Refining Reserves (2020)

Since the designs will be going forward with the majority of classes functioning off of two dice (instead of one) this makes for a good opportunity to refine the mechanics of reserves. I should start by saying plainly, that reserves are functionally analogous to healing surges in 4th Edition D&D, albeit somewhat more abstracted. Specifically, since most of the mechanics in TNP are effectively "at-will" usage, anything with a limitation on usages tends to burn reserves; in essence, they are both healing surges, as well as being every other per-day resource that a character might have.

In the past, the mechanical ethos was to assign a class a number of reserves based on their class die. A baseline amount of per-day healing from reserves was built off of that; classes with more reserves than the baseline (i.e. d10 and d12 classes) would need to have abilities with a reserve cost (that hopefully "made sense" thematically) built into them. These costs were effectively reverse-engineered onto the abilities, in order to fit the class die. With the "two-dice" ethos, what we can do is instead work from the assumption that the number of reserves will be scaled down to the die that most easily aligns with the baseline, and only scale it up if it makes sense thematically for the class to have a "reserve-burning" mechanic. What this means is that only classes with a d10/d10, d10/d12, or d12/d12 loadout will necessarily have to have 10 or more reserves.

The other direction to take, which might make also sense, would be to streamline reserve calculations a little bit, wherever possible. To wit, it could make it easier to outright remove the d4 expression, or at least roll it up with the d8 expression. I think the same could probably be done for d6 and d12; the previous number-crunching on the subject seems to suggest that the sweet spot is about 6-8 reserves per day (and above that, you have to start adding extra mechanics to burn reserves on.) Rather than having to pump d12 classes up with such mechanics, we could simply have d12 and d6 use the same math.

That would leave us with something like this:

• d4 or d8 -- 8 reserves, 4-20 HP restored per = 32-160 HP
• d6 or d12 -- 6 reserves, 12-20 HP restored per = 72-120 HP
• d10 -- 10 reserves, 10-20 HP restored per = 100-200 HP

Admittedly, this looks a little screwy. The d4/d8 and d6/d12 expressions (in terms of per-day healing) "average" out the same, but I can't help but feeling there's more that should be done, to smooth out the variance. Perhaps the way to do approach it, is to have the smaller die always used for the number of reserves, while the larger die is used for the "surge value." This would be a bit of a logistical... well, maybe not "nightmare" but at least a "headache" -- it also doesn't do anything to resolve the issue, with regards to single-die classes.

(It's also probably worth mentioning, that each class having two dice can potentially allow for the separation of HP calculation from Reserve calculation; a class or subclass may use the HP calculation from one of their dice, but the Reserve calcucation from their other die, for example.)

What I think this all would ultimately prescribe, is making the d10 into the de-facto "reserve burning" class die, in order to bring their "daily HP" pool more in line with the other expressions. We might still be able to boost reserves to 12 (for classes that have d12 as one of their dice) if they are a class that we want to have reserve-burning as part of their shtick. This could also be used as for "specs" such as the proposed Psionic or Runepriest mechanics, for example; in such a case, it probably makes sense for those archetypes to boost your character's reserves to 12 (or "reserve calcualtion to d12" if we want to be somewhat pedantic.)


Conclusions
I guess what I would take away from all of this would be:

1. HP calculations probably won't change; it will still be "maximum value of [d20 + class die]" but for two-dice classes, the exact die will have to be specified, and/or may be different depending on subclass.
2. Reserve calculation will effectively default to the lower of the two class dice, with d4 being the exception. This means either d4 will necessarily get 8 reserves, or there will be some other sort of blended calculation that both d4 and d8 will use.
3. If the smallest die a class has is d10 or d12, then that should be a class with a rational justification for having a reserve-burning mechanic.
4. Archetypes/Domains that call for the addition of a reserve-burning mechanic to a character will likely necessitate the character's reserve calculation being boosted to the d10 or d12 calculation.

One other thing (I didn't talk about it above, but should still be mentioned in this conclusion) is the idea of using reserves as a benchmark or modifier. What exactly I mean by this is that, if we're able to hypothetically narrow the number of "maximum" reserves down to a range of 6-10,  this should make it more effective to use "current reserves" as a number by which class mechanics can function. The first example that popped into mind would be as a limitation to the number of creatures that could be summoned by a particular ability, or to the number of summoned creatures that could be under your control at any given time. Admittedly the latter would be far more punishing as the adventuring day went on, and no doubt there could be other mechanics that might leverage this more effectively.

This (admittedly) is sort of a roundabout way of getting to the design mechanic of "ability modifiers" into a game where everything is supposed to be designed off of the dice. But looking over some of the mechanics, I can see where the utility of a hard, flat number would be desirable -- and since reserves are still a function of class dice, it fits into the existing ethos, albeit in a roundabout way. At this point, it's just a question of whether or not a modifier that degrades over the course of an adventuring day is a mechanic with wide enough application to really be useful.

Side note:

In going back through some old literature for TNP, I had originally intended that spending a reserve would always heal you to your maximum HP. However, what actually got implemented was the "surge value" system -- which, in combat, can produce "overhealing" as sort of a way of replicating the design space of "temporary HP" (mentioned in this post here.) I think going forward, the assumption will use a blend of these systems: if you're in combat, or at 0 HP (i.e. "under duress") then spending a reserve to regain HP will require a roll; otherwise, spending 1 reserve will restore your HP to its maximum.

...

Next scheduled blogging day will be Friday, June 5th -- so check back then!

Casting the Dice -- Part 3: The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune

To d6, or not 2d6? That is the question...

