, or just turn themselves into a better fighter than the Fighter, between utility powers and other considerations (like Ritual spells -- which mechanically are the polar opposite of rituals in 5e...) casters were still meant to be able to use magic to contribute meaningfully, inside and outside of combat. That seems fair enough, to me.

As for multiclassing, 4e didn't do away with it entirely... but it ends up with the same problem that skill powers have. There was a sense that multiclassing was overpowered, and also statistically it would basically be impossible to ever balance all of the millions of combinations that were possible. So what 4e did was make it so that you could spend a feat to swap one of your powers, for one power from another class. Now, specifically, you could only do this with Encounter, Daily, and Utility powers (each one costing their own feat) but you're essentially paying 1 power slot and 1 feat slot, to gain... 1 power. It should be obvious to anyone why this was almost never a good trade. (And for completeness, I should mention that if you took all 3 feats, you could unlock the option to swap one of your at-will powers too... if memory serves, and without going to my books to verify.)

Now to be sure, there was always the possibility that One Weird Trick would unlock a broken or overpowered build this way, but... for all intents and purposes, I feel like 4e's version of multiclassing was a token gesture, which was never meant to be actually good. (As an aside to this whole aside, my understanding is that multiclassing in 13th Age originally put your character behind the curve to the tune of losing +1 to attack, as its balancing mechanism -- which is obviously a lot more punishing in the long run than the cost of a few feats. I can't recall if this was changed, later...)

The other thing 4e did was essentially eliminate "dead levels." Between feats, powers, ability score boosts, and even just half-level scaling being applied to everything, every character is gaining something at just about every level. This also is a point in favour of not needing multiclassing in the designs; a lot of times (in my 5e experience, anyway) the best timing for a multiclass dip is when the next level of your current class doesn't really give you anything. If one of the big complaints against multiclassing is that thematically or narratively you end up with characters that make no sense, then one workaround is to design your character progression such that it incentivizes keeping to one class -- because then, your flavour remains consistent.

One of the other benefits is that 4e can do things like let Rangers pick their fighting style at level 1, and shower them with bonus feats that reinforce that style, without any worry of 5th level Fighters dipping 1 level into Ranger and just getting that boatload of benefits for themselves. I think for all the attempts at hamstringing multiclassing, 5e doesn't really get around the core problems; Fighter and Rogue are still the go-to 1- or 2-level dips, precisely because all of their key mechanics are still frontloaded, with no allowances to prevent poaching them via multiclassing. Indeed, 3rd party designers of 5e classes often specify that you cannot use their classes to multiclass.

This "no multiclassing" ethos from 4e does two things in my mind, which are sort of inter-related. First, if we take the frontloading of features to its logical conclusion (such as by also paring down dead levels) it seems obvious to me that the result should be a scaling down of character levels. Particularly when you go from the ethos of feats being bite-size (4e) to being a suite of features (5e) you can more easily compress progression into fewer levels -- probably less than 20, but certainly not 30. The second, related thing is how this makes characters more closely resemble pre-built ones, like you would see in games I've mentioned before, on the blog: Warhammer Quest: Cursed City, Eldritch Horror, and Betrayal at Baldur's Gate.

It's interesting to me how despite being introduced to those games long after getting into D&D, the character design for TNP essentially picks up where 4e left off, but arrives at something so closely resembling the board games' characters.

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Well, I hope that was an interesting trip down memory lane, and that I managed to paint a picture of why 4e was the way it was, and where I think that design ethos was taking the genre.
The next post is planned to be up sometime between September 19th-21st, so check back then!

Leveraging Synergies (2025)

A recent topic of discussion on the TNP Discord was how D&D 2024 compares to TNP, in terms of what it's doing with skills.

In 5e, you have a proficiency bonus that scales up as you level (starting at +2) and generally speaking, you get proficiency with 4 skills -- 2 from your class, and 2 from your background. Certain features (such as Jack of All Trades, for the Bard class) let you add half of this bonus to your skill checks; other features allow you to add double this bonus, a mechanic which is typically referred to as "expertise." Barring these outliers, your proficiency bonus will scale up to +6 and your ability mods will cap out at +5; a +11 modifier effectively means a 10% success rate against a DC30 (i.e. only a d20 roll of 19 or 20 would succeed.) Most DCs in 5th Edition are done in increments of 5, with each increment representing a 25% swing in difficulty; with advantage, a d20 roll with no modifiers vs. a DC10 is equivalent to about a +5 bonus, or about 25% (coincidentally).

As you can probably guess, this leaves 5e with a fairly narrow band of DCs it can meaningfully use. So with the 2024 rules, they've tried to crowbar in advantage, if/when you can reasonably argue to the DM that proficiency bonuses from a skill/tool/etc. would overlap for a given action; instead of stacking/doubling these proficiency bonuses, the DM is instead encouraged to grant advantage on the check. The problem is that not all skills have a tool which makes an obvious pairing with them, causing a difference in effective DC of potentially 25% (the difference between advantage vs. a straight roll.) In short, this is an afterthought, and that's why it's mechanically/mathematically unsound.

If we go back to 3.5, there was a system for "skill synergies" whereby 5 ranks in a given skill granted a +2 bonus to a related skill. Even this was a very "pick & choose" kind of affair, where it was not universally applied. By contrast to what 3.5/5e D&D are trying to do, both TNP systems have skill synergies built into their baseline assumptions. Every "core" skill falls under an Attribute and a Skillset; what this means is that adding bonuses to a skill always increases the bonuses to the other skills that are related to it.

For example, in 3.5 having 5 ranks in Bluff gives you a +2 to Diplomacy and Sleight of Hand checks. In TNP, if you increase your Subtlety skillset, that would increase both your Bluff and Sleight of Hand skills; likewise, increasing your CHA attribute would increase both your Bluff and Persuasion skills. Because all core skills fit somewhere on the grid, this built-in system for synergy works across all core skills; the skillsets effectively serve as another vector (in addition to attributes) by which thematically-linked skills are able to be synergized. In TNP, you can gain training and/or a bonus rank in either the attribute or the skillset for a given skill; instances of overlapping training do not stack, but they do provide the "mastery" bonus to such skills. In the sequel, each bonus to a given skill's attribute or skillset would add an additional d6 to the pool for that type of skill check.

