What is the optimum number of abilities

[Pauly]

In D&D character have 6 abilities. Some games such as GURPS (4) have fewer others such as Traveller (8) Call of Cthulu (9) or Role Master (10) have more.

Of course what is optimal will depend a lot on the complexity of the game, but for the sake of argument assume a medium level of crunch such as D&D or Pathfinder.

The problem with having too few ability scores is that a score may try to encompass too much. For example in D&D DEX combines accuracy of movement and speed of movement which to my mind shouldn't necessarily be treated as the same thing. The other main problem is that the ability gets press ganged into dealing with something it really shouldn’t. CHA being used as the ability to turn undead is a puzzling choice, but seems to be driven by there being nowhere better for turn undead to go.

Having too many bogs the game down in complexity and it’s hard to care about an ability score when you might go half a dozen sessions between that ability getting used.

What those abilities are will change depending on the genre and what the game is trying to simulate?

[Yora]

I think 3 to 6 tends to be a good number that serves most games well enough.

[Quertus]

Honestly? It depends on the game / system, but… zero?

As you said, you may want your character’s ability to do two things to not be at the same level, but you cannot do that if those two things have been bundled together in one ability. Otoh, another player may not care about such distinctions, and giving them lots of stats they don’t care about bogs things down.

So, zero stats.

If I want to characterize my character as “healthy and durable, but easily winded”? Um, well, I give them the “healthy and durable, but easily winded” trait.

That’s optimal.

What works best of what I’ve seen? Eh, it varies, but probably 5-9 stats provides some ability to differentiate characters.

[Jay R]

I was once grading papers in a graduate management class. I wrote "This paper is too long" on a 3½-page paper. I wrote "This paper is too short", on an 8-page paper.

I wasn't being inconsistent. It's too long if you are repeating yourself, or writing things that aren't relevant to the topic. It's too short if you made assertions and didn't back them up. [Yes, I explained this in the comments.]

Similarly, there are too few abilities if you need to simulate something and can't. There are too many if they overlap, or if some of them are irrelevant. There could be a 4-ability game with too many, and there could be a 10-ability game with too few.

How much money should I save?
How much schooling should I get?
How many games should I own?
How big a house or car should I get?

The answer to all of these questions is, "It depends on the specific situation."

[Jedaii]

The OP tries to form a question from an assertion. It's so bad I can't understand if there is a question. D&D does stuff with abilities. Other systems do stuff with others abilities.

Now what? Can you improve D&D with different abilities?

[Curbludgeon]

Mutants and Masterminds 3e has 8 attributes, 2 active defenses, and 3 saves. The attributes can trivially be phased out, as each are really just a placeholder for their constituent effects. Two of the saves have a certain amount of overlap, and with a little tweaking of the math might be better off combined. I could see a 4th edition having no attributes, 2 active defense stats, and 2 passive defense stats, which doesn't sound bad to me at all.

[Asmotherion]

My ideal that I use for my own system is 4, but I can see arguements for 3.

[Anonymouswizard]

Assuming we're not getting rid of them entirely, it depends. If we're using skills/talents to divide competency even further we want a few broad stats, if we're not we want more but narrower stats.

But more important than stat number is stat breadth. GURPS suffers because Strength and Health just don't cover as much as Dexterity and IW, whereas modern D&D has Star's primary functions (melee competency) as part of another stat. Meanwhile learning how to use the six Approaches of Fate Accelerated is hard because they intentionally overlap, but they're all approximately as useful*. Paleomytbic is weird in that it instead uses a set of 12 traits that can be good or bad, and your base chance of success is based off of how many good traits you have.

I have one homebrew system with four Attributes, one with none Abilities, one with two Stats (Body and Mind), one with five but most PCs only get access to four, and everything in between. They also vary wildly, because in some games knowing how strong or smart a character is isn't necessary.

Heck, I'm fairly certain I got Facebook adverts for a game with no stats or skills for about two weeks. Not for everybody, especially as the resolution mechanics seemed to be NSFW.

* No matter how much you try to cheat and run everything off of Clever because 'I'm a Wizard'.

[Kurald Galain]

It's too long if you are repeating yourself, or writing things that aren't relevant to the topic. It's too short if you made assertions and didn't back them up. [Yes, I explained this in the comments.]

I like this approach.

That basically means that if the game has a "god stat" that is clearly the best to invest in, then you have not enough stats and that stat should be split. This is, well, the case in most RPGs that have a dexterity stat, including 3E/PF. Also, if there is some mechanic that should have a stat for rules consistency but doesn't, then you have too few.

Conversely, the game has a common "dump stat" for many characters, then you have too many stats and this one should be dropped. This applies to wisdom and charisma in pre-3E D&D (where wisdom does nothing unless you're a cleric, and charisma has no practical effect), and commonly to the strength stat in a modern or futuristic setting (because if it doesn't involve hitting people with melee weapons, then strength tends to be rather pointless).

