Narrowing it down to ten attributes

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm in the process of writing another draft of STaRS, my simple homebrew system. One of the goals is to simplify characters, so that they're primarily defined by ten attributes, with skills providing advantages when using attributes in specific tasks*. (Ten to match the d10 system I use-- for details, see the link in my signature)

But. I'm having some trouble deciding what, exactly, the ten attributes should be. The ten I used in the last draft are:


Agility— Physical and hand-eye and coordination.
Awareness— Perceptiveness and insight.
Cunning-- Common sense and lateral thinking.
Manipulation-- How well you can persuade and control others.
Presence— Force of personality.
Smarts— Logical reasoning and "book learning."
Speed— Reaction time and physical speed.
Strength— Raw physical strength.
Vigor— Your ability to withstand physical exertion and damage.
Will— Your ability to withstand mental exertion and damage.


I've considered:

Merging Strength and Vigor into a single "Body" stat.
Merging Smarts and Cunning back into a single mental stat.
Merging Presence and Manipulation back into a single social stat... which would probably be a bad idea.
Breaking up Agility into Agility (full-body coordination) and Dexterity (hand-eye coordination). This one's pretty important, methinks.
Adding a "Fighting" stat, representing, well, combat ability.


Ideally, I could wind up with 5 "body" and 5 "mind" stats, but... can't quite seem to decide on what five. Maybe 4-4-4 body-mind-soul, but again...

Thoughts?

*The way this would work: To resolve a task hard enough that there's a chance of failure, you'd roll a d10. If the result is equal to or less than your attribute rank, you succeed. If you have a skill in the relevant task, you'd roll twice and take the better result. (So anyone could roll Strength to climb a wall, but someone with a Climbing skill would have a significant advantage).

[Frathe]

I've considered:

Merging Strength and Vigor into a single "Body" stat.
Merging Smarts and Cunning back into a single mental stat.
Merging Presence and Manipulation back into a single social stat... which would probably be a bad idea.
Breaking up Agility into Agility (full-body coordination) and Dexterity (hand-eye coordination). This one's pretty important, methinks.
Adding a "Fighting" stat, representing, well, combat ability.
Merging Strength and Vigor would be a reasonable option, considering that they are generally associated in real life. It would slightly reduce character options, though, in that you couldn't have a strong but fragile character, or a physically weak but tough one. But how realistic is that, really? I can't think of any real-life examples right now.

I would merge Smarts and Cunning, just because two different intelligence stats is going to confuse first-time players. I really think that the distinction between lateral and logical problem-solving isn't clear enough and well-known enough to make this a "simple" distinction. And, I mean, as mental attributes go, I've heard non-dedicated D&D players confuse Wisdom and Intelligence (what they represent). I think the simplest thing to do here is to have the smallest number of mental, or at least intelligence, stats.

I probably wouldn't combine Presence and Manipulation, considering how much argument Charisma in D&D generates. Honestly, though, I'm not sure what "force of personality" is even supposed to mean; I have a lot of the exact same problems with this stat as I do with Charisma in D&D. I'm just not sure what it actually means. Could you... measure someone's force of personality. Could you define it in any helpful way? If you can, I would really appreciate it. And also be kind of surprised. I also have the concern that, no matter your Manipulation and Presence scores, you should be able to influence people by flirting, assuming that you fit their definition of attraction (species and sexual orientation). You could go like GURPS and base success in flirting-type convincing on Vigor (the "Health" physical stat).
You'd also think that, no matter how strong your "force of personality" was, you'd have a harder time convincing (for example) an animal or alien of anything if you looked ugly enough to them (differing species standards of beauty). I'm pretty sure a component of how convincing you are, your charisma, is your physical appearance (usually, if it's to convince someone to do something, it's how pleasant-looking you are. You won't be pleasant-looking to a tentacle'd, eyestalk'd alien, any more than they are pleasant-looking to you.)

I support splitting Agility into Agility and Dexterity. It does make more sense; the two aren't really related. Then again, Dexterity is essentially how accurate and "agile" you are with your hands, and it's kind of weird to have a stat that represents a particular body part like that. What kind of Dexterity will monsters have? Is it based on their physiology? Does a giant spider have poor Dexterity, because it doesn't have hands? This is less of a concern if there aren't monsters in your system, or if monsters are presented as a (skill) challenge, rather than a constructed entity similar to players.

