If you only had 4 stats/elements to make RPG mechanics...

[danzibr]

tl;dr: what 4 stats and corresponding 4 elements would you choose for RPG mechanics involving at least bio & mech monsters?

Also, maybe a game like this exists already (shoot, or maybe a TTRPG, reminds me of quasi- and para-elemental planes). If so, I'm all ears, but can't think of one that fits the bill.

Examples to help me illustrate what I'm asking. First go the elements, then the corresponding stats (in order)

• hot/cold/mobility/anchoring, strength/intellect/agility/vitality
• fire/water/air/earth, strength/intellect/agility/vitality
• physical/mental/holy/unholy, strength/intellect/parma/narma
• strong/weak/electromagnetic/gravitational, strength/speed/intellect/vitality
• up/down/spin/charm, strength/vitality/speed/charisma
• good/evil/law/chaos, tranquility/passion/et cetera/et cetera
• wood/metal/beast/tone, stretching/here/SaGa/Frontier
• war/death/fury/famine, dex/int/str/vit

Spoiler: original post, I made a lotta changes

Show

Longer version: I was replaying probably my favorite RPG of all time, Phantasy Star IV (hence the bio & mech monsters). Like many games of its era, it doesn't explain the mechanics for crap. On the surface, seems pretty simple. Have 4 basic stats, strength, mental, agility, dexterity (last 2 seem redundant but w/e), and it turns out a whopping 14 types/elements, with some weird stuff conflated. Roughly, they are: wind/physical, energy, fire, gravity, water/ice, light, lightning, exorcism, break, bio, psi, electromagnetic, holy, defeat. Note most at the end are reserved for insta kill, and they're never actually named anywhere official to my knowledge.

Some of this seems weird to me. Wind and physical grouped together, water and ice. You have this random "break" which only has 1 ability related to it, but combine 2 things which... eh, hopefully you see what I mean.

So I was thinking, what if you could streamline these 14, have 4 elemental types, plus light/dark, then various combinations filling in the blanks. For example, base 4 could be... fire/ice/air/earth, fire+air gives lightning, lightning is effective against machines.

And if you're only going to have 4 base elements, might as well align them to 4 stats. For the previous example, could go fire<>strength, ice<>mental, air<>agility, earth<>dexterity (note I think that's super janky, just an example). Ultimately PSIV doesn't really lend itself to this construct, with its 4 stats and the panoply of types, just a thought.

[Rynjin]

Why ice instead of water? Water is one of the classic 4 for a reason (along with your other 3 choices), and it encompassing both makes complete sense.

In any case, Fire = Strength, Water = Dexterity/Agility. Air = Intelligence/Mental, Earth = Fortitude/Constitution has always made the most sense to me.

Water is the most metaphorically flexible of the four elements (being the only one with an easily observable state change into not one, not two, but THREE different phases), and air is the most ephemeral; the other two are fairly self explanatory.

[danzibr]

Why ice instead of water? Water is one of the classic 4 for a reason (along with your other 3 choices), and it encompassing both makes complete sense.

In any case, Fire = Strength, Water = Dexterity/Agility. Air = Intelligence/Mental, Earth = Fortitude/Constitution has always made the most sense to me.

Water is the most metaphorically flexible of the four elements (being the only one with an easily observable state change into not one, not two, but THREE different phases), and air is the most ephemeral; the other two are fairly self explanatory.

Thanks for the response!

No particular reason. I'm thinking hot/cold are opposites. Could easily go fire/ice/air/earth, then fire+ice=water, or fire/water/air/earth, water+air=ice.

But yes, I like your proposal!

[Calemyr]

When I was doing the groundwork for a story I was writing, I created something of an elemental "zodiac" for it. It involved fourteen elements divided across four "circles". Eight of the elements and two of the circles seem relevant to what you're talking about.

Human Circle: The four elements that define a human.
Mind: The ability of a person to think, learn, and reason.
Body: The ability of a person to achieve feats of physical might and skill.
Heart: A person's courage, will, and integrity as well as their ability to sway these traits in others.
Soul: The ability of a person to perceive the world on a level beyond base senses, including a mastery of magic.

