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P.d0t posted:One thing I've found myself bumping up against a few times with this, is when people request a class, and then I reply with, "Well I've never played one, can you tell me what it does?" People love vampires (you probably know what they do, and just need to decide what subset of that is appropriate for your game) and werewolves (whose central aspect is voluntary/involuntary transformation). Shapeshifters/changelings/doppelgangers are popular. Dragonmans too.
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Apr 24, 2016 17:39
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Weekly TNP post is up! Basically mulling very-early ideas for classes, so feel free to poke at stuff. 
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Apr 24, 2016 18:30
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P.d0t posted:One thing I've found myself bumping up against a few times with this, is when people request a class, and then I reply with, "Well I've never played one, can you tell me what it does?" I think the most commonly desired token non-Tolkiens in fantasy games are: Dragonmans, Tieflings/demontouched, Warforged/constructs, Undead, Shifters/werewolves, and sometimes aquatic or flying humanoids.
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Apr 24, 2016 19:17
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but like, what do they do? 
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Apr 24, 2016 23:12
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P.d0t posted:but like, what do they do?
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Apr 25, 2016 00:57
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homullus posted:
homullus posted:
Spiderfist Island posted:
The werewolves and vampires, I think I can conceive of mechanics for (if not necessarily enough mechanics to be as fleshed-out as I would like, to make for a 'whole' class) Changelings/Doppelgangers are also kinda hard to translate into a whole class; like, it works for a theme or a race (i.e. a layer of chargen that is more flavourful than mechanical) but I'm not sure "can look like anyone" parlays into a class' worth of combat mechanics. It certainly is a  if you're working them into a social-heavy system or campaign.Warforged is one I really don't "get", and it might just be that I have a preconceived notion that what they entail won't translate to the system. Like, is not needing to eat/sleep/breathe a super-important feature? Is it being able to have extra/hidden storage, or arm-cannon things i.e. effectively being able to wield a weapon in a non-weapon slot and/or have easy access to neat minor-action stuff? Same for Undead; so they presumably don't eat/sleep/breathe, and maybe are immune to crits..? Do they have a unifying/underlying fighting style, like, are all Undeads slow and shambly? If you come to me saying "I want to play an Undead," what's the experience you're actually looking for? Tiefling and Dragonmans presumably could work, since as races in 4e they are already fairly mechanical to begin with, and then got a lot of support in terms of feats/alternate class abilities and such. ... As a separate, related topic of discussion, would most PC races work as classes? Like if you were to write a 4e clone with "Dwarf" and "Elf" as classes, would that work? What would it look like? I know in Heroes of Shadow and Heroes of the Feywild, there are alternate utility powers for the races in those books, and PHB2 has racial paragon paths... That's sort of what I'm thinking of, with all of this; is it possible to write a Race that is rich enough to cover all the mechanics and design space that a Class currently does? I think it probably depends on the race, and monstrous races are tougher to make it work for. It's an important question to ask, particularly in the context of TNP, where your class is the entirety of your character.
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Apr 25, 2016 01:33
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P.d0t posted:That's sort of what I'm thinking of, with all of this; is it possible to write a Race that is rich enough to cover all the mechanics and design space that a Class currently does? Elves could be anything from bladesingers to archers to spontaneous nature casters. Dwarves would probably work well as the "stand your ground"-iest fighter types. Alternately you could take a page from WFRP and make them specialized in fighting big monsters (a la the Troll Slayer). Undead would probably have a bunch of life steal and be really hard to kill, with a possible side of mind control shenanigans (vampire), spooky powers (ghosts) or disease (mummies, zombies). Really, you just have to commit to a particular vision of what's iconic about a race (or build in options so the player can pick and choose to make it their own) and make sure the race-as-classes aren't stepping on the toes of the job-as-classes if you decide to have both. Basically, build them a mechanical niche.
