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Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



I'm trying to design a fantasy game right now. The original plan was "simple math, simple rules, reskinnable, grid combat, 4e-lite". I'll go into much more detail later this week.

IceBox posted:

I am trying to come up with names for attributes/ability scores that do not provide players with an excuse to roleplay their characters in a certain way. For example, a character with a low intelligence being played as stupid. I want the names to reflect a character's power, finesse, and resilience in the categories of mental, physical, and social (9 total).

My original idea with that sort of thing was to separate "attributes" into classlike roles, such as Defend, Lead, Heal, Strike, etc with each one corresponding to something you do rather than something you are. 9 might be way too many though.

That didn't work for me, so I tried fewer scores with broader implications (pick one of Defend, Lead, Control corresponding roughly to Physical, Social, Mental and one of Martial, Divine, Arcane, corresponding again roughly to Physical, Social, Mental, everyone does damage and...). I'm still thinking about that system, it might eventually turn into something, but it didn't correspond with my "simple" goal.

Right now, I've thrown out ability scores because gently caress ability scores and the baggage that comes with them. They just don't seem to work with my goal of "simple". so what I have is four "trees" of abilites, Might, Cunning, Arcane, and Leadership. you get a primary and secondary tree, but are not forced to take more than one starter ability from your secondary tree (I think most people will want to take more than that).

Your trees become your "abilities" in that you are Excellent or Really Good at your primary and Good to OK at your secondary depending on what you pick. You are Not Very Good at the other two. They also become your "class", but what you call yourself depends on how you choose to portray (skin) your character.

For example, Might/Cunning might be a Barbarian or a Ranger or even a mercenary. Cunning/Might could also be apply to those guys or be a thuggish rogue type. Might/Arcane might be a shapeshifting Druid type of dude, or a tribal shaman who is primarily a warrior who's pleased the spirits, or a Paladin who has some holy help. Cunning/Arcane could be a sneaky thief with a few magic tricks or an sniper who enchants his arrows and conceals himself with illusions. Arcane/cunning could be either of those guys with more of a magical bent, or could be an archetypal Gnome Illusionist.

I can't figure out why you'd actually want traditional ability scores in your game unless you were emulating D&D or going for an overly simulationist game.

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GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

IceBox posted:

I am in the early designing stages for an RPG and I would love some advice.

I am trying to come up with names for attributes/ability scores that do not provide players with an excuse to roleplay their characters in a certain way. For example, a character with a low intelligence being played as stupid. I want the names to reflect a character's power, finesse, and resilience in the categories of mental, physical, and social (9 total).

I realize that at my current point in development this is about the last things I should be concerning over, but it has been bothering me for long enough that I would love some input.

That sounds counterintuitive. I could see it working if you had, say, Power, Finesse and Resilience as your three stats and left it up to people to fluff it however they want. But how is a character with low social stats supposed to represent anything other than someone with no influence or savvy?

Doc Hawkins
Jun 15, 2010

Dashing? But I'm not even moving!


Doc Hawkins posted:

I'm sorry, maybe I'm misunderstanding this: you want stats that do not correspond to the character's fictional attributes?

Okay, I've gotten over my shock. Here are two possible methods I've seen in various games.

1) Decide on what fields of conflict the game will include. "Big Superhero Fights," "Courts of Law," "Alchemic Laboratories," whatever. Tell players to assign a number to each. Tell them that when they succeed, things went their character's way, and if not, not, and that's the only restriction on narration. If they have a low Courts of Law stat, maybe they're an amazing lawyer, but they have powerful enemies, or the system is just broken (cf. To Kill a Mockingbird). If they have high Alchemic Laboratories, maybe they're an untutored kid whose random admixtures of common household items create incredible effects (cf. Georgie's Marvellous Medicine).

2) Make success dependent on the expenditure of points, rather than a weighted randomizer. Call the points "Effort" or "Energy" or "Money" or something value-neutral. For added effect, give everyone the same amount, and/or refresh everyone's pool at the same rate.

But also I have to say, yeah, if you want people to be able to make characters without being given direction on wether they should make someone 'weak' or 'smart,' then DTAS, play Solar System.

piL
Sep 20, 2007
(__|\\\\)
Taco Defender
Re: IceBox

One thing I've toyed with is semi-traditional stats, but then a descriptor that defines in what way. Adapting that concept to IceBox's quandary gives this possible solution:

A 3x3 table with spaces for both words and numbers. The columns are labeled with symbols basically meaning the three things that are being described. So for example: Power/Finesse/Resilience, or Swords/Cloaks/Shields or Clubs/Spades/Diamonds or Fire/Water/Stone, or Impose/Affect/Resist

The rows are labeled: Physical/Mental/Social or Things/Thoughts/People or Swords/Staves/Discs or what have you.

Then each entry in the table also gets a descriptor. Maybe you can get two descriptors for something if you want, I don't know. So an attribute spread could look like this:



code:
               Impose        Affect     Resist

Physical     Strong 8        Slow 2      Fat 5


Mental       Slow 4         Lucky 8      Willful 8


Social      Trustworthy 8  Oblivious 3  Trusting 2



Or

code:
             Impose          Affect          Resist

Physical    Quick 6         Agile 6         Sickly 3


Mental     Rigid 4       Quick-thinking 7    Lazy 3


Social   Attractive 5      Planning 5       Aloof 5

With certain uses your descriptor provides a bonus or a penalty, depending on the situation. So for example in most situation the first character wants to do something physical, he inserts an 8 into his black-box-randomizer, and the second character puts a 6 in there. If the task was fighting somebody, they'd probably go about it in their descriptor's manner. The first guy would use solid strong swings. The second guy is more the roguish get-in-cause-damage-get out. If the task was alpine climbing, the first guy would use his strength to move his bulk while the second guy would go at the same task by quickly shift his weight around and find new handholds. But if the task was to break down a door, the first guy would get a bonus to doing it, because that's a pretty strength dependant task. Then again, if the task was to win a sprinting race, 'quick' is the obvious bonus winner.

