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EldritchWeaver
2020-03-12, 08:30 AM
I'm not happy about Charisma as being the dump stat, so I'm looking for changes to the ability scores compared D&D 3rd edition resp. Pathfinder. What rules (not necessarily only related to Charisma) have been used which deviate from the canon, official or homebrew? I mean something like what an ability score is used for or even changing which ability scores even exist. Do the changes work out in the game?

Maat Mons
2020-03-12, 09:44 AM
My personal (perpetually-unfinished) homebrew is 4 stats:

Brawn (merges Str and Con)
Finesse (new name for Dex)
Wits (merges Int, Wis, and Cha, but is not used for casting)
Magic (new stat for all things Su/Sp/spellcasting)

Some Corresponding changes I've considered:

Anyone can use Finesse for attack/damage with appropriate weapons. No feat required.
Initiative is governed by Wits, not Finesse.
Brawn/Finesse/Wits correspond to Fort/Ref/Will saves. But Magic doesn't normally correspond to any defense. (It is what Divine Grace adds to your saves, though.)

daryen
2020-03-12, 10:18 AM
I'm not happy about Charisma as being the dump stat, ...

That seems an ... odd complaint. Why the complaint about that one stat? Charisma may be the most common dump stat, but so are Intelligence, Wisdom, and Strength (depending on the character's class). Heck, if you look at it, it is even thematic. All of those fighters, druids, and wizards that are dumping their Charisma stat makes perfect sense as they are horrible with other people. Sadly, it actually fits.

Besides, if you want to account for it without actually changing any rules, there are two simple approaches:
1) If using point-buy, just say that no stat can be dropped below 10 its starting value (or only dropped by 1 or 2 points). They can increase the stats, but can't take away from stats (other than by racial adjustments).
2) Realize the idea of a "party face" is nonsense. I don't care how great, beautiful, and personable the party bard is, the fact he is hanging around a bunch of unpleasant, horrible people is going to absolutely tank his reception. Give that dynamic a game effect, and that can be a drive to not absolutely tank charisma all the time.

On that second point, Charisma is always dumped because there are no negative ramifications to doing so. Give the characters the negative ramifications that are already in the rules, and that will hopefully disincline the players from always dumping Charisma.

On the second point, if you roll, then you are going to get bad numbers and those bad numbers have to be put somewhere. Putting it in Constitution means you're dead. Putting it in Dexterity means you're dead. Putting it in your primary attributes means you're useless. Where are you supposed to put it?

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-12, 10:31 AM
I've played many systems where Intelligence and/or Wisdom governed social skills, and they tend to work out well. The main problem in 3.X would be splitting them between the two stats.

As a side note most games I've played seen to have been derived from either a three stat Physical/Mental/Social or four stat Power/Agility/Intellect/Charm split. Sure I've seen other variations, even 10+ stats, but outside of D&D clones they seem to be the most common.

The real problem with Charisma is that D&D as a game removed it's primary function and then tried to kludge importance into it via the method of 'many classes rely on it for powers', when honestly every class that uses it could be reworked to use Wisdom (Paladins, Sorcerers), Intelligence (Bards), or either (Warlocks) without changing the themselves of the class.

I think my latest attempt at writing a heroic fantasy system went for four stats, Might/Grace/Mind/Spirit, with social skills being split between Grace, Mind, and Spirit, and each stat feeding into two derived stats (Might+Grace=Speed, Might+Spirit=Health, Mind+Spirit=Willpower, Grace+Mind=Defence). Although that system also uses loose Archetypes they gave access to feat trees instead of classes, everything works quite differently to D&D. But it's been a while since I worked on it, I should dig it out and get version 3.1 finished (version 1.0 was a pretty straight D&D clone).

daryen
2020-03-12, 10:45 AM
The real problem with Charisma is that D&D as a game removed it's primary function and then tried to kludge importance into it via the method of 'many classes rely on it for powers', when honestly every class that uses it could be reworked to use Wisdom (Paladins, Sorcerers), Intelligence (Bards), or either (Warlocks) without changing the themselves of the class.

Honestly, that's probably the easiest mechanical solution: Just delete the Charisma stat entirely and replace its class functions with Intelligence or Wisdom. Then, add a Feat (Attractive?) that gives a bonus to social interactions/skills.