Now, admittedly, where this idea falls short in the TNP systems is with knowledge skills; although they are grouped by power source (and only half are unique to a given power source) power sources are not given a "score" nor do knowledge skills have "skillsets" or any other such 2nd vector to group them together. In TNP this is somewhat remedied by additional ranks (beyond 3rd) being more readily available, for knowledge skills. As for the sequel mechanics, those details are still being worked out.

I think a strength of the 2d6 ethos for the sequel is that every die you add into the pool has the potential to matter. One complaint I've heard about older versions of the World of Darkness system is that it's still all down to random chance; you roll X number of d10s, and need a 10 to show up, in order to succeed. Likewise, when I play Call of Cthulhu-based boardgames, you end up needing a 5 or a 6 on a d6 in order to succeed; if you fail, you spend a token and gamble again. In both cases, your previous failures don't get you any closer to success. (Worth mentioning here, most newer versions of Axis & Allies, including some 3rd-party off-shoots, allow for previously-failed technology rolls or "tech tokens" to accrue towards eventual success at such research.) With the sequel mechanics, the fact that you are always adding 2 dice together, means that you avoid the pitfalls of the WoD and CoC systems, because low rolls are still potentially useful and therefore worth something. The other thing is that having 2d6 as the DC provides some variability in which results will succeed, as well; obviously, high rolls always have a better chance at success, but nothing is out of the realm of possibility in an "opposed roll" paradigm.

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Running a few hours behind schedule, but managed to stay caught up for August.
Look for the next post around September 10th.

Conventional Wisdom -- Part 2: Class Breakdown (2025)

Just to give some context, I feel it's helpful to recap what the projected class list for the TNP sequel is shaping up to be:

1. Cleric/Paladin thing
2. Sorcerer/Wizard thing
3. Druid/Ranger thing
4. Monk/Rogue thing
5. Barbarian/Fighter thing
6. Necromancer/Warlock thing
7. Bard/Warlord thing

So, specifically, how does this relate to our question of "WIS stat: yes or no?"

The first thing I think of is, if we're structuring mental stats sort of like the physical stats, then it might be the case that there's one stat for offensive spells, one for healing spells, and one for determining the number of targets of your spells. If class #1 and class #7 are meant to be healing classes, then the obvious solution is for them to use CHA as their healing spell stat, since that stat would be somewhat ubiquitous to those archetypes. Ok, so what about class #3? You could possibly make an argument for INT being their healing stat, but WIS is clearly the more obvious choice.

This is where we get into the problem of, "the Wizard is the best at Religion, because the Wizard is the best at INT." How do we solve for this? Do we make the spell functions of the attributes be class-specific? Do we make the knowledge skills for each class function off of their key mental stat? Do we do both? Really, when trying to make attributes work properly, we need to use them in ways that work mechanically, but also reinforce the expectations that the lore and the archetypes impose on the game. And it must be said, that in a non-multiclassing paradigm, it is much easier to fiddle with these levers.

As a bit of a sidebar, this also brings up the lack of utilization of the INT stat, in modern D&D. Without going into detail, this stat has lost features from 3.5 to 4e, and from 4e to 5e. It's only used as the spellcasting stat for Wizards (and later, Artificers) as well as Eldritch Knight (the Wizard version of Fighter) and Arcane Trickster (the Wizard version of Rogue.) So is this something we should try and "balance out?" It seems that the Necromancer half of class #6 could possibly focus on INT; Druid and Ranger could utilize it more, and maybe Cleric, too? What about for class #7? It feels like you could almost do something with keying certain class features of theirs to the INT stat, but not outright spellcasting. How does class #4 fit in? Is Rogue the INT version and is Monk the WIS version?

The other question to consider is if certain spellcasting classes are meant to be completely shut out of healing, then does it really make sense to have 3 (potential) spellcasting stats? Does it make sense to split offensive and defensive spellcasting across 2 stats, to begin with? 5e D&D doesn't do this; each class uses one stat for all of their spellcasting (and often use the same stat for their class features, too.) So should the point of differentiating a Cleric as a WIS caster and a Paladin as a CHA caster lean more into differentiating their skills? In that case, it seems that the implication is that the spellcasting stat (if indeed there is to be only one) for each given class, should be the stat that most closely aligns with the expected skillset of that class.

Again though, this butts up against the problem of who's the odd man out, when it comes to skills like Religion: if you make it a WIS skill, Paladins become bad at it, and Rangers become good at it; if you make it a CHA skill, Bard/Warlord characters are suddenly good at it, but Druids are suddenly worse at it. I feel like the way to avoid this while keeping 3 mental stats, is to make each "class skill" from the knowledge skills just use your highest mental stat. The alternative is to see if we can pare the stats back down, and somehow rework the "power source" framework to be functional with the new implied math.

The other vector to approach it from (particularly if your "good skills" are supposed to use your highest mental stat) would be to ask, what are your "good saves" supposed to be? This harkens back to the previous post, where essentially we have to ask, "What does each save do?" If Paladins, Bards, and Warlords are meant to be good at CHA saves, does that mean their minds are hard to dominate -- or is that meant to be represented by characters with high INT? Or high WIS? The other question is, what else is a non-spellcaster (such as a Monk) getting out of picking one mental stat over the other? The classic answer would seem to be something like "add your WIS to your Armor Class," and particularly in a non-multiclassing system, that seems highly workable.

(I also find it slightly telling, that out of 7 classes, there are only 2 you could reasonably classify as purely martial; I feel like this is reflected in the class utilization of 2014 D&D as well as the reworks in 2024 -- which expands spellcasting for most classes that have it. Unlike 4e, where all classes have powers, 5e really is a return to all powers being spells, and so only spellcasters have real powers -- thus necessitating the overabundance of spellcasting classes.)

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We'll look to do one more post, by August 31st -- otherwise the intended 4th post for this month might have to be punted to later in the year.

Conventional Wisdom (2025)

I had mentioned in a previous post that I'd like the sequel to TNP to have a Wisdom attribute. So far, that hasn't managed to work itself into the designs, but maybe it should.

