Plug & Play vs. Unified Mechanics (2025)

When it comes to TNP, there are two (at least) fairly distinct subsystems at play in the mechanics. The 'attributes' in the game are expressly only used for skill math; if you compare this with basically any version of D&D, the ability scores (and/or derived modifiers) are used for both skills and for combat applications. TNP combat mechanics are their own separate thing, although dice mechanics (such as mastery and advantage/disadvantage) are shared with the skill mechanics.

In a recent discussion, I had suggested that the TNP skill system could be taken out and wholesale bolted onto pre-existing combat systems (assuming that those lack an 'attribute' system of their own, otherwise it might get slightly clunky.) Sure, you'd need an understanding of how the aforementioned dice mechanics work (as well as skill rank mechanics) but there's nothing about the TNP combat system tying itself back into the skill mechanics.

What this reminded me of was 13th Age; some of the criticisms/observations about the system were how it built onto the standard "d20 system"-type of chassis, in sort of a "plug & play" manner. (I'll be explaining the mechanics from memory of what I read years ago, so please forgive me if I get any details wrong.) The background system was meant to replace much of the skills system, whereby you could have something like a +8 to split among two backgrounds; if you could reason that your background would apply to a skill check, you would add that background's bonus. I remember most people went with the +5/+3 split, and the assumption was that this would be added to an applicable ability score modifier. That's when people sort of realized, "we can just unbolt this mechanic from 13th Age, and bolt it onto any system we like [particularly if it had the same standard 6 ability scores.]"

Likewise, your "one unique thing" was meant to be mechanically agnostic -- so, take that idea and add it onto your cyberpunk dystopian RPG if that suits your tastes. Even the icon relationship system (albeit the icons were specific to the setting) was a mechanic that had its own resource pool (such as it was) and had no real connection into any other numbers on your character sheet. You could (and people did) homebrew your own icons, so bolting this mechanic onto pre-existing pantheons was the next logical conclusion that people came to. By contrast, I've seen examples, such as in Blades in the Dark, where party members' mechanics are meant to have small tie-ins to "crew" mechanics or "home-turf" mechanics -- all of which seem designed to tighten the seams, and make the whole system one unit.

To bring the conversation back around, it ultimately points to the question of whether unified mechanics or purpose-built mechanics are the best fit, for any given system. As is often said on Forgotten Weapons, the answer to "what kind of gun should I get?" tends to be "it depends what you want to use it for."

If you look at a system like 5th Edition D&D, the mechanics always fall back onto ability scores, by and large; roll a d20, determine whether none/half/all/double your proficiency bonus applies, prescribe one of the 6 ability modifiers... That's basically every action in the game, in or out of combat. Likewise, Apocalypse World (or any derivative thereof) basically runs off the engine of 2d6+stat. Oddly enough, I'd say D&D is a good system for combat but bad for non-combat, just as much as I would say that Apoc World is a good system outside of combat but bad when it's used in combat. In either case, the selling point is the universality of the mechanic -- regardless of whether the mechanic is really suited to the task.

When we look at "d20" TNP, there's a very clear divide between the (d20-based) combat system and the (d10-based) skill system. Although they share certain things in common mechanically, there's nothing connecting them together. Indeed, early on in the design process, I made the decision to exclude "class dice" mechanics from anything having to do with skills, in order to keep the math more simple. By contrast, the entirety of the combat system is purposefully built around all of the mechanics being derived from class dice. If you can bolt the TNP skills "grid" onto another game (or create a grid of your own) there's nothing stopping you from using this mechanic, without the TNP combat system. Likewise, I think you could also take a combat system (at least with a comparable variety of monster types) and use it with TNP's card mechanic for random campaign generation. How the monsters actually function has no relation to which cards you deal out. This is also why it might be possible to bolt this system wholesale onto the "d6 TNP sequel."

That is kind of the point of the sequel mechanics (among a handful of other things I could point to.) The general idea of "ability scores, done right" as a guiding principle of the designs was to integrate the math into both combat and non-combat applications, and have it all make sense. If executed properly, this has the potential to more successfully fuse those two halves of the game engine together; part of the motivation is to make it so that the system can't be broken down and stripped for parts -- as in the examples with 13th Age. The other reason is the goal of creating an elegant system, that executes on the simplicity implied in the 5e or Apoc World mechanics -- but which hopefully works well for both combat and non-combat. Ultimately, that should always be the goal when building a system off of the "unified mechanic" paradigm.

This sort of highlights the conundrum of 13th Age; if the TNP skill system and combat system don't really interact with each other, what's stopping anyone from taking either of those halves and bolting it onto a system they already use/are familiar with/enjoy? As a designer, the challenge when not making a unified mechanical system is to design things in such a way that "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Essentially, having a purpose-built combat system and a purpose-built non-combat system should synergize in a way that makes the overall experience better -- but it does make it difficult to argue that "this thing can only exist with this other thing," if/when there's nothing substantive tying them together.

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Nearing the end of blogging season! Apologies for the delay in getting this 2nd post out.
I'll look to get one more post out to wrap up the year, either on November 29th or 30th.

Having Reservations (2024)

Let's talk a bit about reserves!

I'll start by saying that the baseline assumption I'm working from for the sequel designs, is that all characters just have 10 HP and 10 reserves; 10 is a nice round number, and 10 is the default target-number or "DC" in TNP anyway. But there are other sources to consider.

One of the games that I've played with a D&D group that I'm a part of is the Warhammer Quest: Cursed City board game. This game effectively has a "wounds" system, whereby being hit twice removes one of your four action dice; for all intents and purposes, this means that the player-characters each possess 8 HP. There is no consideration given to a Constitution score or racial/background bonuses. Early drafts of TNP had all monsters function almost as minions, dealing a fixed amount of damage (usually 1 point) which is similar to how monsters in Cursed City tend to work; this allows HP to be relatively low, compared to the 30ish you would start with in modern TNP (or 4th Edition D&D) for example.

Since in TNP, "everything is derived from the dice," earlier drafts had HP as a function of a rolled class die; this was pretty quickly revised to "maximum value of your class die" (producing a range from 4 to 12) but the obvious imbalance this created led to (effectively) a flat 20 HP being added to these numbers, to even things out a bit more. Naturally, monster math and mechanics had to be completely reworked to accommodate this.

However, since the sequel is expressly not built off of class dice, we can use something like a flat 10 HP to avoid all of the complexity that got built onto the original, simple TNP framework. Likewise, rather than needing to have reserves be "maximum of 2d4/2d6/1d8/1d10/1d12" so that all classes are more or less balanced, we can just give everyone 10 reserves and be done with it.

Now, a topic that I brought up in the Discord is the idea of a "TNP version 1.1" which would fall outside of the sequel designs, and be more of "the same" game, as TNP. In particular, one thing I brought up was the (often blogged-about) idea of per-day and per-encounter abilities. So let me break this idea down a bit -- hopefully without re-treading too much ground.

Basically, if the assumption is that "one reserve = one full heal-up" then the idea becomes something like, "if you have [a maximum of] 7 combats per day, you need 7 reserves for healing," meaning any extra reserves can be used to fuel your other class features. The basic idea is that TNP 1.1 would focus around properly implementing this idea.

To wit, a class with 8 reserves (i.e. 2d4 or 1d8 as their reserve calculation) would have 1 extra reserve not needed for healing, each adventuring day; the assumption would be that these classes would have a "once per day" reserve-burning ability. Likewise, a class with 12 reserves (2d6 or 1d12 calculation) might have a "once per encounter" reserve-burning ability.

So maybe the hierarchy ends up looking something like this:

• 8 reserves: 7 for healing + 1 per-day ability
• 10 reserves: 7 for healing + 3 extra healing
• 12 reserves: 7 for healing + 1 per-day ability + 4 extra healing -OR- 7 for healing + 5 for per-encounter abilities

In this case, extra healing might be for the character to top themselves up (if they are a tanky class that is expected to eat more damage than average, and therefore needs more healing) or to spend their own reserves to provide healing for allies -- such as in those situations where monster damage outpaces expectations. I'd like to have a cleaner method, such that the "10 reserve" builds could have more flexibility, but in a "dice determine everything"-paradigm like TNP, I'd rather be limiting these kinds of things to 1/day or 1/encounter, rather than have to somehow use the dice to justify a different limit.

To take things kind of full-circle, this brings into question the "sequel logic" of just having a flat 10 reserves for everyone; as with a few things already so far in these designs, the space for building mechanics around spending reserves for stuff other than healing is effectively lost by going to a flat math model. However, it's important to remember that the TNP "reserve-burning" mechanics are actually an attempt to unify 4th Edition's healing surge resource with (if not its per-encounter resources) its per-day resources. With that in mind, perhaps the solution as it pertains to the sequel designs is to re-adopt something akin to the 4e power progression, whereby (for example) per-encounter powers are gained at odd-numbered levels, and these are what essentially fuel your "d6 pool" features. So, reserves and "reserve-burning" abilities are no longer fueled by a unified mechanic -- but the upshot is that the numbers become easier to flatten out and balance.

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Alright! So with today's post being on-schedule, the final post of the year should be on December 10th or 12th, as previously planned. Check back then!

Filling in the Grid: Roster Construction (2024)

A topic that came up in the TNP Discord recently (piggybacking off of the last blog post) was how to determine the roster construction in an RPG. In my previous designs, there were effectively 6 "classes," built off of a chassis of picking whether you were a (martial) warrior or a (spell) caster, crossed with whether you used light, medium, or heavy "armaments" (effectively, armor, in a damage-reduction role.) This mapped pretty closely to the vanilla World of Warcraft classes, but was actually built off of the classes I had sketched out for a presumptive (at the time) Diablo 2 follow-up; Mage, Warlock, and Cleric being the light, medium, and heavy casters (respectively) with Rogue, Hunter(? I think?), and Knight being the warrior classes.