MrSandman
2020-03-12, 11:46 AM
I find ability systems stupid anyway. So if I were to do something about it in D&D&Co., I would probably just do away with them. Some DCs might need to be lowered to compensate, and casters would have less spells per day, but in general, I don't think much would change.

Dienekes
2020-03-12, 01:27 PM
A game a friend of mine homebrewed that I liked essentially had these (though the names were different, I don't remember all of them unfortunately)

Strength: How strong are your muscles
Dexterity: Arm quickness
Agility: Foot quickness
Constitution: Health and hit points
Intelligence: How fast you learn things
Will: Your ability to stay focused
Perception: Your awareness
Charisma: Your force of personality

And basically everything needed at least 2 stats.
Melee combatants needed Strength for damage, and Dexterity to hit.
Ranged combatants needed Perception to hit and for bows Strength for damage. For guns and crossbows they simply had a very high base damage

While Mages of various types required:
Intelligence: Actually remembering and performing the spell.
Will: How many spell points you had, and essentially Concentration saves.
Charisma: How strong the effect of the spell ended up being.

So Spells essentially became like attacks. First you'd determine how powerful of a spell you wanted to cast, and remove the number of Spell Points from your Pool. You'd make a d20 + modifiers + Intelligence check to cast the spell successfully. And then the potency of the effect was determined by your Charisma.

However, if you wanted to specialize on the type of mage you were you could take one of the following options.
Wizard: Replace Charisma with Intelligence
Warlock: Replace Will with Intelligence
Bard: Replace Will with Charisma
Sorcerer: Replace Intelligence with Charisma
Cleric: Replaces Intelligence with Will
Druid: Replaces Charisma with Will
Spellslinger: Replaces Intelligence with Dexterity and Will with Constitution
Paladin: Replaces Intelligence with Constitution and Charisma with Strength

Or something like that. He also as a GM focused a lot more on social situations (actually every GM in my group does, which makes dumping Charisma kind of a suboptimal choice if you want to get anything done).

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-12, 02:02 PM
Honestly, that's probably the easiest mechanical solution: Just delete the Charisma stat entirely and replace its class functions with Intelligence or Wisdom. Then, add a Feat (Attractive?) that gives a bonus to social interactions/skills.

Call it Charismatic, and in 3.X have a followup feat called Very Charismatic. Attractive isn't a bad isea for a feat, but IME it tends to work better when it's bonuses are more condition (+X to a subset of social skills to people attracted to your gender, +<X for other people).

You can also, as I said, split the social skills between INT and WIS (in 5e maybe Deception and Persuasion to INT and Intimidate and Perform to WIS?), which also somewhat solves the 'I'm the party face' option by making it more efficient to have two characters invested in social skills.


I find ability systems stupid anyway. So if I were to do something about it in D&D&Co., I would probably just do away with them. Some DCs might need to be lowered to compensate, and casters would have less spells per day, but in general, I don't think much would change.

Eh, in 5e at least you can cut out Ability Scores without missing much, just drop DCs by two or three points and use straight proficiency bonus. Honestly they work in some games but not every game needs them, although you do need to work out how to deal with 'default skills' if you don't use them (fairly easy in roll over systems, a bigger pain in roll under systems).

Berenger
2020-03-13, 12:46 PM
I'm not happy about Charisma as being the dump stat, so I'm looking for changes to the ability scores compared D&D 3rd edition resp. Pathfinder. What rules (not necessarily only related to Charisma) have been used which deviate from the canon, official or homebrew? I mean something like what an ability score is used for or even changing which ability scores even exist. Do the changes work out in the game?

There are two problems with Charisma:

1. Charisma gives nothing "extra". All other attributes give something extra besides boosts to some skills (e.g. HP and Fortitude bonuses for Constitution). Charisma used to give really useful extras in earlier editions (https://advanced-dungeons-dragons-2nd-edition.fandom.com/wiki/Charisma), but they got cut out and, for some bizarre reason, were not replaced with something else. Just putting those old rules back in place would certainly make Charisma more attractive.