As far as the physical stats go, it's seeming like STR will be the two-hander damage stat; I'm moving off of the idea of adding dice for two-handed weapons, and instead leaning towards adding twice your STR mod to the damage roll. This would make it a little easier to balance against TWF, where maybe the damage mod would be the lower of DEX and STR (or you use STR for the mainhand, DEX for the off-hand?) The thing then is how to operate ranged weapons in this paradigm. The idea to this point is that they would have a low (or no) mod, but you could attack multiple times (likely a max of 3.) The idea being that this number of attacks would likely be based off of your stats -- either DEX or AGIL.

Where I've hit a snag is when trying to figure out how this translates to spells. Is there a "number of attacks" stat, or a "number of damage dice" stat? Should there be a stat that's only used for healing, rather than damage? Probably it would make sense for the stats to work differently for each of the spellcasting classes, so there would be no "hard and fast" rule for how the stats work, the way that there could be with plain old weapon attacks.

It almost seems like rather than just being a straight repurposing of TNP's 5 attributes, the sequel mechanics demand there be another mental stat. The case for this is also helped by the fact that "power sources" as a mechanic don't... quite function as intended; does each class have a 'score' with 2 different power sources, and that's how your knowledge bonuses are divvied up? The problem with that is it's effectively duplicating the mechanic of attributes, without the corresponding skillset mechanic to back it up.

So perhaps it makes more sense to reinvent the wheel, and slot the knowledge skills under attributes again, adding Wisdom back in as one of them. Then essentially what you end up doing is going, "well if X is the Cleric/Paladin spellcasting stat, then Religion should use X stat." The problem is that you end up with the Venn diagram where druids are probably supposed to be good at Religion, but also good at "nature" skills -- so do those skills all use the same stat?

I've always thought (particularly in a non-multiclassing system) that it'd make sense to just let each class use their highest mental stat for any knowledge skills on their "class skill list," so to speak. Is that a better way to handle knowledge skills, vis-a-vis attributes? Since there are only 10 knowledge skills, I think you could easily cover them between the 3 mental stats, without too much trouble; the outlier would be something like Animal Handling, which is meant to sub in for riding/using mounts -- something that maps more to Agility than to a mental stat.

The other thing that this gets into is whether the sequel will have traditional saving throws, or not. From the 3.x perspective, INT or CHA saves seem to make no sense -- so why does 5e have them? I agree that they're poorly defined. I also would take it a step further and say that I personally don't understand how WIS became the default mind-affecting/mind-controlling/Vicious Mockery-ing save. WIS being related to "will power" or a WILL save seems to have more to do with alliteration and inertia than anything else; CHA being an option for your WILL stat (in 4e) vibes with "force of will" or "force of personality" (if not outright "will power" -- the difference seeming academic) being tied to Charisma moreso than to Wisdom.

If INT is the go-to "big brain" stat, you could win me over with an argument that INT is the save used vs. mind control. Really, I find myself asking, "Why isn't everything an INT save or CHA save, instead of leaning so heavily on WIS?" If you start from the assumption that mind-affecting spells should either be INT or CHA, what does a WIS save even get used for? It's particularly hard to imagine any of the mental stats really being used for "saves as opposed checks" where you're not really saving out of a combat effect... but that begs the question of "isn't that just a skill check?"

Maybe if WIS is tied more to senses/perception, then WIS saves become more about saving against things like stunned/blinded/deafened; having WIS back in the lineup means skills like Perception and Insight don't necessarily have to be shoved under INT and CHA (respectively) either.

I'll have to sit down and really hammer out the details more. But overall, I feel like this would be one of those rare cases of "addition by addition." Hopefully working WIS into the mechanics solves more problems than it creates. In particular, I think it'll be interesting to iron out how having 3 mental stats will work, with regards to spell mechanics.

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It's always rough coming back from a break, especially in summer when the weather is nicer -- hence the delay.
Next post should be between the 21st and 25th, with a 4th post before the end of the month. Stay tuned!

Where is D&D going?

The future seems to be in question.

For all the improvements that the 2024 version makes to D&D, it does also seem to have a lot of "unforced errors" which are keeping some players from moving over. Some people speculate that the current IP owners may just license the brand out, and stop printing the books themselves -- something that was almost unthinkable, within recent memory. But with the Warhammer IP seemingly being farmed out to whoever will pony up the cash, D&D might not be far off from heading in the same direction.

You also have to think of all the previous D&D authors, who either have already written their own systems, or are now working for competing companies. I think it's fair to say that being able to have the official D&D brand on your RPG system would increase the sales potential by an order of magnitude. Whether or not the price is right, is another matter.

But where does the game go, in terms of actual mechanics? The "feat + ASI" paradigm of 2024 seems popular, and advantage/disadvantage seems to have caught on (a departure from the earlier, wargame-ish stacking bonuses of 4e or 3.5) but tool proficiencies still seem like a mess, and the places where they were obviously going to overlap with skills...? I feel that's a problem that existed since 2014 with no real fix in sight.

The official virtual tabletop for D&D has been axed, as well. Alternatives exist, but I think this development sort of hints that D&D may still be a physical product, for longer than otherwise might have been predicted... or it might just indicate that there will be increased monetization, if there's ever going to be support for such a platform.

What's the next "big" thing in D&D? Do we see more crossovers (Magic: The Gathering, Rick & Morty...) or revival of more old settings? Is a space/future version of D&D in the offing, along the lines of Starfinder? I genuinely wonder if this formula for character advancement will last into another edition -- or do we see a split, like Essentials, where the game tries to break the current paradigm and forge its own path? For all the intricacies in the game, it does still feel very stripped down. In parts, it even feels bare-bones. It'll be interesting to see which parts of the game see the most effort and development, in the coming months and years.

Keywords & Archenemies (2025)

One of the things that the last post reminded me I need to work on is fleshing out archenemies. A few design cues have come to light over the course of past discussions on the topic.