Way back in old-timey days, I wrote a post outlining how I wanted "support mechanics" to function. Essentially, these are "roll and compare" mechanics (class dice used in conjunction with d20 rolls) providing a framework for bonuses that were bigger than Mastery/Expertise, but smaller than Advantage. Part of that process involved coming up with a measurement by which to create bonuses of comparable value, and I settled on [hit chance + (crit chance * 3)] for giving each mechanic a "score."

Now, I wish I could say that I've settled on all of these mechanics, but as you might have guessed from the opening line, the d6 class die is giving me problems. Specifically, when I recently decided to take another try at finalizing these mechanics, I also looked at what the "miss chance" was for each -- and decided that, as best as possible, that those needed to be kept within a relatively small range. However, one of the mechanics I had picked for d6 (essentially, 2d6, and working fairly similarly to 1d12) resulted in a miss chance of just below 10% -- far less than what any of the other dice were doing. So I decided to revise that, and I'm currently still working on it.

What I have settled on, is basically the textual format that I want to have these mechanics laid out in. The idea is that there will be an expression which lays out a mechanic that the minor and major bonuses (for a given die) will both use; then, the minor bonus will add one clause, and the major bonus will add one different clause (not using the clause from the minor bonus, mind you.) I also tried to narrow down the types of clauses used, so that there aren't any more fiddly mechanics than there absolutely needs to be.


Here's what this looks like so far:

d4
always: add the d4 to a miss
minor bonus: treat as a crit if the d4 matches/ties the d20 roll
major bonus: add the d4 roll to a hit [potentially boosting it to a crit]

d8
always: add the d8 to a miss
minor bonus: treat as a hit if the d8 matches/ties the d20 roll
major bonus: treat as a crit if the d8 matches/ties the d20 roll

d10
always: if the d10 rolls its maximum value [i.e. 10] add it to the d20 roll
minor bonus: treat as a crit if the d10 matches/ties the d20 roll
major bonus: add the d10 to a miss

d12
always: you can use the d12 roll [i.e. if it's a roll of 10+] or the d20 roll to determine if you hit
minor bonus: treat as a crit if the d12 matches/ties the d20 roll
major bonus: treat as a crit if both the d12 roll and the d20 roll would hit


A Sea of Troubles
Now, coming back to the d6, I'll just talk about what I'm playing with.
One thing I had considered was rolling 2d6 and allowing the roll to be treated as a crit if the two d6 rolled a tie/match; the math on this was usable, but I don't like that it doesn't fall in line with the existing "match" mechanic, and thought it might cause confusion.

I also looked at fixing the old mechanic by rolling 2d6 but only allowing one to be added to a miss. I found this to be clunky, and more or less decided I don't want to have functions that involved applying 2d6 to one function and also 1d6 to a different function. The idea of rolling 2d6 and adding one (either the lower or higher) on either a hit or a miss seemed intriguing, but the math never quite worked; "add low to miss, add to hit if max" was something mathematically workable, but completely impractical and messy. Howver, that started to point me in a new direction, at least.

What I realized then, was that if I were to use the "add to miss" mechanic on d6, then its other mechanics would have to be completely different than what the d4 and d8 were doing -- otherwise the math would end up slanted, with d6 always being flatout better than d4 and worse than d8. Since I had settled on "add if max" as a mechanic for the d10, I decided I should see if I could make it work for the d6 as well (rather than having it as an outlier.) It also seemed like a sensible idea, in the context of d6 and d10 potentially sharing a "dice role."


This lead me to a few possible setups, each with their own drawbacks:

Option 1:
always: if the d6 rolls its maximum value [i.e. 6] add it to the d20 roll
minor bonus: add the d6 to a miss
minor bonus: treat as a hit if the d6 matches/ties the d20 roll
major bonus: roll 2d6 (instead of 1d6) when determining if the d6 rolls its maximum value

A couple problems with this:
1) The minor bonus actually produces the same math as "add to miss, crit on tie" ...but those are the exact same functions used for the d4 minor bonus, so it ends up just being flatout better -- and to top it off, it's a little bit above the cap for minor bonuses.
2) Trying to bash together a 1d6 and a 2d6, while keeping them separate (because one is a minor bonus and one is a major bonus) is ...mushy.
3) Just too many functions going on, causing confusion; I ran this by some people, and they weren't clear as to whether the "add to miss" or "match" mechanics of the minor bonus only triggered on a "max value" roll.
4) The major bonus happens to also be a little bit above the cap, for major bonuses.


Option 2:
always: if the d6 rolls its maximum value [i.e. 6] add it to the d20 roll
always: add the d6 to a miss
minor bonus: [no other modifiers]
major bonus: treat as a crit if the d6 matches/ties the d20 roll

So, on the plus side, the minor bonus produces the exact same math as the d4 minor bonus -- nice! And both bonuses use only 1d6. The problems are mostly esthetic; having two "always" clauses but no "minor" clause is weird, and it means the major bonus ends up having three clauses. Plus, the major bonus math is still a little bit high (it's more of a hit bonus, whereas the major bonus in Option 1 is built on more of a crit bonus -- but both are around a score of 105.)