I wouldn't add a Fighting stat. It doesn't really seem like a defining attribute of a person. Fighting ability, instead, comes from a combination of strength, reflexes, manual dexterity, agility, physical endurance, willpower, and very importantly, training. If people want to put points into something to get better at fighting, or however this system works with improving at things (besides training in skills), it seems like they'd get better at fighting through practice and training. It certainly doesn't seem like an inherent attribute (though I suppose you can train to get stronger too, but fighting ability has many more other attributes feeding into it). Fighting seems like a skill, not like an attribute. It's something you learn to get better at. You can use your muscles and become stronger. You can train and become better at fighting, the same way you can also practice and become better at playing the piano. The difference is that becoming better at fighting makes you only better at fighting, while becoming stronger affects things across the board. For me, that's the difference between a skill and an attribute.

..Sorry this is so long.

[Quellian-dyrae]

What about something like:

Strength: Raw physical might. The physical "damage" ability.
Vigor: Ability to endure fatigue, hardship, and injury. The physical "resistance" ability.
Speed: Quickness of movement, action, and reflexes. The physical "defense" ability.
Agility: Precision and coordination. The physical "accuracy" ability.
Stealth: Ability to move about unseen and conceal your intentions. Used to achieve surprise.

Presence: Raw force of personality. The mental/magical "damage" ability.
Will: Ability to ignore emotion, influence, and temptation. The mental/magical "resistance" ability.
Smarts: Breadth of knowledge and quickness of thought. The mental/magical "defense" ability.
Cunning: Common sense, lateral thinking, and manipulative skill. The mental/magical "accuracy" ability.
Awareness: Ability to detect the false or hidden. Used to avoid surprise.

[Octopusapult]

Agility— Physical and hand-eye and coordination.
Awareness— Perceptiveness and insight.
Cunning-- Common sense and lateral thinking.
Manipulation-- How well you can persuade and control others.
Presence— Force of personality.
Smarts— Logical reasoning and "book learning."
Speed— Reaction time and physical speed.
Strength— Raw physical strength.
Vigor— Your ability to withstand physical exertion and damage.
Will— Your ability to withstand mental exertion and damage.


For comparison, the homebrew RPG I am making uses 9 stats.

Agility, Endurance, and Strength being physical. Agility represents a characters reflexes and speed, endurance their resistance to disease and total HP, you can guess what strength does.

Perception, Charisma, and Intelligence being mental stats. Perception represents awareness, search and spot. Charisma being general persuasion and disposition, and Intelligence covering the same general area as "Smarts" in your description. An Education of sorts.

Essence, Purity, and Wisdom represent the Spiritual stats. Essence is the ability to manipulate magical energies around you. Used for creating fireballs and other devastating effects. Purity is the ability to manipulate the energy within and is used for buffing and healing. Wisdom covering a street-knowledge and common sense sort of area comparable to your "Cunning."

If you like those, you can use them, it won't bother me.

But in regards to what you've listed and considered, Presence and Manipulation could be easily folded for the same effect, and a Fighting stat was implemented in the Marvel Super-Heroes RPG as part of their FASE-RIP system. It worked there, but it made everything so basic you know? It wasn't like you knew your opponent was simply strong and you could just get him in a position where that Strength doesn't matter, and your speed would be enough to bring him down. It was just... "Fighting." It's bland. I hope that makes sense or helps.

(I think FASE-RIP meant...)


Fighting
Agility
Strength
Endurance

Reason
Intuition
Psych

But that's reciting from a memory a few years old. In case you were curious.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The issue with combing Smarts (knowledge) and Cunning (reasoning) is that, unlike Strength/Vigor, there is a clear, conceptual divide there. On the one hand, you've got your absent-minded professor (high smarts, low cunning), and on the other, your rough-talking streetwise type (low smarts, high cunning).

The issue with combing Presence and Manipulation is, well... a single charisma stat is bad for roleplaying, in my opinion. It doesn't offer enough latitude for characters to distinguish themselves.

Maybe Cunning and Manipulation could be the same? Presence and Will? Or maybe this is a futile exercise.

Mmm. Perhaps:

Mind
Awareness
Cunning
Smarts (Knowledge?)