Firstly, rather than being a blob of HP that can be easily stun-locked, it occurred to me that it probably makes more sense for the archenemy to act on multiple initiatives (i.e. likely as many turns as there are members in the party.) This way, you can build debilitating abilities such that they shrug one off at the end of their turns. It also opens up the idea that the archenemy can just straight up be multiple entities, rather than just one individual.

The simple rule that I had in mind was that any negative effects on enemies (that you impose) would continue until the end of your next turn (meaning you can potentially benefit from them on your following turn) whereas benefits to yourself or your allies would end at the start of your next turn; as an adjunct to this, the "Sustaining" keyword was meant to allow for such effects to be continued by simply taking the same action that initiated them -- but in hindsight that seems sort of unnecessary and redundant. 4th Edition D&D has the "Sustain Minor" keyword, meaning that you can sustain an effect of a given power by spending your minor action on subsequent turns; adopting something closer to that might be more reasonable. I'll have to go through and see where the keyword is being used, where it should be being used, and make a judgment call on how it should work, going forward. Archenemies also beg the question of whether certain effects should last until the end of an enemy's turn only, or if this enemy type should just be the exception to the general rule.

Now, I mention keywords in the same post as archenemies, because it is assumed that their One Weird Trick (Heroes hate it!) is that they could shut down one (or possibly more) keywords, in combat. This might be something they can do from the start, and lose once they are bloodied -- or something that triggers after being bloodied. I'll have to give it some thought, and come up with some samples, to at least get the creative juices going for DMs.

So what are the other keywords?

• Restoration: pretty straightforward, any feature that restores lost HP should have this keyword
• Teleport: again, any feature that allows teleportation; generally these are assumed to not allow for gaining Altitude but otherwise let you reposition freely, without provoking opportunity attacks.
• Concentration: these are all buffs, with the stipulation that each character can only produce or benefit from one concentration ability at a time. The barbarian's Rage is one such ability, cleric's Bless, spellbinder's sigil or hex, etc.
• Form: Guardian, Druid, and Fighter all use forms; for Fighter in particular, I wanted a simple unified mechanic for swapping weapons (in the guise of Fighting Styles) so the Form keyword serves this function quite well. The general rule being that you can take a move action to activate or change the form you are in, but also that you can activate a form as part of your initiative check.
• Summon: These are abilities that let you bring pets or other allies into the fight. Presumably powerful enough archenemies would be able to banish them to other realms, for a duration.

So as you can see, some of these keywords are just groupings of similar features, while others are shorthand/jargon for small bundles of mechanics, that are consistent anytime that keyword shows up. I know previously I had intended for summons to all function off of the same, generic mechanics -- but across the different classes and dice, it just became necessary for each instance to explain how the HP or HD of summons were determined; if anything, HP summons were meant to be limited to certain action types, and I believe earlier versions only allowed them to make melee attacks. But with the addition of a sidekick-wielding archetype for the Warlord, that last restriction might not intuitively make sense.

The other thing of note is that generally, most classes will only be using one of these keywords -- meaning generally shutting down one keyword shouldn't shut down a whole party. Likewise, Fighters can still fight without their fighting styles, Barbarians can still fight without rage, etc. Characters with the Disciple category also have the ability to change their subclass in the middle of combat, meaning a summoner Druid could change to a shapeshifting "Form" Druid (or vice-versa) to mitigate an archenemy's ability.

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Summer break for the blog starts now!
Check back August 1st.

Campaign Generation: Card Mechanic for TNP (2025)

Alright, so by request on the Discord, I'm going to do my best to break down how to use a deck of cards to help randomly generate a campaign, for TNP -- hopefully without having to straight up reproduce the whole rules documentation on the subject.

I've done a random draw of cards, with a little help from Random.org, which I'll be using to aid in this explanation. First step in this process is to take a standard deck of cards, leaving out the jokers for now; because a standard deck + 2 jokers is 54 cards, this has been split evenly across the 6 levels of play (0 through 5) increasing by 2 cards each level -- starting with 4 cards at level 0 and ending with 14 cards at level 5.

Alright, so we refer to the deal for each level as a "hand" just for simplicity; in our random example, the first 4 cards that were dealt are:

• 2 of hearts
• 8 of clubs
• Ace of spades
• King of diamonds

Numbered heart cards correspond to a social encounter; since there is only 1 such card in this hand, this level will have one social encounter, of the lowest complexity. Essentially, this means the party must pass 4 checks related to the social encounter in order for it to be a success; if they fail 2 checks before getting 4 successes, the encounter is a failure. The narrative must be moved forward, but in terms of "scoring" the campaign, the failure counts against the party's total.

Numbered club cards are used to generate minions or swarms; the number on the card indicates the maximum number of HD that minions or swarms can have, in any combat encounters for this hand. Minions should cap out at 4 or 5 HD, while swarms should have 5-10 HD, thus the numbering on the card is significant mechanically (unlike with non-combat numbered cards.) I should emphasize that this number is meant to be the maximum, so you can use minions or swarms with fewer HD -- meaning that 1-HD minions are always an option, even if the card is a 2! Rather than have the card dictate that an entire combat encounter should consist of only one type of enemy, most combat cards let you use the relevant type of enemy for any encounters within that hand.

Aces are wild! You can use this to generate any type of encounter, although in order for an even 50/50 split in the deck, aces should be used to generate a combat encounter. If used this way, you may pick any one type of enemy to add to the hand for this level. If you are adding (for example) a 2nd social encounter, the complexity of that encounter would go up one step; this means that instead of 4 successes vs. 2 failures, the encounter would require 6 successes vs. 3 failures.

Face cards (such as the King of diamonds) correspond to specific enemy types, other than minions and swarms. Kings generate a solo monster, which are meant to be a combat challenge for the entire party; as such, these types of monsters are not meant to be used in any/all encounters for the hand they are dealt. Instead, they strictly represent one combat encounter. Queens (Elite) and Jacks (Standard) allow their respective enemy types to be used in any combat encounters for this hand, similarly to minions or swarms.

Let's continue on!