Option 3:
[using the minor bonus from Option 2, with the major bonus from Option 1]
always: if the d6 rolls its maximum value [i.e. 6] add it to the d20 roll
minor bonus: add the d6 to a miss
major: roll 2d6 (instead of 1d6) when determining if the d6 rolls its maximum value

This seems to (at least math-wise) be the best compromise. And it's probably the 'cleanest' option so far -- although I still don't love mixing 1d6 and 2d6 mechanics together, so the alternative would be:


Option 4:
always: roll 2d6
minor bonus: you can use the 2d6 roll [i.e. if it's a roll of 10+] or the d20 roll to determine if you hit
minor bonus: treat as a crit if both the 2d6 roll and the d20 roll would hit
major bonus: if (either) d6 rolls its maximum value [i.e. 6] add it to the d20 roll

What we've done here is essentially taken the d12 major bonus, and used it as our 2d6 minor bonus -- which works out in terms of math. And then we've effectively recycled the major bonus from Option 1, for this setup. The downside is, there's a lot of functions flying around, and the only unifying mechanic is the 2d6 -- it's a bit of a high price to pay, for the mess it creates.


Conclusions
I should end by mentioning that the math regarding 2d6 that I used in figuring out these numbers, is actually based on the "double-roll and stack" rule's math, rather than just straight 2d6 math.

With that out of the way, I think that Option 3 probably fits the format best, and is (hopefully?) a little less confusing that the others. Option 1 can likely be ruled out just on its math, but also because of the other problems I mentioned. Option 2 cleans up all of the messiness of Option 1, but isn't the best fit for the format. Option 4 ...works, but is just sort of all-around messy (breaks the format, too many computations, etc.)

So, if I had to start implementing math into a new draft of the rules today, I would probably have to go with Option 3. But let me know what your thoughts are on the matter, and I'll continue working in the background to see if there's a better option still out there.


I should also mention one of the lessons learned from previous playtesting: these mechanics are much stronger when applied to defensive rolls. The simple reason for that, is because a given character can only make so many attack rolls on their turn (and generally only one Basic Attack); in a round, however, they may have to make as many defensive rolls as there are enemies to defend against. That all being taken into account, I think the place within the designs for these mechanics is in the Archetypes and Domains, where mechanical bonuses will need to work similarly, across the various class dice; class-specific mechanics can (and probably will, by necessity) deviate from the math presented here.


...


Next post should be up on May 26th, so check back then.

Power Sources (2020)

As I teased at the end of the last post, today we're going to discuss which power sources each class will have access to.

First, I should qualify that some of these might be limited to specific subclasses of a given class, but I just want to do a broad overview for now:


Arcane:
Knowledge Skills: Arcana, Dungeoneering, Religion
Archetypes: Psionic, Skald
Domains: Divination, Enchantment
Classes: (11 total)
Acrobat, Cleric, Paladin
Sage, Rogue, Bard, Occultist, Spellbinder
Druid, Guardian, Adventurer

Divine:
Knowledge Skills: Royalty & Nobility, Medicine, Religion
Archetypes: Avenger, Runepriest
Domains: Devotion, Life
Classes: (8 total)
Acrobat, Fighter, Cleric, Paladin, Warlord
Sage, Bard, Spellbinder

Martial:
Knowledge Skills: History & Geography, Animal Handling, Local
Archetypes: Brute, Soldier
Domains: Leadership, War
Classes: (13 total)
Acrobat, Fighter, Cleric, Paladin, Warlord
Rogue, Bard, Spellbinder
Druid, Guardian, Ranger, Adventurer, Barbarian

Primal:
Knowledge Skills: Wilderness Survival, Animal Handling, Medicine
Archetypes: Elementalist, Scout
Domains: Blood, Stone
Classes: (11 total)
Acrobat, Fighter, Warlord
Sage, Rogue, Occultist
Druid, Guardian, Ranger, Adventurer, Barbarian

Shadow:
Knowledge Skills: Streetwise, Dungeoneering, Local
Archetypes: Revenant, Vampire
Domains: Death, Trickery
Classes: (11 total)
Acrobat, Fighter, Paladin
Sage, Rogue, Bard, Occultist, Spellbinder
Guardian, Ranger, Adventurer



Distribution:
I did try and "balance" out the utilization of each power source. However, as you can see, the 3rd slate does not get access to Divine; as I've mentioned before, most of the stuff going on with that power source doesn't really jive with this slate of classes, particularly with the Religion and Medicine skills being available from other (better suited) power sources.

I think each slate has always had 2 primary power sources. So I decided to make those available to all classes within those respective slates, which necessitated moving some other power sources off of certain classes. With the History and Geography knowledge skills having been combined into one, plus the already existing overlap with Primal (i.e. Animal Handling) it seemed like giving all of the classes on the 3rd slate access to the Martial power source was the right thing to do.

The Acrobat is the closest thing to a blank slate out of its class category (arguably, out of all of the classes) so I decided to give them free choice in their power source, to flavour however you'd like -- which is made a little easier since the category they happen to be in is the "skill specialist" category. I've always seen this class as the main stand-in for the 4e Avenger (Divine) as well as Executioner (Shadow), but also a simplified Ranger (Primal), as well as an obvious place for an "arcane archer"-type character; all of that would also seem to help with the justification.


Flavour:
At times I had considered moving Shadow off of the Paladin class, but it just wouldn't feel right, so long as Blackguard remained one of the Paladin subclasses; taking Martial off of the Sage (i.e. off the Monk subclass) was also something I went back and forth on, but as the design space of power sources expanded in the direction it has, keeping it made less and less sense. On the topic of the Monk, I think Divine seems like a natural fit; the Bard in 3.5 having all knowledge skills on their class skill list, made me want them to have access to this (rare) power source; Spellbinder is sort of taking on its own unique flavour, and Divine as a power source for the Swordmage subclass is a part of that growth.