Primal Circle: The four elements that define the raw physical world. Each primal element touches two human elements and is associated with a cardinal direction.
Land (Solid): The natural aspect of form, stability, and force/kinetic energy. Touches Body and Heart. West Cardinal Direction.
Sea (Liquid): The natural aspect of adaptation, change, and entropy. Touches Heart and Mind. North Cardinal Direction.
Sky (Gas): The natural aspect of expansion, transience, and domination. Touches Mind and Soul. East Cardinal Direction.
Flame (Plasma): The natural aspect of purification, impetus, and transformation. Touches Soul and Body. South Cardinal Direction.

Of course this means that certain natural phenomena are classified differently than standard, such as lightning being an embodiment of Flame rather than Sky or a hurricane embodying Land as much as Sky. The remaining circles and elements are irrelevant to the conversation but are the "Great Circle", which define the natural world as Flora, Fauna, Light, and Shadow as well as the "True Circle", which is simply Life and Death or possibly Creation and Destruction.

As with most zodiacs, it is common for cultures to equate elements with personal traits and assign individuals elements they believe suit them and use the elements as a shorthand to gauge the compatibility of certain personalities with opposing elements having strong (though not necessarily negative) reactions. For instance, a person of Shadow, which is associated with deception and obscurity, will always interact strongly with a person of Light, which is associated with a thirst for truth, perhaps creating a two way game where Light is always trying to figure out Shadow and Shadow is always trying to confound Light. In the story this zodiac was created for, the primary representatives of Light and Shadow in the narrative are both heroes in their own rights and are good friends who understand each other extremely well but are never on exactly the same page and always plotting around each other.

Does that suit the question at hand?

[danzibr]

Does that suit the question at hand?

Yeah, thanks a bunch!

I do wonder... for your true circle, why not go 4 for 4?

[Calemyr]

Yeah, thanks a bunch!

I do wonder... for your true circle, why not go 4 for 4?

A few reasons, one of which being that the Heroes of Life and Death were the primary characters of the drama and I didn't want to dilute it. Also, because the arrangement of the elements is either in a geometric design or a series of concentric rings (depending on the school of thought the person explaining it holds to) and in both cases the True Circle is in the middle and has the smallest space. The True Circle also is oriented on a different axis to the other three, which only makes sense if there are two points of reference (most people only see it as a single point of reference simultaneously representing two elements, because that's how it looks when represented two dimensionally). The True Circle is the most disconnected from humanity (we aren't in control of it at all) and having two elements made it feel special. Finally, the story it was built to support was split up into books based on the circles and acts based on the elements, and the first book breaks very nicely into two acts, particularly as each act is built around a different focal character (each with a different flavor to the writing) and it's easier to ease into a story when you keep the perspective hopping to a minimum, at least at first...

And, when you get down to it, really down to the brass tacks, what other elements could rightfully be in that circle? There's only creation, destruction, and the force keeping it all together - which is to say, everything else held in balance.

(Though, to be honest and fair, my earliest notes suggested that Death was the combination of two opposing primal elements (where two adjacent ones created a human element) while Life was created through a combination of all four. It was only later that I decided that Life and Death should be equals and that the disconnect was the limited perspective of the reader and not because Death was just somehow incomplete Life.

You see, the original zodiac was meant to be an enchantment mechanic for a video game I was designing during breaks at a summer job when I was in college. Over the course of the game, you'd get stones tied to the primal elements. When forging a new weapon, you could any combination of the stones, but only one of each, and the combination would result in a unique elemental attunement. 1 stone would create a Primal weapon. 2 stones would either create a Human-attuned weapon or a Death attuned weapon. 3 stones would create a Great attuned weapon, and all four stones would create a Life attuned weapon. As I built the story around the mechanics, the Zodiac went from being a simple enchantment gig to being the skeleton everything else used as framing, be it the nature and relationships of the characters to the structure of the story being told. Eventually I decided the video game design was not a career I'd enjoy as much as just telling the story, but then perfectionism slowed me down and cancel culture caused me to just shelve the whole darn thing. Why would I put so much of myself into something just to have it dismantled, mangled, and then re-manufactured into ammunition to use against me regardless of my intention? Now it's just a fun thing to muse over while I'm otherwise bored.)

[Glimbur]

Fight. Sneak. Adventure. Talk.

