I'm sure I've mentioned it before but let's examine the difference in ethos between 4e and Essentials a little bit.
With an attack power in 4e, generally you declare that you're using it, then the button gets pushed, and you roll dice to determine if you hit. This means that (hit or miss) the power is expended, assuming it is a Daily or Encounter power. In Essentials, the Fighter class instead functioned off of confirming a hit with a melee basic attack; after the hit was confirmed, they would then push the Power Strike button (an encounter power) to deal additional damage. (The Paladin in Essentials got a similar mechanic, and the Scout subclass for Ranger also got access to Power Strike.)
What this meant was that you never had to "waste" your encounter powers, on a miss. It also meant that you could choose to use it only when you scored a critical hit, thus maximizing the damage effectiveness even further. It's also worth mentioning that since attacks like Charge or opportunity attacks also functioned off of melee basic attacks in 4e, buffing such attacks with Power Strike was also possible. In the 2014 version of 5e, this is also true of the Paladin's Divine Smite ability, because it is cued off of scoring a hit with a melee weapon -- so this could be done with each attack made on your turn, in addition to opportunity attacks (as long as you have the spell slots to burn.) Similarly, the Battle Master in 5e keys its maneuvers off of scoring a hit first, and then expending superiority dice after.
So, how will this work for the TNP sequel mechanics?
Well, the ethos of "2d6 + pool" implies that all of the dice will be in the pool, before the roll is made. This means that we're going to be declaring which power we're using, first -- much like in 4e. However, since adding dice to the pool increases our chances of hitting (while also increasing damage) we end up getting a benefit similar to the "Power Strike"-style of mechanic, but without the two-stage confirmation system being applied to the roll.
This begs the question of whether there should be a mechanic for critical hits, in the sequel. If we take 1/20 as our baseline (5%), then saying "11 or 12 on 2d6" would give us a 2/36 (or 1/18) crit rate, which is pretty comparable. However, we need to keep in mind that the assumption is that the attacker will always be rolling at least 3 dice; scoring at least an 11 on "highest 2 of 3d6" already boosts that to almost 1/5 -- whereas a 12 is only 7.41%
An interesting quirk of the pool system is that damage potential also increases hit potential. This also means that as your crit chance goes up, your crit damage is going up; rolling 5d6 gives almost a 1/5 chance of scoring a 12 on the attack roll, but having 3 dice of crit damage is also going to do a lot more than only having 1 die (particularly if crits are handled by say, using the rolled damage but also adding the dice's maximum value, as in TNP.)
A third thing I've been thinking about is whether there should be a flat number of "daily" power uses, or whether this should be tied to attributes in some way. In previous RPG designs that I've done, I had encounter and daily resources keyed off of stats, so the idea of doing it that way is not completely foreign to me. I was thinking of it in terms of utilization, with my classic example being the Paladin. You're going to want STR for damage, and CHA as your pool stat... but then what? We've got at least 3 other attributes to account for, and we don't want to end up with the default "dump everything into AGIL because it's initiative."
So do we make something like INT the "per day" stat (for Paladin, at least?) that governs the number of uses of your "dice pool" stat? This would necessitate your INT and CHA stats both always being at least a +1, which ties into the idea I had presented previously that your class might prescribe which of your attributes has to be a +0. This also (aside from the obvious) highlights that a "flat 10" number of points to be spread across 5 attributes would probably be a little high, if the assumption was that the Paladin only really needs meaningful numbers in 2 of those stats... particularly if the max in any stat is expected to be +3 and not +4. I do like the idea of a +4/+3/+2/+1/+0 as the "standard array" for a loadout with 5 attributes, so maybe that just solidifies it.
Now, what this does is create some interesting choices. Do you want to "pool" harder, but less often? Do you want to do it weaker, but more often? Do you want to just swing your sword harder (knowing that you're getting double your stat as damage, on a two-handed weapon) and let the pool just be a nice cherry on top, once or twice a day? Naturally, there will be ways to optimize it, but then we also have to think of how our attribute choices impact skills, and not just combat -- which I think would tend towards a heavier focus on CHA, for our Paladin. From a design perspective, we also should give some consideration to, "if our pool button can only get pushed X times per day, then how should that number line up with our crit math?" while keeping in mind the fact that pushing the button is also what increases those odds.
...
Bit of a broad discussion in today's post, but hopefully the ideas flow together well enough for the readers out there.
November's scheduling is a little bit in flux, but I would expect the next post to be up by November 13th, so check back then!
