Class Showcase: Fighter, Paladin, Ranger (2023)

 So for today's 3 classes, we have the (mostly) martial bunch:

• The Fighter (d6/d12)
• The Paladin (d6/d10)
  
• The Ranger (d8/d10)

If we look at 5th Edition D&D, these classes are sort of grouped together, with "fighting styles" being their common mechanic; the fighter gets access to all, ranger leans towards two-weapon fighting or archery, and paladin can basically get any of the others.

It seems clear that there was a deliberate attempt to make Fighters in 5e that could be built for more than just melee, and I felt that was valuable to keep in TNP. However, I didn't want the fighting styles to be something you were pigeon-holed into, so I added the mechanic of each additional style giving you extra damage. The TNP version of the Fighter is actually an outgrowth of the original "Warrior" class, which was a much more barbarian-ish, d12 class; as the Fighter-y bits got added more and more into the Warrior, the d12 made less and less sense. When I started working on the 3rd slate of classes, I decided to make the Fighter as a separate, d6 class, and later with the two-dice revision, d6/d12 seemed the obvious choice.

The Paladin in TNP, on the other hand, was one of the original 5 character classes... sort of -- having evolved out of the d10 "Fighter" class to include some more holy/healing abilities, which the slate was otherwise completely lacking. There are some subtle influences from Diablo 2, as the Paladin in that game was probably my favourite class. I liked the idea of either taking a Cleric domain or a Fighter role (or possibly fighting style) with the Paladin, so I sort of massaged that into the class specialization options; the Fighter and Paladin sharing the d6 class die made role the easier fighter option to share. In much the same way as in 5e, the Paladin isn't mean to be a "pure" healer or "main" healer, but they're a frontliner who can dish out some healing as they fight. I can honestly say I had fun playing a Blackguard in 4e, and so including a dark Paladin with some of the thievery-type skills had always been on my radar.

The Ranger has always been a d8 class, but honestly, stapling an "extra damage die" such as the d10 onto the class just worked flawlessly. The scout subclass bounced around between Ranger and Rogue for a bit, before finally settling in as part of the Adventurer class; I wanted to keep classes to only 2 subclasses, and that sort of necessitated this. Probably the two-weapon fighting and the archery Rangers are the most iconic, particularly coming out of 4th Edition; TNP's Ranger is more akin to the Essentials' Hunter ranger, stapled onto the beastmaster archetype of the Martial Power book. I feel the latter playstyle became popularized for a lot of people (myself included) with the World of Warcraft hunter class, and I think using the beast for 4e's iconic "twin strike" manages to work out ok.

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So, the remaining "completed" class is the Rogue, with 5 others still needing to be polished up and finalized; I might squeeze in a post on another topic, rather than continue with the class showcases, for the next one.

Check back on October 20th!

Crunch Time (2018)

As was kind of expected, playtesting showed that the game isn't fully ready to be released "into the wild."

Since the game's non-combat aspect leans entirely onto the skills, it will be important going forward to have this facet of the game a lot more thoroughly defined. The mechanics of each skill, the basic assumptions of what happens outside of combat, as well as who commands the flow of the action (and when) will need to be codified. I think it will also be important to define when and how to fall back on Attributes, Skillsets, and Power Sources, i.e. when there may not be a specific skill that covers a certain type of action.

The "monster workshop" guidelines will need more testing; there were some flaws with the theorycraft behind solo monsters, and I can only assume that the same will be true of the other new monster types. Likewise, the rules for summoned creatures need to be expanded upon -- specifically, when they should or should not be treated as "allies." Mechanically, the Ranger's animal companion needs to be reworked, since it can potentially soak a lot of damage, with no real penalty or drawback if it's killed; it can simply be 'recast' on your next turn.

Another thing that was shown to be troublesome was various passive and defensive buffs. Boosts to defense rolls can be disproportionately powerful, since a character can potentially make several of them in a round. Whereas bonuses to attacks are generally limited to Basic Attacks, which (among most classes) happen only once, on their turn. The need to balance off these different types of benefits was reflected in the updated Cleric class, which I wrote during the course of playtesting. Always-on buffs will need to have their effectiveness scaled, to match their projected frequency, or simply have that frequency adjusted to match their potency.