Those are the four stats in the rules light high fantasy game I am inventing right now. The three are pretty obvious, Adventure is anything from surviving in the wilderness to climbing a mountain to other ranger type stuff.
Each character starts with 2 in each stat, character building is adding 4 more total (max 4 in each stat). Each session you get tokens in each star equal to your rating in it. You can regain tokens by failing, either by being affected by your Flaw (everyone gets one) or by deliberately or not spending token(s) on a challenge. This does mean that death is off the table as a consequence, but you can certainly fail. Character advancement is still tbd. But it's enough to run an adventure to go steal a dragon's treasure. And what more do you really need?

[Calemyr]

Fight. Sneak. Adventure. Talk.

Those are the four stats in the rules light high fantasy game I am inventing right now. The three are pretty obvious, Adventure is anything from surviving in the wilderness to climbing a mountain to other ranger type stuff.
Each character starts with 2 in each stat, character building is adding 4 more total (max 4 in each stat). Each session you get tokens in each star equal to your rating in it. You can regain tokens by failing, either by being affected by your Flaw (everyone gets one) or by deliberately or not spending token(s) on a challenge. This does mean that death is off the table as a consequence, but you can certainly fail. Character advancement is still tbd. But it's enough to run an adventure to go steal a dragon's treasure. And what more do you really need?

Not bad. But if you're going that route, I'd probably go Fight. Adventure. Sneak. Talk. and call it the F.A.S.T. system.

[danzibr]

And, when you get down to it, really down to the brass tacks, what other elements could rightfully be in that circle? There's only creation, destruction, and the force keeping it all together - which is to say, everything else held in balance.

Initially I was thinking life/death/creation/destruction. Not necessarily life==creation, death==destruction. But... clearly you've put way more thought into this.

As for the rest of your post... I'd play it! Sounds like the kind of game right up my alley.

Fight. Sneak. Adventure. Talk.

Hmm interesting...

I always thought to go base stats and derived stats. Like if you have str/dex/vit for base stats, dex and vit could both contribute to defense (dodging and just uhh being tough), and str and dex could both contribute to say crit. But having the stats themselves be the derived stats... makes things simpler, that's for sure.

Not bad. But if you're going that route, I'd probably go Fight. Adventure. Sneak. Talk. and call it the F.A.S.T. system.

I was thinking Fight. Adventure. Talk. Sneak.

[OracleofWuffing]

I have thought about this significantly less than anyone else, it seems, but I needed a distraction.

It's easier to make a game with combat and I'm lazy, so everyone needs Health, this is going to represent your defenses and limited invulnerability until a stray dust particle instantly kills you. Something's gonna need to be used to reduce Health, so let's have Power represent how much damage things can do to other things. Perfectly ordered combat is so 1980's, so I guess we have to have Talent to represent how quickly you can use your power to reduce something's health- that is, it's an initiative stat- maybe it could be used for accuracy and evasion. I wanted to call it Skill, but I'm irrationally bothered that main stats are better off if they can be abbreviated in a single letter without confusion, and I only thought up of one word for my fourth stat. That's Special, and that's going to be used for different things depending on the character. Robots might require Special to equip complex guns, Humans might use Special to cast magic use science, there might be abilities that trigger based off of Special, and maybe recovering Health is based off of Special.

For elements, I'm taking it as given that we have (Biologic) Creatures and Robots. So, I'll start with elements that utilize those groups. Force is a blanket term for physical damage: bludgeoning, slashing, piercing, crushing, all that sort of thing. Robots take less damage from Force attacks, Creatures take more. Then there's Magnet, because Electromagnetic Pulse is too dang long and I'm already using P for Power. Still damages Creatures, but less than it does Robots. For completeness' sake, I'll add an element that powerfully targets both groups equally... How about Nuclear because it's edgey and future-y, and I'm lazy.

I'd need some clarification about the rules, because I'd like to have non-elemental stuff. If non-elemental is required to be an element, then I guess my fourth element would be Bare. Any resistance to damage resists Bare attacks, and you might need to weigh the difference between powerful weapons that deal Bare damage or weaker weapons that deal Force or Magnet damage. If I'm allowed to have non-elemental and then four elements on top of it, er, uh... I'll run with the idea behind Special, we'll add Unique which is stuff that targets attributes not tied to Creature/Robot. Flying targets might be targeted by a Unique attack that grounds them, a Unique Ray of Enfeeblement-analogue might target higher Power characters, and if all else fails this is the stuff that deals status conditions.