4th Edition D&D started off with a similar ethos to where TNP is now, so let me explain that a bit. 4e was essentially trying to take the pre-existing D&D classes, and map them onto what I refer to as "the intersection of a role and a power source." So for example, Clerics (being a holy healing class, generally) were given the 'Leader' role and the 'Divine' power source.

(As I've probably said before, power sources didn't matter much, until you get into bolting specific feat perks onto your powers; generally power sources informed what your default trained skill would be, as well as your class skills -- this being more or less what got carried over to TNP, mechanically.)

So, with the first PHB, 4e introduced 3 power sources: martial, arcane, and divine. Since the book contained 8 classes, the intention was to (more or less) have 2 classes for each of the 4 roles; famously, this didn't work out because the "martial controller" was nowhere to be found in the designs (until the Hunter subclass, in Essentials.) But the formula for how to "fill in the grid" in 4e was already taking shape; PHB2 added the Avenger (striker) and Invoker (controller) classes to fill out the divine power source, which already included the Cleric (leader) and the Paladin (defender) from the first PHB.

The 2nd PHB also codified Druid away from being a "divine" spellcaster, making the 'Primal' power source its own thing, for really the first time in D&D. The design was kind of kludgy (owed mostly to the fact that Druid is kind of a hybrid, "do everything" class insofar as it's roots in 3.x editions of D&D) so pinning Druid down into the controller role felt sort of forced; to wit, the Essentials and post-Essentials versions of the Druid took the class into completely different directions and roles.

TNP essentially came at its roster construction from the same place as 4e: taking what came before it, and trying to fit it into a defined framework -- namely, class dice. With the earliest iterations of TNP, every class was based off of a single die (either d4, d6, d8, d10, or d12) meaning that a "slate" necessarily needed to have at least 5 classes (whereas every power source in 4e ostensibly should aim to have 4 classes, one for each role.) TNP pretty quickly expanded from one slate into two, and as soon as the 2nd slate was finalized, it began spilling into a 3rd. This is how we got to the current roster of 15 classes.

With the decision to implement a 2nd class die (instead of having just one, for every class) TNP would have had to either expand to a 4th slate, or contract down to just two slates -- in order to keep the class die utilization "balanced." Instead, one slate was kept as single-die classes, while the other two were used to make up all of the 10 combinations of class dice. Similar to 4e trying to fit Druid into a single role within the Primal power source, TNP ended up with "class categories" to try and fit classes into a 'role' within their slate -- which would then make for mechanics/progression that could be mimicked on classes within the same category, on other slates. For what it's worth, I think this works very well on the 'Skill Expert' and 'Jack of All Trades' categories, but is a little shakier for the others.

So why do I bring this up?
Well, it's beginning to seem more and more likely/obvious that there will be an "after TNP" game, in my design future. That said, I think it is worthwhile to ponder, what sort of constraints or framework should be used when deciding what classes to include or exclude from the designs.

TNP has 15 classes, and with subclass mechanics taken into consideration, it tries really hard to at least cover the design space of (if not necessarily faithfully reproduce or "pay homage" to) the 40-odd classes/subclasses presented across the span of 4th Edition (the Psionic classes being the notable absence, in TNP.) Compare that to 5th Edition, where they've started with 12 classes, and more or less just built onto those (adding the Artificer and Blood Hunter, later on) mostly with things that are recognizably prestige classes from 3.5, or (arguably, such as the sprinkling in of Warlord mechanics onto the Fighter class) inspired by 4e.

You can even go back to something as seminal as Final Fantasy 1, to get a sense that 6 classes is kind of the bare minimum; compare that with the "core 4" in D&D of Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and the 5e version of "essentials" making Bard the de-facto 5th class. (You could make a case that this maps to "one class for each ability score [excluding CON].") TNP, by its nature, necessitates 5 classes being the minimum -- although if the framework is shifted from class dice to anything else, this could quickly change.

The question I'm posing to myself is, how many classes would I want, in a follow-up to TNP?
I definitely (if I haven't made it clear in my last few posts on the subject) want to make something smaller in scale, so a straight reproduction/port of the TNP roster is probably off the table. Based on everything we've gone over in this post, 5 seems like the absolute minimum, with 12 probably being the ceiling; ultimately the framework (or "grid") will likely determine what the right fit is.

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Scheduling is a bit jumbly lately, but I would expect the next post to be between June 15th-19th, with the 3rd post this month coming after the 24th. Stay tuned!

Deconstructing the Dice: A "Generic" TNP? (2024)

One of the overarching conceits in TNP is class dice, and how they power all of the mechanics, for each and every class. But what if we were to take a more traditional "generic" D&D-style approach, particularly to the roles of the dice? This is an idea I've been pondering recently, and I've alluded to the general concept of it in at least one previous post.

Specifically, what I want to focus in on today is weapon dice, and how you might start from the general (particularly 5e-ish) D&D approach, and "TNP-ify" the concept. So lets get down to basics.

Broadly speaking, 5e has very few weapon damage die archetypes, with (usually) one obvious best choice out of the available options. Now, not every character is proficient with every type of weapon, but let's set that aside for now. Broadly, most thrown weapons do 1d6 damage, whereas thrown finesse weapons do 1d4; likewise,  'light' weapons (i.e. suitable for two-weapon fighting) do either 1d4 or 1d6 damage. For all intents and purposes, any other one-handed melee weapons cap out at 1d8; two-handed melee weapons are either 2d6 or 1d12, and polearms (i.e. 'reach' two-handed weapons) are 1d10. The 'simple' versatile weapons are 1d6/1d8, but the 'martial' versatile weapons are 1d8/1d10 (worth mentioning that in 4e, two-handing a versatile weapon simply gave it a +1 damage, rather than a different die.) Most ranged weapons are either 1d6 or 1d8, with the 1d10 option being a heavy crossbow, that really requires feat investments to be worth it, IMO.

What am I getting at with all of this? Well, what if instead of scaling the class dice bonuses back to just 1d4, 1d8, and 1d12, we instead scaled back the weapon dice to 1d4, 1d8, and 1d12? Since d6 and d10 are the de facto "extra damage" mechanic dice in TNP (despite also having class dice bonus mechanics available to them) it seems logical that if you were to "TNP-ify" weapon damage dice, you might exclude d6 and d10, for use with other mechanics.

For example:

1d4: thrown weapons, light weapons

1d8: one-handed melee weapons, ranged weapons

1d12: two-handed melee weapons

So, you're necessarily leaving out some of the more niche weapon properties, but if the idea is to strip things down and abstract them a lot, it makes some sense that this would be the way to go. You could even do something to prop up two-weapon fighting by saying that characters with martial weapon proficiency (or its equivalent) could use 1 light weapon and 1 one-handed weapon to do TWF (1d4/1d8, comparable to the typical 1d6/1d6 loadout of 5e) and have a feat that could bump that to doing TWF with two one-handed weapons (ie. 1d8/1d8, exactly as the 5th Edition feat does.) Another thing is you could keep the 'versatile' property by mixing in the +1 damage mechanic from 4e, and even potentially do something with 2d4 weapons(?)

So what would you do with the d6 and d10? Well, to me, the d6 has always been the go-to "extra damage die" because they are so ubiquitous and also ergonomic; if late-stage 4e was any indication however, the actual go-to was d8, but assumedly that boils down to that game's math. Anyway, I started thinking to myself, does the system really need two extra damage dice, if we're not in a "class dice" paradigm, and any character class can be using any die for their mechanics?

That's when it hit me. 

I'm sure I've said in conversation (when discussing the TNP skill mechanics) that the percentile dice actually make the most sense as a default advantage/disadvantage mechanic. In the new drafts of TNP, when making a skill check (or monster roll, as the DM) you can roll both percentile dice, and the "1s" die is assumed to be the "natural result" whereas the "10s" die is the disadvantage or advantage result (when/if applicable.) So what if we used the percentile dice in this fashion, but applied them as the bonus/penalty to a d20 roll? For example, have the "1s" die be disadvantage, and the "10s" die be advantage; applying this die to a d20 roll, vs. a DC of 10 produces comparable results (within ~5%) of the standard advantage/disadvantage mechanic, with just using a d20 (i.e. roll 2, take the highest/lowest, respectively.)

(The other angle to come at this might be to have the weapon die function as both the damage, and the attack bonus; that way you could potentially free up the d10 for one more weapon die, or switch the roles and have d10 be the "extra damage die" with d6 being the additional weapon die.)

If we're going to do a "generic" TNP (i.e. as a sequel, or follow-up project) and move away from class dice, it makes sense to keep some of the original DNA, by giving each dice these kinds of specific mechanics -- so that every die has a "role" (pardon the pun.) I do think you lose something by shitcanning the 5 class dice bonuses, but sometimes it's a case of addition by subtraction; to be fair, these mechanics have only really existed "in the ether" (something that came into the designs after the relatively-stable 2018 edition) but were meant to be the unique selling feature of TNP, going forward. Whether or not they carry over to a post-2024 TNP is yet to be seen.

I think there's a couple ways to do a proper followup to TNP: 

1) you go more traditional/generic with it, something that's more recognizably "D&D-ish", possibly with full-on ability score mechanics

2) you go back to my previous RPG designs, with (ideally) only two dice forming all of the mechanics, leaning heavily into modifiers, but stripping the classes down to the bare essentials

3) you make an ultra-lite mechanical system, that fires off of d6s only (and maybe a standard deck of 52 cards) that can easily be played on a bus, or out on a camping trip

I haven't settled on what the followup will be, but in the back of my mind I'm always trying to come up with fresh ideas for how to make a new TTRPG tick.