In fact, you could, in certain circumstances, just compare descriptors. So even though character 1 has an 8 and character 2 has a 6, character 2 should always win a straight out sprint with no complications. Character 1 should always win an armwrestle between the two.

Other ways to play with this:

You don't have to have high numbers described only by good qualities and low numbers described by poor ones. So you could have Strong 2 vs Quick 7 for example. Quick 7 beats Strong 2 at a race. Strong 2 beats Quick 7 in an armwrestle still. Quick 7 will probably cause more damage in a fight than Strong 2, because even though Strong 2 is stronger, he is less able to impress his will upon the physical world. This is possibly a character limitation or a story-telling one. Strong 2 isn't as good at using his bulk as Strong 7, but is still just as strong. But maybe Strong 7's story is more about him using his muscle than Strong 2's story.

An action point/story point/complications/whatever system can let people bend these rules. So Quick 7 might be allowed a black-box-randomizer contets verses Strong 5 in an armwrestle if Quick 7 spends a point. That point doesn't mean he wins, it just means he gets a chance to out-strong the strong. If the first character picked Strong 10, Quick 7 will probably still lose; and rightfully so as Strong 10's story is clearly about being strong.

Perhaps you have 3 positive descriptors, 3 negative descriptors, and 3 neutral descriptors. Or perhaps all descriptors are positive. Or there's a point system, and you can focus your points, such that there's Strong, but there's also, "Very Strong" and "Super Strong". "Super Strong" beats "Very Strong" in an arm-wrestle every time, but it doesn't mean anything in the aforementioned foot race.

Also perhaps each stat has two descriptors instead of one, with one positive but one negative. "Fast and Weak" "Strong and Uncoordinated" "Attractive and Shy" "Clever and Unconfident", each one showing what will cause an action involving that stat to succeed or fail when it does.


With this system, a low Mental-Impress might fail to figure out the solution to a problem because he's stupid. But another low Mental-Impress might fail because he's too afraid of failure to actually tell anyone about the solution he came up with. Or perhaps even though the character is actually quite well-read and intelligent, he could fail because he doesn't think outside of the box.

Edit: another aspect to inject in the system. With the aforementioned point system, a player could spend points to make his quality apply to a situation, even if it's not a contest. So for example, normally Quick 5 wouldn't get any bonus over Strong 5, but spending a point makes the GM go back and emphasize how the handholds on the cliff face are smaller and spaced out, making it easier for somebody using the Quick-style of climbing as opposed to brute strength.



TLDR: Here's a system that your question made me think of, but if you're just looking for names, look towards setting words, fortune-telling (playing/tarot card) symbology, or simply don't give individual names for each and use a table like system (Physical-Impress, Social-Affect, Mental-Resist etc)

piL fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Aug 15, 2012

Queen Fiona
Jan 8, 2008

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

IceBox posted:

I am in the early designing stages for an RPG and I would love some advice.

I am trying to come up with names for attributes/ability scores that do not provide players with an excuse to roleplay their characters in a certain way. For example, a character with a low intelligence being played as stupid. I want the names to reflect a character's power, finesse, and resilience in the categories of mental, physical, and social (9 total).

I realize that at my current point in development this is about the last things I should be concerning over, but it has been bothering me for long enough that I would love some input.

This just strikes me as a terrible idea, and the other replies to this post don't convince me otherwise. If you don't want a character's overall roleplay style in intelligence and physical power to be defined by ability scores based on their capabilities, then don't use ability scores at all! Even this method of trying to find these categories which somehow don't connect with the properties of the character seems like a doomed approach, because as people here have pointed out, you're eventually going to run out of things that players can't use to define their characters...especially with nine categories.

Even if you do somehow find categories that are totally unconnected with the character's properties, remember that players aren't used to this. They can, and will, misinterpret their ability scores as defining their character physically or mentally. In fact, the mere presence of ability scores will have players who insist this be the case, for reasons of 'versimilitude'.

The best solution, of course, is to scrap this entirely and have stats which are directly connected to attack capability and skill. That way, it just says Sword 7 or whatever, and your player can decide whether he's a stupid brawler with big muscles or a quick stabby dude or an intelligent fighter using special techniques...without any preconceptions whatsoever! It avoids the 'versimilitude' argument too, even if only because often people who make that argument don't play games like that. (And frankly, they're better for it.)

Death to ability scores!

angry_keebler
Jul 16, 2006

In His presence the mountains quake and the hills melt away; the earth trembles and its people are destroyed. Who can stand before His fierce anger?

IceBox posted:

I am trying to come up with names for attributes/ability scores that do not provide players with an excuse to roleplay their characters in a certain way. For example, a character with a low intelligence being played as stupid. I want the names to reflect a character's power, finesse, and resilience in the categories of mental, physical, and social (9 total).

Nine stats seems like a lot of stats, especially if you need some more stats on top of them like HP, Movement, Luck/Karma/Fate, Attack/Defense scores, or whatever else the system needs.

How many stats is the character supposed to have be better than average, average, and worse than average?

Also, it seems like you'll end up with two potentially redundant attack stats and one defense stat.

For physical, you'd have, whatever you names end up being, Strength, Agility, and Constitution. Those three are probably fine; Str makes you hit harder, Agi makes you do acrobatics better and maybe hit more frequently, and Con lets you get hit more.