• 9 of diamonds
• 4 of clubs
• 4 of hearts
• King of spades
• 8 of diamonds
• Ace of diamonds

Now, as you can see, we came up with 2 numbered diamond cards this time. This means we should have a "complexity 0" exploration encounter (4v2), as well as a "complexity 1" exploration encounter (6v3). If it's of any help, the complexity number is meant to correspond to the number of cards dealt at that level, i.e. the level 0 hand consists of 4 cards, corresponding to a complexity 0 encounter needing 4 successes, and so on.

Probably worth mentioning at this point in the discussion, is that the cards and their corresponding encounters are meant to be done in any order, within a hand. Maybe a harder non-combat encounter is done first, with an easier one later; maybe combat leads to exploration, or maybe it's the other way around. The idea is to give the DM (with player input welcomed, too) just a spark of imagination, a simple framework to hang their ideas and their stories on.

Alright, so we've dealt out the hands for levels 0 and 1. Prior to dealing the hand for level 2, we should shuffle in one of the jokers to the remaining cards of the deck. This card represents the archenemy of the campaign; as there are 2 jokers, the DM should be planning around the idea of the archenemy making 2 appearances, in terms of combat encounters (obviously, they may show up in-character in non-combat situations as well). The 2nd joker should likewise be added to the deck prior to dealing the hand for level 4; any easy way to remember this rule is that it happens on the even-numbered levels (after 0, of course.)

Level 2 hand:

• black Joker
• 6 of hearts
• 10 of clubs
• 9 of hearts
• Jack of spades
• 2 of spades
• 5 of spades
• King of hearts

So as we can see, there are multiple non-combat encounters to contend with at this level. The 6 and 9 of hearts mean that we will have 2 social encounters: a complexity 0 and a complexity 1. The 2 and 5 of spades mean that we will have 2 subterfuge encounters: a complexity 0 and a complexity 1.

(With multiple numbered club cards, the numbers are not additive, meaning the HD is always capped at 10 for swarms. Try and use both/all numbers as your HD cap across the various combat encounters for any hand with multiple minion/swarm cards -- but if you want to make things more deadly, you do have the option to default to the highest value instead. Just remember that each card generates one encounter; if you have 3 numbered clubs, that means 3 combat encounters, no matter what.)

To give some context, here are the suggested "core" skills for some of the different non-combat encounter types -- but remember to encourage your players to use their Knowledge skills as well!

Social: Bluff (CHA/Subtlety), Disguise (CHA/Infiltration), Forgery (INT/Infiltration), Insight (CHA/Detection), Intimidation (STR/Communication), Linguistics (INT/Communication), Persuasion (CHA/Communication)

Subterfuge: Bluff (CHA/Subtlety), Disable Device (INT/Infiltration), Disguise (CHA/Infiltration), Forgery (INT/Infiltration), Lockpicking (DEX/Infiltration), Sleight of Hand (DEX/Subtlety), Stealth (AGIL/Subtlety)

Exploration: Break Objects (STR/Infiltration), Climb (STR/Athletics), Decipher Script (INT/Communication), Disable Device (INT/Infiltration), Jump (AGIL/Athletics), Lockpicking (DEX/Infiltration), Search (DEX/Detection)

(And don't forget, Perception and Investigation checks are almost ubiquitous across non-combat encounters.)

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A couple other minor things, to note:

1. It might be possible for the archenemy to be defeated before the campaign ends. Think about how the story should continue! Or, if you prefer, don't feel like you can't fudge or otherwise arbitrarily pick the archenemy's appearances, to make things dramatically appropriate -- you're perfectly able to do this, in a non-randomly generated, curated campaign so it would be silly to say you can't do it with the cards as well.
2. One of the safety nets of the system to try and make sure things are kept interesting: if at any given level, the total number of non-combat cards (numbered spades, diamonds, and hearts) does not exceed the level number of that hand, the DM has the option to combine the number of non-combat encounters when determining complexity, rather than breaking them down by individual suits. So for example, if there was 1 non-combat card dealt from each suit in the 4th level hand, the DM could opt to have a complexity 0, 1, and 2 encounter (assigned to whichever type they prefer, or in consultation with the players) rather than simply having 3 encounters of complexity 0.
3. Another safety net in the rules: if a hand produces no combat cards (numbered clubs, face cards, jokers, OR aces) "the dealer should return the hand to the deck, reshuffle, and re-deal until a different result is attained."

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So, as you can see (hopefully) aside from the specific monster mechanics, this idea could easily be ported over to other systems -- possibly including the TNP sequel, of course.

I should have one more post before the end of June, but then I will be on break until the start of August.

Sequel Mechanics: Initiative (2025)

I know I had said previously that I would be interested in trying to make initiative checks back into a form of skill check, but I've since realized that's a bad idea.

The whole point with a d20 initiative roll is to actually provide some dispersion of the numbers, so there's less worrying about tie-breaking, or everyone's numbers being bunched up together. If you're doing a d6 pool and taking the highest 2, you're actually getting the opposite effect; similarly, this is why TNP still uses a d20 initiative roll, rather than a d10+d6 skill check.

Since the default mechanic for most rolls in the sequel will be some variation on 2d6, my first intuition is to have it so that initiative checks start with 2d6, and then add 1d6 "per plus" of Agility, to the pool. So a character with a +3 Agility would roll 5 dice, and the total of all of those 5 dice would be their initiative count. I feel like this would be a good compromise, providing the desired variance while also giving a tangible benefit to having a higher attribute.

The interesting thing with that idea, is you could then use the attribute as a tie-breaker if needed. For example, if someone with a +1 Agility rolls 18 on 3d6, and someone with a +3 Agility rolls 18 on 5d6, then the person with the +3 would win on the tie-breaker. It also makes my brain tingle a little bit, because instead of everyone randomly rolling a number between 1-20 and slapping a modifier on it, your attribute effectively determines the ceiling for how well you could possibly roll; a +0 would cap out at 12, while a +3 would cap out at 30.

Initiative sort of naturally avoids the pitfalls of needing a "release valve" for excessive dice, since the number can basically go infinitely higher. This makes it easy to have any initiative bonuses just add dice to the pool, rather than use something like advantage on a d20 roll, for example. Likewise, with 2d6 as the minimum roll, it's easy enough to have a -1 dice pool penalty as a baseline mechanic.