2. Some classes gain too few skill points, so they couldn't capitalize on a high Charisma score even if they rolled one. Social skills being mostly locked behind the insane, ham-fisted concept of cross-class skills doesn't help, either. When I'm DM, I either grant Starting Occupations (http://www.d20resources.com/modern.d20.srd/starting.occupation/) from d20 Modern (those let you pick some additional class skills) or just make every non-magical skill a class skill for everyone.

EldritchWeaver
2020-03-13, 06:09 PM
That seems an ... odd complaint. Why the complaint about that one stat? Charisma may be the most common dump stat, but so are Intelligence, Wisdom, and Strength (depending on the character's class). Heck, if you look at it, it is even thematic. All of those fighters, druids, and wizards that are dumping their Charisma stat makes perfect sense as they are horrible with other people. Sadly, it actually fits.

As it Berenger explained it, Charisma is the odd one out of the scores. My personal opinion is that the ability scores, if we'd keep the six as is, then they should provide always an saving throw bonus. I think that 4th ed was it where the better of two modifiers count. 5th using all scores for some saves is making this too MAD IMO. And PF2's ill-fated resonance was littered with exceptions and not even effective at what it was supposed to do at high levels.

FaerieGodfather
2020-03-14, 11:00 AM
I am a big fan of either combining STR and CON (like Barbarians of Lemuria) or splitting DEX into "precision" and "agility/speed" (like Rolemaster or HARP).

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-14, 05:16 PM
I am a big fan of either combining STR and CON (like Barbarians of Lemuria) or splitting DEX into "precision" and "agility/speed" (like Rolemaster or HARP).

Agreed here, especially in games where melee combat is less important.

Then again, I'm one of those weirdos who supports Strength being the only melee combat stat, While it might be true that dexterity is more important than power for hitting an opponent the most important thing here is stat desireability, and I've seen people drop Strength like a stone once they can key Offence, Defence, and Speed/Initiative off a single stat (partially why I've always allowed Speed formulae to key off of Strength instead of Dex, and now let players key initiative off of Int).

Other things I've seen is splitting off Perception from Intelligence/Wisdom and allowing ranged attacks to key off of it, although I'm not so convinced on that one myself.

So looking at the two games I've got down here, Wild Talents has two physical stats (Body, Coordination) and four mental stats (Sense, Mind, Charm, Command) of which the last two are social, while HERO has roughly the D&D spread but prices attributes differently based on strength. I also own systems with no attributes, one Attribute, two or three, all the way up to ten, but the thing I've learnt is that generally the smaller the list the sweeter, and six to eight seems to be the maximum depending on the person.

Although you can also get rid of stats entirely, using either skills or some other method as the only numerical measurement of character ability. It works quite well as long as everybody's on board.

Kapow
2020-03-16, 10:35 AM
I think my latest attempt at writing a heroic fantasy system went for four stats, Might/Grace/Mind/Spirit, with social skills being split between Grace, Mind, and Spirit, and each stat feeding into two derived stats (Might+Grace=Speed, Might+Spirit=Health, Mind+Spirit=Willpower, Grace+Mind=Defence). Although that system also uses loose Archetypes they gave access to feat trees instead of classes, everything works quite differently to D&D. But it's been a while since I worked on it, I should dig it out and get version 3.1 finished (version 1.0 was a pretty straight D&D clone).

A game a friend of mine homebrewed that I liked essentially had these (though the names were different, I don't remember all of them unfortunately)

Strength: How strong are your muscles
Dexterity: Arm quickness
Agility: Foot quickness
Constitution: Health and hit points
Intelligence: How fast you learn things
Will: Your ability to stay focused
Perception: Your awareness
Charisma: Your force of personality

And basically everything needed at least 2 stats.
Melee combatants needed Strength for damage, and Dexterity to hit.
Ranged combatants needed Perception to hit and for bows Strength for damage. For guns and crossbows they simply had a very high base damage

While Mages of various types required:
Intelligence: Actually remembering and performing the spell.
Will: How many spell points you had, and essentially Concentration saves.
Charisma: How strong the effect of the spell ended up being.

So Spells essentially became like attacks. First you'd determine how powerful of a spell you wanted to cast, and remove the number of Spell Points from your Pool. You'd make a d20 + modifiers + Intelligence check to cast the spell successfully. And then the potency of the effect was determined by your Charisma.



