Reviving TNE

[Orion]

I'm a few weeks away form summer vacation, during which I'll have not only more time for design work, but also the chance to actually play some games. As such, I've been wanting to revive the TNE project.

I seem to recall Frank Trollman saying that what he wanted from us now was write-ups on the character classes, what we thought they should look like at each level.

We've had lots of conversations about what a progression needs-- a veriety of atacks, something to make long fights interesting, diverse attacks for CAN purpose, charge up times, attacks that unlock late, et, etc, etc.

First of all, I can't even keep track fo the current design standard fo what shoudl go in a progression. Second, I'm not sur ehow these requirements are compatible with the universal ability slots, unless people are spending slots on families of related abilities.

Frank, or anyone, do you have any advice on how I could usefully contribute to the TNE project?

[Cielingcat]

A class is simply a list of preset abilities that are chosen for you at each level. You can follow your class if you want, or you can break away from it. Basically, it's a Fighter with the feats preselected so you don't need to do the work.

[Username17]

The inclusion of the CAN allows us to go to fixed Hit Points without serious difficulty I think. Numerical tweaking is still required, but the core concepts seem to work.

So here's how it's currently working out:

• You have a fixed number of hit points.
• Having a specific number of Wound boxes may not be required even. Wounds can just count up and provide a bonus to what enemies CAN do to you.
• Hit Points rise and fall a lot during combat, and when they fall to specific immutable points, your thresholds drop (allowing further attacks to accomplish more).
• Eliminating enemies is done by attacking them when you have sufficient CAN to do so. Getting people smacked with Wound effects or disadvantageous conditions raises others CAN against you.

This actually comes back to resource management. Since building up CAN is something that you have to do before you can blow enemies up when they are as powerful as you are, powers on charges can be saved up until later in the fight without insulting our tactical knowhow. That is, an attack which grants a bonus to your CAN that can be used once a fight will probably not be at its best if you use it right away against the main villain. It will instead naturally be useful to wait on it until round 3 or 4 to let fly with the killer move. Alternately, if you are facing a speed bump enemy, you can let fly your death spiral to get past it in a single round. It provides resource management variety without getting into complex systems like token management or timers.

But so I think we're looking at now is:

• Fine tuning numbers.
• Brain storming powers.
• Getting a battle map / movement / terrain system.
• Nailing down the skill system.

-Username17

[virgil]

Do we neccessarily want to have three different stats to keep track of in the attrition of combat? We have hit points, wounds, and CAN; all three of which players will be gaining and losing in varying amounts. This isn't even including (de)buffs that will fly around. There can be a point in which there is too much accounting in combat (though I will admit that I don't know where that point is).

[Calibron]

Both Wounds are CAN are going to be very small numbers, as far as I can tell; single digits for most or all of the game. I don't think it'll be that much of a problem.

[Username17]

Hit points can be kind of small as well. We could even shrink them somewhat by going to a base 2d6 bell curve for damage. What I don't want to ever ever happen is for the party to be in the position of the 12th level 4e example Eladrin Paladin who is forced to resort to her at-will attacks that do a d8+7 damage when dishing out the final four hundred remaining hit points on the 12th level solo Hydra. That's just crazy talk. I don't want to be in the situation of playing "I attack, You attack" for twenty fucking rounds while a four man party very slowly hammers away on a titanic and uninteresting brute monster.

Without Hit Points, we'd have to go into a system of scaling wounds or allow as how mook monsters have their hits bounce off with no measurable effect most of the time. And in either case we'd have to find a new place for second winds and magical combat healing.

We don't want actual Wounds to vanish in-combat because that's hella frustrating. We also want people to be able to take a second wind, because that's kind of cool. With the hit point counter we basically have something that adds up to you taking more wounds (and can be gotten rid of with healing) in addition to the wounds themselves (which are healable only out of combat).

We could have lower points on the effect roll give out "shaken" conditions that stacked and added to enemy CAN but were extremely easy to shake off. That would have the advantage of getting rid of hit points entirely. But it strikes me as less elegant than just subtracting the effect result itself from the remaining hit points.

-Username17

[Aktariel]

I wondered what happened to this... TNE is something I would very much like to see completed - especially given the suckage that fourth edition is (now that I've had a chance to read the rules.)

[Cielingcat]

How do hit points and wounds work again?

