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" but 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!
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