I'm not personally inclined to tie the stats to the elements, I think it would be more fun to have the options open to strange combinations of the two groups. But, for the sake of distraction, I'll try anyways.
Bare/Unique ties to Talent, representing yourself as an individual.
Health ties to Force, representing your ability to exist.
Power ties to Energy, representing your potential to change things.
And that leaves Special tied to Nuclear, representing the world's ability to change you.

All easily memorable as the HPTSFENBU system.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Elements:
Light (which includes Shadow and Mirrors)
Time
Heat (including cold/ice)
Chemical (which includes body enhancements and most construction magic, as well as the more obvious acid attacks and stuff)

Corresponding Traits:
Magic (note that you also need the corresponding stat(s) if you don't want to specialize in Light)
Speed
Mental
Physical

(Alternatively:
Speed
Mental
Charm
Physical)

I prefer the first one, because none of the stats are something you want to do without; a character will be defined as much by what they're forced to sacrifice as by what they focus in. Similarly, the elements all complement each other; Chemical works a lot better when you give it Time or Heat to speed up the reaction, Light plus Time can weave illusions of past events/memories, and reflecting Heat with mirror-themed Light skills is extremely useful both offensively and defensively.

[Brother Oni]

The old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks ran off 3 stats, Stamina, Skill and Luck, with Advanced Fighting Fantasy adding a 4th, Magic, that was antagonistically aligned with Skill.

As Stamina covered both strength, hitpoints and constitution, tests against them would be made either against your maximum value or your current value (to represent fatigue and injuries).

A lot of the mental stats were glossed over and relied on player skill, rather than character skill.

[dafrca]

And, when you get down to it, really down to the brass tacks, what other elements could rightfully be in that circle? There's only creation, destruction, and the force keeping it all together - which is to say, everything else held in balance.

For some reason when I read this I thought Life, Death, Eternal, Ephemeral

Not sure it works, but it made sense to me late at night. LOL

[endoperez]

There are lots of philosophical constructs that are similar to this. There are two ways I could approach this: firstly, I could choose a set of rules that support the kind of game I want to make, or second, I could choose a set of elements that I find interesting on their own, without giving any thought to the mechanics themselves.

From a mechanical viewpoint, you could look into something where simple starting point becomes a complex end result. For example, the old PS1 RPG Grandia uses four basic stats.

STR (Strength) - Improves Attack, used to calculate damage
VIT (Vitality) - Improves Defense, used to reduce incoming damage
WIT (Wit) - Improves Action, used to act more often in combat
AGI (Agility) - Improves Movement, which lets you move farther during your turn.

Raising skills raises stats, and can also affect maximum hit points, mana points, and skill points. Mana points and skill points are separate resource pools; magic is used for spells, skill points for weapon skills, and skill points are slowly recovered during combat. All magic skills give more MP, all weapon skills give more SP. Each level in Axes gives 1 hp and 2 strength, while each level in Swords increases WIT by 2 and STR by 1.

There are four elemental skills, roughly aligned with the four base stats.

EARTH - STR+1 (Gravity)
WATER - Max HP+1 (Water, healing)
FIRE - WIT+1 (Fire)
WIND - AGI+1 (Wind)

So four stats, four elements, right? Now we get to the interesting part: different magics can be combined together.

Earth + Water = Forest or Nature (could be Bio in your system)
Earth + Fire = Explosion (possibly Energy or Break, depending on what Phantasy Star does with those)
Wind + Water = Blizzard (Ice)
Wind + Fire = Thunder (Lightning)

If we add a fifth basic element, let's call it Spirit, we could get the rest relatively easily:

Spirit = Light (maybe Energy)

Spirit + Fire = Holy
Spirit + Water = Healing + Exorcism
Spirit + Earth = Electromagnetic / Energy / Break
Spirit + Wind = Psi

That leaves only Physical and Defeat unaccounted for, and perhaps some of Electromagnetic, Energy and/or Break. But in the Grandia system, the physicals could be combinations of magical and non-magical skills, like Sword+Fire, or Axe+Wind.

