Stats & Skills

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Right now we have 5 stats. For each stat I've listed possible names, and under it what the stat governs (skills and/or derived stats)

Strength, Power, Muscle, Brawn
-Brutal Melee
-Athletics

Dexterity, Agility, Speed
-Finesse Melee
-Acrobatics

Consitution, Toughness, Endurance
-HP
-Pain Threshold

Perception, Senses
-Ranged

Intelligence, IQ, Smarts
-Magic

Is this the right number of stats? What else does each stat govern?

[Shark]

What if we didn't have stats, as they are generally thought of now. In dnd, in vampire, in gurps, in larps, in pretty much all roleplaying games a character is boiled down to a set of numbers, which one then applies to a set of rules to determine what the character can and can't do, and how well he can do it.

Well duh, one might say, it's a perfectly reasonable way to boil a character down, and it is, but is there another way? And if so, why would you use it, other than to be different? I dunno, I'd say that another way of defining a character could lend a different overall feel to the game, and maybe there's a way that's generally better?

I'm not saying what I'm presenting here is that thing, it's just an idea.

What if, rather than buying number upgrades for a character to define their basic stats, we offered a range of different physical and mental traits which one could upgrade that defined a character. If rather than having, say Intelligence 10, one determined their character's intelligence more specifically. Say one could buy one's IQ, then your education and natural aptitudes. Also you would buy your specific sort of strength, say you were lean and agile, or large and able to lift heavy things over your head. There would similar basic categories, like mental, physical, personality, or even just mental and physical and just group things in sub categories in those two groups, however we would decide to structure it.

Something like:

IQ: we would define different IQ ranges that you can buy and later increase, the different ranges would come with different in game specifications. The in game specifications would be something like:

IQ 50-80 - idiot, cannot read or write, must use d4s for all intelligence rolls. (This would be a a flaw you could take, I suppose, or the base.

81-100 - average, can read and write one language, uses d6s for int rolls.

etc, etc.

Then something like:
Body:

Scrawny: Less average body or hp or somesuch. Perhaps this is a flaw, that gives you more points to spend.

Skinny: Slightly above average speed, takes up fewer squares/can fit into smaller spaces than other larger characters.

Fat: Slightly below average speed, a small amount of damage reduction, or mitigation from the extra layer of blubber.

Slow: Poor reflexes, this could be a flaw that gives you penalties on reactive attacks. Or it could give you a bonus in other areas, such as you're slow but you have a bonus in slow, powerful attacks.

Quick: Good reflexes, this could be something like, gives you a bonus to reactive attacks, and a penalty to normal attacks, or just to slow powerful type attacks.

Muscular: Bonus to power based (formerly strength based, for these purposes) attacks. Maybe penalties the more you upgrade muscular, as you grow bigger.

Sinewy: Maybe some sort of damage reduction, or upgraded Pain threshold.

Flexible: upgraded dodge dice for melee defense attacks. upgraded acrobatic actions Acrobatic for acrobatic movements.

Stiff: Downgraded dice for reactive actions, and acrobatics actions. Maybe a bonus vs being moved, like bull-rushed, or any actions that would move the character.

Etc, etc, and in better categories probably, as certain things negate certain other things.


etc etc.

Then you would buy your education and any special aptitudes.

For this stuff, we would have to make a decision, if we wanted to do away with skills and bundle it with education and special aptitudes, which I am kind of into, or keeping skills.

Public school education - Can read and write an additional language, and has a basic knowledge of mathematics and (one additional knowledge). Uses d6's (or d8's, depending on what the basic level of education would be) for all int based skill checks (or if we were to do away with skills, it could be something like: adds 1 to all int based action rolls, or here's a crazy idea: Can spend 1 adrenaline to auto-succeed (on one die) on any Basic int based action. )


Photographic Memory: can recall specifics of any event that you have witnessed. May use one adrenaline to auto-succeed (on one roll) on any search action (but adds X Time)? May automatically remember any event, book, number, face, etc, that you have personally seen.


Similar combat related categories.

I'm sure it could be more simply put.

I'm using a sort of modified dice variant for this idea also:

3 or 4 dice, or however many we feel is a good amount of variability but not too much, and every action is grouped with certain characteristic, rather than a stat, which determines the size of the dice you roll, range from 6-12 still of course, for the different characteristic upgrades you could buy.

What this does, is, rather than generalize your stats, it specifies your characteristics, which would lead to actions being bundled, so rather than an attack being a melange of your stat and your skill, you're characteristics would simply determine the dice size, and interact some way with the dice, whether it be adding bonus' to all the rolls, giving a certain number that you can apply to any die you roll, or, as I put in the above example, a new idea, where adrenaline functions as a way to offer autosuccesses on certain actions, which I like the simplicity of, but if it's not enough variance, we can basically work adrenaline whatever way we find that gives us the amount of variance we want.