Rogue being split into Assassin and Sorcerer subclasses makes for a similar case, with Primal being meant for Sorcerer, Martial being meant for Assassin, and their other two power sources being meant for both. The presence of the Shadow power source for classes of the 3rd slate is meant for a more "city-focused" versions of the Guardian (specifically the Warden subclass), Ranger, and Adventurer. I didn't give Bard the Primal power source, since Skald is meant to function as the "Primal Bard" (as it is in 4e's Heroes of the Feywild... sort of.)

Fighter and Warlord are given a bit of room to stretch out, since they would otherwise end up sort of narrowly focused. I particularly like the idea of a Runepriest Fighter, or a Primal-flavoured shamanistic Warlord. I also like the Primal power source on the Sage class, as sort of a "Brown Wizard"-style character. I've often felt bad about limiting Barbarian as much as it is in this regard, but nothing else really seemed to fit; hopefully their subtypes will help do them justice.



A Bridge Too Far?
As you can pretty clearly see, not every Domain or Archetype is a fit with every class, under each power source. This is why these character subtypes remain partially a function of class (or at least class category) rather than purely a function of power source. That being said, I know there will still be some imperfections, as with any time an entirely new framework is presented. I guess this is all to say: "I apologize in advance if you get hyped about one of the possible combos laid out here, and it ends up getting axed," because this is an absolute possibility.

So!
15 classes, 5 power sources, 10 archetypes, and 10 domains. It's going to be tough, but I'll try my best to get these things all playing together nicely -- and limiting subtypes by another metric besides just power source is meant to help facilitate that. Hopefully this all converges together just right, and makes power sources a meaningfully hefty part of the designs, and of character customization.

...

Blog Update
Just one minor thing I want to touch on here:
Historically, I've taken a break in July; I think I will try and take the whole month off from blogging this time, so that I can settle down and focus on going heavy into the writing and design work. Assuming I take December off this year as well, that means 8 months of posting in 2020, for a total of 24 posts this year. That's down from 30 in both 2017 and 2018, but I still feel its a good number; if work continues on into 2021, I will probably use this year's schedule for that.

Next post is due on Friday, May 15th -- check back then!

Expansionism -- Part 3: Redux

As you might guess from the title, I've done a couple posts on this topic in the past. More recently, I've been focusing in on the need/desire to have more subtypes available for character customization, and to have those more mechanically tied in with Power Sources. To that end, I went about mocking up some possible candidates, drawing largely from some of the ideas I had touched on in the past.

Previously, classes had been structured a couple different ways. In one setup, some subclasses amounted to "mandatory combat roles" (with actual roles being mechanically optional upgrades) while other subclasses were... more or less a proper class, but jammed in with another class, under one set of shared mechanics (or at least a shared class die.) Archetypes were another layer of optional customization that existed over top of all of these, and were class-specific; in the 2018 rules, these were referred to as Specialist Classes.

I bring this up because basically what I'm looking at doing is to bring back a 4th form of class customization/subtype; subclasses and roles will remain, but Specialist Classes are going to be split into Archetypes and Domains, both of which will expand in number. However, your class will specify whether it uses one or the other -- but usually not both -- so effectively, either an archetype or a domain will be used to "fill" the Specialist Class "bucket" within your class' progression.


Filling in the Grid
One thing I'll throw out there right off the bat, is that I've decided to associate each Skillset with one Power Source.

• Arcane: Subtlety
• Divine: Presence
• Martial: Athletics
• Primal: Detection
• Shadow: Infiltration

Probably the mechanics of that will be implemented something like this:
When you gain a Power Source at 1st level, you add its associated Skillset to your class skill list, allowing you to take training with that Skillset. When you gain a Specialist Class (Archetype or Domain) you gain a rank in the Skillset tied to the Power Source of that Specialist Class.

One other specific quirk that I've settled on, is to allow some of the existing Archetypes (from the Fighter/Bard/Adventurer class category) to instead be used as subclasses for their current classes, while also functioning as Archetypes for certain power sources -- thus allowing other classes to also gain them.

Anyways, here's what I have in mind, for the various Specialist Classes; whether or not this changes, will depend on how well I can implement these ideas:

Arcane
Domains: Enchantment, Divination
These will be derived from the existing Sage 'schools'
Archetypes: Skald, Psionic
Psionic is the first instance where I'll have to do some research and build out some new mechanics. I think some sort of 'power point' mechanic is a useful, fun little extra thing to staple onto existing classes, without making an entirely new class, or slate of classes (or Power Source, for that matter.)

Divine
Domains: Life, Devotion
So we already have some Life domain mechanics being used on the Cleric and Paladin; I'll just have to expand that out to give mechanics that'll fit for the other classes that will have access to Divine Domains. In terms of flavour, the 5e D&D Paladin's Oath of Devotion seemed the most in-line with the power source, so I'm going to see what I can mine from that inspiration.
Archetypes: Avenger, Runepriest
Here, I'm going to try and get a good mix of 4e D&D's Avenger with 5e D&D's Oath of Vengeance. Similar to the Psionic, I think the 'rune state' mechanic is something fun that could be stapled onto traditional Divine classes, but also Fighter or other Martial classes.

Martial
Domains: War, Leadership
It just seemed logical to move the War domain over here, from Divine. Leadership is where I want to implement my idea for a "Lord archetype" which would get 'followers' (likely, minions) to aid them in combat.
Archetypes: Brute, Soldier
These will be taken from the existing Fighter archetypes.

