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, whereas 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!