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Apologies for the delay(s)! If you ever need more updates, remember to check the Discord.
Next post is planned for June 6th; the scheduling pattern may change going forward, but I'll try to keep to the "3x per month" frequency (likely with a makeup post in December.)

Apples & Oranges (2024)

One of the gripes I have with the design of 5e is how incongruous it is.

The example that immediately jumps off the page to me is how armor progression is essentially attribute-based for light armor users (or unarmored builds), but is money/loot-based for heavy armor users. Would it be so undesirable to just have heavy armor AC improve with STR, the way light armor AC improves with DEX?

Likewise, I find this same problem when you compare (for example) an archery Fighter build vs. a Warlock eldritch blast build. Right off the bat, the Fighter has the clear advantage, from being able to take a +2 to hit with their fighting style, and already adding +DEX to ranged weapon damage -- whereas the Warlock needs to spend "class feature currency" to gain +CHA to their eldrtich blast damage, and no comparable way to increase their hit chance.

Where the Warlock pulls ahead, is the fact that they deal force damage right out of the gate; again, the ability to deal "magical" weapon damage, or non-mundane types of damage as a Fighter comes down to loot... which in itself either comes down to plot contrivance (in the case of a published adventure) or outright DM fiat. At levels where resistance to mundane weapon damage becomes more ubiquitous, a Fighter without an appropriate magical weapon will see their damage fall off substanstially.

The odd thing about it is, the solution is already in the game, in other places; as a 6th level Monk, "your unarmed strikes count as magical for the purpose of overcoming resistance and immunity to nonmagical attacks and damage." A rogue with the Soulknife archetype can deal psychic damage basically at will, from 3rd level. Likewise for Paladins, "By 11th level [...] Whenever you hit a creature with a melee weapon, the creature takes an extra 1d8 radiant damage" in addition to the push-button radiant damage they can do with Divine Smite, or other types of magical damage they can deal with their buff spells. It's also pretty easy for Wizards or Sorcerers to have at least two different "flavours" of damage from their cantrips alone.

The question I find myself asking is, what is the point of this type of design?
We saw some steps forward with 4e, such as making sneak attack not care about the anatomy of your target in order for it to work. And the distinction between piercing/bludgeoning/slashing weapons had more to do with qualifying for feats than resistance/immunity. But at later levels, this cat-and-mouse game started to creep in, where ongoing damage started at 5 and resistance started at 3, with both scaling up over the tiers of play. We also see this kind of thing in Diablo 2, where after a certain point in the patch history, all paladins became spellcasters because dealing magical damage was more effective than buffing your sword swings -- and that's to say nothing of the fact that Diablo games are fundamentally about gathering more and better loot, whereas (in my opinion) D&D should not be.

I guess at the core of my meanderings is this opinion: it doesn't work. Designing some classes (and their progression) around their attributes and class features, while others are effectively designed around the loot they find...? It doesn't work for TTRPGs. You need to pick a lane in terms of your designs, and stick with it; if a class fundamentally can't function without specific loot or gear, then those items need to be made into class features instead. And if you're going to build a resistance/immunity mini-game into your combat, it's probably best done as a mechanism by which you allow one party member to shine; the double-edged sword with that is you essentially pigeon-hole your designs around the assumption that all parties must be composed a certain way, or there will be enemies they either can't win against, or will struggle a lot harder to deal with.

This is why TNP has always been built around the concept that "all damage is created equal." This helps with a lot of the abstraction, including things like base damage dice; whether a Fighter is dealing 1d6 damage with a shortsword or a quarterstaff or a scimitar is irrelevant. When looking back at my previous designs, added damage types created additional effects, such as poison damage ignoring damage reduction from armor, or cold damage causing penalties to speed and initiative; I think this is a lot better way to handle this sort of concept, within a table-top setting.

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Next post is due up on May 5th, so check back then for more!

Campaign Scaling (2024)

As I've recently been giving some thought to HP and reserves, the idea of doing a 'basic' and an 'advanced' version of TNP has recently popped into my head... but we'll shelve that discussion for now. A lot of the numbers for these player statistics are essentially built off of using the dice to generate values similar to those in 4e D&D, when it might be more practical to just scale things down -- say, by using a flat 10 for HP and also for reserves.

The problem that this bumps into is how reserves scale over levels, and this dovetails into a broader design discussion, which I haven't really brought up on the blog before.

In my experience, there are essentially two different ways to scale up player power in RPGs: either the PCs get stronger, and enemies stay relatively static, or the PCs get stronger while the enemies also get stronger. I would say the latter describes the previously mentioned "MM3 on a business card" ethos for 4e D&D; if your chance to hit goes up by +1 every level, but your enemies' defense also goes up by +1, then the relative math stays about the same (assuming a d20 system.) This is what I often (uncharitably) refer to as "the illusion of progress," because while your numbers go up, your ability to hit remains mostly unchanged. The flexibility of this method is that when you fight enemies of considerably lower level, the PCs should be able to absolutely dunk on them; the question that arises is whether or not this is a valuable metric, or if the challenges the PCs face should always remain relatively equal to their level.

The drawback to the alternative method is that you end up with a system where the game starts off hard, but as the PCs become more powerful, the game unintuitively becomes easier. The proper way to execute this idea is to make the opponents more challenging in other ways (generally, AoE or multi-attack, or other similar 'action economy' advantages) but this requires a great deal of mathematical crunch, to get just right. It also means gating more difficult enemies to higher levels.

The circle which I am trying to square with TNP is how the reserves per day mechanic should be handled. The skeleton idea for the card-based random campaign generation system would essentially proscribe that at starting level you would have 4 encounters, and at your final level, you would have 14 (half of which statistically would be combat encounters.) So, if the idea is that you would need to spend 1 reserve to heal up from each combat, then you only need to spend 2 reserves at your starting level, but 7 reserves at your final level. This is an inversion of the previous example, since the PCs are starting out with more than enough reserves, but at later levels they are going to be riding a fine line; whereas the expectation is that the PCs would get stronger (even though the enemies might get stronger, too) in TNP they're getting relatively weaker, since all other math is kept flat (attack, damage, HP, etc.)

What ends up happening with "reserves based on max value of class dice" is that the range of numbers has quite a bit of variance (from 4 to 12.) Using two class dice for 10 of the 15 classes helps with this, but to really mitigate the variance, we need to raise the floor for the other 5 classes -- essentially, by raising d4 and d6 to "2d4" and "2d6" when it comes to reserves. This gives us a variance between 8 and 12.

So, this begs a few questions: does the minimum need to be 8? Or is 6 enough (if the highest average number of combat encounters per day is expected to be 7)? If the variance is as small as 8 to 12, wouldn't it make sense to do something like say "everyone gets 10, period, end of story," and just save all the useless overhead? Well, for a 'basic' version, I would argue absolutely it makes sense... and sometimes what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

This is where we circle back to the idea of "reserve burning" abilities. For the sake of argument, let's say that 8 is considered to be the minimum number of reserves needed, just to get by with healing. What this essentially does (by implication) is make "d10 reserve" classes into the ones that should get 1/day reserve-burning mechanics, whereas the "d12 reserve" and/or "2d6 reserve" classes end up with the 1/encounter reserve-burning mechanics. So how would this shake out in practical terms?

Cleric (d4/d10) = 8 or 10
Fighter (d6/d12) = 12
Acrobat (d4/d8) = 8
Paladin (d6/d10) = 10 or 12
Warlord (d8/d12) = 8 or 12

Druid (d4/d12) = 8 or 12
Guardian (d4/d6) = 8 or 12
Adventurer (d6/d8) = 8 or 12
Ranger (d8/d10) = 8 or 10
Barbarian (d10/d12) = 10 or 12

If we reverse-engineer the numbers a little bit, this essentially means that any d10 class either needs to be a tankier class (expected to burn through more healing than average) or needs to have a 1/day ability; d12/2d6 classes need to be both tankier AND have a 1/day ability, OR they need to have a 1/encounter ability. It makes for some potentially interesting added design space, but it doesn't always line up smoothly. The interesting thing is that since most classes could potentially operate off of two different numbers of reserves, this also makes it possible for each subclass within a class to have some variance w/r/t reserve-burning mechanics. The trick of it is to not bump at-will abilities to being per-encounter abilities, simply because we can give a class enough reserves to do so.

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Next post is due on April 14th, so check back then!

Basic Bookkeeping (2024)

Part of the design ethos that went into the 2021 draft was to use class dice as sort of a "keyword" for certain character statistics, but also to bind some of these stats together.

For example, "reserves & surging" were treated as a paired set of statistics, but this produced some odd results. The 1d4 class die "expression" translated to 8 reserves and a surge value of 4, with 1d6 producing 6 and 12, respectively. On some of the classes that were updated most recently (Druid being the one that comes to mind) some expressions were de-coupled, in order to make these statistics operate more smoothly.

I think part of the reasoning for pairing the stats together in the first place was so that there were fewer expressions you needed to remember; if your class has two class dice, then you'd only ever need to memorize two class die "expressions" -- making it so there was a 50/50 chance that you'd be able to guess which value to use, if you couldn't remember. That sort of falls apart when sometimes 1d4 means 4 and sometimes it means 8, as mentioned in the example.

It also didn't really manage to facilitate what it was meant to do, within the design ethos (namely, to raise the floor on certain numbers.) These expressions being unituitive just meant that their functions ended up needing to be spelled out on each class loadout anyway, or else you'd have to refer back to the core rules that explained the values these expressions were meant to generate. In other words, something that was meant to speed things up and streamline the jargon, actually seems to have made things less clear, not more.