Overall I'd say five to seven is pretty good. In my experience (by the above definitions) Whitewolf has too many with 9, and GURPS has too few with 4.

[Captain Cap]

Savage World is probably the system with the most balanced stats I have ever played:

Agility: cost of and defence against physical skills, evasion.
Smarts: cost of and defence against smarts skills, defence against certain mental effects, range of spells.
Spirit: cost of and defence against social skills, defence against certain mental effects, rolls to overcome fear and shock.
Strength: encumbrance (and a low score can be really punishing), damage of melee and thrown weapons, restrictions on the equipment you can use effectively.
Vigor: toughness, defence against physical effects and hazards.

[animorte]

Savage World is probably the system with the most balanced stats I have ever played:

Agility: cost of and defence against physical skills, evasion.
Smarts: cost of and defence against smarts skills, defence against certain mental effects, range of spells.
Spirit: cost of and defence against social skills, defence against certain mental effects, rolls to overcome fear and shock.
Strength: encumbrance (and a low score can be really punishing), damage of melee and thrown weapons, restrictions on the equipment you can use effectively.
Vigor: toughness, defence against physical effects and hazards.


I have no experience with it, but strictly based on what you’ve listed here, it seems very clear to me where the balance comes from. Stats that have glaring penalties for dumping them instead of just being able to ignore them provides a bit of encouragement.

Being accurate and concise in your description also helps that along.

[Captain Cap]

I have no experience with it, but strictly based on what you’ve listed here, it seems very clear to me where the balance comes from. Stats that have glaring penalties for dumping them instead of just being able to ignore them provides a bit of encouragement.
Another thing that helps is that a character can be competent enough in something with limited investment: for example, if you build a caster, putting some points into Strength and combat may make you a decent melee fighter without too much of a sacrifice with respect to your magical abilities.

[Kurald Galain]

Savage World is probably the system with the most balanced stats I have ever played:
I'm curious how this is different from str/dex/con/int/wis-and-cha-combined in D&D?

[Captain Cap]

I'm curious how this is different from str/dex/con/int/wis-and-cha-combined in D&D?
First, they don't make you better at "active" checks: for Fighting, Shooting, Taunting etc. checks only your skill value is relevant. Attributes related to skills (Agility, Smarts, Spirit) are used to defend against certain skill uses (instead of attacking directly or helping allies, in Savage World you can also disadvantage your enemy via skill checks, and the related Attribute helps you defend against these attempts): the more points are spread among these attributes, the less openings you have.

While a high Dexterity may let you spend more skill points on physical skills, like Fighting (which determines both melee attacks rolls and the equivalent of AC), you can't really funnel all of them in one skill (and wouldn't really be that advantageous either, due to diminishing returns), so a low Dex fighter can keep up with a high Dex one without much problems (at the cost of versatility).

In combat, that is in general far deadlier than D&D, damage affects a target only over a certain damage threshold (and when it does so, it can be nasty), so any source of damage can be extremely valuable, and even a character that doesn't focus on melee may find a decent Strength score beneficial (other than for encumbrance and equipment limitations), if only not to be powerless in close quarters.

Smarts, aside from its relation to skills and defences, is important for all caster, in fact it influences the range of many spells independently of the attribute that governs your magic skill.
Also, Smarts is sort of like Wisdom+Intelligence skill-wise, governing skills like Notice and Knowledges. Spirit is more akin to Wisdom+Charisma when it's a matter of "saving throws".

Vigor... well, is Vigor :smallbiggrin:

The most important balancing factor, however, is (as I already mentioned) the diminishing return from investing in a single trait: without going into the details, for both skills and attributes, the lower is your stat, the more impactful will in general be the next point you're going to spend on it. This tends to incentivize spread out stats over min-maxing.

[Ignimortis]

Generally, I find that anywhere between 5 and 8 is best.

Having 3 and/or 4 tends to be very limiting (since the average party is 4 people, having one character with one of the stats high means you've got the best spread, and designers are far more vary about letting people have more than one stat high).

Having more than 8 tends to bury you in minutiae very few people care about (Dexterity and Agility are separate-but-equally-important? Knowledge and Logic are both attributes?). And that usually ends up having things that I don't really see as attributes/talents/aptitudes, but skills (see WFRP's Ballistic Skill/Weapon Skill, or any system that puts Knowledge/Erudition as an attribute).

Of course, all that depends on whether every stat has a mechanical purpose, and whether some stats are too good to be one stat instead of two, or too bad to be two stats instead of one. But 5 to 8 tends to work best, IME.

[Mastikator]

Gumption
Chutzpah
Moxy
Childlike Wonder
The Cut Of My Gib
A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi

These are the optimum abilities

[Vahnavoi]

This question likely has multiple answers, depending on how rest of a game system is constructed. The minimum hovers around three - or at least I've not seen a non-trivial game with less.