As I originally come from not-DnD, this reminded me of another system (The Dark Eye / Das Schwarze Auge), which I always thought of as pretty good, although it is really clunky.
I don't know how easy it would be to port it over, as it is a roll under system.
When I started with DnD, I tried to use something like it: taking the average of three ability-mods for a skill (e.g. (Str+Con+Dex)/3 for climb), than I realized, that I don't need that much versimilitude from DnD. :smallwink:

Basically everything (base-attack, defenses, initiative, number of hitpoints, spellpoints, skillpoints...) is derived of three or more abilities (at least in the version I played), sometimes the same twice (e.g. hitpoints = (Con+Con+Str)/2). For skill checks (and spell checks) you also use three abilities.

Like that each of the 8 abilities are used in a great number of instances:

Courage (or bravery?): Endurance, spellpoints, spell resistance, initiative, close combat attack, skills and spells
Intelligence: Spell resistance, spellpoints, skillpoints, lots of skills and spells
Intuition: Spellpoints, initiative, defense, ranged attack, skills and spells
Charisma: Spellpoints, lots of skills and spells
Dexterity (as in sleight of hand): Ranged attack, skills and spells
Agility: Endurance, initiative, close combat attack, defense, skills and spells
Constitution: Hitpoints, endurance, spell resistance, skills and spells
Strength: Hitpoints, close combat attack, defense, ranged attack, skills and some spells

Morty
2020-03-16, 11:19 AM
D&D would indeed be improved by just dropping attributes altogether. It's easy enough to do in 5E, but in 3E/PF it'd be harder. I've generally grown dissatisfied with "traditional" attributes in general, not just in D&D. They feel redundant and a clumsy attempt at realism far too often.

Friv
2020-03-16, 11:42 AM
If you want to collapse things, something that I've seen work is to merge Wisdom into Intelligence and Charisma, and name the two remaining stats Intelligence and Will.

Physical observation and interaction skills (such as Spot, Listen, and Survival) go from Wisdom into Intelligence, and social skills (Sense Motive) and Will saves go into Will along with all the Charisma skills. That way, your social ability also governs your ability to resist mental influence.

At that point, it's up to you whether divine casters take Intelligence or Will as a casting stat, but I would lean Will for clerics and paladins, Intelligence for rangers and druids.

Anonymouswizard
2020-03-16, 12:09 PM
As I originally come from not-DnD, this reminded me of another system (The Dark Eye / Das Schwarze Auge), which I always thought of as pretty good, although it is really clunky.
I don't know how easy it would be to port it over, as it is a roll under system.
When I started with DnD, I tried to use something like it: taking the average of three ability-mods for a skill (e.g. (Str+Con+Dex)/3 for climb), than I realized, that I don't need that much versimilitude from DnD. :smallwink:

Basically everything (base-attack, defenses, initiative, number of hitpoints, spellpoints, skillpoints...) is derived of three or more abilities (at least in the version I played), sometimes the same twice (e.g. hitpoints = (Con+Con+Str)/2). For skill checks (and spell checks) you also use three abilities.

Like that each of the 8 abilities are used in a great number of instances:

Courage (or bravery?): Endurance, spellpoints, spell resistance, initiative, close combat attack, skills and spells
Intelligence: Spell resistance, spellpoints, skillpoints, lots of skills and spells
Intuition: Spellpoints, initiative, defense, ranged attack, skills and spells
Charisma: Spellpoints, lots of skills and spells
Dexterity (as in sleight of hand): Ranged attack, skills and spells
Agility: Endurance, initiative, close combat attack, defense, skills and spells
Constitution: Hitpoints, endurance, spell resistance, skills and spells
Strength: Hitpoints, close combat attack, defense, ranged attack, skills and some spells



5e has simplified quite a bit, Astral Energy is based on one stat depending on your tradition, offence is based on Courage for melee and I think Dexterity for ranged and how many points you're willing to pump into the rating, while the stat for defence varies based on weapon type. Mages are more MAD than warriors and have to deal with sharply limited mana, I like a lot of DSA, the only problem is knowing few people willing to go through character creation.

