New Mechanics: Level Progression (2023)

As mentioned around the start of the year, the most recent complete(ish) version of the rules is the 2021 draft. This included a revamp of the leveling system that had been bolted on previously; basically, it had gotten too unwieldy and needed to be pared down.

Let's start with the leveling: why 6 levels (0-5)? The short answer is, I felt something a bit more compressed made sense for the general ethos of TNP, as it pertains to streamlining and simplicity. Ultimately, I kind of wanted there to be 5 levels, because that's a number that gets used a lot in the system:

• the 5 class dice
• the 5 class categories
• the 5 Skillsets
• the 5 Attributes
• the 5 Power Sources

I also wanted the progression to be an even number of levels, just for the purposes of symmetry and aesthetics; I ended up cheating a little bit by adding a "level 0" so that I could have it both ways. While there are 6 levels, you can only gain 5 levels, if you want to look at it that way. (It's also probably worth noting that in Warcraft 3, heroes got their ultimate abilities at level 6, so that may have subconsciously influenced my thinking at some point.)

With that being established, there are effectively 3 types of progression:

1. Core progression 
2. Knowledge progression
3. Class Category progression

Core progression is the "meat and potatoes" of progression, starting off with your trained skills at level 0, class specialization (such as a domain, or archetype) at level 1, with Attribute rank bonuses coming at 2nd & 4th levels, and feats being granted at 3rd & 5th levels. TNP doesn't really "do" attributes in the traditional sense, but I wanted to include something resembling that type of progression, nonetheless. Right now, most of the feats that I've written are various types of skill bonuses, but I also want to include some combat perks -- such as improvements to grappling, or ignoring disadvantage on ranged attack rolls when prone.

Knowledge progression is considered more "fluff" than "crunch" so it's siloed off from core progression, to keep the two from competing over the same level-up resources. You gain a power source at level 0, and can upgrade it or add another power source at level 3. At all other levels (1, 2, 4, and 5) you gain a knowledge rank in a skill of your choice; this can be chosen independent of your power sources and their affiliated knowledge skills, allowing players to upgrade their characters in ways that are thematically or narratively appropriate.

Since there are 5 class categories, there are also 5 different progressions for them. Each individual class within a category might not upgrade in exactly the same way (roles tend to be class-specific, as just one example) but the mechanism within a category will be essentially the same. Class category progression bestows benefits at odd-numbered levels (1, 3, and 5) regardless of category.

• Blade Master: 1 bonus knowledge rank, 1 bonus Attribute rank, 1 bonus Skillset rank (chosen in any order)
• Jack of All Trades: combat role, feat (for which you meet the requirements), or other feature from your class (such as Fighting Styles for the Fighter class)
• Skill Expert: bonus Skillset rank at each of the three levels; also gain a bonus power source at level 0
• Ideologue: bonus Knowledge rank at each of the three levels
• Disciple: [still TBD, although the intent is for these classes to have combat roles, so that will certainly be a part of it]

The progression for Blade Master was originally going to be used for Disciple, when that category included the Druid and the Paladin -- so those two categories are still a little bit in flux, but everything else is mostly nailed down. In the past, classes like Paladin, Barbarian, and Warlord have typically gotten a bonus to one of their attributes, so this is something that ended up being built into the ideas for class category progressions.

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Two more posts to go in June, before taking a break in July.
The initial plan for this year was to do one post in late July (meaning 2 posts in November and 1 in December.) If that changes, I'll be back with a post around the 2nd week of August.

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.

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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!

Scattershot (2023)

 Just a few short little things today:

1. Advantage
After typing out the whole post on the double roll mechanics, I'm leaning more and more towards stripping out Advantage for base damage and initiative bonus. This would leave it only being able to apply to checks (skill checks or initiative checks) which is a lot cleaner. It would also remove the need for the specific double-roll mechanic, for advantage on 2dX base damage/initiative bonus expressions. Basically, what I'll have to do is go through the existing drafts for the classes, and see how many times these mechanics were actually used, and then decide if they should just be replaced with mastery, or with some other kind of dice bonus. (This may lead to some pondering over whether HP and initiative should still be linked.)

2. Class Slates & Power Sources
I should probably lay out what the actual "class slate" compositions are. It's also worth noting that each slate will contain one class from each "class category" -- the idea being that this allows classes within a category to have easily-comparable mechanics, but also so that each slate can be used to compose a party consisting of one member from each category, without the need to borrow classes from other slates. That being said, since slates are focused around power sources, getting every power source (and therefore, training with all of the knowledge skills) will be a lot easier for a party if they mix and match classes from more than one slate. Although each slate focuses on 2 power sources, most classes will have access to at least 3 power sources, and I've tried to sprinkle the power sources "evenly" when all 3 slates are taken on the whole.

• Slate 1 ("Martial or Divine") - Cleric, Paladin, Fighter, Acrobat, Warlord
• Slate 2 ("Arcane or Shadow") - Sage, Rogue, Bard, Occultist, Spellbinder
• Slate 3 ("Martial and/or Primal") - Druid, Guardian, Ranger, Adventurer, Barbarian

3. Tumbling

It sort of occured to me that there might be justification for having 3 tiers of "disengaging." For starters, the obvious baseline for such mechanics is the "5-ft step" (3.5) or the "Shift" (4e) which allows you to move 5 feet / 1 square (respectively) without provoking, but this effectively ends your movement. In my head, I've kind of extrapolated this out in TNP terms to equate to "disengaging from 1 enemy" which should take a Move Action, without requiring a check; to "disengage from 1 enemy" as a Minor Action, would require a Tumble check (however that ends up being adjudicated.) 