A few of the more basic concepts of the game need to be defined -- "Death and Dying" (so to speak) being one of them. I mentioned previously that Reserves are meant to function as out-of-combat HP top-ups, but the mechanical ability to use them needs to be cleared up a bit. Can you spend Reserves at the end of combat, if you are "dropped"? Does initiative immediately end when all enemies are defeated, or should you finish out the round (potentially letting support characters get more healing in)? These kinds of things need to be explained in the text. "Expertise" (I feel) also needs to be straightforwardly called out as simply a piece of mechanics jargon, or it needs to be renamed (because it continues to cause mental logjams with new readers/players.)

Last (for now) is the fact that I need to finish writing the remaining classes, which also means needing to crunch their damage numbers, and make sure everything balances. The class features all need to be reformatted, and the slate/category upgrades need to be instituted across all classes. The "Performance" progression needs to be ironed out and finalized; some classes being able to gain it as an option at 1st level, but with no actual benefit until 2nd level is something that needs to be fixed. "Subclass only" and "Archetype only" classes will need to have unique and interesting upgrades available to them.

Once the classes are set, they will all need to be tested, re-tested, and re-balanced; if the playtesting has shown anything, it's that things are never as close to completion as they seem, and that the devil is in the details. For the game to reach a finished state, there will need to be a lot of bug-squashing; I'm hoping I can find faster ways to identify problematic, vague, or breakable mechanics, going forward.


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Keeping with the blog schedule, the next post should be up on August 18th, so check back then.

What to expect from 2018

Happy new year, everyone!
For those keeping score, the blog had just over 1000 views a year ago, and now it's at just under 3000.

Today I'm going to try and touch on as many thing as I can, pertaining to what I plan to write about on the blog this year, as well as the sorts of innovations and changes that will appear in the game design itself. But before getting into any of that, I'm happy to announce that the first draft of the "starter slate" classes is all ready to go:

• The Sage (d4)
• The Fighter (d6)
• The Ranger (d8)
• The Adventurer (d10)
• The Warlord (d12)

I should point out that these classes have been written with much of the new framework in mind; it shouldn't be difficult to have the rest of the classes match up to that. Notably, since there are no "archetype-only" classes in this slate, it'll be important to make sure that those classes have enough customization options, once they are re-written.

In terms of the blog itself, of course I will be including information on changes to the designs, as they come up. In addition to that, I would also like to go back and discuss how some of the existing ideas came to be, and why those decisions were made; for example, I'd like to write about the original slate of 5 classes, the use of Class Dice, and the skill setup. In terms of scheduling, I'm hoping to stick to the plan laid out here, adhering to my "every 10th day"-ish routine, with breaks in July and December.

As I touched on in my previous post, in terms of development, I want to essentially update the classes to the 2018 Edition aesthetic, one slate at a time -- rather than doing all classes in concert with one another. What this means is that (once the core rules are likewise updated) I intend to do some playtesting with the starter set, then adjust those classes (and the core rules) as needed, then work to release another slate of classes, playtest them, and so forth in that fashion.

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For some mechanical changes (in addition to those already announced) I'm going to work at streamlining and fixing a few things:

Opportunity Attacks: Though I like the conceit of just doing auto-damage with these actions, it's not a good fit for TNP. With some classes getting "double roll and stack" on this damage, it clashes with the positional mechanics that can impose disadvantage on OAs, requiring a specific rules-exception that I don't like. Also, not having an attack roll makes it sort of a misnomer, and I haven't found an alternate piece of jargon that's to my liking. As such, OAs will now use a traditional attack roll. One potential benefit of this is that it will allow for classes to have both a basic attack and an Opportunity Attack "loadout" which may open up new design space.