PintoTown
2020-04-27, 11:54 PM
What I don’t get is why we’re still using the whole 3-18 thing. Nobody much rolls 3d6 for stats anymore. Why aren’t we just using the bonus to represent your attribute? It seems as obvious as dumping THAC0.

Anonymouswizard
2020-04-28, 05:03 AM
What I don’t get is why we’re still using the whole 3-18 thing. Nobody much rolls 3d6 for stats anymore. Why aren’t we just using the bonus to represent your attribute? It seems as obvious as dumping THAC0.

The most logical reason I've seen it's that if you set the average at 10 people get that 15 is 'really strong' a bit better then if you set the average at 0 and have your +2 modifier as 'really strong'. This does work slightly better when using 3d6 insist of 4d6 or standard array, but the principle stands.

So yes, from a pre mechanics viewpoint we should get rid of them, but they might still serve a useful purpose.

ExLibrisMortis
2020-04-28, 07:17 AM
3-18 gives you a natural cutoff at 0, where bad stuff happens (paralyzed/catatonic/dead, in 3.5).

Dump stats are a natural consequence of having an optimizable system with meaningful choices between stats. That said, Charisma is dumped a lot, by many different character types, so it's arguably not well-balanced, and likely needs a buff. A few options:

Allow people to key their Will saves off of Charisma. That'll allow people to dump Wisdom or Charisma, a marked improvement. A simple fix that works in combat-heavy games.
Give everyone Leadership. With Charisma directly increasing the number of followers and the level of your cohort, it becomes a nice stat for everyone. Similar to the 2e rules linked above, I think.
Revamp your social skills, and use them consistently and extensively. In my experience, 3.5 (or 4e or 5, and I guess PF too) social skills don't provide a lot of structure for social encounters. Making social encounters more interesting/complex/mechanically structured would make Charisma more useful.

Morty
2020-04-28, 07:59 AM
What I don’t get is why we’re still using the whole 3-18 thing. Nobody much rolls 3d6 for stats anymore. Why aren’t we just using the bonus to represent your attribute? It seems as obvious as dumping THAC0.

I figure it's a legacy thing. 3E tried to establish a consistent scale of attributes, like other systems were already doing, but had to keep the 3-18 range because "that's how things are done" and people would complain otherwise.

PintoTown
2020-04-28, 08:07 AM
I figure it's a legacy thing. 3E tried to establish a consistent scale of attributes, like other systems were already doing, but had to keep the 3-18 range because "that's how things are done" and people would complain otherwise.

I get the legacy stats for the days when stat damage was a thing. That system made sense. Now it just seems like dead weight, and a strange hang up if people would gripe about it.
And you’re right. I’m sure they would.

Anonymouswizard
2020-04-28, 09:38 AM
I get the legacy stats for the days when stat damage was a thing. That system made sense. Now it just seems like dead weight, and a strange hang up if people would gripe about it.
And you’re right. I’m sure they would.

Did you see what happened when WotC tried removing Martial/Caster imbalance? Just accept that fanboys will complain if D&D moves too far from AD&D1e.

Psyren
2020-04-28, 10:34 AM
Because "roll for your stats" is one of the most iconic phrases in the medium. Even if you replace the stats with pure modifiers, people are still going to want an option to roll dice to get there, and a bell curve like 3d6+ helps to avoid extremes.


3-18 gives you a natural cutoff at 0, where bad stuff happens (paralyzed/catatonic/dead, in 3.5).

This is a good point too. Damaging stats directly is an excellent way to make some conditions (like poison or disease, or drain from undead creatures, or called shots) "feel" different than regular injuries. And if you have stat damage, then "Keep your stats above zero" is intuitive, where "keep your stats above -5" isn't.

PintoTown
2020-04-28, 10:58 AM
Did you see what happened when WotC tried removing Martial/Caster imbalance? Just accept that fanboys will complain if D&D moves too far from AD&D1e.

Alignment Languages are my constitutional right!