This all sort of highlights the limitations of the overall TNP design ethos, whereby "all of the numbers have to derive from the (class) dice," but also highlights how the added flexibility of using a 2nd class die is so important... or at least helpful.

Pivot Point
Since HP in the current versions is calculated as the maximum value of your initiative check (including initiative bonus) HP and initiative bonus will necessarily continue to be paired together. However, I don't think that there's necessarily any benefit to keeping your engagement value coupled with your initiative bonus, as was the case previously.

The idea that I'm moving forward with is that engagement, initative bonus, reserves (per day), and surge value will all be based off of the following class dice expressions, each with their own entry (rather than coupled together):

• 1d4
• 1d6
• 1d8
• 2d4
• 1d10
• 1d12
• 2d6

Obviously, when used as an initative bonus, these dice will be part of a roll, but for the other statistics, they will just straightforwardly use the maximum value of the expression. This means that you can still make a subclass like the Wizard have 8 reserves and a surge value of 4, it's just that you'd use 2d4 as their reserve value and 1d4 as their surge value -- rather than saying 1d4 translates to 8 and 4, respectively. 

I can also confidently say that with the little bit of number crunching I've done over the years on the topic, the 1d4 expression will not be used for "reserves per day" -- effectively raising the 'floor' on that number to 6. In the paradigm of most classes having two class dice, the reality is that almost all classes/subclasses will have between 8 and 12 reserves, with the Rogue (Scoundrel) being the obvious exception to this -- although this could just as easily be handwaved to 2d6, if no other subclasses are going to use 6 reserves as their minimum.

Updating Designs

As I've talked about before, this sort of lends to the idea that classes with "1d10" reserves should have a 1/day reserve-burning class feature, whereas classes with "1d12" or "2d6" reserves could have something that's closer to 1/encounter. This actually leans more into the Essentials-style ethos that TNP tries to go for, where some classes have encounter powers and others have daily powers (compared to core 4e D&D, where all classes have both.)

Previously, reserves always had to be rolled in order to regain HP. In recent drafts, this has been revised to only occur during combat, or if your character is at 0 HP once combat is over. Otherwise, spending one reserve will heal you up to full, without needing to roll. This means that the "HP per reserve" is a lot more even across the classes (vis-a-vis surge value) so we can worry less about that as a consideration, in the overall reserve-burning design space.

Looking back at the text of the 2018 playtest version, there were also a couple of other rules that have since fallen by the wayside; classes with a surge value of 4 were given expertise (mastery) on the d20 roll to restore HP, and you gained advantage on the roll if you weren't bloodied yet. This has me wondering if some take on these mechanics could/should make its way into the current rules. Generally, I'm leaning in the direction of having fewer rules and fewer exceptions overall, and just streamlining things where I can.

...

As was mentioned in the Discord, I've recently begun work on compiling a new draft of the rules -- which is what led to the topics being discussed in today's post. I'm going to continue to work on this draft, as time allows.

Next post should be up on March 23rd, so check back then for more!

Ongoing Updates (2024)

With the intention being to finalize TNP sometime this year, I do realize and appreciate the fact that it likely will need some continued updates once it gets into the hands of the general public. So, it's my intent that if/when feedback comes in, I can still update the designs even after the rules are "done."

Off the top of my head, there are a couple of potential design spaces which I don't think have been fully mapped out yet; whether these make their way into TNP or into a later RPG design is still up in the air.

One more narrow example is the proposed mechanics for the Acrobat class. Since this class is meant to cover the design space of some of the classes left out from 4th Edition D&D (specifically the Seeker, Avenger, and Assassin/Executioner) the idea was that each power source would give this class a different feature, mapped to one of those left out classes. This didn't make it into the designs yet, but since it's such a relatively small thing, I may try and include it before the system is officially wrapped.

There are two other subsystems that have a more major impact, which I would like to see fleshed out more fully in the class designs: conditions/status effects, and reserve-burning mechanics (i.e. encounter powers and daily powers.) There were a few classes where, as I was updating them, adding in these mechanics just happened to be top of mind and ended up getting included. But this was not done uniformly, and it would likely require a thorough editing pass to really update all of the classes to a design ethos that properly utilizes these mechanics. As such, this may need to be something that is trickled out through a series of ongoing updates.

Based on the previous post on the subject, it probably stands to reason that all classes could have a 1/day ability; as a starting point, that may be a good enough place to work from. I think the conditions & status effects definitely need to be worked into the monster-building advice, and there probably needs to be some guidance as to what levels along the character progression it would be appropriate to use such effects.

As for the campaign-building mechanics... while still a little rough around the edges, the basic framework seems to be "there." Probably testing will have a bigger impact on it than anything, so having something "playtest ready" is more important than having a system carved in stone.

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As an update to the previous post, I think the way to approach the skills portion of the character sheet is with something of a "workspace" whereby a generic heading for each 'dot' could be set beside each skill, in rows. So, for example, have two dots for Training, one mapped to Attribute and one to Skillset -- with the same done for skill ranks: one dot for Attribute and one for Skillset (with possibly a 3rd for feat bonuses, or similar things that might bump a skill rank beyond just those two boosts.)

This way, you don't have to necessarily make a notation of the Brawl skill being a Strength/Athletics skill, as long as you know which bonuses you have to those. As such, it would likely make sense to have a section with a list of all 5 Attributes and all 5 Skillsets, where you can fill in your bonuses to each -- or, just have those work similarly, with the "workspace" approach, i.e. you only fill in training/ranks for the attributes/skillsets that have upgrades applied to them, and the rest are left off of your sheet.

...

A little bit of a short/hasty post for today; the next update is due March 3rd!

Skill Layout (2024)

One topic that's been on my mind lately, is how the skills should be laid out, vis-a-vis some sort of character sheet format. The way that upgrades are given to skills in TNP makes this sort of thing hard to map; this is why (if I design a followup game) I'm considering other possibilities -- such as training only being applied to skillsets, and ranks only being derived from attributes.

To wit, TNP has 20 "core" skills and 10 "knowledge" skills; the closest comparison would be D&D 3.5, with 35 and 10, respectively. The question in mind is whether the character sheet should simply list bonuses by attribute and by skillset, which would then be hashed out using a player aid, such as this one -- something designed to be read (somewhat) easily either vertically or horizontally. The alternative is to simply list all 30 skills, and do something akin to World of Darkness -- with either one or two training 'dots' and two rank 'dots' to fill in, for each skill, corresponding to attributes and skillsets.

Basically, the intent with the mechanics (as discussed more thoroughly in this post) is to cover as much of the spectrum of those typical adventuring skills, without having to track different skill points for 35+ distinct line entries. By having an overlapping system of 5 skillsets and 5 attributes, the whole process can be simplified. Also, the intention was to build in a system of diminishing returns, so as to encourage branching out, rather than overspecialization; I also didn't want training to stack, in order to avoid the kind of numbers bloat I would associate with skills in 4th Edition D&D.
For example, training in 4e would give you a +5 to a skill, and your ability modifier in your main stat could easily start as high as +5 -- meaning it was impossible to fail a DC10 with your main skills, while a skill with a +0 bonus was effectively a coin-flip. What TNP essentially does, it make it so you can get that +5 from your attribute or from your skillet, but not both; you can have training in both, but then the diminishing returns kick in.

The other reason that the skill mechanics now use the 1d10+1d6 system, is that there was some rumbling about a desire to have a greater variety of skill gradations. Under the d20 system, there was effectively only 4 skill levels, and the numerical jumps in between them were not very smooth. With the current mechanics, a skill check can be made with or without training, or with training + mastery, as well as applying 1, 2, or 3 skill ranks (potentially more, but rarely more than 4.) This means a total of 9 possible combinations, however this is all kept neat and streamlined by the "skill grid" of attributes and skillsets.

Now, knowledge skills function a little differently than "core" skills, in two ways:

• they can potentially gain mastery without training
  
• they can more easily exceed 3 ranks in a given skill

Much like how an attribute or skillset is a suite of core skills, a power source is essentially a suite of knowledge skills; when you gain a power source, you either gain training with 2 of its 3 associated knowledge skills, or training with 1, but mastery with all 3. Since every power source shares 2 of its skills with other powers sources, and because most character classes should be able to get at least 2 power sources, this gives some amount of flexibility to branch out or to specialize. Since knowledge skill ranks are part of character progression and/or class category progression, you also have a lot of latitude in how you scale up these skills, regardless of the power source you start with.

The question then is, since half of the knowledge skills are associated with more than one power source, should the character sheet list each of these skills twice? Or would that cause too much confusion? It seems like it'd be easier to just list all 10 knowledge skills (than it would be for all 20 core skills) with 'dots' for training and ranks -- mention of power source in that mix might not even be entirely necessary, come to think of it... perhaps you could have the knowledge skills split between those that are unique to one power source, and those that are shared.

I wonder if the tack to take with skills more generally is to only write the ones you have training/mastery/bonus ranks with, onto your character sheet. I actually tend to write my 5e characters out by hand (on lined paper) and this is the way I do my skills, within that ethos. Since the baseline assumption in TNP is that a skill check is 1d10+1d6, you only really need to make note of the skills with which you would roll something other than that. You could have a set of blank lines where you fill in your specialized skills, with spaces beside each to write in the relevant attribute or skillset, and beside that, additional space for noting training/mastery/bonus ranks -- possibly using some kind of a 'dot' system.
(One other thing to mention is that since 1 or 2 skills can exist at the intersection of any given attribute or skillset, while TNP has 20 core skills, there are actually only 15 such intersection points -- further shortening the list. For example, Brawl and Climb both fall under Strength and under Athletics, so their bonuses will always be the same as each other -- no need for separate line entries, despite being two different skills.)