Body
Agility
Body (Vigor? Strength?)
Dexterity
Speed

Soul
Manipulation
Presence
Will

or

Mental
Awareness
Cunning
Manipulation
Presence
Smarts
Will

Physical
Agility
Body
Dexterity
Speed

[Frathe]

The issue with combing Smarts (knowledge) and Cunning (reasoning) is that, unlike Strength/Vigor, there is a clear, conceptual divide there. On the one hand, you've got your absent-minded professor (high smarts, low cunning), and on the other, your rough-talking streetwise type (low smarts, high cunning).It's a fair point. Then again, there's arguably a third type of intelligence, that of common sense, where someone could be "cunning" (clever and street-smart) but lack good judgement. (Someone could also, of course, be book-smart and lack this common sense.) Of course, maybe good judgment and making good decisions is something that should be part of roleplaying, on the player's end, rather than an attribute. Making good decisions is not something you can reasonably handle with a die roll, not without removing roleplaying. So while I think there's a third type, it'd probably be better to leave it how it is and not include it.




The issue with combing Presence and Manipulation is, well... a single charisma stat is bad for roleplaying, in my opinion. It doesn't offer enough latitude for characters to distinguish themselves.If you want another charisma stat, you could always introduce Attractiveness. It's reasonable enough as a physical charisma stat.



Mmm. Perhaps:

Mind
Awareness
Cunning
Smarts (Knowledge?)

Body
Agility
Body (Vigor? Strength?)
Dexterity
Speed

Soul
Manipulation
Presence
WillI like this one, more than the second one. The other had a confusingly large number of mental stats.

I would rename "Body" to something that sounds less generally physical--Vigor is good, or Strength is good too (although with Strength people wouldn't realize based on the name that health was calculated from it, but the other way (calling it "Vigor") people might not realize it's the Strength attribute).

[Philemonite]

If number 10 is that important you could try something like this:
Body-Strength and Constitution
Mind-Inteligece and Will
Soul-Wisdom and Piety
Speed?-Dexterity and Agility
Social-Charisma and Presence

[Grod_The_Giant]

If you want another charisma stat, you could always introduce Attractiveness. It's reasonable enough as a physical charisma stat.
Yeah, but when would you ever roll it? Seduction checks, and... that's about it.


I would rename "Body" to something that sounds less generally physical--Vigor is good, or Strength is good too (although with Strength people wouldn't realize based on the name that health was calculated from it, but the other way (calling it "Vigor") people might not realize it's the Strength attribute).
Physique? Doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but then, neither does Manipulation...

[Frathe]

Yeah, but when would you ever roll it? Seduction checks, and... that's about it.Fair point, unless you claim that your attractiveness influences every social/manipulative interaction with others of your species (which might be realistic. Good-looking people get free drinks bought for them, and get told they're funny even when they're not. That stuff kicks in even when you're not actively flirting.)

Actually, the psychological halo effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect#Role_of_attractiveness) would influence various things too.

But yeah, I understand if you don't want that as a stat. People are going to read it as sexual.



Physique? Doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but then, neither does Manipulation...Physique seems fine, as long as incredibly easy pronounceability isn't your main goal.

[Spiryt]

Grouping strenght and 'vigor' and constitution together doesn't really make more sense than grouping 'smarts' and cunning together, really, general resistance, immunity, endurance and raw muscle/joints strength (of all types) isn't e really closely linked.

There's plenty of big powerful men, that can bench and squat hella lot, and level people with one unqualified punch, but who get absolutely pre-stroke after running 200m, and are generally unhealthy as hell, eating mainly a lot, drinking etc.

Or one can have some Pygmy guy who's rather weak, given their statue in the first place, but can run, hunt, fish, and generally do manual labor in the heat of rather malarious jungle, for simple example.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Fair point, unless you claim that your attractiveness influences every social/manipulative interaction with others of your species (which might be realistic. Good-looking people get free drinks bought for them, and get told they're funny even when they're not. That stuff kicks in even when you're not actively flirting.)

Actually, the psychological halo effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect#Role_of_attractiveness) would influence various things too.

But yeah, I understand if you don't want that as a stat. People are going to read it as sexual.
Truth. But that sort of thing is well beyond the scope of a rules-light system like STaRS. Much better handled as a trait:


Attractive- Gain Advantage on casual social checks against people who are attracted to your (species and) gender.

@Spiryt-- I agree, but I also feel like those are much more unusual cases. It's like the split between Dodge (ranged AC) and Parry (melee AC) in M&M-- sure, you can imagine a case where a character would have them be different, but 95% of the time you'll want both at the same level, so why not combine them and handle the border cases with flaws?

Besides, what would you combine to keep things at ten?

[puctheplayfull]

Per your rolling rules, abilities are used (like in many other RPG's) to represent raw talent, especially where no specific skill would apply, or when a player does not have a skill that could apply. To that end, you will want to use stats that are easily distinguished in such situations.