Morty
2020-04-28, 11:06 AM
To use a concrete example, Shadow of the Demon Lord uses a similar range of numbers as D&D and likewise uses a d20+modifier method, but an attribute modifier is simply Attribute - 10, without having to consult a table. It also collapses attributes to just four - Strength, Dexterity, Intellect and Will. The major difference is generating starting attributes. They're determined by your race, with humans having three 10s and one 11, and increase when you gain classes... if you survive that long.

Anonymouswizard
2020-04-28, 11:34 AM
To use a concrete example, Shadow of the Demon Lord uses a similar range of numbers as D&D and likewise uses a d20+modifier method, but an attribute modifier is simply Attribute - 10, without having to consult a table. It also collapses attributes to just four - Strength, Dexterity, Intellect and Will. The major difference is generating starting attributes. They're determined by your race, with humans having three 10s and one 11, and increase when you gain classes... if you survive that long.

Heh, not the first time I've seen that method of modifier generation, although to be fair past 2e the formula for modifiers is simple: (Stat-10)/2 round down.

Also not the first time I've seen that kind of stat generation method, and I'm not a fan of it. I'm a much bigger fan of point buy with races altering your caps rather than your stats. Although I should really give SotDL a look at some point.

Morty
2020-04-28, 11:41 AM
Heh, not the first time I've seen that method of modifier generation, although to be fair past 2e the formula for modifiers is simple: (Stat-10)/2 round down.

Also not the first time I've seen that kind of stat generation method, and I'm not a fan of it. I'm a much bigger fan of point buy with races altering your caps rather than your stats. Although I should really give SotDL a look at some point.

Yes, I'm not a big fan of racial stat modifiers either. But at least you gain more modifiers as you level up and gain new classes. The idea in SotDL is that you start as a level 0 no-name and start gaining a proper skillset as you level up.

Anonymouswizard
2020-04-28, 12:10 PM
Yes, I'm not a big fan of racial stat modifiers either. But at least you gain more modifiers as you level up and gain new classes. The idea in SotDL is that you start as a level 0 no-name and start gaining a proper skillset as you level up.

I find them less annoying, but still not good, in games without classes or strong archetypes. As I said, I prefer cap modifiers, members of a race might spike higher or lower but the median is about the same.

And yeah, it sounds somewhat interesting, especially with the class system starting you out as more of a generalist and making you specialise, but it wasn't in my FLGS last time I checked.

Aotrs Commander
2020-05-05, 08:33 AM
What I don’t get is why we’re still using the whole 3-18 thing. Nobody much rolls 3d6 for stats anymore. Why aren’t we just using the bonus to represent your attribute? It seems as obvious as dumping THAC0.

Realistically, likely mostly because of legancy and because stat damage is a thing, and you'd have to do a fair bit of faffing to fiddle with all stat modifiers to account for that; it wouldn't be quite a simple as just halving all the stat damage/bonus items (inherent bonus, for one).

It would certainly be doable if you desired, though, and probably even more in 5E, where from my limited understanding, there is no stat damage.



I have fundementally taken the approach with Rolemaster on my lastest revision pass; the stat score is now generated FROM the modifier, rather then the reverse. Right down to the point where you just get a load of modifiers (plus your racials) at character generation, and variance comes form the trade off between rolling you background options and trading out the rolls you don';t like. Worked very well in keeping the Aotrs Lich party within bounds; there op level character's OB was a few points higher than the next two or three who had EXACTLY the same OB (from different professions, stats an other bonuses) and the less combat ones were not vastly far behind, to I chalked that up as a win.

Og course, as someone for whom RM is the second choice after 3.5/PF1/3.Aotrs, the problem with having two or three stats per skill is that it becomes a lot more time consuming to generate characters and monsters, because by the time you have even a modest number of skills, you have to look it up everytime. Whereas with D&D, you only have to remember one stat for every skill. There's something to be said (says the Rolemaster veteran) about not over-complicating things for the sake of it; at some point, you have to draw the line on how much extra faff you have to put it to deal with when you move away from the abstract.

To whit:


Agreed here, especially in games where melee combat is less important.

Then again, I'm one of those weirdos who supports Strength being the only melee combat stat, While it might be true that dexterity is more important than power for hitting an opponent the most important thing here is stat desireability, and I've seen people drop Strength like a stone once they can key Offence, Defence, and Speed/Initiative off a single stat (partially why I've always allowed Speed formulae to key off of Strength instead of Dex, and now let players key initiative off of Int).