Mental stats are a bit more strained. You could have Intelligence, Cleverness, and Wisdom. Int, makes you smarter and you know more stuff, Clvr does ???, and Wis lets you block psychic attacks? How do you mechanically distinguish between a guy with high Int and low clever vs low Int high clever? Does the finess stat just make spells or w/e hit more often?

Social stats seem the weirdest to me. You have Charisma, Seductiveness, and Social Resolve. Charisma makes people like and agree with you, but so does Seductiveness, and social resolve needs to defend against both. But what's the difference between a charismatic dude and a seductive dude? A guy with high charisma is good at telling people what to do, but if he has a low finess stat do people just ignore him? Do the roll against their Social resolve to resist his overtures?

What about Klagdor the Orc-Wise, a fantasy hitler. He's this bad mother that is really charismatic so he whips his nation into a frenzy and unleashes them against his enemies. He's got high Cha, he's good at public speaking, and a good Sed, he tells the audience exactly what it wants to hear. But he's got a low Soc.R. Can the elves occupying the orc fatherland's liebensraum just tell Klagdor to knock it off? And if they do, does their social attack need to overcome both Klagdor's Soc.R and his mental resist?

It seems, for a start, that you could collapse the mental and social power and finess stats into two stats instead of four stats, and maybe add some sort of defining keyword trait system. So you'd have INT but every character chooses between being brilliant(knows lots of stuff) clever(comes up with out there ideas) normal(no special effects or penalties) or dull (not very smart).

TLDR;

Withou knowing a lot more about how different stats interact it's pretty hard to know what they should be called or even if you need all 9 of them.

angry_keebler fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Aug 15, 2012

Gerund
Sep 12, 2007

He push a man


angry_keebler posted:

Mental stats are a bit more strained. You could have Intelligence, Cleverness, and Wisdom. Int, makes you smarter and you know more stuff, Clvr does ???, and Wis lets you block psychic attacks? How do you mechanically distinguish between a guy with high Int and low clever vs low Int high clever? Does the finess stat just make spells or w/e hit more often?

And why have a "knows more stuff" stat when you'll still have a group of skills to specify what that character knows (sailing, wilderness, knives), and how well she would know it (+2 +5 etc)? You're just creating a confusing element in front of what your players should actually care about.

A lot of other good stuff has been said but I needed to point out the inane "Int makes more skills, use Int for skills" double-dip.

angry_keebler
Jul 16, 2006

In His presence the mountains quake and the hills melt away; the earth trembles and its people are destroyed. Who can stand before His fierce anger?

Gerund posted:

And why have a "knows more stuff" stat when you'll still have a group of skills to specify what that character knows (sailing, wilderness, knives), and how well she would know it (+2 +5 etc)? You're just creating a confusing element in front of what your players should actually care about.

A lot of other good stuff has been said but I needed to point out the inane "Int makes more skills, use Int for skills" double-dip.

This is a good point. A game with ability scores should use different stats for different skills, so a strong guy can have just as many skills as the smart guy. Making intelligence the arbiter of skills and skill points is irritating, and serves only to cement that the high Int guy is a super skilled genius and low Int guy can't do anything because he's too busy playing with his toes and drooling.

angry_keebler fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Aug 16, 2012

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Having played with the Dresden Files books for awhile now as a player...

... the length is not the issue, though it is fairly padded. The magic section, for example, could probably be edited down quite a bit to the essentials. It tends to meander a lot. For example, I play a mage that specializes in travel magic; I remain consistently amused that most of the section is dedicated to telling me why 80% of my specialty is impractical or unusable. :raise: Why's it in the game again, then? Anyway, to wit:
  • The game starts which the city-building section. I understand what they were aiming for; they want to involve players in the process. But it's a section you will only use once or several times during the course of a long campaign. It does not need to be at your fingertips. What's more, doing city design without having the setting established is fumbling about in the dark. Also, this means City Design and Scenario design are on opposite ends of the book, when they should be married and having children.
  • Stunts and skills are in different sections, even though stunts often need you to reference back to the skill rules, requiring you to flip back and forth.
  • Supernatural types and supernatural powers are entirely different sections, even though you often need to cross-reference the two. They're six chapters apart, even. And that's not counting when you have to bounce over to the magic section for complete descriptions of even short abilities like Wizard Longevity.
  • The magic rules don't have clear headers and often blur between setting information and rules, so looking up a rule often requires you to dig though paragraphs and paragraphs of expository text to get a clear answer. Of course, that's true of a lot of the sections in the book - when it isn't digressing constantly into its IC-chatter. I like the in-world chatter, but it's distracting in places it really shouldn't be.
It's not the worst book - it's not as bad as Mouse Guard was to try and parse mid-session - but I'm bewildered as it used as an example of how to present FATE. I can only wonder how much worse other books must do it, because Dresden Files is a bloated headache as far as being a user manual goes.

The problem with big RPG books is - the bigger they are, the better they need to be organized. Small RPGs can get away with dodgy organization, but if you're at 400 pages, you need to ironically minimize page-turning. Concentrate necessary rules information where it needs to be cross-referenced, and then let the world information sprawl out in its own section.

Something like Crafty's recent Mistborn is a much better example at how to lay out a similar style of game (fantasy novel series to RPG). It focuses information much more tightly where you need it, and puts it in a very logical order. The choice to lay it out like a novel hardback is debatable, but I find it much harder to argue the order of topics and time spent on them.

sighnoceros
Mar 11, 2007
:qq: GOONS ARE MEAN :qq:
Whoa what, a Mistborn RPG? Details!