So how would you like to see the skill layout handled, for TNP characters?
Let me know in the comments below.
Next blog post is due up on February 22nd, so make sure to check back then.

The Conundrum of Class Dice Bonuses

Since the summer break, I've been trying to figure out a solution to the problem with the d12 bonus. What it comes down to is that because d12 is such a large damage bonus, it has to be a relatively small attack bonus, in order for the DPR to be balanced against the other (smaller) dice bonuses -- to wit, in the current iterations, the d12 does not provide an attack bonus at all. This creates a problem, because it does not bestow the multiplicative effect to "extra damage" that dice bonuses with an attack bonus offer. I came up with a fix, but in the process I realized I should also clean up some of the nomenclature a bit.

Class dice bonuses are bonuses to attacks, which use class dice; they can be bonuses to attack rolls and/or to damage rolls. When used as a bonus to an attack roll, the class dice bonus is referred to as an attack bonus, and when used as a bonus to a damage (i.e. base damage) roll, the class dice bonus is referred to as a damage bonus (or bonus damage, depending on grammatical considerations.) Extra damage is something entirely separate from bonus damage; extra damage is only ever represented by d6s and/or d10s, can only be used for damage (not for attack bonus), and is in addition to both base damage and bonus damage.

Now, it's important to remember that while all 5 of the class dice bonuses may be applied to a given attack, only one may be used as an attack bonus -- and you can choose which one to use, after rolling all bonuses. Some of the class dice bonuses have special functions that work "as an attack bonus," meaning that in order to benefit from said bonus, no other attack bonus may be applied. Specifically, the d8 bonus when it ties the attack roll (d20), or using the d10 roll in place of the d20 (i.e. a 10 on the d10 being used to make a hit.) Remember this for later.

The general rule is that a class dice bonus can be used for an attack bonus OR a damage bonus, but not both -- however, there are exceptions (which is partly why to simplify things, one of the reworks I was considering was to just allow all dice to be used for attack bonus AND damage bonus.)

As I had said from the top, the d12 bonus:
a) does not have an attack bonus component, and;
b) does not properly scale with extra damage dice

So how do we fix this? Well, what I've come up with is this:
"As an attack bonus, the d12 bonus allows all extra damage dice to be treated as having rolled their maximum value."

Essentially what this does, is take the base hit chance (50%) and crit chance (5%) without an attack bonus (or, when applying the d12 bonus, which has no attack bonus component) and instead of multiplying those chances by the random roll of the extra damage dice, you're multiplying them by the maximum value of the extra damage dice. The result is that the extra damage scales up, more in line with the other class dice bonuses.

As mentioned in a previous post, since each class dice bonus (with a base damage of 1d8) produces a DPR of about 7.3 we then need the extra damage dice to work out to at least another 16.7 DPR, in order to hit our "1 KPR" number of 24 DPR. By using the d12 bonus this way, we're multiplying the maximum value of 5d6 or 3d10 by 50% (hit) and taking double that amount, multplied by 5% (crit):

(30 * 50% = 15) + (60 * 5% = 3) = 18

So this means that with the d12 bonus in play, the DPR from extra damage can be increased to 18, finally putting it just about on par with the other bonuses.

Now, this may seem a bit unintuitive and weird, since objectively the roll of the d12 is doing nothing to provide the actual attack bonus. But we do need to treat it as an attack bonus, to keep other attack bonuses from being applied in addition to this one. Since the ~7.3 DPR from the d12 bonus comes entirely from damage, this also means that the rule for the d12 bonus must be that it can be used for attack AND damage, in order for this math to work out.

Essentially, I think of attack bonus and damage bonus more and more like two separate buckets, that can each be filled in specific, different ways. Attack bonus is more like a "typed" bonus, in the sense that, for example, a "feat bonus" to attack can be stacked with a "power bonus" to attack, and a "circumstance bonus" to attack... but not with another "feat bonus" to attack; if every class dice bonus to attack is considered a "feat bonus", then only the highest/best would apply. Bonus damage is more like an untyped bonus; all of them can be stacked (unless they specifically don't apply, such as when using one for an attack bonus prohibits using it as a damage bonus.)

...

Anyway, hopefully that doesn't muddy the waters too much; it was the simplest fix to the class dice problem, short of reworking the whole scheme from scratch.

Next post should be up on October 30th, so check back then!

What comes after The Next Project?

I'd like to take a bit of a detour today, and discuss something I've been asked a few times in the past: 

"So what's your next game going to be?"

While I did work on a few homebrew TTRPG designs in the past, I've always sort of thought as 'The Next Project' as being my magnum opus within the genre; I've often answered the question with, "I'm not a game designer, I'm just a guy who designed a game."

Early on, what inspired me was the question, "what are the classes for the next Diablo game [after Diablo 2] going to be?" My penchant for playing niche builds in the game (such as archer Paladins, and staff-wielding Amazons) combined with the idea of remixing the different skill trees, ultimately to end up with 6 different classes.

Somewhere along the way, that morphed into the more generic, 1d10/1d6-based system that I generally referred to as "Unnamed RPG" -- the 6 classes I came up with were instead broken down into a combination of whether you were a spellcaster or a warrior, and whether you had light, medium, or heavy armor.

Anyways, getting back to the question: what would I like to do next?
Well, there's a couple ideas.

One of the games that I had the pleasure of playtesting a bit was sort of... a wargame miniatures-esque system with a fantasy theme to it, called 'Feint Wars.' The basic mechanic was that you had a deck of cards consisting of 3 suits, each numbered 1 through 6 (2 through 5? something like that...) Now, this deck was split between you and your opponent, so there was an element of card-counting involved. You could use a certain number of cards on your turn, either to move or attack; you could move a number of spaces equal to the card's value, or attack with that value vs. an opposed card from the defender. The twist was twofold: you would both select your cards and then reveal them at the same time, but also there was a "rock-paper-scissors" element, where each suit trumped one other suit, effectively granting the card a +3.

Now, the idea that this gave me was, "could you base a similar sort of game off of a deck of Italian cards?" Generally, these are pretty similar to a standard deck, with a few notable exceptions, the most pertinent in this instance being that the numbered cards only run 2 through 7. There are still 3 face cards in each suit (although the naming conventions are slightly different) as well as aces; the suits are also different, and there are no "black" or "red" suits. Translated, the four suits are swords, sticks (batons), cups, and coins. Anyways, it isn't really an idea I followed up beyond my brain making that initial connection (and perhaps the suits lending themselves more to an RPG setup.)

The other idea I had for a game is likewise somewhat nebulous; I always just think of it in one phrase:

Ability Scores, done right.

Now, what does that mean, exactly? Basically, in the vein of something like 13th Age, it'd use the conventional 6 ability scores (or something close) but do it in a more modern way. For example, one hack that I always thought would be handy in 4e (or a 3.x paradigm, without multiclassing) would be to have Knowledge skills from your class skill list use either your highest mental stat, or else get a flat bonus in place of an ability modifier if you weren't "trained" with the skill. 

I also like the ways that both 4e and 13th Age do defenses, namely by using the higher of two mods, or using the middle of three mods (respectively.) My basic thought was that each defense would have one or two default stats, but that the special perk of each class would be that they could substitute in their main stat for some (or all) of those defenses. (For example: using Charisma as effectively a sort of 'luck stat' when making Reflex saves, which would otherwise use Agility.)

Another idea in that vein came out of my experience with 4e; couldn't you just use your ability score for your defenses (rather than 10 + ability mod + class bonus + magic item bonus + half-level bonus + feat bonus, etc. etc.)? I think that'd be an interesting quality-of-life simplification... if you could make the math work, which is always the rub.

As you might guess from the attributes used in TNP, I'd like to do something where Agility and Dexterity are split up, and maybe the functions of Constitution are governed by something separate from ability scores. I'd like it to include a Wisdom stat as well, if at all possible. Another thing I'd like is the possibility of having a handful of basic classes, and mixing them together somehow to expand the roster (For example, Fighter crossed with Priest creates a Paladin character.)

In the broadest terms, I think if there were a new project on the horizon, I would want to revisit the 1d10/1d6 paradigm. The thing that I've realized in working on TNP is that there's a value proposition (and an ergonomic quality) in using percentile dice to model advantage/disadvantage (as TNP does with skills, as well as monster mechanics.) The d20 gaming zeitgeist seems to be shifting more and more towards the idea of bending the flat math into a bell curve, by modifying the roll with other dice rather than with flat modifiers -- something which has always been a cornerstone of TNP, but also pioneered by systems like 'Shadow of the Demon Lord' with its boons/banes mechanic.

In lieu of the "d20 + class die" mechanic of TNP, a more generic/universal system with something like this as its backbone would appeal to me greatly. In particular, I think it would work great for a system that is meant to be small in scope (say, 6 different playable classes, maximum) rather than the sort of "greatest hits" mentality that can be attributed to the size of the TNP roster.

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Anyway, those are my thoughts for the time being. There's barely a week left in June, so expect the next post to be up on (or just before) Friday the 30th.

Custom Campaigns & Skill Challenges (2023)

I was recently asked what the guidance would be for campaigns that are not randomly generated, using a deck of cards. It's actually quite a simple bit of reverse-engineering.

The number of encounters remains the same:

• level 0: 4 encounters
• level 1: 6 encounters
• level 2: 8 encounters
• level 3: 10 encounters
• level 4: 12 encounters
• level 5: 14 encounters

Now, the general idea with the deck of cards is that all numbered clubs (9), all face cards (12), and both jokers (2), will all be combat encounters, with aces (4) being "wild" (i.e. they can be any type of encounter.) If the aces are treated as combat encounters, this results in 27 out of 54 cards being combat -- exactly half of the deck. When I've asked around in the past, this seems to be roughly the ratio that most game groups shoot for: half combat, half ...other stuff.