Primal
Domains: Blood, Stone
Here we're going to be taking the existing Guardian totems, and will have to tweak and smooth them out to fit the various class dice.
Archetypes: Scout, Elementalist
Scout is already in the designs (for the Adventurer class) and I thought that could be spread around a bit; in 5e it's used as a Rogue archetype in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, as well as a Fighter archetype in Unearthed Arcana form. Elementalist might be a little bit trickier to pull off, but I wanted that sort of "primal sorcerer" idea, as it was used in 4e's Heroes of the Elemental Chaos.

Shadow
Domains: Trickery, Death
Trickery is going to mostly be a re-skin of the 'Misdirection' Sage school, but may borrow from the 5e equivalent. Death Domain is still very much up in the air, since there is wide swath of source material to draw from, and I haven't settled on anything specific yet.
Archetypes: Vampire, Revenant
Again, Vampire is one of the more unique (but very niche) classes, from 4e's Heroes of Shadow; I think we can boil down the core mechanics of the class (as well as the Vryloka race, from the same book) and get something to layer onto our Archetype-using classes. As for Revenant, I still have some reservations about how to implement it mechanically, but I think this would be a welcome addition, if done right.


Piecing Together the Puzzle
Now that I'm finally (I hope) done shuffling around which classes are part of which categories, what I've decided to do is fundamentally expand the customization options for each category, using these new tools that we have at our disposal. Here's how I see that rolling out:

Category 1: Cleric, Sage, Guardian
 - Uses existing subclasses
 - Can take any Domain, regardless of Power Source

Category 2: (Skill Specialists) Acrobat, Rogue, Ranger
 - Uses existing subclasses
 - Can choose Archetypes, based on their Power Source

Category 3: (Generalists) Fighter, Bard, Adventurer
 - Uses existing class archetypes as subclasses
 - Can gain Roles
 - Can take any Archetype, or pick a Domain specific to their class slate*

Category 4: Paladin, Spellbinder, Druid
 - Uses existing subclasses
 - Can choose one Archetype and one Domain, both based on their Power Source

Category 5: Warlord, Occultist, Barbarian
 - Can take certain class-specific archetypes as subclasses**
 - Can gain Roles
 - Can choose Domains, based on their Power Source


*Fighter domains would be Martial; Bard domains would be Arcane; Adventurer domains would probably differ depending on the subclass taken.
**Warlord subclasses would be likely be Skald, plus any Divine or Martial archetypes; Occultist subclasses would likely be Psionic, Elementalist, plus any Shadow archetypes; Barbarian subclasses would likely be Runepriest, Scout, plus any Martial archetypes.


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This post is already running a bit long, so I'll try and touch on Power Source distribution another time. It's obviously inter-related, with having them now closely linked to class customization.

Next post should be up on May 5th, so get in touch before then, if you have other suggestions for discussion topics.

Kill and Reroll (2020)

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post, is that with the new skill mechanics, one thing you can do to speed things up is to always roll both 'percentile' dice, instead of just 1d10. Having a clear ground rule that the "1s" die functions as the natural result, and the "10s" die is used for advantage, this allows both dice to always be rolled (one of them being disregarded, if advantage is not applicable) without any confusion, or possibility of messing with the probabilities (as well as preventing cheating, whether intentional or by honest mistake.)

I bring this up in today's post, because with the new skill mechanics happening to share dice with the monster roll mechanics, it might be helpful to backport this kind of utility from the former, into the latter.


Circa 2018
As I go back and look at the baseline monster mechanics from the 2018 version, a couple things stand out. First, the basic guidelines for how to modify the 1d6/1d10 roll:

Untrained: Use the higher of the two results
Trained: Use the stacked value of the two results
ExpertiseMastery: 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

However, going through the document a little farther, I noticed that the 'Untrained' expression is only used a couple times: for the damage output of Standard monsters, and for skills. Well, if we suppose that monster skill checks will now function in line with player skill checks, then we can remove this particular definition, and simply specify (as a function of the monsters themselves) that Standard monsters should roll both dice for damage, but only use the higher result.

The other thing that sticks out is the fact that minions function off of their own separate guidelines (albeit using the same shorthand and the same roll, and only for rolling skills):

Untrained: Use the d6 result
Trained: Use the lowest result
ExpertiseMastery: (unchanged) Any 1s rolled can be treated as the maximum value on that die
Advantage: Treat the check as a success, if the result is a tie
Disadvantage: Cancel out Advantage on the roll, or use the d10 result

Now, the intention with this is essentially to make minions worse than other monsters at skill checks; if an encounter budget gives the DM a handful of minions at the same cost of one Standard monster, this allows the monsters to effectively get, say, 5 grapple attempts for the price of one -- which potentially leads to dogpiling, and would just seem unfair to the players. I think my intial idea was to have them simply use "roll under, d6" as their mechanic, so I may yet go back to that. (I instead tried to incorporate the monster roll, in some form.)

Another idea I'd been recently considering, would be to have minions use a flat d20 for skill checks, as sort of a simple, no-nonsense solution. But the success rate starts off a little higher than that of 1d6+1d10, so it would have to be modified in some way to reduce that, thus losing any elegance in the process. One idea in relation to that, was to add the minion's number of Hit Dice (HD) to the DC, increasing it from 10; that produced a situation where lesser minions were better at skills than greater ones, which is counter-intuitive.

However, something else clicked in my head at that point: what if we use the minion's current HD as its skill ranks, and simply have minions (by default) roll the d10 with disadvantage? Since this would mean that minions would no longer use their HD as a 'target number', the cap on minion HD could also be raised a little bit (from 4 to 5, likely not much higher than that.) Alternatively, the cap could be lowered to 3, so that their skills ranks are in line with the player defaults.