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Another relatively short post for today, since it's a pretty quick topic.
In the background, I'm still working out ways to get the other mechanics ironed out w/r/t weapon dice and spells and attributes and such.

Next post will hopefully be on or before June 17th, with one more post before the July break.

Balancing Act: Combat Attributes (2025)

I mentioned previously that the relationship between the d6 pool and "weapon dice" could be one where 2-handed melee weapons add 2d6 whereas 1-handed melee weapons or ranged weapons only add 1d6. The question is how to balance out the utility of these different loadouts. Obviously, there are a few assumptions we need to start from, in order to lay the groundwork; probably there will only be one of your five attributes going as high as +3 (with likely a single +2, and either two +1s or two +0s to round things out.) The other thing is that the baseline assumption of the math is that you will always use your two highest dice for your attack roll; this means that your damage roll will consist of the remaining (i.e. lowest) dice in the pool.

Without accounting for hit chance, the lowest 2 of 4d6 (i.e. two-hander) averages to 4.66
Similarly, if we take two swings with a one-hander (i.e. two-weapon fighting, lowest 1 of 3d6) the average is 4.08

However, when we account for the dice pool attack vs. a 2d6 defense roll, the two-hander is actually going to hit about 10% more often -- meaning the damage modifier needs to bring the TWF routine up to a damage number that's about 10% higher, in order to be comparable in utility. When we factor in a +2 damage modifier for both attacks, the damage is still behind the two-hander (assuming it's at a +3 damage modifier) -- 8.08 vs. 7.66, without factoring in hit-chance. So, that might need some more fine-tuning.

The initial idea I had for balancing out ranged attacks was to use the lower modifier (between STR and DEX) for damage, but allow a number of shots based on Agility mod. The question really then becomes, how do spells even work? Is it just INT mod for number of attacks, and CHA for damage? Is it class/subclass dependent? Is one stat used for damage and one for healing?

This is actually a thing I had narrowed down (somewhat) in my previous RPG designs; basically, weapon-users could attack twice, and magic-users could target one square and all adjacent squares to it. Maybe that'd have to be sort of a class-level of feature, since not all casters are "blasters" per se. The other thing was that I had weapons be sort of an extension of spells, so if you used a dagger or wand, it'd be 1d6 and greater targeting capacity, but if you used a full length staff, it'd be 2d6 with more of a one-target aim. Maybe the baseline for spells in the TNP sequel need to start from something similar?

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Bit of a shorter post today, as things are a little busy lately.
Hopefully June will be a bit closer to the planned blogging dates; check back on the 5th or 6th.

Power Sources: The 6th Attribute?

I've been giving some thought to how TNP compares to D&D, as it pertains to skills.

If you think about how skills work in 3.x, 4e, or 5e D&D (the versions I'm personally familiar with) there are two main components: ability score modifiers, and skill points/skill training/skill proficiency, respectively. In TNP, skills are linked thematically along two vectors (Attributes, and Skillsets) whereas in D&D skills only share ability modifiers in common, and the remaining skill math varies completely independently; the exception to this would be skill synergies in 3.x, where 5 points in [skill X] provides a +2 bonus to [skill Y].

That all being said, where TNP veers off from this structure is with Knowledge skills. Where D&D uses INT (and sometimes WIS) for its knowledge skills, TNP instead keys them to Power Sources: Arcane, Divine, Martial, Primal, and Shadow. But with TNP having only 5 attributes instead of 6, I've been starting to wonder (particularly in the context of the sequel mechanics) could power sources be treated as a "6th attribute" for your character? (i.e. 5 universal stats and 1 variable one, rather than 6 that are universal.)

The quirk with knowledge skills in TNP is that they are grouped together, like a skillset (sort of) but they lack that 2nd vector linking them to anything else... aside from other power sources; each power source consists of one unique skill, and 2 other skills that are each shared with different power sources. Coming back to sequel mechanics in particular, with the core skills having both an attribute bonus and a skillset bonus to their dice pool, how would you do something similar with knowledge skills? My first thought was that since in TNP, all classes basically have 2 power sources, you could just... do that again. The problem is not all power sources overlap with each other, and unique knowledge skills don't overlap at all; in short, the extra math has to come from somewhere.

So should power sources be linked to skillsets? There's some synergy between the two in TNP, so maybe power source and skillset could be the two vectors linking knowledge skills together. For example, with Infiltration linked to the Shadow power source, a +2 Infiltration skillset bonus could be applied to Streetwise, Dungeoneering, and Local knowledge skill checks. Because of unique skills being their own thing, it seems that power sources would need their own bonus -- but then you end up with all skills in that "set" having the same bonus. However, if it is assumed that all characters have two power sources (say, one with a +2 and one with a +1 bonus) that could at least give the shared knowledge skills some variance. The issue with that being, now we're talking about a "7th attribute" and not just a 6th.

I came into this talking point from a place of trying to cram knowledge skills back into an "ability score" framework, after TNP successfully extracted them from that. And I feel like I'm not any closer to solving that puzzle. It doesn't make sense to give all knowledge skills a flat bonus, but it also doesn't seem to make sense giving all knowledge skills within one power source the same bonus; it seems like the more "a la carte" approach of TNP is all that works. We'll have to see how thing go, as the design process carries on.

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I've got one more post planned for May, so check back by the end of the month for that.

Death of the DC10 -- Part 2: Rise of 2d6 (2025)

Slowly but surely, the sequel mechanics seem to be rounding into form. The initial conceptualization of something focusing on a "d6 pool" engine seems to now be pivoting into a 2d6 engine, with d6 pool features. So let me unpack all of that, a bit.

In a previous post, I touched on the fact that TNP has 5 basic types of rolls: attacks, saves, skill checks, initiative checks, and base damage rolls. With the 2d6/d6 pool mechanics, the sequel is moving more towards combining attack rolls and damage rolls together; the quintessential idea is that you will pick 2 dice from the pool to use as your attack roll, with any remaining dice being used for damage. There might be a power attack mechanic that (for example) allows you to add dice to the pool, but requires you to use the lowest die from the pool as one of the attack dice; there might also be mechanics ("Daily" powers, as a potential example) which allow the attack dice to be counted in the damage pool as well as the attack roll -- not unlike how some of the class dice bonuses function, in TNP.