Queen Fiona
Jan 8, 2008

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

sighnoceros posted:

Whoa what, a Mistborn RPG? Details!

I'm supposed to be playing it Monday, I'll try and report in. My friend picked it up and said, with amazement, 'They did the math.' So I have high hopes for it.

IceBox
Aug 15, 2002
Thanks for the input. I definitely have some things to think about.

To explain the system a bit further, a player needs to make some sort of skill check to determine the outcome of a proposed action. That player would describe the action and work together with the GM to select the appropriate skill-attribute pairing for the check. The player would then roll dice, the number of which are determined by the character's ranks in the attribute and the quality (number of sides) of which are determined by the character's ranks in the skill.

I am hoping for something where players have the agency to work with the GM in a way to creatively pair attributes and skills for creative interactions. I want to avoid names like "intelligence" for mental power to help try and break some of stereotypical bonds between things like intelligence and history. Maybe a player says that the character has a high level of social finesse and as a result has been very observant of the people and surroundings and can glean some historical information from the region in that way, rather than having read it in a book or studied it in school.

This is still in a really rough state, and I really appreciate the feedback I am getting, so the more the merrier.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



I need some math help. I have the idea of making "attack rolls" on 2d6, and building character power by increasing the number of d6 rolled every few levels.

I'm sure there's a formula that would show me the % chance for each possible value of xd6. Can someone tell me what it is? I'm not good at math (I was in fact terrible at math in high school) but I'm improving.

So you have some context and can provide feedback on my terrible idea:

You roll xd6, based on your level. There are no attack bonuses or penalties, but there is a Defense Number involved. Roll Attack Dice (xd6), subtract defense number, and get your Combat Score.

<2: Miss

3-6: Damage or effect.

7-11: Damage and effect.

>12: Damage and effect, extra bennie (I'm not explaining the whole system right now, but this bennie lets you do extra/better actions sooner).

Pairs and triples of odds or evens do an extra thing (thus you're more likely to do an extra thing as you level up and get more Attack Dice)

I'm only going up to 7d6, so I need percentage chances for each value of 2d6, 3d6, 4d6, 5d6, 6d6, and 7d6. Can someone help me please? I'm perfectly capable of plugging a formula into excel and interpreting the result, but I need to know what the formula is so I can work out the Defense Scores for weak/tough monsters at each level.

The idea here is that I can scale monster defenses with the expected attack values of the PCs, with the goal of 7-11 occurring about half the time. You don't get +1 to hit, +2 to hit, but you do have some abilities with the potential to temporarily lower a Defense Score. Likewise, you don't give monsters -1 or -2 to hit, but you raise their target's Defense Score.

I don't know if Defense Score, Atack Dice, etc are the final terms. Probably not, because I'm thinking about a way to simplify the way actions/effects are expressed.

IceBox posted:

I want to avoid names like "intelligence" for mental power to help try and break some of stereotypical bonds between things like intelligence and history.

How about separating Intelligence into Intuition and Education or something like that? You were already talking about 3 mental stats, right?

Zandar
Aug 22, 2008
Dice probabilities. The simplest method to implement would probably be the combinatoric one at the bottom. That said, it'd be much easier to just use https://anydice.com with "output 2d6", etc.

Giving it a brief look, I can see that the extremes will become more probable as you increase the number of dice; in fact, if you want to keep the 7-11 range a constant probability (it would have to be about 40%), the chance of getting 12+ will shift dramatically as your Attack Dice increase (from 0% at 2d6/1 Def to 25% at 7d6/16 Def). There's no getting around that while keeping static ranges for results; it's just a consequence of more dice giving a larger range.

Goon Danton
May 24, 2012

Don't forget to show my shitposts to the people. They're well worth seeing.

I'm not sure of a general plug and chug formula for xd6, but if you have excel I can give you a method.

Make a chart with 1-whatever d6 as the rows, and result numbers 1-(whatever*6) as the columns. For the 1d6 row, put a 1 in each cell from 1-6, since each can be rolled one time. For rows higher than that, each cell is the sum of anything in the previous row that could give you that result if you added another d6. So for 2d6, result of 8, it would be the sum of 1d6, result of 2 through 7. You can copy-paste the cells from 2d6 once you want to expand to more dice.

All that will give you is the number of ways to get that result on that number of d6. To get the probabilities, make a second chart, and have each new value be (old value)/(sum of the whole row).

Not sure if that makes any sense, since I haven't had my coffee and I'm fighting the autocorrect on my phone, but it will get you the full distribution for as many dice as you need if I explained it right.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Thanks guys. I used anydice and just copied the results for each range into excel.

I might need to rethink this, looking at the figures. Or maybe rethink the effect ranges instead. I guess it's all about how swingy I want it to be.

Edit:

What do you guys think about a to-hit system based on a static number per level, opposed to a static defense number based on the monster's general dangerousness. The difference modifies a straight up 2d6 roll with the above table of results. Damage is also static but goes up/down a little if you roll a pair of evens/odds.

Or roll the damage into the results, so the table looks more like

<2 Miss
3-6 low damage or effect
6-9 low damage and effect.
10-11 high damage and effect.
>12 high damage and effect and bennie.

Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Aug 16, 2012

LuiCypher
Apr 24, 2010

Today I'm... amped up!

angry_keebler posted:

This is a good point. A game with ability scores should use different stats for different skills, so a strong guy can have just as many skills as the smart guy. Making intelligence the arbiter of skills and skill points is irritating, and serves only to cement that the high Int guy is a super skilled genius and low Int guy can't do anything because he's too busy playing with his toes and drooling.