Conveniently, since each level is budgeted for an even number of encounters, you can just... make half of them be combat encounters. Or less than that -- totally up to you! The other thing is that without using cards to prescribe which monsters to use in your combat encounters, you can just... use whatever you'd like. This is made easier by the fact that the budgets for the different types of monsters are based off of the number of PCs in each combat encounter:

For each PC in a combat encounter, include one of the following:

• 1 Elite monster, or;
• 2 Standard monsters, or;
• 10 HD worth of Minions and/or Swarms

If you choose to have the "boss" of your campaign be a solo monster rather than an archenemy, so be it. The monster guidelines are meant to ensure that either will be a sufficient challenge for an entire party of (typically) 4-5 PCs. This customization option also lets you drop your "big bad" in wherever it's dramatically appropriate, rather than leaving it to the deck to turn up a joker.

That all being said, the framework for how non-combat encounters are "scored" is something that I have yet to nail down. The basic idea is that it would scale based on the card number and/or the number of encounters for that level. The followup question then becomes, is "completing" a non-combat encounter a question of successful skill checks, or merely attempted skill checks? Is it some ratio of successes vs. failures?

Interestingly enough, if we look at the 4th Edition DMG (page 72-73, ish) it spells out the 'complexity' of skill challenges, in a table -- which conveniently happens to map very closely to the encounters per level, stated earlier in this post; essentially, a "complexity 1" challenge requires 4 successes before 2 failures, a "complexity 2" challenge requires 6 successes before 3 failures, and so on. 

Now, the book goes on to say that you can adjust the DC down to lower the "level" of the challenge, or reduce the maximum number of failures to increase the "level" of the challenge; the 4e DMG bases the level of a skill challenge off of "the moderate DC" for skill checks, at the party's current level. Since TNP uses a static DC10 for skills, we can essentially rule out adjusting the "level" of a skill challenge by lowering the DC of the checks involved. This also seems to rule out the possibility of reducing the maximum failures, because... that only increases the "level" and not the "complexity" -- i.e. requiring 4 successes before 1 failure (instead of 2) would only increase the "level" of the challenge by 2, not the "complexity."

My first thought is something like this:
At level 0, you do 2 skill challenges; one requires 2 successes before 1 failure, one requires 4 successes before 2 failures.
At level 1, you do the same 2 skill challenges, but also add a 3rd which requires 6 successes, before 3 failures.
...and so on in that fashion.

So, ultimately, the number of encounters for a given level would indicate the highest number of successes needed, for a skill challenge at that level; the maximum number of failures would be half of that number... which would also (typically) be the number of non-combat/skill challenge encounters, for that level.

This would mean at 5th level, you would end up doing 7 skill challenges, needing a total of 14+12+10+8+6+4+2 = 56 successes (so an average of 8 successes) -- because requiring 14 successes each, for all 7 skill challenges seems... well, obnoxious.

This also maps out for us how many successes and failures would be needed at each level, if we simply wanted to average the difficulties of the skill challenges at a given level -- or even combine multiple challenges together. If nothing else, I feel like this is at least a playtest-worthy framework.

Now, with that all being said, there is nothing to stop a DM from freestyling their campaign, and using some kind of story/milestone progression, rather than strictly using combat and non-combat encounters for leveling. But the intent here is to provide a meaningful guideline (as well as a definitive endpoint) in order to help beginners to run their campaigns.

The other thing to consider is timing. A given encounter may not necessarily take an entire gaming session to complete (and particularly not the non-combat encounters.) However, with 52 weeks in a year and 54 encounters in a campaign, the hope would be that a bi-weekly gaming group (and certainly a weekly gaming group) could complete a single campaign by the end of one calendar year. A mix of monster types, as well as being able to sprinkle in recurring archenemies, should allow a campaign of this length to include smaller and larger arcs, and also meaningful build-up and payoff for the main quest.

...

I'll aim to have the next post written up about a week from now; check back around June 6th and it should be published.

Damage Rolls (2023)

One thing that derives out of the new ethos for bonuses, is the necessity of keeping the dice for attack rolls and damage rolls separate from each other. This is a little unintuitive for me, since I tend to roll them both together (when I'm playing D&D) to speed up play just slightly.

Since class dice are used for the functions of both attack bonuses and base damage, it's important to know which dice are for what, when you're physically rolling them. One thing I wrote into the most recent draft of the rules is that it's a good idea to have at least two trays to roll dice into, in order to help facilitate this.

In one of my recent posts, I hinted at possibly removing the advantage mechanic from base damage. If we were to take it a step further, allowing mastery on base damage to apply to extra damage, this would make it possible for all damage dice to be rolled together -- without the need to delineate between the types of damage rolls. Since base damage is always going to be 1 or 2 dice, but extra damage can be from 1d6-5d6 or 1d10-3d10, the application of mastery separately to each expression seems valuable, to keep damage from spiking. On the other hand... does it really make sense to have "mastery on extra damage" as a separate mechanic from "mastery on base damage"?

The most likely application of mastery on base damage would come from combat mastery; this is attainable from positional mechanics (like targeting prone creatures in melee) as well as status effects (a.k.a. debuffs, conditions, etc.) such as a target being Incapacitated. So where would mastery on extra damage come from? This seems like an obvious bit of design space for class features (much like mastery on initiative bonus, for example.) It's just a question of whether having separate instances of mastery for the two damage types is worth the added overhead; there would be something of a 'quality of life' improvement if the damage could all just be rolled together, and have mastery apply to everything.

The problem with this is that it creates an exception to the general rule, whereby mastery on a given type of roll does not extend mastery onto the bonus dice for that type of roll. This is particularly important for saving throws and skill checks (where there is the potential to stack multiple dice bonuses) because adding mastery would significantly skew the math, in unintended ways.

There's also an argument to be made for not allowing mastery to apply to extra damage at all. In short, the mechanic changes the average damage on a d6 from 3.5 to about 4.33, and on a d10 from 5.5 to 6.4; this means that the average damage on 5d6 is over 2 points higher than 3d10, once mastery is applied to both. Again, this 'solution' would still mean extra damage ends up being the 3rd roll in the attack sequence:

Attack roll + bonus dice -> base damage -> extra damage

It might also be the case that the break between calculating base damage and extra damage has some value -- sometimes the extra damage might just be overkill. It's probably worth mentioning here that since monsters such as swarms and minions have a number of "hit dice" (rather than "hit points") they actually take damage based on the number of damage dice inflicted on them, rather than the exact value of the dice rolls. So, if you hit one of these creatures, you only really need to know whether your base damage does 1 or 2 dice of damage, and how many dice of extra damage you would apply (as well as any bonus dice which are able to be used to deal damage) -- effectively only needing to physically roll the attack die and its bonuses.

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Check back for another post, between the 25th and 28th of May.

Monster Math (2023)

A while back, I took a look at the previous monster mechanics, and went about streamlining and updating them a bit. Oddly enough, I tend to put more of the monster mechanics down in blog form, than in my actual notes, so it's often a case of compiling everything into one location to really get the ball rolling.

Way back in the 2018 draft of the monster mechanics, the monster roll (1d10+1d6) was modified by a handful of tags:

• Untrained: Use the higher of the two results
• Trained: Use the stacked value of the two results
• Expertise: Any 1s rolled can be treated as the maximum value on that die
• Advantage: If the result is a tie, treat both dice as their maximum value
• Disadvantage: Cancel out Advantage on the roll, or use the lower of the two results

As with the rest of the designs, obviously "Expertise" has been renamed to "mastery." And since standard monsters were really the only ones using the "untrained" expression for damage, this tag is going away. The "trained" tag (if kept at all) is going to function as the "If the result is a tie, treat both dice as their maximum value" mechanic, while advantage/disadvantage are only going to apply to the d10 component of the monster roll, bringing thm in line with skill checks.

Since monsters effectively only make one roll for attack and damage, this roll is considered their attack roll, for the purposes of whether disadvantage would apply (i.e. in the case of status effects, such as being Incapacitated.)

Every monster will need to be given a skill rating with each of the combat skills, as well as an initiative modifier. Since initiative will be sticking with a d20 roll, the obvious way to handle monster initiative would seem to be bonuses of either 1d6, 1d10, or 2d6. Because most combat skills fall under STR or AGIL (with perception being the outlier) it stands to reason that tmonsters should have their skill stats done strictly by attribute, rather than attribute and skillset.

There are two special rules for minions, regarding skill usage:

• Minions have skill ranks equal to their current HD, but default to having disadvantage on the d10 roll
• If an effect imposes disadvantage on a particular skill check, minions may not use that skill

As I've mentioned in previous posts on the monster mechanics, this is so that it is harder for minions to "dogpile" other characters, such as by massing grapple attacks. (Likewise, miinions cannot make ranged attacks if they are adjacent to one or more PCs.)

Beyond that sort of stuff, the monster mechanics haven't been changed a whole lot.
So far, I'm sticking with the same encounter budgets as before:

For each PC in a combat encounter, include one of the following:

• 1 Elite monster, or;
• 2 Standard monsters, or;
• 10 HD worth of Minions and/or Swarms

Solo monsters are meant to function as a combat with phases/stages, or a creature with multiple llimbs (such as a kraken or a hydra.) It could also be a dragon with various attacks (breath, tail, claws, etc.) where defeating each limb of the dragon disables the associated attack.

