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.