Trade-offs/Double Rolls: The mechanic of Trade-offs is one that has often been classed as a misnomer, by some of the readers. As the designs have evolved, the specific use of Trade-offs has not been applied uniformly enough, in my estimation. Since things like Counter-attack and Power Attack already have design changes planned (to make them operate without using Trade-offs) I'm going to remove this piece of jargon from the rules, completely. This means that some class abilities will have to be (or have already been) completely changed or replaced. For other instances, the "double roll" terminology will be used instead. Since double rolls that are not just advantage or disadvantage are generally limited to using Class Dice (rather than d20s) you can expect to see that spelled out more explicitly, in the next draft of the rules.

Advantage/Disadvantage: I am considering a few changes to these mechanics:
1) a return to "if you have both advantage and disadvantage, roll 3 dice and use the middle result" (which appeared in earlier drafts.) I might want to have this in place, so that the design space of using both the highest roll and the lowest roll remains viable, in instances where both advantage and disadvantage would apply.
2) re-rolling the dice, in the case of disadvantage resulting in a tie; overall, I don't like to have re-rolls (particularly for play-by-post purposes.) However, the general rule of "treat one result as its maximum value on a tied double roll" functionally does nothing, with disadvantage -- I may want to change that.
Neither of these are set in stone yet, but they are both on my radar.

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That's about all for today; check back next weekend for another post!

The Road Ahead (2018)

Today I'm going to go with a rough overview of the changes you can expect to see in the upcoming draft.

Classes
Whereas in Beta 4, I wanted to develop and refine all 15 classes in concert with one another, in the 2018 Edition I'm planning to first implement the classes planned for use with the "starter slate."

• Sage (d4)
• Fighter (d6)
• Ranger (d8)
• Adventurer (d10)
• Warlord (d12)

Once the full versions of these classes are completed, their starter versions will simply remove some of the decision points, i.e. Subclasses for Sage and Ranger will be picked automatically (Wizard and Hunter, respectively) as will things like skills and Archetypes, for all classes.

I do intend to to keep all of the 15 classes from the previous version, but they will be rolled out over time, rather than all at once.

Leveling

Right now, the intention is to have 5 levels of progression (though I am not 100% decided on whether characters will start at level 1 or level 0.) This means that ideally, we want each class loadout (i.e. Subclass only/ Subclass + Archetype/ Archetype only/ Role + Archetype/ Role only) to have at least 5 possible upgrades to purchase (ideally, more.)

Archetypes, additional Roles, skill training, and Power Sources have been identified as upgrades that can be bought using the leveling process, i.e. Experience Points (XP). Now it becomes a matter of unifying class structures, such that those upgrades can be moved off of their current frameworks without breaking anything. Instances of Power Sources tied to Subclasses (for example) will need to be reworked.

Slate upgrades are definitely something I will want to include as purchasable upgrades, though similar upgrades for "Categories" (i.e. loadouts) are currently up in the air.

It's also intended that in lieu of purchasing an upgrade to your current class, XP can be used to change your class, within certain parameters. Currently, the intent is that you don't have to spend XP as soon as you earn it, but also that at earlier levels, changing your class would not come at an XP cost. This is meant to make it easier for newer players to ease into their class, or make changes to their character if they find the class they picked is not the right fit.

Backgrounds

My intention for handling Performance skills, is that they will be on their own progression track (i.e. gaining 'ranks' in them will not be purchased with the same currency as other upgrades) and this track will only be unlocked for certain classes and/or Archetypes.

As for Knowledge skills, I am moving away from the structure I had written about previously. Instead, one of two possible paths will be integrated into the rules (or possibly both will be presented as options.)

The first method is to keep Power Sources as an upgrade (much as they currently exist in the designs) but instead of granting training with 3 knowledge skills, they would instead grant training to one skill, and Expertise to one skill. Depending on the Power Source, this might mean training with one skill and Expertise with another, or both benefits to one skill. Layered onto this, characters would have a Knowledge progression track, where they would gain 1 benefit per level (either training with an untrained skill, or Expertise with a trained skill.)