[Username17]

How do hit points and wounds work again?

Current concept:

When you make a damage roll, you compare the damage to the damage thresholds to see whether you get to apply your secondary effect, your wound effect, or your fatality for your attack. Regardless of the outcome, you subtract your damage result from their current hit points.

If, when you make the attack, your opponent's hit points are already low, the thresholds are reduced. If, when you make your attack, your opponent already has Wounds, you get bonus to your CAN. If you have CAN, you either do more damage or have your thresholds reduced (undecided on that point).

Hit points are recoverable in-battle as are secondary effects. Wounds are not.

Possible lines of simplification could include merging Hit Points and Secondary Effects; merging Wounds and Defense Number; and handling all threshold modifiers as damage modifiers. Right now, it looks like those pieces of complexity have real value, but I'd like to see other people go at the logistics with a fresh eye.

-Username17

[Orion]

How is an effect that gives you CAN different from an effect that penalizes the targets thresholds?

[Calibron]

One gives you a bonus against everyone and the other gives everyone a bonus against them.

[Orion]

Okay, but he says that you get a bonus ot CAN when attacking a wounded opponenet. Why not just have wounds reduce your thresholds?

[Calibron]

I don't like it. I'd prefer if hit points had to be reduced to zero before you can inflict Wounds, and once they were gone damage was checked against a damage threshold to see if you got to inflict a Wound, maybe two if it was really spectacular damage. Wounds lower your CAN so you are both easier to kill and it's harder for you to kill someone else.

Imps die in one hit because your CAN is so much higher than their's. Their CAN is so much lower than yours that their main function is to get rid of your hit points so the real monsters can inflict Wounds and kill you; though if their are enough of them they'll eventually roll high enough on damage to inflict a Wound, and eventually you will accrue so many Wounds that the very low CAN of the legions of goblins you're fighting will be high enough to kill you.

I'm thinking that damage thresholds don't go down as you accrue Wounds, so if something just can't do enough damage to Wound you, it's only possible function is to whittle down your hit points or maybe inflict status effects.

Status effects shouldn't be related to hit points, they should just be attached to attacks and your opponent gets to roll a saving throw to resist them; If you're affected you now suck in one way or another. Nice and simple, not to mention familiar.

CAN that is equal to or within a very small range allows your attacks to do their basic function. CAN that is lower means most of your attacks only do hit point damage. CAN that is a little higher adds extra effects or damage to your attacks. CAN that is higher than that means that if your attack would normally inflict a Wound it instead kills/destroys your target.

CAN is mostly static, but if I remember correctly a lot of people wanted combination attacks to mean something; so doing a combo attack against an opponent gives you a bonus to CAN against that opponent on the final move in the routine. Another option is that the attack at the end of the combo is just really awesome, great damage, nasty effect, huge area, whatever.

So to review.
Hit Points: Shield you against Wounds.
Wounds: Lower your CAN.
CAN: Checked against your opponent's CAN to see whether the effect of your hit is basic, powerful, or fatal.
Status Effects: These work exactly like they do in 3rd Ed.

Good? Bad? Ugly?

[Calibron]

Oh yeah, before I forget, what were we calling the third type of monster? You know we've got Imps, Brutes, and the boss types. What was the term for the boss types?

[NoDot]

I remember reading on the wiki (probably outdated) the material on this. With the addition of CAN (and Wounds raising CAN of opponents against you), I think it works just fine.

[Username17]

I don't like it. I'd prefer if hit points had to be reduced to zero before you can inflict Wounds, and once they were gone damage was checked against a damage threshold to see if you got to inflict a Wound, maybe two if it was really spectacular damage. Wounds lower your CAN so you are both easier to kill and it's harder for you to kill someone else.

The idea is to allow the game to transition smoothly from a state where you are fighting a strong monster to one where you are fighting a weak monster to a state where you are fighting a very weak monster. That you can be at a state where you kill the enemy in one hit, but that you can also be in a state where you may kill the enemy in one hit.