It could probably be argued that minions don't need to be given a half-dozen different skill gradations (as they receive in the existing designs) and how keeping it that way would just create more things for the DM to keep track of. So it's helpful to be able to reduce some of the clutter. On the other hand, it may be important for distinguishing different types of minions from one another, such as lurkers vs. bruisers, for example. With that in mind, maybe the distinction could be that such enemies could "buy off" the disadvantage on the d10, for their signature skill(s).


The Biggest Problem
What I found to be a major stumbling block, was trying to figure out the monster interaction with "Positioning & Debilitating effects" which impose advantage or disadvantage, since monsters did not use d20 rolls. With the percentile roll paradigm in mind (springing forth from the new skill mechanics) it might make sense to simply have those modifiers applied only to the d10 roll, for monsters.

This would enable us to unify how Advantage modifies the roll, for all types of monsters (since the standard monster roll and minion monster roll in the old designs interact with Advantage effectively the same way, for skill checks.) It also means Advantage now functions the same as it does within the new skill check mechanics for PCs (which, as we've established, utilize the same dice rolls.)

This also frees up the design space of what happens if the roll is a tie. Ties could be used for adding special effects to attacks, or recharging abilities -- just as a couple of examples. Or the simple perk of "treat both dice as their maximum value" could be made the sole domain of specific monster types, such as Elites and/or Archenemies. As a side note, we could also have special triggers for when either the d6 or the d10 rolls its maximum value.


Drawing Conclusions
So effectively, what I think we've come up with is something like this:

Damage Rolls:

• advantage/disadvantage are applied to the d10 roll
• Mastery can be applied to both dice
• Special effect/recharge on a tie(?)
• Standard monsters use the higher roll as damage; minions and swarms do auto-damage (based on current HD)

Skill Checks:

• advantage/disadvantage are applied to the d10 roll
• Mastery can be applied to both dice
• Special effect/recharge on a tie(?)
• Minions have skill ranks equal to their current HD, but default to having disadvantage on the d10 roll (maybe with further disadvantage resulting in outright 'action denial' w/r/t using that skill)

When we compare these to each other, we can see that they almost completely overlap, with just a few exceptions for specific monster types. I much prefer this to the previous setup, where minions tried to use the same jargon, but with different mechanics. It also plays a lot nicer with the (admittedly more player-facing) core mechanics of the system.

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I've been working on mapping out the new subtype/specialist classes, in the background. So while writing actual mechanics for those will be a big process, I've mostly ironed out what's going where. That will likely be the topic of the next post, on April 24th.

Skill Upgrade (2020)

As I mentioned at the start of of this posting season, skill design is the one area in which I have been able to make significant inroads -- to the point that I have contemplated playtesting these revised skill mechanics on their own; if you feel so inclined to try them out with your group, please let me know how it goes :)


Redrawing the Grid
Only a few minor changes were made, in terms of the setup of core skills:
 - Break Objects is now STR/Infiltration, instead of STR/Athletics
 - Animal Handling was removed, and changed to a Knowledge skill
 - WIS has been removed, and remaining skills put under INT
 - Influence skillset was renamed to "Presence" (to better reflect the removal of Animal Handling, but also so that each Skillset now starts with a different letter, for easier abbreviation.)

What this does is create a grid consisting of five Attributes and five Skillsets; symmetry is always nice to have, and 5 is a good number, since it also happens to be the number of classes per slate. It also cleans things up a bit, with each skill 'intersection' now consisting of no more than two skills. If there's one quandry that has arisen out of this, it's the realization that INT seems like a batch of skills that normally might be limited to a small number of classes -- I may have to just own it as a quirk of this particular system, and build lore from those mechanics.


Re-education
The setup of, "which Knowledge skills were tied to what Power Sources," has been a niggling problem since the conception of tying them together in the first place. I had mostly settled on having two skills for each, but it never quite lined up perfectly; when it came to actually doling out skills specifically to classes, the limitations were laid bare. So in addition to adding Animal Handling as a Primal knowledge skill, and combining History and Geography into one (since I felt neither were particularly weighty, individually) eventually I settled on having three skills for each Power Source: one unique skill, and two shared skills.

Going back and forth between my "Knowledge Skills by Power Source" tab and my "Power Sources by Class" tab, this eventually helped to greatly streamline the distribution of the latter, ensuring that classes had better access to the skills that seemed to best fit, thematically. Just as an example, I felt that classes like Paladin should be able to have Medicine without needing the Primal power source, and that classes like Druid should be able to have that skill without needing the Divine power source (since a skill like Royalty & Nobility doesn't really seem to fit, for a hermit...) The easy solution was to give the Medicine skill to both of those power sources.


Mechanical Crunch
The decision to move the math away from d20 was a direct result of me trying to fulfill the request for more gradations of skill competency. The previous designs (which have basically been in place since "Beta 4" days) boiled down to: d20; d20 with expertise; d20+d6; d20+d6 with expertise. There's a pretty sizable mathematical gap between those middle two expressions, and in order to bridge the distance, the d20 would need to somehow morph -- and it just can't.

What I had been tinkering with was some sort of disadvantage/normal/advantage scale, applying to both the d20 and the d6. Toying with that a little bit revealed essentially two things: that the d6 would always need to be added (except if the d20 had advantage) and ...that advantage on the d20 would be too powerful. This produced a really clunky and unintuitive structure (d20 w/ disadvantage or normal + d6 w/ disadvantage/normal/advantage) but it also sucked from a tactile perspective, as I discovered through the process of absentmindedly rolling these dice, to pass the time at my D&D games.