The alternate method is to adopt something more akin to the 13th Age system for Backgrounds. Specifically, I would get rid of granular Knowledge skills entirely, and instead have knowledge checks rely solely on your Power Sources. Two possible ways of handling this immediately present themselves:

1) Simply replace the 5-level Knowledge progression track with a Power Source progression track -- you gain training with a Power Source or Expertise with a trained Power Source, each level, or;

2) You gain Power Sources more or less as currently devised within the system -- having one Power Source applicable to the knowledge check in question would provide the benefit of training, and having more than one would grant Expertise to the check.

Combat Math

Behind the scenes, I've been working on crunching out the damage of various existing (and potentially future) attack routines. Broadly, the designs are moving towards more streamlined dice usage, including previously-outlined changes, using things like Advantage and Expertise. Another important change is to the assumed baselines for damage.

I've mentioned before that earlier playtests showed classes doing around 15 DPR, and that I had been using that as my benchmark. Through the process of working on the math, I've moved the target to 13.5 DPR; I found that it's quite a bit easier to fit the smaller dice (in particular) under this guideline. As an example, an attack dealing 2d12 damage, with both Expertise and the Reliable property, hits this mark almost exactly -- a reasonable attack routine to use as a base.

For d6 classes, I am trying to move the designs towards the "universal" maximum of 24 damage, with a situational perk that can boost it to 30 (i.e. an additional d6.) In their preexisting versions, Fighters get an additional d6 against prone targets, and Rogues get an additional d6 when attacking an enemy they are already Engaged with. The trick will be in trying to make the "universal" numbers more reliable -- specifically, the Rogue and the Guardian rely a bit heavily on situational damage boosts. One thing I have found effective in patching this, is granting double damage on critical hits (typically in conjunction with boosts to crit chance) so expect to see this benefit implemented widely, particularly for d6 classes.

Blog Scheduling

I would like to keep up with posting roughly 3x per month/once every 10 days, as I have been. I'm not 100% sure on which rotation I'll go with for 2018, but I've narrowed it down to two possibilities. In either case, there will be 5 posts over January and February, 1 post in late July, and 1 post in early-mid December; all other months, I should be able to do 3 posts.

The next blog update will be about a month from today, so check back then!

Change Log [2017/01/25] (Beta 4)

Here's a list of some of the changes that have been made to the various classes, since the start of the holiday break:

• Archer can now Counter-attack against ranged; same Hunter ability re-worded
• Acrobat using d20 to Power Attack removed; specialty basic attacks are now Reliable; Martial Artist's prone ability now works on unsuccessful attacks; Archer's reroll ability now works on any ranged attack (not just ranged basic)
• Wizard's Magic Missile basic attack is now Reliable; Veritable Vision now grants Expertise to damage rolls
• Assassin now gets training in either AGIL or Infiltration, instead of defaulting to AGIL
• Rogue Tactics given archetype-specific effects; clarified how Disengaging works via Cloak & Dagger
• "Warrior" class renamed to "Adventurer"
• Adventurer's Defender ability changed to "1d10[exp] or 1d20[exp] for defense rolls"
• swapped some aspects of the Fighter and Adventurer TWF abilities
• Soldier archetype's power attack ability limited to attacks made as a standard action; Weapon Training's miss roll is now likewise limited; Weapon Training can no longer turn misses into crits
• Fighter's Protection style changed to "allies in your maelstrom" instead of "Nearby ally"
• changed some Guardian totem perks to require spirit manifestation; Blood Totem now does extra damage when you are bloodied
• Cleric regains some HP when spending reserves in combat
• Ranger mark damage changed to "advantage; stack if you already had advantage"
• Bard can now Power Attack using a basic roll
• Bard's "Leader" role renamed to "Support"
• Necromancer's Animate Dead changed to allow for multi-HD minions
• Warlock's minor action attack removed; Eldritch Blast iconic attack now targets a number of enemies based on the roll, rather than making a number of attacks based on the roll
• Mystic's trained skills corrected to fit current format (oops)
• Paladin's Holy Aura reworded, now grants defense bonus only on unsuccessful rolls
• Paladin now gets training in either STR or Influence skills, instead of both (still gets additional skill training from their Archetypes)
• Swordmage now gets training in both STR and Influence skills, instead of one or the other
• Hexblade's Beguiling Blade changed to "roll class die in place of d20 roll" rather than "double roll and stack in place of an unsuccessful attack roll"
• Changed the rules on stacking class dice onto d20 rolls, in the core rules; clarified mechanics of using a basic roll for a Trade-off