And we didn't even touch all the possible elemental combinations, so there's still Earth+Wind and Water+Fire.

Leveling up Spirit could improve all four basic stats in rotation, or it could only affect the mana point and skill point pools (it'd be the only magical skill to improve max SP).

[Anonymouswizard]

For elements in the standard RPG sense I'd probably begin with:
-Physical/Kinetic
-Fire/Heat
-Ice/Cold
-Acid/Chemical

Just my initial thought on getting four elements as neatly as possible. Fire and Ice are opposites, as are Physical (just hit it with a lot of energy) and Acid (carefully break it apart). I'd love to get electrical energy in there as well, but it's not as neat a system and I like having Physical/Kinetic as an element, it means that once everybody has a decent pool of special moves and skill points you can start throwing Phys-resistant enemies at the player to reduce reliance on 'just spam basic attack' style play (yes, you do need warriors to get actual moves to make this work, and ideally give everybody access to multiple elements).

As a general rule in this system Light comes under Fire. This is an assumption that these spells are generally using photons, and assuming that the burns are close enough for our purposes.

Things that don't fit would just get lumped under 'untyped' damage.

Of course from a worldbuilding perspective Physical is not suitable as an element.

For the four stats, well one of the tabletop RPGs I'm trying to write uses Courage/Grace/Wisdom/Faith, which roughly corresponds to Power/Beauty/Knowledge/Belief. But for a more standard set.
-Power: increases attack strength.
-Resilience: reduces damage taken (or serves as HP).
-Speed: determines turn order and/or how many actions.
-I dunno, if you're going cost focused that's all you really need. Split one or add some kind of social stat.

Ideally no stat should be purely useful in combat or out of combat. But if I was making a tactical combat game I'd use those stats, with Speed determining both action order and movement allowance, while things like to hit and dodge values for various attacks would be based on unit type/class. If both a Warrior and Priest are equipped with a Fireball spell and have the same Power they'd do the same damage, but the Priest is more likely to have an effective attack.

[Lacco]

For a completely non-standard, very abstract set, for my newest idea (not really project as it's only few sketches in my notebook) on extremely obsessed, not really stable protagonists that make terrible choices in their horrible lives.

Hunger - the "I NEED!" attribute. Covers primal, animalistic urges of your body that make you do what you do. Can't fight your body forever.

Ambition - the "I DESIRE!" attribute. Covers actions that further your ambition - your wishes, dreams, obsessions and desires. Even if you just thought of them.

Hatred - the "I HATE!"" attribute. Covers actions that are caused by your enemies - whether they are real or just made up - and dislikes. Lash out!

...Void... - the "NUMB" attribute. Covers all the actions you carry out just to keep appearances. How's the weather? Oh, did you catch yesterday's game?

Yeah, had this terrible idea when I was stuck in a terrible, soul-sucking job. For a week. Don't use these. The game can not be won.

[Amechra]

The four elements are Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, and Robot.

Bio enemies? Good at resisting/dealing Monkey damage.
Mech enemies? Good at resisting/dealing Robot damage.

Or how about Chattur'gha, Mantorok, Ulyaoth, and Xel'lotath? Or Physical/Neutral/Magic/Sanity, if you don't want to use the names from Eternal Darkness.

In all seriousness, I don't think cutting down on the number of elements necessarily makes things more understandable. I think it's more important that you have logical relationships between elements and that they work with the themes and mechanics of your game. If your game just needs to divide damage into "Fire" and "Not Fire"? That works. On the other hand, I don't think that Pokemon would work nearly as well if the only types were Normal, Fighting, Psychic, and Dark. Another game might, but I don't think Pokemon could.

...

Speaking of Pokemon, how about Cool, Pretty, Smart, and Tough? I could see that array working for a game focused on social stuff:

Cool: How well you keep up with trends and how well you handle stress.
Pretty: Generally sets your first impression and serves as the "raw charisma" stat.
Smart: How snappy a dresser you are and the general intelligence stat.
Tough: How tough you look and your general "physical" stat.

Clearly, the three types of damage would be Clothing, Emotional, and Social.