So I decided to start testing out other dice, and one of the obvious choices to go with (after trying a few permutations of solely using d6s) was 1d10+1d6 -- which I had used in my 'previous' project, as well as for the 'monster roll' in TNP. As it turns out, a straight 1d10 roll roughly mimics the math of a d20 with disadvantage, and (likewise) a d10 with advantage approximated a straight d20 (if a d6 was added on, in both cases.) After some further number-crunching, I decided to use a "best 1 of" dice pool for the d6, instead of disadvantage/normal/advantage, with advantage on the d10 coming from skill training.

This creates a setup which is fairly easy to grok: rank 1 is 1d6, rank 2 is best 1 of 2d6, etc., with ranks being gained by upgrading skillsets or attributes. Potentially, ranks could be increased even further (rank 4 for sure, anyway) without breaking any math -- so that creates another design space which can be played in. I initially wanted to keep "expertise" in some form, but realized that within a DC10 paradigm, it was a bit too powerful of a mechanic, when applied to a d10 roll (as apposed to d20.)


Mastery
I had (probably as far back as any playtesting I've done/feedback I've ever gotten) been thinking of alternate names for expertise, and mastery was always one of the contenders. The change in skill mechanics warranted not only a name change, but a change in this mechanic itself. In short, the point of expertise was to get the effect of being able to reroll 1s (although mathematically it's better than that) without having to actually reroll 1s (and slow down gameplay at the table.) But, a realization came to me when I was tinkering with methods for rolling stats in D&D; without going off on too much of a tangent, I realized that "infinite rerolls" is less of a slowdown, when applied to an activity (such as rolling stats) that doesn't take place very often.

Generally, in most tabletop RPGs, one skill check can encompass a large part of a non-combat encounter (or possibly even multiple linked actions, rather than just one.) As such, non-combat is generally resolved with fewer rolls than combat. If we apply the previously-stated logic, we can assume that allowing for rerolls in non-combat (i.e. skill use) should be acceptable, particularly if it fits within the desired mathematical parameters -- and in the case of using 1d10+1d6 for skills, it absolutely does. (As a side note, "Combat Mastery" will probably continue to function exactly as the old expertise, so "Skill Mastery" will be delineated as its own thing, in the rules text.)

For core skills, skill mastery is obtained by having training in both the attribute and skillset tied to a skill. Since the intersection of an attribute and a skillset is now limited to two skills (and with establishment of a default, that characters have training in a combination of two skillsets/attributes) this sets an effective cap for skill mastery, as well as a baseline from which to expand, for more skillful characters. For power sources, mastery functions a little bit differently, granting a minor bonus to all associated knowledge skills (if the player chooses to focus on boosting one skill as high as possible, or if they choose to double-down on a power source, rather than branch out.)


Implications
With effectively "borrowing" the old monster roll for our new skill dice, it's probably time to re-evaluate whether the monster roll mechanic works well. Looking back at it, I've found the implementation a little kludgy, and now might be the time to streamline the mechanics a bit, so that they work a bit more harmoniously on both the player-side and the DM-side.

Another question that all this begs, is whether skills used in combat should apply Skill Mastery or Combat Mastery (or leave it to the gamers' discretion.)


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Hopefully I'll get some time to do a little more design work in the near future; no time off work for me, during this extended lockdown, unfortunately.
I don't really have a topic set for the next post (April 14th) so feel free to send in your suggestions.

The Role of the Dice (2020)

One of the foundational mechanics of The Next Project has always been class dice; each slate of classes consist of one class for each die (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12) resulting in 5 classes for each slate. Late into my recent downtime, some of the seemingly mismatched class/dice combinations began to nag at me, so I started to look at how those could be remediated. The fact that this seemed to most strongly affect classes which were also hindered by a lack of foundational "lore" or "fluff" was something that made my desire to change things even more acute. So I'll start there.

Since this is essentially talking about "unfinished" design, I should stress that feedback is welcome and appreciated, on any of the stuff covered in this post.

The Acrobat and The Adventurer
I've talked about these classes (perhaps the Adventurer moreso) often in the manner of trying to even justify their existence; typically, when the topic of shortening class rosters came up, they were always at or near the forefront of the discussion. They sound so generic, it's not a 'real' D&D class, that sort of thing. This is a problem which is compounded by the conceit of class dice: why would I want to be that class, when there are two other classes which use the same dice (and possibly, suspiciously similar mechanics) but who I've actually heard of before, or have played in D&D or other RPGs?

Another problem with the Acrobat in particular is that the design space of the d4 is just so... restrictive; even when used for the Sage -- and especially for the Druid -- it ends up often being used as a clunkier d8, by way of 2d4. This eventually got to the point where I simply flatout mocked up a draft of the Acrobat as a d4/d8 class. With the Adventurer, we see kind of the opposite problem; being stuck with one die might not be all that bad for what is primarily a TWF class -- unless that die is too big, as I often felt with the d10. (It should be noted here, that switching Guardian to d6 and Adventurer to d10 was a late change, when I initially introduced those classes, done mainly to ensure the latter would be mechanically distinct from the Rogue.)

Change is Inevitable
The first idea that came to me, to this end, was to simply have each class use two dice. I then quickly realized that would produce 10 combinations of dice, and so (rather than double up on any of them) I decided that I would keep 5 "single-die" classes. Shortly thereafter, I realized that a single slate could not have more than 2 single-die classes, and still have equal utilization of each of the dice. For example, if you have a d4 class, a d6 class, and a d8 class, then your final two classes end up being d10/d12 and... d12/d10. So while other combinations would be possible, I finally settled on having one full slate of single-die classes, and two slates using a mix of the 10 two-dice combinations. As much as possible, I also tried to keep each of these classes with one of their 'original' class dice.