For Man or Beast -- The Druid and The Ranger (Beta 4)

Today's post focuses on two classes that appeared in 4e D&D's "Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms" (a book in the 'Essentials' line.) The four classes featured in that book could probably be glossed as the "2nd-team All-Stars" of D&D (particularly the 4e/Essentials paradigm) coming after the "big 4" of Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard.

Without further ado, I present:

• The Druid
• The Ranger

The Ranger was one of the original 5 classes, from the very earliest beginnings of The Next Project, holding down the d8 slot on that first slate.  It seemed a fit for the weapons a Ranger would typically use in D&D, and for giving them a decent amount of HP; it also works really well for the prescribed function of the class die within this game's framework.

When the idea of expanding the game to a 2nd slate started to gain steam, Druid was one of the first two classes I was interested in doing (Monk being the other, with Warlord being a popular "fan favourite.") At the time, I felt it made sense to have the Druid as a d8 class -- middle-of-the road, sharing flavour and mechanics with the Ranger.

Through the process of paring down the list of classes I wanted to write, and settling on doing 3 slates, it became clear that Ranger and Druid belonged to the same "power source." And so, because of that, one of them would have to be moved to a different class die.

I decided to shift the Druid down to the d4 slot. It made sense as a die that could be used to add HP to the class when they shapechanged, without pushing those numbers outside of the existing bounds. And it seemed like a logical step to just convert the class from "1d8 math to 2d4 math."

I also wanted to use the d4 as the Summoner archetype's limit on how many 'minions' they could control, in contrast with the Mystic's utilization of the d10. However, this ended up being implemented differently than I had originally planned -- largely due to the move away from using abilities from other classes (as was also done with the new Bard.) The Summoner no longer uses pre-existing summoning abilities; instead, it has its own unique mechanic for summoning, which works similar to the new Ki mechanic for the Monk (itself a d4 class.)

Wanting to keep classes to only 2 archetypes, I knew that having Shapeshifter and Summoner under 'Druid' would mean moving the Shaman archetype off to somewhere else; stay tuned for the Guardian class in an upcoming post, if you're wondering where it ended up.

The Ranger hasn't changed a whole lot since its inception, aside from having the archetype framework added onto it; this was when the class inherited the Beastmaster archetype from a previous Summoner class. Likewise, the Druid was completed very late in Beta 3, and so hasn't seen nearly as many iterations as some other classes. Overall I think this update removes some of the clunkiness that the d8 version had, with trying to juggle its 3 archetypes.

In terms of skills, I decided to play with the math on these two classes a little bit; no guarantees I'll keep things this way, but we'll see how it shakes out in playtesting. I didn't want the Druid to be able to use its forms to always be the best at whatever the party needed for skills, so I like the interaction of the d4 class die with Expertise for them. Likewise, the Ranger using its class die for skills interacts in a neat way with its Expertise bonuses, and makes them truly the master of the outdoors.

Along with the Barbarian class (which was completed prior to kicking off "50 Days of Design") the Druid and the Ranger fit onto the slate I'm referring to as:

"Heroes of the Wilderness"

 As of right now, the previously-mentioned 'Scout' class will instead be made an archetype, under the umbrella of a 'Warrior' class; along with the Guardian, these 5 classes complete this "3rd slate."

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Coming up on the next blogpost:

• The Cleric
• The Mystic

Check back on Nov. 30th!