Something I had been thinking of also, is die number, you're right that if we roll a large number of dice one success being a success is too easy, but I'd like to find the right die number which would be okay with having one success equalling one success. The reason for this being that pairing down to what is essential I think should be the goal, also it's a sort of weird mechanic when you have to wait for 2 successes to actually have a success, it seems sort of like forcing it, but I don't know if having 3 or 4 dice is enough variance. I'd like to propose that it is, especially depending on how we treat adrenaline.

I'm sure there are other solutions, but whatever it is I'd like our dice rolling system to be set up so that 1 success does equal a success. It may be a minor success, if we wanted to have a few different levels of success, it I don't think it should be nothing.

[alex]

Something like:

IQ: we would define different IQ ranges that you can buy and later increase, the different ranges would come with different in game specifications. The in game specifications would be something like:

IQ 50-80 - idiot, cannot read or write, must use d4s for all intelligence rolls. (This would be a a flaw you could take, I suppose, or the base.

81-100 - average, can read and write one language, uses d6s for int rolls.

If IQ ranges from 50-150 say (100 point range), and you've got categories of 20-30 that's 3-5 categories overall. So what is the benefit of going from 52->53 IQ? Is there none unless you jump a category? We could make the bonuses more than just 1, but that point it makes more sense just to just 1-3 or 1-5 (1 for each category).

Then something like:
Body:

Scrawny: Less average body or hp or somesuch. Perhaps this is a flaw, that gives you more points to spend.

Skinny: Slightly above average speed, takes up fewer squares/can fit into smaller spaces than other larger characters.

Fat: Slightly below average speed, a small amount of damage reduction, or mitigation from the extra layer of blubber.

Slow: Poor reflexes, this could be a flaw that gives you penalties on reactive attacks. Or it could give you a bonus in other areas, such as you're slow but you have a bonus in slow, powerful attacks.

Quick: Good reflexes, this could be something like, gives you a bonus to reactive attacks, and a penalty to normal attacks, or just to slow powerful type attacks.

Muscular: Bonus to power based (formerly strength based, for these purposes) attacks. Maybe penalties the more you upgrade muscular, as you grow bigger.

Sinewy: Maybe some sort of damage reduction, or upgraded Pain threshold.

Flexible: upgraded dodge dice for melee defense attacks. upgraded acrobatic actions Acrobatic for acrobatic movements.

Stiff: Downgraded dice for reactive actions, and acrobatics actions. Maybe a bonus vs being moved, like bull-rushed, or any actions that would move the character.

Etc, etc, and in better categories probably, as certain things negate certain other things.

These seem good, but more like one-time merits/flaws you buy when you start. I'm not really sure how you could blend these together. Can you take the same trait more than once? How would stacking work? If not, why must I diversify to improve?

3 or 4 dice, or however many we feel is a good amount of variability but not too much, and every action is grouped with certain characteristic, rather than a stat, which determines the size of the dice you roll, range from 6-12 still of course, for the different characteristic upgrades you could buy.

I would say at least 4, max 8. We could have it all come from stats, not sure of the best thing here yet.

What this does, is, rather than generalize your stats, it specifies your characteristics, which would lead to actions being bundled, so rather than an attack being a melange of your stat and your skill, you're characteristics would simply determine the dice size, and interact some way with the dice, whether it be adding bonus' to all the rolls, giving a certain number that you can apply to any die you roll, or, as I put in the above example, a new idea, where adrenaline functions as a way to offer autosuccesses on certain actions, which I like the simplicity of, but if it's not enough variance, we can basically work adrenaline whatever way we find that gives us the amount of variance we want.

I'm still a little confused on how your characteristics would affect the roll. I mean ignoring the details, how many could to apply to an attack? Seems like it would be hard to balance and weave together. Trying to go from a bunch of words to a dice pool is much more complicated than just knowing the dice pool number. I'm still interested to hear more about this idea, but it has "popped" in my mind as viable yet. Can you maybe give an example character and action building?

Something I had been thinking of also, is die number, you're right that if we roll a large number of dice one success being a success is too easy, but I'd like to find the right die number which would be okay with having one success equalling one success. The reason for this being that pairing down to what is essential I think should be the goal, also it's a sort of weird mechanic when you have to wait for 2 successes to actually have a success, it seems sort of like forcing it, but I don't know if having 3 or 4 dice is enough variance. I'd like to propose that it is, especially depending on how we treat adrenaline.

I'm sure there are other solutions, but whatever it is I'd like our dice rolling system to be set up so that 1 success does equal a success. It may be a minor success, if we wanted to have a few different levels of success, it I don't think it should be nothing.

I agree with the way we've phrased things now it doesn't really make sense to have to wait for 2 successes. I'm worried about reducing the size of the pool, though. Obviously it would be nice if 1 success meant the action succeeded in some capacity, but especially if there are modifierse/adrenaline that can add to the dice getting one is very easy. The problem here is terminology. We call them "successes" despite the fact that "success" is a binary concept, it's either a success or a failure. We can easily come up with an original word for the concept, one that let's an arbitrary number of them make sense.

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