However, what game systems label as abilities and what actually are abilities are two different things. D&D may nominally have six ability scores, but most versions have much more abilities than that. What an ability actually is, is an independent parameter or dimension used to describe what a character can do - independent meaning it cannot be wholly reduced to nor derived from some other ability. In D&D, class, alignment, personality, skillpoints, size, speed, hit dice etc. all have facets that do not reduce to ability scores.

That also means that, sorry Quertus, your idea of zero abilities is logically wrong. Each independent arbitrary natural language trait you use to describe a character is an ability.

[Captain Cap]

That also means that, sorry Quertus, your idea of zero abilities is logically wrong. Each independent arbitrary natural language trait you use to describe a character is an ability.
At this point it's just semantics, but I think it's clear OP is using "abilities" to refer to basic traits that are common to every character. Traits as suggested by Quertus (more akin to feats or Fate Aspects) don't necessarily satisfy this condition.

[Anonymouswizard]

Gumption
Chutzpah
Moxy
Childlike Wonder
The Cut Of My Gib
A Certain Je Ne Sais Quoi

These are the optimum abilities

Heh, I do like the use of Chutzpah as an ability. Honestly I've grown quite fond of the set the current edition of Paranoia uses, partially because the physical attribute is called Violence.


At this point it's just semantics, but I think it's clear OP is using "abilities" to refer to basic traits that are common to every character. Traits as suggested by Quertus (more akin to feats or Fate Aspects) don't necessarily satisfy this condition.

Yeah, I've been assuming that the discussion is about what most games call Attributes, i.e. the broad traits that every character has a defined rating in.

[Glimbur]

Wuthering Heights has Rage, Despair, and Oldness. Roll over rage to control yourself, roll under to do violence. Roll over despair to notice things apart from yourself, roll under to... uh... this stat might not be balanced. Roll over oldness to be healthy and avoid wounds, roll under to be wise. 1d100 roll, base oldness is 1d10+15. You can do the math on how wise characters are.

Perhaps I run the game wrong but more often than not one-shots end with a trial. Of a PC. Who is usually guilty.

[LibraryOgre]

Wuthering Heights has Rage, Despair, and Oldness. Roll over rage to control yourself, roll under to do violence. Roll over despair to notice things apart from yourself, roll under to... uh... this stat might not be balanced. Roll over oldness to be healthy and avoid wounds, roll under to be wise. 1d100 roll, base oldness is 1d10+15. You can do the math on how wise characters are.

Perhaps I run the game wrong but more often than not one-shots end with a trial. Of a PC. Who is usually guilty.

Looks similar to Lasers and Feelings (https://johnharper.itch.io/lasers-feelings)... Pick a number between 2 and 5. Higher numbers means you're better at Lasers (technology and science), lower numbers means you're better at feelings (talking and junk). If you're doing Lasers, roll under; if you're doing feelings, roll over. You roll 1 or more d6. If you roll your number exactly, you get Laser Feelings, which is special insight into what's going on.

[HidesHisEyes]

In D&D character have 6 abilities. Some games such as GURPS (4) have fewer others such as Traveller (8) Call of Cthulu (9) or Role Master (10) have more.

Of course what is optimal will depend a lot on the complexity of the game, but for the sake of argument assume a medium level of crunch such as D&D or Pathfinder.

The problem with having too few ability scores is that a score may try to encompass too much. For example in D&D DEX combines accuracy of movement and speed of movement which to my mind shouldn't necessarily be treated as the same thing. The other main problem is that the ability gets press ganged into dealing with something it really shouldn’t. CHA being used as the ability to turn undead is a puzzling choice, but seems to be driven by there being nowhere better for turn undead to go.

Having too many bogs the game down in complexity and it’s hard to care about an ability score when you might go half a dozen sessions between that ability getting used.

What those abilities are will change depending on the genre and what the game is trying to simulate?

As you say it really depends on the system. D&D has six stats to support a wide array of ways to engage with the game and portray different archetypes. Some games have three stats - some version of “body, mind and spirit” to paint characters in much broader strokes. Lasers and Feelings has one stat: you have to roll over it or under it depending on whether you’re doing something controlled and scientific or something emotional and empathic, because that dichotomy is what that game is about. In that game it really doesn’t matter that “analyse a chemical sample” and “snipe someone with a plasma rifle” use the same stat. It runs on theme logic, not logic logic.

Maybe not a very helpful answer. For what it’s worth, I think my favourite number of stats is five, probably breaking down to something like:
- physical strength and endurance
- agility, coordination and reaction time
- awareness, wits and cunning
- knowledge
- force of character and people skills

That’s for the kind of game I most like to play. It’s not appropriate for every game.