I agree with this statement, as well as the earlier statement about paring down the number of abilities. Where a lot of systems (D&D included) start to fall flat is when they try to make different attributes that are really the same attribute. D&D's problem is the Intelligence/Wisdom divide and the Wisdom/Charisma divide - ultimately, I think Wisdom really is the superfluous stat that needs to be merged into the other two. When you have multiple stats to represent the same thing, it causes the system to bog down under the weight of unintuitive complexity.

Personally, I'm all for ability scores so long as they directly inform skills, which then affect the basic mechanics of the game i.e. attacking and interacting. A possible solution to the situation is to have Strength grant an equal number of skills points as say, Intelligence, but have it so that you can only spend them on certain skills - Strength points for Strength skills, Intelligence points for Intelligence skills. A strong person can be just as skilled at what he does as a smart person, it's just that their specializations are in different realms. Having one stat be the be-all-end-all for skills will lead to situations like Call of Cthulhu, where Education clearly outweighs everything else when it comes to your basic skillset.

Just as a random suggestion for anyone, an idea I pitched earlier in the D&D Next discussion thread pertains to how ability scores affect classes - or rather, how they should be built in such a way that no statistic becomes your "dump" stat and all classes are viable regardless of statistics.

The next logical step is to, of course, remove the ability scores entirely and just play what you want to play. But if people want ability scores as a concrete expression of an abstract value...

Example - Fighter:
Strength fuels the damage of his abilities.
Dexterity fuels the fighter's ability to hit consistently and evade damage.
Constitution fuels his ability to take hits.
Intelligence enables the fighter to use superior tactics, which can help him better position himself and his allies (in game effect - free shifts) as well as provide offensive bonuses by helping you to crit harder and faster (you figure out weak points in an enemy's body/stance and you aim for those).
Charisma enables the fighter to more effectively lead from the front and attract attention, providing leadership bonuses to allies (+ to damage) and making him "stickier" (gosh darn it, people like to hit you instead of the wizard).

It's not a complete idea, nor is it balanced - but the idea is to provide incentives to have high scores in everything and provide a basis for consequence if you have a low score in something. You can just as easily get rid of the ability score as a measure of value by simply telling players at creation "Pick a class. Pick two abilities to specialize in - you're considered "good" in those. Pick one that you're weak in - you're considered "bad". The rest are all merely average."

And now after saying this, I'm starting to realize that ability scores can sometimes be rather silly.

angry_keebler
Jul 16, 2006

In His presence the mountains quake and the hills melt away; the earth trembles and its people are destroyed. Who can stand before His fierce anger?

LuiCypher posted:

And now after saying this, I'm starting to realize that ability scores can sometimes be rather silly.

The problem is that ability scores are, at best, redundant in a class and level based system. Usually, and for DnD specifically, there's only one right build for each class. A fighter needs Con, Wis, ane Str || Dex. Why not just make each fighter start with the appropriate stats, to prevent new players from screwing themselves. And if each fighter starts out with the same stats, why not just get rid of the stats?

If you want a class that plays radically different when it has a different stat build, consider splitting it into two (or more I guess) different classes. If high Dex fighter plays way different than high Str fighter, call one the mercenary (he skulks around with a bow and has knife fighting tricks) and the other the soldier (sword and board or spear with and shield fighty man with movement denial tricks) and then you can bake unique playstyles right into the system.

angry_keebler fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Aug 16, 2012

Queen Fiona
Jan 8, 2008

Of all evil I deem you capable: therefore I want the good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws.

angry_keebler posted:

The problem is that ability scores are, at best, redundant in a class and level based system. Usually, and for DnD specifically, there's only one right build for each class. A fighter needs Con, Wis, ane Str || Dex. Why not just make each fighter start with the approprate stats, to prevent new players from screwing themselves. And if each fighter starts out with the same stats, why not just get rid of the stats?

If you want a class that plays radically different when it has a different stat build, consider splitting it into two (or more I guess) different classes. If high Dex fighter plays way different than high Str fighter, call one the mercenary (he skulks around with a bow and has knife fighting tricks) and the other the soldier (sword and board or spear with and shield fighty man with movent denial tricks) and then you can bake unique playstyles right into the system.

Coincidentally, a non-ability score based system avoids two problems! The first is randomly rolled ability scores, which grant unfair advantages or disadvantages to characters by default, even in the best case.

The second is a bit more complicated, but there are people out there who absolutely hate the idea that they have to optimize to be effective. And classes which explicitly require a specific array or a selection of two or three really bug these people. (Why it doesn't bug them when it's randomly rolled, I have no idea.) Even in less extreme cases, you find people raising non-optimal stats with no practical use, often for 'roleplaying reasons'. This might be because they don't want to be dumb/weak/ugly, because they don't know what the optimal array is, or because of experience with other systems that confuses them.

Ability scores heavily obfuscate and confuse how the game is played versus how roleplaying works, conflating the two heavily. This is the very definition of a bad thing, especially for new players, and though it works out better in systems where ability scores are better designed or less vital to every bit of task resolution, I prefer to leave that can of worms where it belongs...in the trash.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!
Personally, whether or not you use ability scores depends on the game. These days I'm fond of "tradeoff" ability scores where you're giving up competency in one area for competency in another. An example is Mutants & Masterminds' attack and defense scores. That way, everybody gets even combat attributes and those that really need to be stronger or faster can do that. (Of course, M&M has issues in certain options being more powerful than others in that regard, but it's a decent start.)

There are also attributes that are oft-problematic. Where do you divide the line between talent and skill with things like dexterity and charisma? Both are hardly inborn traits, though talent plays a factor.