Imagine if you will a bell curve, something like this:


Now when you're being attacked by stirges or big mosquitoes, or whatever, yo probably want a hit to just splat an enemy every time. But if you're fighting it out with grunt hobgoblins, it's probably OK for them to go down in one hit sometimes and in two or more hits other times. In fact, that's very desirable so that hobgoblin grunts feel different from big mosquitoes. So let's say that you roll your damage dice and that makes a Gaussian distribution as pictured above. If you roll a number over on the right of the distribution, the hobgoblin goes down, and if you don't, it doesn't. And of course, if you hit the Dark Lord with a sword, there's no result on the curve that will drop him. And that's all fine - you can just have people roll a couple of dice for damage and set hit points accordingly and be on your way - for single attacks.

Unfortunately, if you add the results of attacks together you see two undesirable effects:

• Flattening of the curve. If you roll more dice, the combined results tend to come to the average. At the limit of infinite dice, the average result will be 3.5. Rolling 2-4 dice gives a nice little bell curve, but add that together 5 or 6 times and your results are pretty much deterministic.
• Instant Overkill. 3d6 averages 10.5, and it can get an 18. If you add the results of two rolls together you're talking 6 dice, which averages 21. So if you have any chance at all of dropping your foe in one hit (even if that chance is less than one half of one percent), then you are virtually assured of doing it with overkill in two hits.

So the goal here is to have points on the bell curve which are insufficient to drop your foe give you a bonus towards doing it next attack, but not give you a bonus proportional to your actual roll. Case in point: if you need an 18 on three dice to drop your foe and you roll a 17, your foe does not drop. He should be hurting, and he should be easier to drop next attack, but you shouldn't need to roll the difference, because 1 is substantially less than the absolute minimum you can get on 3 dice. The next attack should drop on maybe a 15 to pull numbers right out of my ass (numbers which would be consistent with such an attack giving out a secondary effect that gave +1 and a Wound effect that gave +2, as it happens).

The idea here is that even, no especially against foes that you can't take down in one hit, that you should not know deterministically how many hits will be required. The game genuinely becomes anticlimactic if the attacks on round one are just as likely to win the battle as the attacks on round 7 - it basically just makes the entire game feel like an exercise in coin flipping. But the game also suffers if the mindless accumulation of damage points becomes sufficiently predictable that we can predict it reliably during the course of an actual game. To use the Fen Hydra example again, with 620 hit points and attacks doing like 20 damage, we would be in a situation where the statistical probabilities of landing attacks would loom large. Having to hit our enemy ~30 times to fell him, we'd be making enough attacks that we could just take average damage and multiple by to-hit chances and divide into hit points to figure how many turns the battle would take - and that's fucked.

What I'm thinking at this point, just looking at the Bell Curve, is that we seriously don't need hit points at all. Bonuses can be small and discreet enough that the game can run smoothly from the point where an enemy inflicts a future +1 if he lands in the Red zone on the right to the point where there are enough bonuses accumulated that he inflicts a future +1 in the right Green Zone, and a future +3 in the Red Zone, and then into a situation later on where he gets a +1 in the Yellow, a +3 in the Green, and drops his foe in the Red, and so on...

And looking at what I just wrote there, I am double guessing it again, where I am now thinking that it would probably better if the first hit was a +2 bonus that could be healed in combat, and the second tier was a +1 bonus that couldn't be healed easily.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

I couldn't find how thresholds are calculated on the wiki. Has that been roughed out yet?

[Calibron]

I'm not sure I understood that at all, or rather I'm not sure I understood the point behind that at all.

For things like giant mosquitoes you'd be practically assured to chew through their hit points in a single attack, and an attack that's strong enough to completely obliterate somethings hit points would not only be strong enough to Wound them, it would almost certainly be overwhelming enough to inflict two Wounds; that wouldn't really matter though, since your CAN starts out at the lethal range and you splat them instead of inflicting Wounds.

Against total mooks(Monsters according to the wiki) like kobolds or weak goblins you'd have a decent chance to wipe out their hit points in one attack; say a 40%-70%ish chance for most basic AoE attacks, but a 80%-100%ish chance for basic single target. Now as I said before if you manage to do enough damage to deplete all their hit points with one attack then you're more or less assured to beat their damage threshold and qualify to inflict a Wound; but since your CAN starts out in the lethal range they go splat. It seems reasonable that some goblins might survive a relatively low damage fireball, and may even survive two or three or more of them if the caster rolls terribly for damage several times in a row. It also makes some sense for a goblin to have a chance to survive the first sword to the face(or magic ray of head explosion), but not to survive several focused attacks from a powerful adventurer.