With that baseline in mind, it then stands to reason that "disengaging from 1 maelstrom" as a Move Action would require a Tumble check (but would not require one, if done as a Standard Action), and that "disengaging from all enemies" could be done as a Standard Action requiring a Tumble check -- then it's just sort of a matter of "filling in the grid" so to speak.

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Going to keep it short this time, as I've been in kind of a crunch lately.
Check for the next post on the weekend of May 5th-7th.

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!

Role Mechanics (2023)

I'll begin this post with a bit of a disclaimer. As touched on in the overview of subclasses and categories, not all classes will have "roles" (in terms of the TNP mechanic) while some classes will have roles baked in as part of their subclass and/or specialization. That being said, I'm going to touch on what I would consider to be role mechanics, even if a given class does not necessarily derive those mechanics from a role.

Perhaps it'd be best to start off by qualifying what a role is, in TNP. In earlier drafts, it was usually referred to as a "combat role" and (in short) it was a feature or set of mechanics that helped a class to fulfil a particular job or play-style, during combat. The most obvious example is whether a Fighter is going to be playing the "tank" or the "DPS" in a given encounter. Classes which have the option to select a role at the start of combat (i.e when initiative is rolled) will typically get one role at 1st level, with the ability to gain more roles as they progress.

If we look back to 4th Edition D&D (and particularly, pre-Essentials) a class was quite clearly defined as the intersection of one role with one power source; the Paladin was a Divine Defender, while the Fighter was a Martial Defender. The roles included defender (i.e. tank), leader (i.e. healer), striker (i.e. DPS), and controller. (Probably worth mentioning that I've heard cases of people having weird hangups with the term "leader" -- such as assuming that those were the only classes allowed to lead the party.) As 4e progressed into Essentials, the striker role became more gated towards melee, while ranged characters were funnelled into the controller role. At any rate, TNP follows more or less the same formula, with a few wrinkles.

Support
First, in TNP the leader role is generally referred to as "Support" to avoid the aforementioned hangups. The core support mechanic is restoring HP -- typically referred to as "inspiring" allies, rather than explicitly healing them; this has to do with HP being an abstraction more generally, but also specifically with not wanting HP restoration to necessarily have to be miraculous or magical, in any way. Whereas 4e D&D would grant classes with this role a twice per encounter healing ability, I've gone in the direction of "once per ally, per encounter" so that it scales to party size a little bit better. Generally speaking, this HP restoration will not cost reserves, instead using dice mechanics. We kind of want the amount of HP restored to be in that 2d4 to 2d6 ballpark, so depending on the class using the ability, the healing may be keyed off of their own class dice, or use the higher of their dice roll or the target's dice roll. Many support classes will be able to use this ability as a minor action, or as a standard actions with some additional benefit.

Example classes: Cleric, Warlord, Bard, Druid, Adventurer (Skald), Guardian (Shaman)

Striker
Just as the striker role in 4e split off into ranged and melee variants (and I've often argued this was how a party of 5 was meant to be rounded out, within a paradigm of only 4 roles) TNP generally does the same. More specifically, the ranged striker role tends to lean towards d6 classes, while the melee striker role tends to be d10 classes. However, as mentioned in earlier posts, the "2d6" ethos allows for tanky (i.e. melee) characters, so this is by no means a strict rule. The reason for going with d6 and d10 as the "striker dice" is because d6 is so ubiquitous, it makes it an obvious choice to use for stacking multiple damage dice; likewise, a standard polyhedral dice set usually contains percentile dice (effectively, two d10s) and sets of multiple d10s (often used in RPGs such as the World of Darkness) have also become commonplace. The other reason for selecting these dice, is that there's actually a pretty obvious cap/balance point: 5d6 or 3d10, both producing a maximum of 30.
Again, while some characters will be strikers by virtue of it being a role option for their class, it'll be baked into some classes in other ways as well.

Example Classes: Fighter (d6, d12), Cleric (d4, d10), Paladin (d6, d10), Rogue (d6), Occultist (d10), Guardian (d4, d6), Adventurer (d6, d8) Ranger (d8, d10), Barbarian (d10, d12)

Defender
While 4e used marking mechanics, Essentials moved to the "defender aura" mechanic. As you might have guessed, TNP leans towards the latter, with a bit of the former sprinkled in as well. The drawback to the aura system is that forced movement can mitigate it to a great extent; a marking mechanic that does not require adjacency can potentially allow for punishments to be dealt from a distance (probably best demonstrated by the Paladin in 4e, but also the Swordmage.) To augment the mark-and-punishment mechanics, generally defenders in TNP will have beefed up "opportunity damage" expressions. There are also some incentivizing mechanics (i.e. encouraging enemies to target the defender and/or discouraging them from targeting others, using bonuses or penalties, respectively.) Another key defender mechanic is allowing them to make opportunity attacks whenever an enemy attempts to move away, including by methods which would normally not provoke such attacks.

Example Classes: Fighter, Paladin, Warlord, Spellbinder (Swordmage), Guardian (Warden), Barbarian

Controller
Often somewhat nebulous, and eluding a comprehensive or simple definition in 4e, this role is likewise broad in TNP. These classes will definitely do the bulk of the status effects / conditions (whereas such riders could be found within nearly any role, in 4e) as well as doing area attacks, and (specific to TNP) performing the role of summoning/controlling other creatures.

Example Classes: Acrobat, Cleric (Invoker), Warlord, Sage (Wizard), Rogue (Sorcerer), Occultist, Spellbinder (Hexblade), Druid (Summoner), Adventurer, Ranger

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Hopefully that all helps to provide a better overview of how classes can be expected to operate in combat. If you have any suggestions for blog topics, please comment below (or wherever you get your links to the blog.) Next post is due April 15th.