Ultimately the "old school" is that talent is a far greater factor than experience or practice. You can't be a Paladin unless you're pretty much born for it; at least, in most versions of D&D and its derivatives, you basically cannot train to be a holy knight. Barring things like high-level magic to adjust attributes, holy knights are born, not raised, not trained, on account of the high CHA requirement (amongst others). There's not a practical means for a wizard to pump iron and train their muscles (and raise their STR) in order to train as a fighter.

The benefit and drawback with the conventional attribute system is that it locks characters into their specialties. I think you could do some interesting fantasy world stuff with this - having it be the basis of a highly regimented society could lead to some interesting elements with castes based on attribute, if talent is such an overriding factor.

Ultimately, though, I'm preferring seeing attributes have a smaller and smaller role, and skills taking up their slack in systems like FATE. I think a lot of them could just be replaced with a perk or feat system, where if you want to be really strong, take the feat that increases your carrying capacity, or if you want to be really fast, take the feat that increases your movement speed.

I find it much cleaner to try and design on an exception-based basis by just saying a character is "Strong" or "Very Strong"; a Strength of 8-13 is effectively inconsequential most of the time anyway. The granularity to a system like AD&D can be useful if things like waxing and waning attributes can be important (like if attributes adjust with the moon phase, for example, or a game with poisonous environs where characters slowly degrade), but for the most part it tends to be background noise.

angry_keebler
Jul 16, 2006

In His presence the mountains quake and the hills melt away; the earth trembles and its people are destroyed. Who can stand before His fierce anger?

AlphaDog posted:

What do you guys think about a to-hit system based on a static number per level, opposed to a static defense number based on the monster's general dangerousness. The difference modifies a straight up 2d6 roll with the above table of results. Damage is also static but goes up/down a little if you roll a pair of evens/odds.

Or roll the damage into the results, so the table looks more like

<2 Miss
3-6 low damage or effect
6-9 low damage and effect.
10-11 high damage and effect.
>12 high damage and effect and bennie.

Rolling 2d6 against a semi-static scale sounds a lot more managable than rolling up to 7d6 against a sliding scale.I think using a table like the one above is fine, but I'd still let the players roll damage so I'd make the table:

<3 Miss
3-6 Half rolled damage or 1 status effect
7-9 Rolled damage OR half rolled damage and 1 status effect
10 & 11 Rolled damage and 1 status effect
12 Maximum damage and 1 status effect OR rolled damage and 2 status effects.


If you're not going with a hit table, you could just have a static chace to hit an equal level opponent, and add a bonus to hit weaker opponents and a penalty to hit stronger opponents. A level 5 guy hits a level 5 opponent on a roll of 6 or better, but hits a level 3 opponent on a 4 or better and a level 6 on a 7 or better. This allows you to make henchmen/minions a few levels lower than a boss monster so there's an added mechanical benefit to targeting the weak guys first.

Or, say, if you're 2 or more levels higher than your opponent, add an extra d6 against a static target number, but 3 or more levels below you lose a d6. Add in some sort of expendable bonus dice mechanic (daily/encounter powers that provide a flat bonus or extra d6s or a fate/luck point that can be burned for extra dice or damage) to prevent situations where the party needs to roll a 6 on 1d6 to have any chance of beating a megafucker.

mllaneza
Apr 28, 2007

Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952




angry_keebler posted:

Rolling 2d6 against a semi-static scale sounds a lot more managable than rolling up to 7d6 against a sliding scale.I think using a table like the one above is fine, but I'd still let the players roll damage so I'd make the table:

<3 Miss
3-6 Half rolled damage or 1 status effect
7-9 Rolled damage OR half rolled damage and 1 status effect
10 & 11 Rolled damage and 1 status effect
12 Maximum damage and 1 status effect OR rolled damage and 2 status effects.

You just reinvented Dungeon World. DW has one basic stat build (with rolling as an option). Whenever you roll dice you always just use the modifier for the appropriate stat. The 3-18 stat range in DW is a layer of D&D verisimilitude over Apocalypse World, which just uses the modifier as the actual stat, so they end up in about a -2 to +2 range for starting characters. Both game let you increase your stats with experience, in DW you change the score which might change the bonus, and in AW you just add to the stat directly.

Then there's the variable level of success. In DW you roll 2d6 and add the stat modifier. Here's the Move for shooting people:

quote:

Volley
When you take aim and shoot at an enemy at range, roll+Dex. On a 10+ you have a clear shot—deal your damage. On a 7–9, choose one (whichever you choose you deal your damage):
• You have to move to get the shot placing you in danger of the GM's choice
• You have to take what you can get: -1d6 damage
• You have to take several shots, reducing your ammo by one.

That might be too narrativist for some people, but in play it works out very well. 2d6 has a nice bell curve; all the Moves follow the same 6-, 7-9, 10+ pattern so it's easy to remember; making choices and giving the DM an opening to mess with you makes for a fun, engaging game. AW has some moves than can be advanced to have a 12+ entry with experience.

Apocalypse World is deeply hackable for different settings. The basic system is very clean and deeply elegant, but a lot of people never took a look at it because of the vague post apocalyptic setting (myself included). Then they made Dungeon World, which is AW with levels and 3-18 attributes, and caught a lot of attention and had a successful Kickstarter.

Elector_Nerdlingen
Sep 27, 2004



Oh bugger, I figured someone would have done something similar. Oh well, doesn't matter, I think the rest of the game is different enough that it won't mattter.

I'll type up a big post on the combat and skill system as soon as I have full use of my left hand back. Typing with some fingers taped together is a huge pain in the arse.