Hit points shouldn't be really high, if a level appropriate threat focuses all it can do on one party member then that party member's hit points should be gone in one round, two rounds tops; but that's okay since hit points are easily recoverable, it only really matters if they managed to inflict any Wounds(which if it was a Closet Troll or Master they probably did) or nasty status effects that carry over into the next round or longer

[baduin]

I always considered the basic damage system of True20 to be superior to the hit point system. The basic system works more or less as a D20 toughess save (Toughness equals constitution+armor) against fixed damage+10. It can be inverted, so you roll D20 +your basic damage (which equals weapon+Str) against Toughness+10.

If you fail the save by a specific amount, you suffer a lesser effect, if by more, you suffer a worse effect and so on, to the death at far end. The specific implementation of that idea in True20 is not very good.

In that system anyone could be killed by one hit, if they rolled poorly. To avoid it, PCs and important NPCs have a fixed number of Conviction Points (action points, in other words), which can be used to limit damage: when you use a conviction point, your opponents roll is limited to 10. For level appropriate opponents, it means they cannot kill you, at most lightly wound you.

This system has following benefits:

1) Damage (or damage save) is always rolled as D20+fixed value against a fixed target. So the system works the same, as long as the difference between damage and toughness is the same, independently of their absolute values. There is no statistical difference between damage 10 against toughness 10 and damage 110 against toughness 110.

2) Since conviction points can be used to bolster other saves, the difference between effects targeting save and damaging effects is much lesser. Your buffer points work against both.

The original True20 damage rules:
http://true20.com/files/true20revdmg.pdf

My version of True20 damage system can be found here.

http://rapidshare.com/files/98325747/Tr ... system.pdf
http://shadowend.pbwiki.com/f/True20-D20_emulation.zip

Quick start rules for True20 can be found here:

http://true20.com/support/

Of course, that system cannot be used as-is, but I think it can be adoped to TNE and it would be worthwhile to consider it.

[Calibron]

One of the first problems I spotted with that is that someones actions should never do *nothing*; and the next step away from having absolutely no effect is to completely remove your opponents actions and make them easier to hurt the next attack. Actually no, that's just the first major problem I spotted, the real first problem I spotted was that someone has to roll every time they're hit; that quite obviously doubles the amount of dice being tossed around for no good reason. In fact I didn't really stop seeing problems until I stopped reading the document.

The fact that everything that's supposed to survive more than one fight needs bullshit "get out of jail free" points should tell you this is a horrible system for a high fantasy game, or any game that involves a moderate amount of combat and characters that are supposed to live more than one session.

[Username17]

My objection to True 20 (or M&M for that matter) damage system is not conceptual, but practical. The numerical inputs they put on those systems have been deeply problematic, and the fact that you are rolling against a straight d20 makes the entire event very "swingy" (to use inane 4e terminology). But the basic concept is quite sound in theory, I've just always thought it was too much effort to make it work. But seeing as how we are making a new game system from scratch, the difficulty of building a new math engine is one we can't escape anyway.

My thought is that by moving things to 3d6 for the damage roll (or soak roll, whichever), that the feeling of constant lottery winning and losing that accompanies a fight in Mutants and Masterminds can be largely avoided. The bell curve should cause things to work out roughly as they should more often.

So to pull numbers out of the air, imagine for the moment that you had 3 tiers of damage before dropping, and each of them were 4 numbers long. Each of them heaps a +1 CAN bonus on you, and they are cumulative. The difference being that they come harder and harder to remove. Now let's say that Dropping comes at 20. Meaning that:

• On an 8-11 you get scuffed for a +1 to enemy CAN.
• On a 12-15, you get scuffed and bruised, for a +2 to enemy CAN.
• On a 16-19, you get scuffed, bruised, and wounded, for a +3 total to enemy CAN.
• On a 20+ you drop.
• A scuffed condition can be removed by you spending an action to catch your breath, which makes you have your guard down for a turn. During that period, enemies have +1 more CAN against you, and afterwards both the guard down and a scuffed go away.
• A bruised condition can be removed by using various abilities, most of which have charge limits or recharge times.
• A wounded condition cannot be removed in combat under any circumstances.