The final monster type is the "archenemy" which serves as the final boss/recurring villain of the campaign. Generally, they should take the encounter budget for an entire party of 4-5 PCs, but function more or less like an elite monster, rather than a solo. Their main perk is the ability to shake off debilitating effects, or limit the use of certain abilities. This is based of the foundation of a robust keyword system, covering mechanics such as healing, summoning, sustaining/concentration, forms, etc.

The monster mechanics and the campaign-building card mechanics go hand-in-hand, for obvious reasons; it's probably still worth testing and fine-tuning some of the monster stuff, but really nailing down the campaign mechanics will be a big focus going forward.

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Next post will be 7-10 days from now, so check back then!

Party Composition (2023)

So, building off of the earlier posts on role mechanics as well as class categories, I felt that party composition was something I should touch on for today.

Generally speaking, TNP is built around the idea of having a party of 4 characters. This sort of leans on roles, and sort of leans on class categories... but not really. So let's get into it.

The basic idea for party composition in TNP is that, in its totality, the party should have training with each core skill, twice over. That is to say, at least two members of the party (mixed and matched) have training with each core skill. Each class will have training with 2 attributes/skillsets, with 'skill expert' classes gaining a 3rd, plus 'skill expert' and 'jack of all trades' classes having the option to take a feat granting an additional trained attribute/skillset.

Going the route of having both a 'skill expert' and 'jack of all trades' in the party, (and taking this feat twice, as a group) a party of 4 characters can end up with 11 instances of skill training, covering the 5 skillsets/attributes. This means there is a little bit of wiggle room, since at a minimum, a party of 4 would still have 8 instances of skill training, meaning most skills should be covered at least once.

Just as not every class category is covered by a party of 4, this also means that not every role or 'role mechanic' would necessarily be covered either. This is why it is useful having these mechanics as something that certain classes can toggle on or off; 'jack of all trades' classes and 'disciple' classes both have the option to select a different combat role at the start of each combat, essentially allowing such classes to plug different gaps in the party.

As such, while the class categories used in TNP are grouped by slate (and slates are loosely based on power sources) this is not analagous to 4th Edition; class category does not determine your class' combat role within its slate / power source. Instead, it is more of an indication of which "pillar" your class focuses on:

• Skill Experts focus on core skills, and generally have the easiest access to Infiltration skills
• Ideologues focus more on knowledge skills, and generally have access to more knowledge skill ranks than other categories -- but they also tend to specialize, rather than generalize, in this regard
• Jack of All Trades classes are the most customizable, and meant to fill gaps within parties through bonus feats and their access to role mechanics
• Blade Masters are (obviously) melee classes, and so generally focus on combat, of the melee variety -- either tanking/defending, or as melee strikers (and within that, they're more of a 'skirmisher' or 'brute' role rather than a 'lurker')
• Disciples are...still kind of a mixed bag, at this point.

So that sort of begs the question...
...if skill expert is the Subterfuge (♠) category
....and blade master is the Combat (♣) category

...does that make 'jack of all trades' the Social (♥) category?

...should the Exploration (♦) category be the Disciples, or the Ideologues?

A compelling argument could be made that Warlord should be the Social disciple, and Druid should be the Exploration disciple, leaving Occultist as (probably) the obvious Subterfuge disciple. But I would be remiss if I didn't also acknowledge Warlord as basically a literal "disciple of Combat" (duh)

Knowledge skills (i.e. ideologues) tend to lean towards exploration skills, but they do have some social applications as well (specifically the Local, Streetwise, and Nobility & Royalty skills.)

If we're looking at the 'jack of all trades' category, Fighter is the obvious Combat class; Bard (Scholar) could be Exploration, and Bard (Performer) could be Social, with Adventurer (Scout) being Exploration and Adventurer (Skald) being Social... then is Exploration or Social the obvious secondary pillar, for the Fighter?

Circling back to roles, I should reiterate that most "support healing" in TNP does not spend reserves. The rationale being that we do not want that role to create an additional drain on reserves -- as was the typical knock on 'leader' classes in 4e. (Some people people have argued that "Damage is King" and healing is wasteful and unnecessary, but I can't say I've lived that experience.) Part of the reason for doing it this way is so that you can better compose your party to the tastes of your players, without necessarily needing to fill every "role" in combat. This (hopefully) allows people to play more to their preferred style, rather than tailoring to some real or perceived necessity, within the party composition mini-game. And it certainly isn't mandatory to have one of each "category" in every party, or that you shouldn't double up on a given category, either.

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Alright, I'll leave it at that for today. Next post will be aiming for April 25th or 26th, so check back then!

New Mechanics: Status Effects, Conditions, and Initiative (2023)

I'm choosing to not call this post an overview, because some of the information presented here isn't completely instituted into the game, and I expect some of it to change with playtesting. Where status effects and conditions intersect with initiative, is when you try to sort out the notion of "surprise" rounds or a "surprised" mechanic/condition; that will be touched on towards the end of the post.

Laying the Groundwork
As one might expect, when looking for inspiration, the first thing I did was make up a spreadsheet to help me compare conditions from 4e/Essentials with those in 5e. In my opinion, the conditions in 5e are poorly constructed and underutilized in the designs; that's not to say 5e added in a bunch of unneeded conditions, just that they didn't execute on them. (It has been hinted at that 'One D&D' will rework things to make status effects actually line up with spell effects, something I think potentially could be a big improvement.)

The short version of this comparison:

• 4e does not have a Poisoned, Frightened, or Incapacitated condition
• 5e does not have a Slowed, Dazed, Surprised, Helpless, Removed from Play, Weakened, or Insubstantial condition

Breaking down these outliers is probably a helpful place to start, in explaining why or why not to keep a condition in the game.

Poisoned: disadvantage on attack rolls and ability (i.e. skill) checks
This always struck me as weird, since such a generic debuff is tied to such a specific flavour of damage. For TNP, we're going with Exhausted as "disadvantage on all skill checks," while having "disadvantage on attack rolls" end up elsewhere.

Frightened: disadvantage on ability checks and attack rolls while the source of its fear is in line of sight, and cannot willingly move closer to the source of the fear

I feel like this is one of those seminal control-type abilities in RPGs, and I genuinely think it's pretty well-written in 5e. We're keeping Frightened in TNP, but it's beefed up to more of an "action denial" effect, rather than just disadvantage on rolls.

Incapacitated: cannot take actions or reactions
My own DM'ing experience has led me to decide pretty early on that this type of effect wouldn't be in TNP. If you want to be really mean in combat, what you can do is combine more than one action denial effect; in 4th edition, dazed (can only take one action) and prone (needing to use your move action to stand up) was a pretty good example that I came up with.
I tend to refer to this condition as "lose a turn" -- and oddly enough, the 4e condition "Removed from Play" does exactly that; Stunned in 4e does the same, and Surprised is effectively "stunned during the surprise round." Suffice it to say, there's a lot of verbiage being thrown around on a concept that I ultimately wasn't going to use. Instead, if you are surprised at the start of initiative in TNP, you are Shocked, which is similar to 4e's Dazed condition -- limiting how many actions you can take, but not denying you the ability to act, outright. The term "Incapacitated" in TNP is instead recycled as the generic debility, granting you disadvantage on attacks and saves, and granting your enemies combat mastery against you -- while you yourself are unable to gain combat mastery against enemes (that last bit was something that was ultimately added in to the Blinded effect, in Essentials.)

Slowed: your speed becomes 2, do not pass 'Go', do not collect $200
This one from 4e was pretty hard to mimic in a more-abstracted movement ethos. Effectively, this is absorbed into the Immobilized condition, which restricts all forms of movement except for teleportation or forced movement. 'Restrained' is a bit of a sticky wicket; in 5e it reduces your movement speed to 0, whereas in 4e it adds that you can only move by teleportation. Both also effectively give you a penalty while granting enemies a bonus to attack you. In the current draft, Restrained in TNP makes you Immobilized, Incapacitated, and unable to move or be moved by any means, in addition to disadvantage on certain skills (i.e. Weakened.) Grappled is essentially "Immobilized while the grapple is maintained" so as such, it seemed reasonable to make it a little stronger than just regular immobilization; in the current draft, this translates to also applying disadvantage on off-turn actions.

Helpless: you grant combat advantage

Now, specifically the only time this condition is used in 4e is when you're unconscious, although the Essentials text more or less says the DM can slap you with this if you're tied up real good, or similar. It's also the prerequisite for a coup de grace in 4e (if memory serves.) Suffice it say, we're not using this in TNP. If a creature is Dropped (i.e. surrenders or drops to 0 HP) they fall Prone -- which is an effect that grants combat mastery in melee.

Weakened/Insubstantial: you deal/take half damage (respectively)

I just never like the mechanics of doing half of anything, and having to round up or down. Effectively, hitting or being hit 50% less often mimics the same effect, and so that's where the disadvantage mechanic is a handy catch-all. Again, this is not used in TNP.

Rounding Out the List:

Now, at its core, the status effects in TNP (aside from those based on positioning in combat) are all designed off of a few basic building blocks:

• Combat Mastery
• Incapacitated
• Shocked
• [disadvantage on skills]

As said earlier, Exhausted grants disadvantage on all skill checks. Weakened grants disadvantage on Strength and Athletics checks; this effect is nested into Restrained, in the current draft. Dazzled is simply disadvantage on Detection skills; the Dazed and Dominated conditions have Dazzled nested into them. Likewise, Frazzled is disadvantage on skill checks using Subtlety (i.e. Stealth) and Communication (i.e. Intimidation); the Fazed and Frightened conditions cause the target to also be Frazzled. (Alliteration is fun!)