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Apr 25, 2016 02:04
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P.d0t posted:The werewolves and vampires, I think I can conceive of mechanics for (if not necessarily enough mechanics to be as fleshed-out as I would like, to make for a 'whole' class) I'm speaking from personal preference, but for the cases of Constructs and Undead, the experiences are usually "I want to be a robot made for an unknown / defunct purpose with unique weapons and modular robotics" and "I want to be a cursed creature that lost natural weaknesses in exchange for unnatural powers and weaknesses." P.d0t posted:As a separate, related topic of discussion, would most PC races work as classes? Like if you were to write a 4e clone with "Dwarf" and "Elf" as classes, would that work? What would it look like? I know in Heroes of Shadow and Heroes of the Feywild, there are alternate utility powers for the races in those books, and PHB2 has racial paragon paths... I think that in the cases of Vampires/Undead and Shapeshifters/Lycanthropes, you could make a compelling Race-as-Class if you turned them into a more modular suite of abilities that expands over time. Like, an Undead chooses several aspects (bloodsucker, hard to kill, etc.) and weaknesses (slow, weak to fire / strong light). As they advance in experience and power, they can gain new abilities. IIRC in some of the earliest games of D&D undead PCs that moved from one type of undead to another as they leveled up were a common occurrence. Remember: any sufficiently advanced undead is indistinguishable from a demon. Shapeshifters would also work in a similar way, where they gain new types of forms they could turn into or improve previous types as they level up ("humanoid disguise," "small flyer," "war-form," etc.). You could also simplify it into a "doppleganger" tree and a "lycanthrope" tree that have some shared core abilities but very different roles in combat and noncombat. You could even conceive of Constructs as a class too, where they can incorporate magic items and weapons into their body and heal in unconventional ways, sort of like robots in Final Fantasy Adventure 2 for the Game Boy.
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May 5, 2016 20:26
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So in TNP, skill ratings (if you will) are basically:
I was mulling ways to simplify/unify this; would using just d20s + Advantage be better? i.e.:
Here's what the math looks like. Basically, having the d6 and d10 options adds a few grades with smaller jumps in between each different bonus, but it's clunky in that it's dissociated from the core mechanics of "d20 + Class Die"
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May 9, 2016 03:01
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P.d0t posted:So in TNP, skill ratings (if you will) are basically: Consider instead looking at how often characters will be succeeding in their core tasks and asking yourself "is this how I want this system to feel"? Like, I don't think it matters that much whether, in a game system, players generally succeed on 11-20 vs 12-20, but in that scenario, they're all using the same dice. If the way you have it structured (with class dice for skills, or without) means that wizards are worse (or better) than clerics at "doing their jobs," then you might have a problem.
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May 9, 2016 20:04
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homullus posted:If the way you have it structured (with class dice for skills, or without) means that wizards are worse (or better) than clerics at "doing their jobs," then you might have a problem. Naw I got rid of that problem, by ditching ability scores (mostly) and breaking skills into "Adventuring" (mechanical) and "Background" (fluff) skills. It made it easier to assign skills to classes along thematic lines, and also ensure some level of parity between classes. I guess my question is, how often should you succeed at "your job"? IIRC in 4e it was like 75%, no? (barring hyperbolic char-op, of course) I think it's safe to safe that a rate of 90%+ mostly defeats the purpose of rolling..
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May 9, 2016 20:23
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P.d0t posted:Naw I got rid of that problem, by ditching ability scores (mostly) and breaking skills into "Adventuring" (mechanical) and "Background" (fluff) skills. It made it easier to assign skills to classes along thematic lines, and also ensure some level of parity between classes. If the game tells me that my skill roll is supposed to represent one of the top ones in the world, I expect the character to be able to do routine things with either no roll or a very low chance of failure. Likewise, there are pools of expertise out there in the player world, so telling them that somebody can do [hard thing] with [small amount of training] will set people to typing furiously at the internet. Beyond those extremes, I don't think it matters.
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May 9, 2016 20:47
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homullus posted:What does expertise/proficiency mean? Well, they're both purely mechanical. I could probably write more words into the text explaining what "Skill Expertise" represents in-universe, but basically it's a mechanic by which the floor on your skill results is raised; Rogues and Bards get the broadest applications of it, as you might expect. Here's basically the entirety of the Skill rules, for anyone who's interested: SRD posted:Skills underlined for emphasis on the language used.
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May 9, 2016 21:01
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P.d0t posted:Well, they're both purely mechanical. I could probably write more words into the text explaining what "Skill Expertise" represents in-universe, but basically it's a mechanic by which the floor on your skill results is raised; Rogues and Bards get the broadest applications of it, as you might expect. I should have added more words of my own, because this is what I meant. Should I succeed 67.5% of the time at a skill? Well, I think that depends on whether that 67.5% chance represents the peak of human activity, the untrained ability of a guy on the street, or somewhere in the middle. 67.5% chance to succeed isn't good or bad per se.
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May 9, 2016 21:16
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P.d0t posted:That's sort of what I'm thinking of, with all of this; is it possible to write a Race that is rich enough to cover all the mechanics and design space that a Class currently does? For monstrous races, race-as-class really makes more sense than skill adjustments and a special ability. I think the question you need to ask yourself is more about how many do you want to build? I think I'd make four to serve as examples, with a system for building new ones as players ask for them.