For physical stats:
STRENGTH is a good place to start as it is an obvious measure of physical power, the ability to lift and move things. It can also affect the physical damage you do with melee weapons and anything thrown. I have never understood why some games use it to affect to hit rolls in melee combat.

VIGOR/HEALTH/CONSTITUTION would be a good choice for measuring physical health, resistance to disease and poison, and possibly to body changing effects like polymorph.

The real question is whether you want one stat that represents hand eye coordination, flexibility, and reaction time or if you want to split them between DEXTERITY and AGILITY respectively or similar stats. Many systems have gotten by for years just having one stat to represent this. The big question you should ask when making the decision is how often such a breakdown would come into play. It all comes down to balance. If you have one stat that is rolled against considerably more often than the others because it covers a broader range of situations, then that will become the main stat players focus on. If you use only one stat, it could arguably apply to offensive combat rolls, defensive combat rolls, reflexive reactions (avoiding a bus on the street or reducing AoE damage), rolls defaulting from coordination and agility based skills, and I am sure there are others. Essentially you want to avoid making one ability too weighted. Your use of SPEED may be key. You could use this ability to cover anything that would be based on reaction speed and any skills that would benefit more from your ability to move quickly than how controlled you move. The Other end of the scale would be DEXTERITY to measure coordination and flexibility/control. There would be no set AGILITY stat with some functions of such an ability falling under SPEED and the rest falling under DEXTERITY.

This gives us something like:
Strength
Vigor
Dexterity
Speed

You would use the same guidelines for selecting mental stats.
SMARTS/INTELLIGENCE would be a good stat to use to represent book learning, and raw memory.

CUNNING/REASONING/LOGIC could all be used to represent your characters ability to solve problems, and apply knowledge. CUNNING seems more a function of intuition and instinct while LOGIC sounds more cold and calculating. REASONING seems a good middle ground that can cover everything from gut feelings, to applying your knowledge of computers to try and fix an alien ship.

WILL/FORTITUDE is perfect for a mental endurance and health (if using sanity rules of some kind). It would be to the mind what VIGOR is to the body.

PERCEPTION/AWARENESS is also about as broken down as you want to get. I would suggest you continue using AWARENESS so you can lump mental/social insight in with perception of the physical world.

This gives us:
Smarts
Reasoning
Will
Awareness

If you must keep the total at 10, then this leaves two slots for social stats. It seems the majority of your social tasks are how easily you can manipulate or coerce someone (deception, seduction, haggling) so MANIPULATION is the core social ability. I agree that 'Force of personality' is a lot more difficult to qualify than quantify, but here goes: A meek submissive person, regardless of how well they can lie, would have a low CHARISMA/PRESENCE while a boisterous aggressive/dominate person would have a high CHARISMA/PRESENCE. It all appears to be a factor of self confidence and perhaps projection would be the best word. The problem with using this stat is simple, how meek or confident you are directly affects your ability to manipulate people in nearly all aspects. On the other hand, physical attractiveness as a stat would be overused if it affected all social rolls and underused if it only applied to seduction. The question then becomes what situations (besides trying to influence others directly) would require a new social ability, or how could you divide your social influence based on your ability to coerce others and your raw confidence and its affects on others. One possible answer I can offer is this: MANIPULATION applies to the more subtle forms of social interaction: lying and deception, seduction, coercion; while CHARISMA/PRESENCE applies to more open/outward interactions where your self-confidence or 'force of personality' would be more the deciding factor like haggling, intimidation, and making friends in new places. This leaves out physical attractiveness as a base stat, but realistically that would be a function of your VIGOR and PRESENCE anyway.

This means for social stats we have:
Manipulation
Presence

and as a whole this gives us:
Strength - raw physical power
Vigor - bodies health and resilience
Dexterity - coordination and flexibility
Speed - physical speed and reaction time
Smarts - knowledge and acuteness of memory
Reasoning - problem solving and application
Will - mental health and resilience
Awareness - perception and insight
Manipulation - subtle coercion and subterfuge
Presence - outgoing personality and influence

If you wished to expand past a base of 10 abilities:
*you could break down parts of Speed and Dexterity to create Agility
*you could add a stat for Luck
*you could add a stat to measure Beauty/Attractiveness
*you could consider combining part of Vigor and Will to make Fortitude: a measure of overall endurance both physical and mental, leaving Vigor and Will only governing physical and mental health
However, none of these would really be necessary with the breakdown above.