[Eldan]

That's similar to some versions of FATE that use stats like that. For example, Dresden Files accelerated has the six stats Flair, Focus, Force, Guile, Haste and Intellect.

You could probably cut those down to four. I'd be tempted to Combine Intellect and Focus, I seem them used for the same Things a lot.

The three corresponding Damage types are Social, Mental and Physical.

[Morgaln]

For elements in the standard RPG sense I'd probably begin with:
-Physical/Kinetic
-Fire/Heat
-Ice/Cold
-Acid/Chemical

Just my initial thought on getting four elements as neatly as possible. Fire and Ice are opposites, as are Physical (just hit it with a lot of energy) and Acid (carefully break it apart). I'd love to get electrical energy in there as well, but it's not as neat a system and I like having Physical/Kinetic as an element, it means that once everybody has a decent pool of special moves and skill points you can start throwing Phys-resistant enemies at the player to reduce reliance on 'just spam basic attack' style play (yes, you do need warriors to get actual moves to make this work, and ideally give everybody access to multiple elements).

As a general rule in this system Light comes under Fire. This is an assumption that these spells are generally using photons, and assuming that the burns are close enough for our purposes.

Things that don't fit would just get lumped under 'untyped' damage.

Of course from a worldbuilding perspective Physical is not suitable as an element.

For the four stats, well one of the tabletop RPGs I'm trying to write uses Courage/Grace/Wisdom/Faith, which roughly corresponds to Power/Beauty/Knowledge/Belief. But for a more standard set.
-Power: increases attack strength.
-Resilience: reduces damage taken (or serves as HP).
-Speed: determines turn order and/or how many actions.
-I dunno, if you're going cost focused that's all you really need. Split one or add some kind of social stat.

Ideally no stat should be purely useful in combat or out of combat. But if I was making a tactical combat game I'd use those stats, with Speed determining both action order and movement allowance, while things like to hit and dodge values for various attacks would be based on unit type/class. If both a Warrior and Priest are equipped with a Fireball spell and have the same Power they'd do the same damage, but the Priest is more likely to have an effective attack.

If you're not set on having opposites, you could put fire/heat and ice/cold as one element. After all, cold is just the absence of heat, so the difference is whether you increase the temperature to produce heat damage, or reduce it to produce cold damage. That could very well be lumped together in one "temperature manipulation" element.That way, you'd have room for electric energy as fourth element.

[Anonymouswizard]

If you're not set on having opposites, you could put fire/heat and ice/cold as one element. After all, cold is just the absence of heat, so the difference is whether you increase the temperature to produce heat damage, or reduce it to produce cold damage. That could very well be lumped together in one "temperature manipulation" element.That way, you'd have room for electric energy as fourth element.

I considered it, and if I was using for elements I'd likely do it. I'm viewing Phys/Fire/Ice/Acid as what I'd use in a fantasy setup, and Kinetic/Thermal/Chemical/Electric as more of a scheme fiction one. But in many cases having enemies vulnerable to great and resistant to cold, or vise versa, makes a lot of sense to people.

Actually, since posting that I've had ideas of how to expand the latter into a full system. I'm imagining a turn based isometric deal in a science fiction setting, with weapons being split among the four elements as makes sense (so firearms deal kinetic damage, lasers deal thermal damage, and so on). Then we'd have an attack power stat, a defensive stat, a movement/turn speed stat, and something tied into Skills. Maybe Precision, Resilience, Reaction, and something like Willpower. All weapons would have a primary attack, some would have a secondary attack, and some armours would give either a secondary attack skill or movement skill. Other skills would be bought from a skill tree and real with things like movement, hacking, or pre-combat crafting.

[Clistenes]

Let me see...

Earth - Physical - Strength and Constitution (earth and stone are traditionally linked to resilience and strength).

Fire - Mental (and Perception) - Wisdom and Intelligence (the mind, understanding, creativity and perception are often described as light or as a flame; sight is linked to light, "enlightenment" is "the state of understanding something...").

Air - Social - Charisma (social skills are strongly linked to speaking, and hence, to the voice, which is linked to breath).

Water - Skill (and Agility) - Dexterity (see Bruce Lee "be like water"; water adapts and changes shape, water finds the path of least resistance, water erodes rocks drop by drop...).