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Something that we were very mindful of about the design structure with 1e was that it had taken most of the steps that were needed to achieve a classless design, but we found during the class rework that we were constantly coming up with ideas for new features to try to maintain a “standard feats per class” with a standardized progression within a class, and this mostly just served as a frustrating artificial constraint from including some cool stuff because it seemed neat but we couldn’t fit it into the existing structure.
To top it off, the purpose of a class structure is to force a character to occupy a particular niche. A Class does X thing. By virtue of having 4 classes that could be wildly different, you ended up a couple of steps removed from how classless design works anyway. Instead of combining classes to create an archetype, our new approach will allow you to collect perks from different branches of our Advancement Web to build a character that fits the specifications you want.
Another advantage of this is that we took into account how people were designing their Pokemon Mystery Dungeon homebrews and found that this design approach was also beneficial for Playing As Pokemon. By removing set classes with set expectations, we can harmonise and have building Pokemon and Human PCs operate on the same setup.
We’ll see about giving a peek at the Advancement Web in the near future, but you can think of games such as the Final Fantasy series’ Sphere Grid, or progression in the likes of Path of Exile, and start to see what we’re aiming for.
So the thing with a d20-based system is that it comes with certain baggage. Burdens of expectation. Artefact mechanics such as AC (in the form of Evasion) that have often been the source of grumbling, especially with discouraging higher level play. Of course, like most d20 systems, thing start to break down at higher levels in PTR1 with evasion, as has been mentioned many times across the community. Other ideas such as saving throws and the like are very baked into the d20 heritage and it’s where class design has been steadily moving away from.
One of the big things for moving away from d20 and into the d100 space is also where it interfaces with our Xd6 skill system that we have in PTR1. People often dislike setting check DCs under the PTR1 system because they must decide something that is fair. People have concerns about setting the DC too high and making it impossible for some characters to pass or too easy for others. With a d100 based approach to skills, each character has their own level of competence in a field and the base DC is their skill level.
You’ll be familiar with this already in part because a d100 system is already how PTR 1’s capture system resolves. The DC is set, then modifiers applied, and you just have to roll under that target number. The biggest difference is that the base DC here will be your character’s skill level.
To put this into a worked example: In a fantasy campaign, you have a party of pokemon trainers who embody classic archetypes. The tanky armoured Knight, the Mage, the Rogue.
The Knight may have a Climb skill of 45, to the Mage’s 20 and the Rogue’s 35, but the knight is carrying a lot of heavy armour and equipment, so he has a -20 modifier. The Mage has no assistance to climb for themselves, but the Rogue type brought climbing gear because they expected to be scaling things, so they have a +10 from their equipment. In order to scale the cliff in front of them, the Knight now needs to roll against 25 (skill 45 -20 for heavy load), whilst the Mage is looking for 20 because they haven’t invested in climbing. The Rogue meanwhile is looking to roll under 45 to climb. All the GM had to do here was determine any suitable bonuses or penalties based on the situation.
In this way, no skill check should be impossible but should reflect the characters’ investment in their skills and the situations they are presented with. No calculating a fair global DC is required. Just, if something is meant to be a relatively easy feat to accomplish, or very difficult to accomplish, a global DC modifier between -40 and +40 should be applied, with most ‘challenging’ checks falling at +0 and modifying away from there as appropriate to the scope of the task.
A fun fact about the Pokemon video games. Did you know that accuracy checks are resolved as a d100? Your DC is determined by the accuracy value of the move, modified by a bunch of factors such as accuracy and evasion combat stages. No need for a static evasion score, it’s all factored into the accuracy check in that way. Saving throws? No need. The attacker will roll a d100 against the % chance to trigger for an effect, and if they succeed, then the effect will be applied. Due to our funky new Legends: Arceus inspired initiative system (more on this in another segment), conditions will expire after a set number of Activations rather than when a Save is made.