(Similarly to 5e, my intention with the sequel is to turn initiative checks into just another type of "ability check"; in the TNP ethos, it makes sense to use Agility for this purpose for a couple reasons, not the least of which being that STR and DEX are assumed to be the weapon attack attributes, while INT and CHA would of course be the spell attack attributes. This change would further simplify the number of basic roll types.)

Now, the idea has come about to replace the DC10, and it's looking like the replacement will be 2d6+mods. For one, this effectively lowers the DC to 7+mods; as mentioned in the last post on this topic, having an attack roll of 2d6+2 vs. DC10 is functionally the same as 2d6+0 vs. DC8. By transitioning the DC to 2d6, this acknowledges the realities that the attack rolls were facing, while also allowing us to remove "ability score modifier" math from the baseline assumptions. For skills, the variability in the DC also means that we remove the issue of "only 5s and 6s matter"; this makes the 2d6/d6 pool mechanic way more viable for skills, without having to incorporate something like the two-stage roll that was proposed before.

By de-coupling ability score math from attack math, we can actually look at expanding the range of modifiers again. I think probably what will evolve as the basic structure of the classes is that one attribute will be your damage modifier stat, and another attribute will be your "dice pool stat." So, for example, as a paladin you could have a +2 STR that adds to every melee damage roll you make, and a +3 CHA which adds dice to every Divine Smite spell/attack that you use -- or you could flip the two, if you want to trade higher burst-damage for more reliability. This has come as something of a revelation recently, and I think it'll open up the designs a lot more; ironically, by going back to the TNP ethos of not having attribute math contribute to attack math, we're actually able to do more with attribute math, and not less.

Since the baseline assumption is that an attacker will be rolling at least 3 dice, I'm leaning towards the idea of one-handed melee weapons and ranged weapons representing the 3rd dice of the attack; two-handed melee weapons would be 2d6, essentially adding a 4th die to the pool. There might be some tinkering around the edges, as to how this works; my first intuition is that two-handed weapons and unarmed attacks (i.e. straight 2d6 roll) would gain a +STR mod to damage, while one-handed/"two-weapon fighting"-type attacks could have the option to add STR or DEX -- or maybe one for the 1st attack and the other for the 2nd? (Ranged weapons might add no mod, or the lower of the 2 mods, but that might be unnecessarily fiddly.) This would still need to be balanced out against spellcasting; it might be the case that spell mods (such as INT and CHA) would simply add dice to the pool, but not damage modifiers. But that also begs the question of, which attribute modifier would spellcasters use, for push-button "Daily" powers, or similar effects?

I've floated a few ideas as to how defenses/"saves" might work, but so far I think the most compelling idea is having saves tied to effects, rather than saves tied to attributes. I think there will likely be an "Armor Class"-equivalent that is tied to class bonuses/features; having Agility tied to both AC and initiative seems overbalanced, so I'm probably going to try and avoid that. In general though, the DM can use 2d6 in a pinch to determine success or failure; skill check DCs can be nudged up or down using small modifiers, but I think the general assumption for monster "save" DCs should be an unmodified roll.

The other interesting quirk about a 2d6 baseline assumption is that it also still allows room for mechanics based around rolling "doubles" or "ties." And since 2d6 is the backbone of each type of roll (attacks, saves, checks, and opposed checks) you can have classes or other features apply different bonuses on doubles, to each type of roll -- almost akin to how 'mastery' in TNP works as sort of a universal dice modifier.

All of these things have made me very positive about the direction that things are going, with the sequel development. I think the current implementation of the d6 pool mechanic now does an adequate job of filling the design space left behind by 'class dice'. I also like that despite axing the d20, DC10, and other things from TNP designs, the ACIDS "skill grid" and the Knowledge skill/Power Source paradigm have been able to remain intact, giving a strong foundation to build upon.

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Apologies for the delay in posting; I'm hoping to cram 3 posts into what remains of May, so that we can keep on track. Check back around this time, next week!

Status Effects & Conditions (2025)

This'll be a bit of another hybrid post, similar to the last one. So, I've done a post previously about this topic, but I kept some things close to the vest. I didn't feel like the designs were necessarily finalized (and playtesting may still break some things) but since that post, I haven't made any significant changes to the designs... So I've decided to share them here, in full. 

Now, the thing that this has me thinking about with the sequel, is how saves should be structured. The obvious idea from D&D is to base saves off of "attributes" but perhaps it'd make more sense to base them off of effects? Prior to 3.x, D&D tended to have saves based on the origin of the effect, such as a wand or a dragon's breath.

With TNP, the "dazzled" effect is nested into both the "dazed" and "dominated" effects; maybe it would make some sense to have those saves tied to a mental defense, using INT? Likewise, "frazzled" is nested into "fazed" and "frightened" -- all of which seem to line up with a CHA save. Without a CON attribute in play thus far, it feels like it might warrant being represented as a save (if nothing else) particularly against effects like "exhausted" or "weakened" (assuming it'd be preferable to just using STR.) Maybe with lower/flatter HP, "current HP" could be used as a DC for effects that would target CON -- something that would degrade through attrition? The other issue is that DEX doesn't really lend itself well to a save, if AGIL is in the mix -- so it makes it hard to "balance" a setup like TNP's into something where every attribute has a save (such as in 5e.)

I also kind of like the idea of more situational bonuses, akin to (2014) 5e having gnomes gain advantage on mental saves vs. magic, halflings getting advantage on saves vs. being frightened, elves being immune to magical sleep and advantage against being charmed, etc. It might end up being that the defenses are their own array, not tied to attributes -- or maybe there's just one generic "defense" roll, and only situational bonuses apply? An interesting thing with this is you could nest two 'saves' into one roll; maybe you have a different bonus for attacks that target AC/HP than for ones that cause fear, so an attack that does both only calls for one defense roll, but the differing bonuses would be applied to that roll, to determine whether damage, effect, or both would "hit."