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May 9, 2016 23:13
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:Crawls into thread gasping, clothes ragged and bloody, face unshaven: The... Attack powers... Are done! With the caveats- I've only done levels 1-20 and will need to rewrite the first few classes' since I feel like I understand more now and the terminology changed several times and I need to replace the ones that are just copying the PHB, but IT CAN BE DONE is the point. Background powers (aka Utility powers) will be next. Which means defining backgrounds. These will be souped up Themes and cover all things non-combat. Your initial skill choice, special features, etc. So far the list includes: Military Noble Spacer Scholar Scoundrel Commoner (?) Primitive (?) Initiate (the "Jedi training" background basically) Not sure what else. Also need to define the skill list.
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May 10, 2016 15:51
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Maxwell Lord posted:Background powers (aka Utility powers) will be next. Which means defining backgrounds. These will be souped up Themes and cover all things non-combat. Your initial skill choice, special features, etc. Totally looking forward to this; keeping blogging, yo 
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May 10, 2016 16:40
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So I know I've asked this before in the thread, but can we get an updated 'roll call' of 4e clones and hacks? Also, reading the PBTA thread, they kinda touched on this with Exalted hacks: What stuff about 4e are you trying to emulate, with your clone?
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May 22, 2016 04:01
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My space opera game is still under the title "4000 AD", though the default setting doesn't even mention Earth so I'm going to have to come up with something catchier. On a basic level I'm trying to preserve the actual math of 4e- the expected damage and to-hit bonuses, defenses, etc. My thinking is mostly that this is the important thing of the game that needs to be preserved, and it also makes it legally easier to do something new if I'm not having to rephrase how fireballs work. Another thing I want to preserve is the climb. I actually like how the tiers are structured, you start out doing heroics, get into genuine superheroic and leader-of-armies type stuff, and then at epic levels you're taking on demon lords and battling at the foundations of the cosmos. I understand this gets bogged down a little (I need to actually run an epic-level campaign myself just to see how long it takes to fall apart, and how it does so) but I can see this translating to space opera really well- at 1-10 you're like the characters in the original Star Wars movies, at 11-20 you're doing more over the top poo poo like the Jedi circa the Clone Wars or the Guardians of the Galaxy, and at 21-30 you're basically the New Gods or characters in a Zelazny novel.
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May 22, 2016 07:43
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So, digging into skills. I've been thinking, temptingly- what if we at least started to dig into noncombat resolution with the same kind of vigor that 4e brought to combat? It's a little tricky because there's more room for intangibles and there's no measuring system like HP (to a certain extent this was what successes and failures in skill challenges are meant to be, but it doesn't quite feel right.) Still, there's some room for better definition. It seems to me there are certain kinds of skill usage, that roughly grouped can make up: knowing/perceiving things, doing things, and talking. Some backgrounds I've been designing look groomed to be focused- the Noble is a social monster, the Scholar knows all the poo poo, the "Commoner" class is your working man who works hard with his hands, etc. I've been trying to come up with inherent abilities (before you start getting background/utility powers) and a lot of it is "get a bonus/reroll/automatic success every so often when doing X" kind of things. For a lot of those it's become useful shorthand to say "A Social check" and similar things. I can't start to dig into the math until I get back to where my books are. But I feel like, perhaps, instead of trying to "fix Skill Challenges", the answer isn't to go further in detailing and balancing character's non-combat capabilities.
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Jun 22, 2016 11:21
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Maxwell Lord posted:It seems to me there are certain kinds of skill usage, that roughly grouped can make up: knowing/perceiving things, doing things, and talking. Really, the reason Skill Challenges are awful is because any entertaining game needs meaningful choice, and SCs severely lack it. You could take a look at Strike!'s Chase and Team Conflict minigames that are pretty good examples of adding choice to non-combat stuff.