Then, when you face lesser enemies like hobgoblin soldiers, you start with a +5 CAN on them. That means that initially you're going to be dropping them on a 15 (almost 10% of the time), and you'll be progressing on every hit (literally a 3+ to cause the least of the damage effects). Chances are you'll drop the target in 3-4 hits.

On substantially lesser opponents, like grunts, you'll have a +10 CAN, meaning that you drop them on a 10+ and provide at least a second tier damage effect on any blow that doesn't drop them in one. You'll take them down in a hit or two almost every time.

On imps and wisps, you have a +15 or higher CAN, meaning that you drop them on virtually every hit, and with a second hit you are genuinely guaranteed to drop them.

Now obviously, these numbers can be fiddled with and probably should be. If these numbers are too high, for example, one could very plausibly drop to 2d6 and all the CAN numbers would get adjusted accordingly.

---

But I was tossing Hit Points around because I wanted to make sure that attacks by lower level enemies could add up and hurt even if they couldn't drop you right away. And the way CAN interacts with damage rolls I don't think that's required.

-Username17

[Calibron]

This I think I can get behind. I don't like it as much as what I proposed, but it is simple and elegant and looks like it could work. Personally I'd prefer if we kept the numbers a little smaller and put the scale at the 1d10/1d12/2d6 level, whichever turns out to work best. One thing I like about this is that you can't drop an equal level opponent right off the bat, it's just not possible.

I'm assuming that these rolls are just dice+CAN difference.

I remember from earlier discussion that all attacks would do something even on a miss, but under this system would we only roll for damage effect, or do we still roll to hit? Would we still have the option of only inflicting status effects and not rolling for damage effect? If so do saving throws or similar come into it, or their opposite roll against their *whatever* defense to see if you can effect/fully effect them? Do we have any passive defenses at all beyond CAN? Does having a higher CAN improve you attacks beyond likeliness to wear down or drop your opponent?

Personally I'm hoping the answers to those questions end up being no, yes, yes, yes, and yes; but I don't have any proposals right now, I need time to contemplate this way of doing things.

[Calibron]

Wait, no if you need to roll the equivalent of an 8+(regardless of what number system we use), and imps get the equivalent of a -15 then they literally can't do anything to you. Under my proposal they could at least burn through your hit points so that something actually capable of inflicting Wounds had a better shot at you; under this system they have absolutely no effect whatsoever. You could honestly ignore them, marching through millions or billions of the little things and not care at all. Furthermore mooks may be able to inconvenience you but even when they've managed to get you down to scuffed they can't do anything further. I don't like that. Mooks shouldn't generally be able to kill a character before they can escape, but they should pose a legitimate threat in sufficient numbers; I mean at least to the point that you can't just ignore them. Hell even the Hobgoblin soldiers are literally incapable of defeating you, they can only have a CAN 2 lower than your at best which means you kill them on a natural eighteen and they cannot ever roll high enough to drop you.

I know that the numbers you threw down were just for example purposes, but I see a disturbing trend here: it may end up that no matter what we do with the numbers that anything that is even moderately easy to kill will offer absolutely no legitimate threat at all. This is bad, it may be wrong, but it's still bad.

I seriously prefer an HP/Wounds/Damage Threshold system or even just a Wounds/Damage Threshold system if the rest of the members are resoundingly against the inclusion of HP. It gives a lot more leeway and it allows CAN to be kept to a much smaller number.

[Username17]

I think it important under virtually any system that the offensive and defensive output of an imp be hampered differently. An imp wants to be grotesquely out gunned defensively and only moderately out of its league offensively. An Imp hitting you should hurt, an Imp struck in the face should explode.

A -5/-15 setup would be quite workable. It causes you damage effects (but never fatalities) on a 13+, but it explodes pretty much every time it gets hit. The result is that your best bang for buck is to attack Imps until you clear them out. Systems where Imps are just weak across the board make it so that you just ignore the Imps while concentrating on other opponents.

Essentially I see a point in which Glass Cannon monsters are +5/-5, while Imps are -5/-15. Today's Fey are tomorrow's Sprites.

-Username17

[NoDot]

I'd like to echo the 2d6 cry.

Tell me, are NPCs supposed to be tough 0/0 CAN enemies, or are you supposed to always get some sort of PC CAN Bonus.

Also, can you remove scuffled and bruised conditions without removing the wounded condition?