I also didn't want the bigger/badder conditions to simply be a combination of smaller conditions -- otherwise, you don't need to make a new condition, you can simply mix and match the smaller ones to get the same effect. So for the higher-end effects, there's also usually a little something extra:

• Dazed creatures are Dazzled, Incapacitated, and unable to see
• Fazed creatures are Frazzled, Incapacitated, and unable to hear or speak
• Dominated creatures are Dazzled, Shocked, and cannot attack or disengage from the source
• Frightened creatures are Frazzled, Shocked, and "Cannot take movement actions except to disengage from the source, or to take cover"

Beyond all this, there are things like cover, high ground (as it has been called in earlier drafts) or altitude (as it's tentatively called in the current draft), as well as being Hidden (covering both the Stealth skill as well as any magical forms of invisibility) and the 4e-staple Bloodied condition.

The trickiness with some of these is the mechanic of "players always roll" rather than enemies attacking players, bringing into question whether or not a particular condition should always apply "evenly." In other words, should an effect that grants disadvantage on saves (i.e. to players only) make the target also grant combat mastery to those targeting it (something that can apply to players, and monsters)? This uneven application can potentially lead to a double-penalty where one is not intended -- theorycrafting doesn't always catch everything, so this is where playtesting has to step in and find issues.

Surprise! Roll for Initiative
I mentioned in earlier posts that initiative checks will be it's own "thing" rather than piggybacking off of skill checks. This is because the change to skill check dice (i.e. no longer using d20) produces a flatter result, meaning the initiative numbers would be clustered together, when in practice it's better if they're spread apart. The question becomes, how do you determine who has surprise? It doesn't make sense to just go by highest/lowest initiative, but we also can't simply compare opposing initiative checks, since they are no longer skill checks.

What I'm considering is this (and admittedly, this is clunky and might bog things down):
Whenever you're out exploring, and danger may arise, each player should choose whether they're sneaking, on lookout, or taking a 'balanced' approach (snazzier terms for these, TBD.)

• If you are sneaking, you roll stealth: on a success, you are Hidden at the start of combat; on a failure, you have disadvantage on your initiative check (i.e. only the d20 component of the roll.)
• If you are on lookout, you roll perception: on a success, you gain advantage on your initiative check (again, only for the d20 component); on a failure, you are Shocked at the start of combat.
• If you are taking a balanced approach, you do not need to make a skill check; you do not gain any of the possible penalties or benefits to initative/at the start of combat.

By structuring it this way, we get the benefit of the 5e approach (where there is no 'surprise round' per se) while making it more clear as to who has the jump on who -- since it can be adjudicated on an individual basis, rather than... whatever the hell 5e is trying to do. (I find the idea of "group checks" to be a bad mechanic, just generally.) It also sort of lines up with the 4e notion of surprise, where the ambushers get a round to take limited actions, while the "surprised" get to do nothing; instead, in TNP you have the ambushers able to act fully and with a bonus (i.e. combat mastery from being Hidden) while the "surprised" are limited in their actions, and have a penalty (granting combat mastery from being Shocked). I also like the structure of having Shocked be an in-combat status as well as the one used to model surprise -- rather than 4e having two different statuses that are functionally the same thing.

Teaser:
The other application to consider is whether certain effects should be 'at-will' while others require you to burn 'encounter' or 'daily' powers -- or whether burning reserves can upgrade effects, along a certain track. It's definitely something that will need to be worked into the overall designs.

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Well, it's anyone's guess when the next post will be out; hopefully March 26th, at the lastest.

Design Origins -- Part 5: Skills

Today I'm going to talk about the origins of the skill system in TNP, which I think is particularly important, due to the bigger role it's taking within the overall designs.


Filling in the Grid
Probably the most wide-reaching question to ask, is where did the "Core Skills grid" come from? There are a few points of influence, and (as with many things in this system) the short answer is that it's a blend of various editions of D&D, plus my own previous designs.

The actual list of skills I went with, was mostly just a blend of 3.5 and 4e -- unifying some skills where 4e did, but adding in some of the old skills it had left behind. The idea was mostly to have a slightly bigger toolbox on hand, in order to deal with non-combat situations. Professions and crafting were still left by the wayside, since there isn't any itemization or money used in TNP -- without which, those skills are largely just fluff.

After a few iterations, I would also separate what I would call "ribbon skills" (Knowledge and Performance) from the Core skills; ultimately, I never thought they were as valuable, and they never really fit into the grid (i.e. having them linked to attributes.) What made more sense, was to borrow from 4e -- by having Knowledge skills more closely linked to Power Source; Arcane classes typically got Arcana as a trained skill, Divine classes got training with Religion, etc. This also helped to give Power Sources more mechanical weight than just interacting with re-specs; generally they didn't do much in 4e, until you got deep into feats and optimization (which is a design space that I wanted this game to avoid.)


The Advent of Skillsets
As I've touched on in one or two other posts before, 4th Edition D&D had a group of class skills that were sort of ubiquitous to all "Fightman"-type classes (namely Athletics, Endurance, Heal, and Intimidate.) Similarly, the Thievery skill was limited to a very small niche of classes, and that was something I sort of wanted to preserve; there might be many classes which could be good at stealth, but deeper forms of skulduggery should still be more limited in their availability. So I was starting to lean more and more into the thought of a "skillset" really being a reflection of "what skills are iconic to this class?"

The idea of allowing classes to be built as "good at a skillset" was intended to avoid M.A.D. -- the design conceit of requiring a character to have several high ability modifiers -- in this case, to be good at their class skills (i.e. Athletics using Strength, Endurance using Constitution, Heal using Wisdom, and Intimidate using Charisma.) Essentially, the system should let you make a character that's good at all the skills in the set, without needing to be "good at" each attribute that the skills are tied to.

Another part of the thought process behind grouping skills into sets, was to allow each group to include skills for each type of encounter (combat, social, and exploration.) This would allow a character to always be able to contribute meaningfully, even if they were only good at one skillset. Ultimately, I would end up keeping skillsets aligned a bit more thematically, but I still think this goal ends up being achieved; generally, each class gets training with at least two groups of skills, which helps to cover the different encounter types.

Now, in the previous game I had worked on, there were 6 skillsets (which at various points in development were coupled and then de-coupled from attributes.)

• Athletics
• Acrobatics
• Influence
• Information
• Deception
• Detection

We can see how this setup clearly influenced TNP. Eventually, Information would become Knowledge (which was then moved to the background skills.) A friend who I had showed the designs to, asked me why I had separated Athletics and Acrobatics, and eventually I decided to just put the two together; conversely, the Deception skillset covered too much space, and would later be split into Subtlety and Infiltration.

The Fifth Element
I can remember when 5th Edition D&D was still in the playtesting phases, one of the notions put forth was that of combining any skill with any ability modifier. Ultimately, I would say that's not what 5e actually implemented, but then neither did TNP; instead, I kind of pivoted slightly, to the idea of distinct skills being the intersection of an attribute, and a skillset.

For example, instead of "Deception" just being a Charisma skill, it would be a skillset; where Deception and Charisma intersected, would be skills like Bluff or Disguise. Other "Deception" skills could be found by intersecting with other attributes, such as Sleight of Hand using Dexterity, or Forgery using Intelligence.

4th Edition D&D flirts with this sort of "mixing and matching" as well, largely due to the necessity of prioritizing your combat stats above all others. This manifested itself in the idea of replacing one ability mod with another, for certain skills. The example that always came up was the feat that allowed half-orcs to use Strength (an attribute which they got a bonus to) for Intimidation, in place of Charisma.

5e allows DMs to use this as sort of a general... piece of advice (I'm not sure you could call it a rule) when appropriate. What all these workarounds solidified for me, was the simple need to get rid of "traditional" ability scores -- the kind that govern both combat, and non-combat. Instead, by using "ability scores" (Attributes) as part of the skill grid, they serve as a second method for grouping skills -- creating another vector by which classes can be distinguished from one another.


Modifiers & Math
In 4th Edition D&D, the design around skill difficulty was something I felt was a problem, and it entirely comes down to the stacking of modifiers. When the game was released, I think the intention was that having either a high ability modifier or skill training would be sufficient to be successful with a given skill (in most cases.)

The problem was that the rest of the system strongly incentivized maxing out one or two stats, and also that there was nothing preventing a high stat from being combined with skill training. When the DCs were revised later on, it was (seemingly) done so, to take into account this sort of rampant overspecialization -- with the obvious side-effect of making it so that combining a low stat with training became suboptimal (and almost pointless, if the stat was low enough.)

So the seeds for the idea of "skill training or ability modifier, but not both" had already been planted in my head. How this manifested in my designs, was by allowing bonuses to a skill to come from either its Skillset, or its Attribute, but having each bonus apply only once -- even if the character had the same bonus to both groupings.

In the earliest incarnations of TNP (with the original slate) there had been skill mechanics based off of each class die; I quickly came to the decision that I wanted a more unified system for skill resolution (particularly as I began to add more classes.) My first thought was to use d6 and/or d10 -- again, leaning on ideas from the previous game I had written; the existing skill mechanics for all 5 class dice could simply be "rounded" up or down, to fit.

I was never sure of the exact implementation I wanted, but when I went in and crunched out the probabilities, it became obvious. The d10 on its own (when added to a d20 roll) pushed the crit chance way too high, and when combined with Expertise, it nearly pushed failure completely off the table. Since the d6 roll combined with Expertise produced comparable results to an unmodified d10 (without the drastic increase in crit rate) axing the d10, and just sticking with d6, presented itself clearly as the simplest solution. I also like that this uses one of the most common dice, sort of keeping in line with the game's more tactile-based design choices.

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That's all for today! I may dig into some comparisons of the execution of skill systems a bit more, in another post.
In any case, check back on September 29th for the next update.