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Jun 22, 2016 14:38
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Maxwell Lord posted:So, digging into skills. The thing I've sort of come to understand through my work on The Next Project is that it's probably valuable to understand which game mode skills are used in; some skills are never going to be used to deplete the enemy's "Social HP" but some might be used to deplete the HP of, say, a trap or hazard. Secondly, Knowledge skills are kind of sticky. I've basically digested them as "+math to Investigation checks related to [background]" so your classic Dwarven Stonecunning is a bonus to Investigate stonework/statues/etc. rather than there needing to be a Knowledge:Stonecraft skill, or whatever. Overall these skills are of dubious value (and I treat them as "ribbon" abilities) because they are completely reliant on the DM throwing you a bone; OTOH if you write that skill onto your sheet, the DM should put that in their campaign for you. Thirdly, when it comes to Social skills, it breaks down as a choice between being nice/truthful (Diplomacy), dishonesty/misdirection (Bluff), or hostile/threatening (Intimidate). What does this mean? If you're being honest, there will be no repercussions if/when the NPC you're interacting with delves deeper into the tale you've spun; Bluff, they can potentially find you out, and Intimidate can lead to a fight. Now, you also need to consider, do the players WANT to turn this social encounter into a fight, or do they just want to bully their way past it? There's 3 basic types of encounters (Social, Exploration, and Combat) but in my discussion with others, the Stealth vs. Perception mini-game is another that doesn't quite fit the mold. You're trying to avoid detection by an NPC, i.e. avoid a social or combat encounter, but it's also not quite an exploration encounter because you aren't necessarily investigating or interacting with the environment. Another thing to keep in mind is that Perception is a swiss army knife, because it's almost always applicable to a skill-based encounter. As for how to set up the skills, the way I did it is to group them by ability score and "skillset" So for example, Thievery falls under the DEX ability, and the Deception skillset. However, on top of this, I kept combat skills separate from ribbon skills; proficiency with FORT-adventuring skills (like grappling or intimidation) are separate from FORT-knowledge skills (i.e. Heal) To the concept of actually making skill use as involved as combat...? Well, you need to introduce the same resources (HP, surges, AEDU powers) that you have to manage in a combat encounter; this is the central problem that people always butt up against when you clone 4e. They want to make the non-combat better and more involved, but it basically involves either: a) doubling the number of powers you have to write b) requiring very heavily silo'd utility powers that have explicitly and strictly non-combat applications, only c) giving powers a combat AND non-combat usage, hopefully tied together with flavourful naming schemes It's also very challenging to give classes equal utility in skill-focused encounters, particularly compared to the relative "ease" of doing so with the combat engine. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 18:18
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Since the DTAS issue came up a page or two ago, there's an alternative I wanted to share: nuke simulationist ability scores, but keep effect-setting ones. For example, being capable of using a pushing power that pushes people further and further away is something good and useful for a game that wants to give the players actual, tangible progress in their sheets (none of this 'illusion of progress' malarkey, there is no such thing as 'tier+1 push resistance' baked into every monster to counter your push distance increase). In a retroclone I worked on once upon a time (a long, long time, we're talking five years ago), a thing I did was kind of condense the 'styles' of the 'ability pairs' of basic 4e into what I called the 'Triple V' system: Valor, Verve and Vim. Each of these mapped roughly to two scores from 4e (the mentally and physically offensive Charisma and Strength to Valor, the swiftly reactive Dexterity and Intelligence to Verve, and the defensive, stolid Constitution and Wisdom to Vim), and each of them covered specific effects. Valor covered things like push/pull distance and attack bonuses, Verve covered shifting and targeting distances, and Vim covered damage reduction and defense bonuses (these are not exhaustive lists, just examples). The interesting thing was that, since these were not really simulationist scores, you picked how your points were distributed amongst them within a certain range, and each class had some powers that worked better for people who'd favored one of them. For example, if you were a Tempest (speedy multiattacky striker, primarily meant to emulate 'hit them a bajillion times in two seconds' jRPG heroes and fighting game characters), there was an encounter power that removed you from the board entirely and let you perform singular attacks (as in, no stacking them against one target) against a number of enemies equal to half your Verve, which you could sustain round after round with your standard action, letting you safely brutalize the enemy team at the cost of burst damage. By contrast, there was also a Valor-based power on that same level that let you perform a standard two-hit multiattack and then fling your opponent up into the air a number of squares equal to your Valor, with no save, meaning they would take increasing damage and be thrown back a greater distance the higher your Valor was (and then hit the ground proned). The class was the exact same, with the same core mechanics of hitting dudes tons of times per round, but favoring one of the three Vs over the others gave it an entirely different flavor, reducing the need to make a billion classes to represent a lot of similar-but-not-quite-the-same concepts like it happened in 4e with two-weapon fighters. I think there's a place for that kind of...'effect scores', for lack of a better term. It's a neat little way of allowing the player to customize his character's little details and really give them a personal stamp without having to sacrifice a class-based structure that allows for serious uniqueness between players who all favor the same role.
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Jun 22, 2016 19:56
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Maxwell Lord, I just want to say that though I don't really post in this thread much, I do enjoy your constant, relentless updates and appreciate the work you're doing. Cheers! I think you've also found another solution to the "DTAS problem" in that keeping stats is actually cool and good if there is a real choice behind them rather than an utterly predictable mathematical progression with only one correct answer. Certainly I wouldn't be opposed to still having stats if they still mattered in the way you described your system.