The Title of this Post
Now one other thing I should touch on before the big reveal, is how the dice were essentially each given roles, throughout the design process. In short, the mechanical and ergonomic uses of each die led me to (as I still tentatively map out where this is going) break them down into 3 categories: support dice, striker dice, and defender dice. Naturally, d12 is the defender die, providing a little bit more HP and reserves; d6 and d10 are the striker dice, since they're probably the easiest to have extras on hand, for stacking damage; d4 and d8 are the support dice. The d4 is the smallest die, and so it's the easiest to simply add onto a roll; the d8 'support' mechanics are likewise straightforward (since it covers most of the 'miss' range on a d20, without overlapping onto the 'hit' range.)

Now, with that being said, these clearly are not the only uses that these dice will have; the d4/d8 Acrobat shows us how we can use a d4 to "step down" damage, using the smaller die for area attacks, and the larger one for single-target attacks. So we're not going to worry about classes mapping perfectly to "dice roles," letting us instead use the dice for whatever mechanics we want. It will, however, occasionally be a point which guides the decision-making regarding class dice combinations.

So here's what I've come up with:

• d4/d10 -- Acrobat
• d6/d12 -- Fighter
• d8/d6 -- Cleric
• d10/d8 -- Paladin
• d12/d4 -- Warlord

• d4 -- Sage
• d6 -- Rogue
• d8 -- Bard
• d10 -- Occultist
• d12 -- Spellbinder

• d4/d6 -- Druid
• d6/d10 -- Adventurer
• d8/d4 -- Ranger
• d10/d12 -- Barbarian
• d12/d8 -- Guardian

I'll try and go through these one by one, as much as possible, but for the second slate (i.e. all the single-die classes) it just seemed simplest to make the most magical slate be the one where the classes had ranged damage that was as strong as their melee damage (in particular, the Occultist and Spellbinder.)

I think sticking the d10 onto the Acrobat is a bit of a compromise, based on trying to limit each slate to two uses of each die. (Cleric has a similar problem, with the d6 feeling misplaced, but maybe it can work well as a way to add damage to your allies' attacks.) I think it should be simple enough to port over the d4/d8 Acrobat loadout to this ethos -- although admittedly, it does raise the "what weapon is this supposed to simulate?" question, which d4/d8 doesn't really seem to cause.

Fighter, makes sense; it was essentially functioning as a 2d6 class before, so d6/d12 is a no-brainer. Paladin adding the d8 to their repertoire as a support die is a good fit, as well as for stepping-down their ranged damage. Warlord having a support die to go with their d12 also seems right.

For Druid, I think basically adding almost any die to their setup makes it less clunky; I think d6 gives the most design freedom for their animal forms, since both d4 and d6 can be doubled, while keeping things in line with the mathematical expectations of the system. Ranger is another one that feels like a bit of a compromise, since they don't generally map to "support class," but I think they can use the d4 for potentially interesting marking mechanics. Finally, Barbarian and Guardian were ones that I settled on kind of late; I don't really like Barbarian having such a huge ranged damage die (d10) but I think giving them a striker die has merit, as does giving the Guardian (shaman/warden class) a support die, rather than just saying, "well you're a spellcaster, so you have d10 ranged damage, I guess."

So coming back to the Adventurer, like I said earlier, I wanted to do something that had a bit more of a foundation in existing D&D mechanics. Specifically, I looked at the Scout class, from the 4e Essentials line. Without getting into the nitty-gritty, generally you'd build your Scout to use light blades (d8/d6, but with a little better hit chance) or axes (d10/d6, for a little more damage) for your TWF loadout. It also seems logical to have Adventurer be a striker/striker dice combination; admittedly, a lot of other dice were moved around to accomodate this -- possibly more than was really warranted.


Plan B
The other option was something like this:
Acrobat is instead d4/d8
Cleric is instead d8/d10
Paladin is instead d6/d10
Adventurer is instead d4/d10
Ranger is instead d6/d8

Admittedly, I think Acrobat and Ranger both work better in this loadout. But by the same token, I don't like Adventurer as much at d4/d10 (although maybe it makes sense, with Skald being support and Scout being striker.) I also don't particularly like Cleric having (overall) bigger dice than a Paladin, but I likewise don't think I could switch the two (Cleric as striker/striker is basically right out.)

At any rate, I do have this in my back pocket, in case it shakes out that the whole thing need a big rethink. The other possibility might be to have one or two single-die classes on each slate -- but that proved to be a bit messier to navigate, in the course of my tinkering.


Dovetailing into other Designs
With dice roles having been established as a (soft) mechanic, this ties back into my previous post. If we're going to have sort of "generic" subtypes, meant to be used by multiple classes based on their power source (rather than on any mecahnical similarity, such as class dice) then perhaps it makes sense to have subtype mechanics tied to "dice roles." The first thing that comes to mind would be subtype mechanics like, "deal extra damage, using your Striker die," or, "gain a Minor Bonus, using your Support die." The problem with that, is how to port it back onto single-die classes. The real question then becomes whether we work those classes around the subtypes, or work the subtypes around those classes.


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Went a bit long on this post, but there was a fair bit of interwoven material to cover.
If you have suggestions for the next topic, please comment below, or wherever you're getting linked to the blog from.

Next post will be due on April 3rd.