Deosn't that just make Strength the king stat instead of dexterity, with broader applications?



3.x - well, PF particularly - does have a "problem" where Dex is the king stat and Str basically doesn't nothing but add to damage and carrying capacity. But when you look at the altenatives...? Pillars of Eternity tried to have Might which was just "how much damage you dealt" but everyone - including them - kept equating it to physical strength, and the fewer physical stats you have the more than becomes a thematic problem, whether you like it or not.

When I abortively tried writing my own system (I gave it up as being fundementally more trouble than it would be worth) I went with ten stats (like Rolemaster) Strength and Speed representing mostly upper/manipulative strength and lower/movement capability strength, reaction speed, constitution, intelligence, will power, charm, affinity (a sort maguical sensitiy stat) and attraction (which also noted as being Stuff With Allure e.g. the One Ring). But? Reaction was clearly the king stat and it was just not worth the effort of me trying to re-invent the wheel. (Steradian accuracy instead of size/range was the only idea out of I thought was actualyl quite good, but still not something I have ported out.)



I think the issue with charisma and how much use it sees outside of the obvious caster-stat is a VERY table-dependant and whether or not and even HOW you use social skills at the table. (Rolemaster? All those kajillion skills, and there are fundementally no social skills at all and the ones they are are very narrow in scope.) Whether you do it mostly on the roll, never roll and just roleplay it out or mostly the latter with a roll for success, whether you pay the slightest of attention to D&D's bizarrely constructed Diplomacy skill (that very notably, NO adaption to computer game has ever used; hell, it you wanted to give characters a break, you could do as they do and fold Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate into a single Persuade skill) or even whether the game is set up with plenty of USES for social skills. If you're playing, say, a game where by you are the Dark Lord's Black Ops team that spends the time undercover where you need to be able to lie to people, it's less likely to want to dump Charisma. (I mean, not impossible *cough*that one intulo ranger with Cha of 41*cough*) A game in which you are punching monsters to death might mean social skills don't come up much if at all.



1By our rules, you start you stats at base 8 and add a load points (34 +2 if human) point-for-point, max 18 (then racials are applied), so you can't drop a stat below 8 because you want to, you can only choose to not invest in it; intulo happen to have a -4 to Cha because they are like Evil Vulcans or something who more or less don't have emotions and lack strength of personality, so he'd have sucked (rightfully so) at social skills whatever...

Anonymouswizard
2020-05-06, 10:19 AM
Deosn't that just make Strength the king stat instead of dexterity, with broader applications?

Not really. Strength was much better, and it made Rogues less of a combat class (I think I eventually allowed them to finesse daggers as a class ability as a patch), but Dex was still important enough that most players wanted a bit.

My current system uses it, all melee attacks key off Power while all raged attacks key off Grace (and spellcasting keys off Spirit), but dropping any particular stat can hurt. It's why the game doesn't let you dump any, even random rolling only allows scores as low as 8 (in a d20 roll under system) and that's not the intended generation method. Or rather, you don't get anything for dumping stats, make them sas low as you want but you don't get points back for going below 8.

Morty
2020-05-07, 10:30 AM
These days I wonder if attributes are necessary at all, in a general sense. Now of course in D&D the are more or less obsolete, but this extends to other systems. It feels like in "traditional" games they're often just there because people expect them to. At the very least, I appreciate if it they're not just added together with skills - for example, Savage Worlds mostly has them as pre-requisites and for determining costs of skills.

Psyren
2020-05-07, 01:04 PM
These days I wonder if attributes are necessary at all, in a general sense. Now of course in D&D the are more or less obsolete, but this extends to other systems. It feels like in "traditional" games they're often just there because people expect them to. At the very least, I appreciate if it they're not just added together with skills - for example, Savage Worlds mostly has them as pre-requisites and for determining costs of skills.

I wouldn't call them obsolete. Even 5e still has skills - they just auto-scale now, and due to bounded accuracy the gap between someone who is invested and someone who isn't is much smaller than it was in 3e.

