Ability Scores Revamp

[Hexblade]

I thought the Ability Scores were a bit narrow, so I expanded a bit. This started with me reading a thread about Charisma, so I took the time to create a new submenu of ability scores.


Strength:
*Melee (How well you can punch things, physical strength)
*Weapon (How hard you can swing your blade)
*Breaking (How easy it is to break something, eg doors, windows, etc.)
Dexterity:
*Finesse (How well you can do things that require skill, eg threading a needle)
*Agility (How well you can dodge, duck, jump, etc.)
*Speed (How fast you can run)
Constitution:
*Endurance (How well you can survive in harsh conditions, eg drowning, freezing, etc.)
*Toughness (How well you can take blows)
*Natural Healing (How fast you heal from wounds)
Wisdom:
*Philosophy (Your "thinking" skill, thinking outside the box)
*Perception (How well you notice things)
*Devoutness (How religious you are)
Charisma:
*Personality (Force of will)
*Manipulation (How well you lie or deceive)
*Attractiveness (How attractive you are)
Intelligence:
*Street Smarts (How well you know the city)
*Book Smarts (How well you know academic knowledge)
*People Smarts (How well you know how someone will react)


As well, new saves:

Fortitude: Endurance Mod.
Will: 1/2 Personality Mod. + 1/2 Philosophy Mod.
Reflex: 1/2 Agility Mod. + 1/2 Perception Mod.


HP is calculated off of Toughness, Dex Mod. for AC becomes Agility Mod. BAB is Melee/Weapon/Finesse, depending on what you are using. Skills are pretty simple, things like Bluff become 1/2 People Smarts Mod. + 1/2 Manipulation Mod. Everything is rolled as 18 different skills, but you roll the 6 base skills first. Those modifiers affect the ones within them. For example, let's say you are doing Intelligence and get 15, 18, and 9 for the sub-abilities, and 13 for the main one. A way of organizing this is:
Intelligence-13
Street Smarts-9
Book Smarts-18
People Smarts-15

Then, you factor in the Intelligence bonus, and it becomes:

Street Smarts-9+1(10)
Book Smarts-18+1(19)
People Smarts-15+1(16)

Any racial bonuses apply to the base stat.

[Crake]

How would this work with point buy? And don't you think that this is making an already incredibly complex system even more unnecessarily complex?

[ExLibrisMortis]

I'm not sure what you are trying to do.

If you want to simulate real-life 'abilities' better, I'd suggest you get a strength, dexterity and constitution score for each major muscle group, because 'melee', 'weapon' and 'breaking' are incredibly vague and useless. Monk unarmed strikes are weapons in 3.5, so what happens when a monk breaks a door with an unarmed strike?

Your other divisions have similar problems, being either arbitrary, counter- or non-intuitive, or hair-splitting, and they all sound tedious to use.

[Hexblade]

Fair enough. It was a bit of a stupid idea anyways...

[nedz]

Most sports are rated according to Strength, Stamina and Suppleness; which sort of equate to Strength, Constitution and Dexterity - except that the latter include co-ordination also.

The three Ss can be broken down into different regions of the body: Upper, Lower, Core etc.

Mental stats are a whole other can of worms.

[Xervous]

Instead of terming them sub ability scores you could just wipe the slate and call nearly everything skills in a manner similar to how shadowrun works. This would most likely require a rework of skillpoints to prove feasible.

[Honest Tiefling]

I don't think the break down works all of the time. You could have someone who is frail and lacks physical strength, but is really good at breaking stuff. Like some sort of toddler with an aura of everything breaking around them.

The breakdown of intelligence seems more like skills then stats, really. Memorization, Wits (How quickly you react) and a stat to determine how quickly you learn seems like a better idea.

[Endarire]

AD&D 2E had a similar subscore system. The simplicity of the 6 scores is better. Some things can be combined. The game is an abstraction, after all.

[Sayt]

In Nomine has three stats, Corporeal, Ethereal and Celestial. You start out with 9 (IIRC) points ("Forces") to distribute into them. Each Force in one of those three generated three subpoints for the substats. The Corporeal substats were along the lines of Brawn, Coordination and Corp. Resilience. Ethereal has Persuasive, intellect and something. Celestial had Spiritual resilience, Power and unremembered x.

I found it quite novel and interesting, honestly.

[Der_DWSage]

Fair enough. It was a bit of a stupid idea anyways...

I won't say it's a stupid idea, but there's no real indication of what you're actually trying to do with this system. As it is, it's just...complexity for the sake of complexity, with little reason for it. Not to mention that you now have to redo all the skills and what substat they're tied to. (With many of them not changing significantly-all the Knowledges will still be off of book smarts. But will Sense Motive be People Smarts, Perception, or 1/2 of each?)

Complexity for complexity's sake is rarely a good thing to strive for.

[bekeleven]

Nobilis has 1 stat (Aspect) that covers all physical and mental abilities.

I always liked that.