The basis is still the 2d6 + attack number - defense number. "Boss Monsters" will modify their defense upward by 1d6 each round instead of just having more hp. Certain abilities will temporarily reduce the target's Defense or increase your Attack, never stacking, since a 2 point total difference on that table is pretty big. Pairs of odds will be bad, pairs of evens will be good, probably with odds giving less damage and evens healing you a bit, since there are not really hit points in the game (well there are, but they don't represent injuries, are called something else, and are usable as more than a measure of being close to KO'd).

GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

There's something to be said about making a distinction between Intelligence and Wisdom, in that at the very least the archetypes they represent are different. Strength and Constitution, on the other hand, should have never been separate stats because pretty much every fantasy character who is strong is also tough, and viceversa.

Ability Scores in general are pretty terrible conceptually, not just in how they are implemented. If you are going to make a hack of D&D at least change those.

lodoubt
Apr 9, 2012

by Y Kant Ozma Post

sighnoceros posted:

Whoa what, a Mistborn RPG? Details!

My friends and I have played it quite a few times now, all as one shots. Obviously this doesn't leave me in a good position to judge, but while it is great for oneshots and short campaigns, I get the feeling it wouldn't hold up so well in an extended campaign. I can't see people having as much fun after 10+ sessions with the same characters. The advancement possibilities are a little limited by eye, and coupled with its incredible favouring of specialisation, you have its primary failings, and ones I would possibly like to discuss here once more people have played.

OTHER than that, it's a really fun game. The above issues were relatively unobtrusive within the game and they only really come up when you sit back and think before and after each session. Kinda Dresden Filesey, even if it has almost no shared mechanics in the strictest sense. I love its chargen, though its laid out kind of irritatingly in the book.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

TK-31 posted:

There's something to be said about making a distinction between Intelligence and Wisdom, in that at the very least the archetypes they represent are different. Strength and Constitution, on the other hand, should have never been separate stats because pretty much every fantasy character who is strong is also tough, and viceversa.
I agree with Strength implies toughness, but not the vice-versa. Nigh-indestructable characters of average or above average strength aren't too uncommon.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Splicer posted:

I agree with Strength implies toughness, but not the vice-versa. Nigh-indestructable characters of average or above average strength aren't too uncommon.

The problem with "all Strong characters are also Tough, but not all Tough characters are also Strong" is that it privileges one attribute over another -- why put points into Tough if you can put them into Strong and get both? Some games solve this by having derived attributes or ones that get their starting points from other stats, but it's An Issue.

Doc Hawkins
Jun 15, 2010

Dashing? But I'm not even moving!


homullus posted:

The problem with "all Strong characters are also Tough, but not all Tough characters are also Strong" is that it privileges one attribute over another -- why put points into Tough if you can put them into Strong and get both? Some games solve this by having derived attributes or ones that get their starting points from other stats, but it's An Issue.

Or you could decide that in your game characters solve problems physically by being Tough, so an attribute for strength would be a distraction, or vice-versa.

Splicer
Oct 16, 2006

from hell's heart I cast at thee
🧙🐀🧹🌙🪄🐸

homullus posted:

The problem with "all Strong characters are also Tough, but not all Tough characters are also Strong" is that it privileges one attribute over another -- why put points into Tough if you can put them into Strong and get both?
I was saying that I saw an issue with using fantasy tropes to justify merging them, not that they should be half merged mechanically or something.

Splicer fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Aug 22, 2012

Scrape
Apr 10, 2007

i've been sharpening a knife in the bathroom.
I, for one, have always bated the Int/Wis separation as well as Str/Con. My ideal system would measure fitness, intellect, and charm as the only three defining stats, leaving the player to interpret their Fitness as either strong/tough or fast. Like seriously, can you really imagine a super strong guy who is not also tough? Or vice versa? I feel like only superpowers make that distinction.

Doc Hawkins
Jun 15, 2010

Dashing? But I'm not even moving!


Scrape posted:

I, for one, have always bated the Int/Wis separation as well as Str/Con. My ideal system would measure fitness, intellect, and charm as the only three defining stats, leaving the player to interpret their Fitness as either strong/tough or fast. Like seriously, can you really imagine a super strong guy who is not also tough? Or vice versa? I feel like only superpowers make that distinction.

A survey of All Fiction Ever will reveal a million super-tough guys who are not unusually strong. There's countless cases where the distinction would matter, but the only case you need to consider is your particular game: the people, struggles and situations that you want it to be about.

GimmickMan
Dec 27, 2011

Scrape posted:

I, for one, have always bated the Int/Wis separation as well as Str/Con. My ideal system would measure fitness, intellect, and charm as the only three defining stats, leaving the player to interpret their Fitness as either strong/tough or fast. Like seriously, can you really imagine a super strong guy who is not also tough? Or vice versa? I feel like only superpowers make that distinction.

It really is a question of how granular you want to make your game. A more cinematic approach sacrificing complexity for simplicity will see you doing away with divides for things until you get the barely necessary ones. My stuff tends to revolve around having those three (down to the names, except Charm is Empathy) with Perception or Willpower added in as the theme and mood of the game demands.

Mind you there is a lot to be gained from having more stats than the essentials, but there is a lot more to be lost in doing them wrong, and most of the time systems are made without the designers being aware of what kind of game they want to be running.

If you want the core of the gameplay experience to revolve around combat, as is the case for most systems out there, you may want to consider stats such as Dexterity or Reflexes to be kept separate from other physical ones simply to ensure that everyone who is a good fighter is mechanically different, and keep all the mental or social stuff to a few stats because you're not going to need them as much.