A big reason to keep both attributes and skills, is that there are so many possible actions in a tabletop game that aren't necessarily defined as a specific skill - but because attributes are much broader, almost every action imaginable can be mapped to one or more of them. That's a huge advantage not just of keeping attributes, but of the tabletop medium as a platform for gaming in general. For example, in D&D there isn't necessarily a skill that covers actions like forcing one's way through a panicking crowd, or seeing if a character remembers a key piece of information from an earlier session, or swinging on a chandelier to avoid touching the floor below. You could go to the effort of inventing skills like Memory or Swashbuckling to cover some of these edge cases, but then you run into issues like skill bloat and resource constraints (ranks, items, and proficiencies)

There's also the fact that having skills and attributes be separate allows the game system to be more granular with how it reflects effectiveness, allowing a character who is high in one to compensate for a weakness in the other and vice-versa. This adds texture and immersion to the game because other inspirations for our games (like fictional works and even the real world) work that way too. For example, someone who is generally dim (like Elan) might display a surprising degree of knowledge about a subject they are particularly interested in, talented in, or received particularly good training in (like Elan's knowledge of story structure and tropes, knowledge that also happens to have a high degree of practical application in his world.) This could be represented in a skill-and-attributes system by this character having a low attribute modifier but a very high skill modifier.

Anonymouswizard
2020-05-07, 02:00 PM
These days I wonder if attributes are necessary at all, in a general sense. Now of course in D&D the are more or less obsolete, but this extends to other systems. It feels like in "traditional" games they're often just there because people expect them to. At the very least, I appreciate if it they're not just added together with skills - for example, Savage Worlds mostly has them as pre-requisites and for determining costs of skills.

For me I kind of had to keep them after gutting skills to 'some Archetypes can spend Willpower points for rerolls on certain tasks'. Even if I do add in archtype-independent abilities to help make character progression more interesting that 'put another point in a stat' being skilled in a certain area will work the same way, take the ability and it lets you reroll in exchange for Willpower.

I've also considered having players buy Secondary Attributes independently instead of calculating them, but it would either complicate Point Buy a whole lot or require another step in character creation, and I'm really trying to keep it simple. But essentially I've come to believe that you need two of: Attributes, Skills, and Special Abilities, but all three might be a bit much in most games.

Morty
2020-05-07, 03:56 PM
For me I kind of had to keep them after gutting skills to 'some Archetypes can spend Willpower points for rerolls on certain tasks'. Even if I do add in archtype-independent abilities to help make character progression more interesting that 'put another point in a stat' being skilled in a certain area will work the same way, take the ability and it lets you reroll in exchange for Willpower.

I've also considered having players buy Secondary Attributes independently instead of calculating them, but it would either complicate Point Buy a whole lot or require another step in character creation, and I'm really trying to keep it simple. But essentially I've come to believe that you need two of: Attributes, Skills, and Special Abilities, but all three might be a bit much in most games.

Yes, attributes do have their uses, depending on what the other parts of the system look like. Maybe it'd be more accurate to say that they often feel like an unnecessary layer in crunchier and more involved systems, like D&D or Storyteller games. If there isn't a dedicated "skill" system, then attributes of some kind are an obvious candidate to pick up the slack.

I guess I just can't help but poke at things and ask "okay, but how necessary is it, really?". And there have been systems that ditch attributes, like Liminal and Blades in the Dark.

Psyren
2020-05-08, 12:44 PM
Blades does have both attributes and skills, they're just simplified. Insight, Prowess and Resolve are the attributes, while the secondary things like Hunt, Finesse, Prowl and Command are effectively the skills that derive from those attributes. Here again, the layering provides advantages that would be lost if one of those layers were to be removed.

Friv
2020-05-08, 04:12 PM
Blades does have both attributes and skills, they're just simplified. Insight, Prowess and Resolve are the attributes, while the secondary things like Hunt, Finesse, Prowl and Command are effectively the skills that derive from those attributes. Here again, the layering provides advantages that would be lost if one of those layers were to be removed.

Although Blades is also interesting in that it uses Attributes in a very different way from what people are used to - your Attributes are derived from your skills, and rather than providing direct bonuses they make it easier to use your skills safely. (Which is to say, I agree with you, but the distinction is pretty neat.)