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Jun 23, 2016 04:29
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Maybe it's nothing new to some, but I found the first 2-3 pages of this thread on RPG.net a fairly interesting attempt at dissecting the root design of 4e. After those first few pages the "discussion" is only interesting if you want to read the same arguments about mundane fighters vs magical fighters that have been done ad nauseum. I can't stop myself from reading the whole thing every time
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Jun 23, 2016 14:33
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Maxwell Lord posted:So, digging into skills. Any noncombat resolution system that wants to be as interesting as combat really needs something to provide incremental progress and partial success. That's what cumulative successes and failures tried to do and what HP would do. Even if HP feels like a weird way to measure a challenge, it's a weird way to measure someone's ability to keep fighting. So if you can live with that it's usable for describing how close a door is to being picked or just how pissed off an angry mob really is. The other big part is having some way for the challenge to "fight" back at the party, costing them some sort of resources or inflicting some sort of penalty. Some of them could be passive effects that only trigger if the party does certain things like trying to intimidate a little old lady. Certain options could have serious risks or downsides in their own right. However different abilities can also help to avoid or weather any such consequences even if they don't directly help overcome the challenge. Characters who are actually focused on overcoming a particular challenge are effectively acting like strikers. Characters acting to stop negative consequences are effectively defenders. It's also possible to envision roles similar to that of a leader or controller. So a wizard might still use magic but instead of bypassing challenges, it makes things easier for the other party members by giving them the tools to do things that would otherwise be impossible. Leaders could provide bonuses and alleviate negative effects for a while. Depending on the challenge type however, different characters might have different roles. It is a bit more contrived than nobles being good at social skills and the like but we know that role-based classes work.
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Jun 27, 2016 09:15
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In place of your typical math-fix feat(s), I'm trying to come up with a system where each class can basically add a 3rd ability mod to the mix, when determining one of their defenses. Would it be wise to work from the baseline of STR/CON=FORT, DEX/INT=REF, WIS/CHA=WILL and then just add a 3rd ability to one of those, or should all 3 defenses be done on a class-by-class basis? INT and CON seem to be easy to slot in for WILL CHA can work well for REF, in my mind; WIS is also a possibility FORT kinda gets stuck with DEX, a la 13th Age..? Suggestions?
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Jul 11, 2016 16:16
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So after a break working on other things I have a new Hacking Fourth post on the relative value of status effects. Everything's rough right now, looking at values in terms of [w] dice instead of precise damage, but I think it's a start- I've also tried rephrasing each to avoid copying the PHB language. After this I'll dig into the skill system and DCs and that will hopefully help 4000 ADs background powers.
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Aug 18, 2016 15:49
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I've started a blog, so that I can post about design & development for the upcoming draft of my d20/D&D heartbreaker The Next Project: Old thread is here  Blog is here! First post is already up
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Aug 20, 2016 02:44
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Crosspostin' this, since it probably belongs in here:P.d0t posted:Alright, so I have a draft of the rules for The Next Project done up well enough that I want to share it for critique.
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Oct 4, 2016 04:11
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P.d0t posted:Crosspostin' this, since it probably belongs in here: thanks, will have a look at it soon and try and give some feedback
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Oct 4, 2016 04:34
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P.d0t posted:Ok, I got 4 of the 5 intended "starter classes" polished up and ready. More crossposting. Will try and add these links into the Core Rules doc, when I get back tonight. e: Classes are now in the doc, and Cleric (d8) is done. e: also, I felt the Rogue was a bit lacking, so I added an ability from one of the other archetypes; that archetype (the Scoundrel) was probably going to get scrapped anyway, so eh. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Oct 5, 2016 |
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Oct 4, 2016 22:17
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Sorry dude, I've only been able to get through it once but I don't think I'm cut out to give feedback on the system. It seems okay, I like the idea of being engaged in melee, how you're trying to use reach etc - but I just can't fake it that I know how it would work in play. If you want feedback on the writing maybe I could be more helpful there, but only marginally.
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Oct 10, 2016 16:22
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starkebn posted:Sorry dude, I've only been able to get through it once but I don't think I'm cut out to give feedback on the system. It seems okay, I like the idea of being engaged in melee, how you're trying to use reach etc - but I just can't fake it that I know how it would work in play. A gift for you! Let me know if there is anything I should further add/explain in the text. As usual, comments/suggestions are on, so feel free to mark up the doc.
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Oct 12, 2016 00:46
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A new blogpost appears!
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Oct 12, 2016 01:38
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