Now tentatively, the defense roll in the sequel would be a simple 2d6, with flat modifiers. The reason for this is that unlike attack rolls, adding dice to the pool is kind of a waste, since they cannot be converted to damage dice. Relatedly, since many of the penalties in the TNP designs hinge on disadvantage, they don't easily or directly translate to this 2d6 system idea. You could do something like "roll 3d6 and take the 2 lowest" but I feel like if the DC mechanic is a dice roll, then the modifiers should be static -- whereas with TNP, the DC is static, and the modifiers are dice rolls. So, penalties to things like defense rolls would be simple -1 or -2 to the roll (depending on what the math ultimately would dictate.)

Worth mentioning is how this leans into monster designs. I've said a few times that the status effects and conditions aren't really worked into the PC mechanics all that much, but they definitely still could be, for monsters -- especially if they're meant to be more "built on the fly." The steeper debilities might be limited to the more difficult monster types, but I also should reiterate that the baseline in TNP is that any bonus or penalty is assumed to only last for 1 round; that also goes a long way in defining monster capabilities, as well. Another monster mechanic that was hinted at was the sort of "recharge/special" effect, if the monster roll (1d10 and 1d6) were a tie. Perhaps this could be something that upgrades effects, either in severity (such as stepping up dazzled to dazed or dominated) or in duration (from 1 round, to a "save ends" kind of effect.)

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I think the sequel stuff is rounding into shape, as far as basic mechanics. I just need to focus on hammering out the necessary "playtest materials" for TNP, in the meantime.

Check back in the first week of May for another post!

Recap: TNP vs. Sequel

As part of the process of trying to get my focus back onto TNP, I've done some thinking about what makes the system "more than the sum of its parts." I also think it's a good time to look back at the progress the sequel has made, and where that currently sits.

Despite being a d20 game, TNP is probably not what you would refer to as a "d20 system" type of game. To wit, TNP does not use traditional ability scores (or ability modifiers) nor does it bother with having 5e's six saving throws, or the FORT/REF/WILL paradigm of 3.5/4e; the 5 main types of rolls as laid out in the design are:

• attack rolls
• saving throws
• skill checks
• initiative checks
• base damage rolls

Dice (and dice mechanics, such as mastery) are used as the bonuses for all of these 5 types of rolls; all of the mechanics flow from the dice (generally, the class dice in specific) and the few uses of flat modifiers are typically drawn from class dice mechanics, as well.

The original premise for the sequel grew out of a combination of some smaller ideas. With several of the TNP mechanics using d6 for bonuses (and with d6 and d10 being cemented as the "Extra Damage Dice") there was some temptation to expand out that idea -- by making "d6 pool" the overarching mechanic of the system. The d10 would be kept for skill checks (no change from TNP) but the other "class dice" would be warped into "weapon dice." Ultimately, this idea didn't really play nice with the d6 pool, and it didn't even really fill the same niche as class dice did, in TNP.

The other "smaller idea" that was intended to be implemented was somehow reverse-engineering attribute modifiers from the skill rank system, and massaging those into some kind of combat application. This was meant to provide more of a "traditional" RPG feel to the mechanics, but ultimately this never felt like it worked, either. One compromise idea was to use a d20 + d6 pool system, however, the very reason that skill checks in TNP stopped using d20 is because it became impossible to make the math work, with those mechanics. This is what ultimately set us out on the path of pivoting the sequel designs towards a purely d6-based system; at time of writing, the only thing really recognizably TNP about it is that I am still committed to keeping the skill "grid" intact.

Getting back to TNP, what makes the class dice mechanic unique is that each die is sort of a bundle of mechanics, rather than just more math; you could replace the damage effect with something like a d6 pool, but the system really loses something without the die-matching mechanism that class dice provide. Since only one die can ultimately be applied as the "attack bonus" (although some can be used for attack and damage) there's sort of this element of making each attack roll its own little mini-game.

To compare roster construction, TNP has a slate of 15 classes (based on a single use of class dice, as well as each combination of two.) I would say TNP is most heavily inspired by 4e's roster of characters (and in some cases, particularly the Essentials versions) but the 5e influence does show itself as well. For the sequel, the idea was to pare down 5e's core 12 classes by about half, while possibly adding Warlord and Necromancer into the mix. So while TNP's classes each have 2 subclasses (some of which could be classes in their own right, some of which are more "two sides of the same coin") the idea with the sequel was more that each "class" would straightforwardly consist of 2 classes -- with attributes doing the heavy lifting for differentiating them. (A cleric leaning more on INT, with a paladin benefiting more from CHA, for example.)

Another comparison to make would be the resolution mechanics. TNP uses a DC10 for attacks, saves, and skill checks; the sequel seems to be pivoting more towards an "opposed roll" structure, with d6 pools for some mechanics, and flat bonuses for others -- details to come, as things get finalized. Relatedly, instead of having things like HP and reserves/surges tied to class dice (as in TNP) the intention with the sequel was that these might be more standardized, on a number like 10, for example.

Notable about TNP is how skills are not governed by the same attributes used for combat math; though this might change a little bit for the sequel, one key thing that will likely remain the same is how Knowledge skills (i.e. backgrounds, for all intents and purposes) do not function off of a mental attribute, and are instead based on power sources, akin to those of 4e. This means that players can more easily tailor their backstory to taste, and have the mechanics actually reflect those decisions -- while not sacrificing combat effectiveness, or proficiency with other "core" skills, in order to do so.

While monsters aren't terribly fleshed out for TNP or its sequel, the TNP slate is built off of the foundations laid by 4e D&D. Minions, swarms, and standard monsters form the backbone (and have been expanded in their scope a little bit) while elites, solos, and archenemies serve to flesh out the campaign, as well as the DM's toolkit. The bare bones for the TNP monster mechanics are there (owing much to the "MM3 on a business card" ethos), but it will probably be helpful to have some example monsters ready, for playtesting if nothing else.

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Anyway, that's probably enough of a recap for now. I'll try and revisit the sequel stuff as the designs progress a bit more concretely. Maybe the next step is to move into playtesting and just hammer out the "DM side" of TNP, as it goes?

One more post to go, before the end of the month. I'll be planning to have it up on April 25th.