But if you want the Wizard to feel different to the Druid in the same way the Rogue feels different to the Fighter (beyond having a different class), then you want to keep the Int/Wis divide.

GimmickMan fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Aug 22, 2012

starkebn
May 18, 2004

"Oooh, got a little too serious. You okay there, little buddy?"

Scrape posted:

My ideal system would measure fitness, intellect, and charm as the only three defining stats

Brains, Brawn & Balls

Scrape
Apr 10, 2007

i've been sharpening a knife in the bathroom.

Doc Hawkins posted:

A survey of All Fiction Ever will reveal a million super-tough guys who are not unusually strong. There's countless cases where the distinction would matter, but the only case you need to consider is your particular game: the people, struggles and situations that you want it to be about.

If you think of toughness as just survival, maybe so. As far as my experience with fiction goes, the good guys often get tired and sick and slog through it. I think having separate HP mechanics emulates that well: the heroes survive but that's not a measure of their hardiness from a CON stat point of view. Someone who works out regularly is gonna be tough and strong, I don't see how you get one without the other but maybe that's just me.

I mean, yeah, there's different types of workout routine but I don't need that granularity.

Scrape fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Aug 23, 2012

PublicOpinion
Oct 21, 2010

Her style is new but the face is the same as it was so long ago...
I'm thinking of someone like John McClane from Die Hard, who is presumably a bit above average in strength but endures an insane amount of punishment. So your tough-but-not-strong hero would be the grizzled vet who yanks a quiver's worth of arrows out of their own personal torso without batting an eye but wouldn't be capable of suplexing an ogre.

Scrape
Apr 10, 2007

i've been sharpening a knife in the bathroom.
My biggest design question right now is how to implement Skills. I hate d20-style static bonuses with a large randomizer. I used to really love L5R's roll&keep system (dice pool, add your Stat plus your Skill, but only keep dice equal to your Stat, try to hit a target number), but nowadays I like simpler mechanics. L5R has too many Stats for me, I think.

I've been playing a lot of Dungeon World and Apocalypse World, which work amazingly without skills at all, but to be honest I miss the satisfaction of Improving My Sword Skill every couple sessions.

What are some good skill systems that are elegant, rather than realistic?

Scrape
Apr 10, 2007

i've been sharpening a knife in the bathroom.

PublicOpinion posted:

I'm thinking of someone like John McClane from Die Hard, who is presumably a bit above average in strength but endures an insane amount of punishment. So your tough-but-not-strong hero would be the grizzled vet who yanks a quiver's worth of arrows out of their own personal torso without batting an eye but wouldn't be capable of suplexing an ogre.

Yeah, I understand that but I think hit points often fill that role. In a lot of games, two characters with the same "Con" score will have different HP totals. So which one actually measures "toughness?"

Fenarisk
Oct 27, 2005

Scrape posted:

My biggest design question right now is how to implement Skills. I hate d20-style static bonuses with a large randomizer. I used to really love L5R's roll&keep system (dice pool, add your Stat plus your Skill, but only keep dice equal to your Stat, try to hit a target number), but nowadays I like simpler mechanics. L5R has too many Stats for me, I think.

I've been playing a lot of Dungeon World and Apocalypse World, which work amazingly without skills at all, but to be honest I miss the satisfaction of Improving My Sword Skill every couple sessions.

What are some good skill systems that are elegant, rather than realistic?

This probably gets done to death but FATE and fudge dice in general are nice. You roll 4dF and just add/subtract your +'s and -'s and add that/subtract that from your skill total.

There are no stats, everything just runs of skills (plus some aspects).

PublicOpinion
Oct 21, 2010

Her style is new but the face is the same as it was so long ago...

Scrape posted:

Yeah, I understand that but I think hit points often fill that role. In a lot of games, two characters with the same "Con" score will have different HP totals. So which one actually measures "toughness?"

I guess that just depends on how you have the system set up. I was sort of thinking of Savage Worlds, everyone has 3 wounds (barring Edges) but you only take a wound when damage exceeds your Toughness, so you could totally have a wizard with d4s in Agility and Strength but a d8 in Smarts and Vigor who can calmly walk through a storm of flying glass with nothing more than superficial scratches while someone with d12 Strength gets torn to ribbons (though they could afford to walk around in 200 lbs of armor to bump up their Toughness).

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angry_keebler
Jul 16, 2006

In His presence the mountains quake and the hills melt away; the earth trembles and its people are destroyed. Who can stand before His fierce anger?

Scrape posted:

I don't see how you get one without the other but maybe that's just me.

There's a lot of advantages to having 3 physical stats. Consider a game with Str,Tuf,Agi, and 6 points to spend, max score 3. A 3 is way better than a 2, and a 2 is way better than a 1.

George

Str 3
Tuf 2
Agi 1

Manny

Str 1
Tuf 3
Agi 2

One guy is 50 year old George Foreman, the other is 22 year old Manny Pacquiao. If George hits Manny square on, Manny is dead. But George is older and slower, so he hits less often, has fewer HP, and gets winded from throwing punches faster. Manny is too small to do much damage to somebody so far out of his weight class, but he's tough as hell and faster than George. George wants to end the fight in the first round, so he expends his punches quickly going for the KO. Manny knows he won't KO George until George is worn down so he works slowly, boxing carefully and trying to wear his larger stronger opponent out.

By analogy, this works for any sort of game where small, relatively weak heroes are expected to be able to face off against big bruisers in single combat and win. You can do this with relative skill levels and advantages/disadvantages, you can do this with secondary stats, or you can do it with primary stats, or some combination thereof.

E
fixed

angry_keebler fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Aug 23, 2012

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