Creating Derived Stats For D&D(PEACH)

[87blue]

This is just a little thought experiment I had to make the most out of the big six stats. If I am going over already trodden ground please let me know.

Dodge: (Wits+Dex)/2. Also add w/ D20 for initative.
Unarmed Melee Damage: (Str+Dex)/2. Using a melee weapon has you add the weapon bonus.
Willpower(Used to both cast/summon and resist magic/mental assults): (Int + Chr)/2.
Damage reduction(reduces the amount of damage taken): (Str + Con)/2. Armor bonuses add to this off course. Can also be used for Capacity.
Death save: (DR + Willpower)/2. This is to make sure you don't fall unconscious.
Athletics: (Str+Dex)/2. Can also be used for Move.
Casting: (Wits+Int)/2
Summoning: (Chr+Int)/2
Speechcraft(Persuading/blackmailing others for profit): (Chr+Wits)/2


You can see the theme here right? Thoughts?

[Yakk]

I don't think "take the average" is the best way to describe "these two stats combine to make this one".

You appear to have changed the big 6 stats; you should be more clear about that. Also you seem to use different abbreviations for the same stat.

You have doubly-derived stats (the average of average), which due to repeated averaging become "muddy" in range. Repeated averaging means you end up with the mathematical equivalent of a blurry picture.

I find it helpful to think of what happens when I take the dual of a system like yours. You have Athletics = Str+Dex and Dodge = Wits+Dex

    Wits - Dodge - Dex - Athletics - Str

Dex can be viewed as a combination of Dodge and Athletics instead of the other way around.

You can take a page from how Big5 broke up personality types. Create a cloud of adjectives and connect them, and see if you can find clusters, instead of starting with 6 points and inventing intermediate ones. This kind of thought process leads me to have Brawn (a combination of Str and Con in D&D) as a primary attribute more than Str or Con is; when thinking about someone, Brawn matches how I'd expect heros to be more than Str and Con separately do; the "High Str, Low Con" hero is a strange exception, as is the "Low Str, High Con" hero. So I think Brawn should be a primary attribute, and you can handle "is sickly" or "is hardy" as a separate minor axis.

With that kind of refactoring into more character-defining axis, you can have secondary attributes that produce variation on the first.

Like, Brawn can have secondary attributes of Size and Health; the secondary can be +1 or -1.

You can try to do the same kind of thing for the "Fast" hero archetypes, the "Smart" hero archetypes, the "Slick" hero archetypes, etc. Find primary attributes that evoke an actual "kind of hero" and have derived attributes that you'd feel like should clump together. Then have secondary attributes that tweak the primary.

Finally, go over it with a balance pass; if one primary attribute seems too good or not good enough or "too dump staty".

As an example of me doing the above exercise:

Brawn (Size, Health, Athletics)
Guile (Dex, Wits, Awareness)
Mind (Knowledge, Willpower, Common Sense)

Here are 3 primary attributes each with 3 secondary attributes.

We can use the 0 1 2 rule to make characters; you have a 2, a 1 and a 0 for primary attributes, then a 2 a 1 and a 0 for each secondary in a primary.

Suppose I'm making a big burly fighter:

Brawn 2 Size 2+2 Athletics 2+1 Health 2+0
Guile 0 Awareness 0+2 Dex 0+1 Wits 0+0
Mind 1 Willpower 1+2 Common Sense 1+1, Knowledge 1+0

Their derived stats are Size 4 Athletics 3 Health 2, Awareness 2, Dex 1, Wits 0, Willpower 3, Common Sense 2 and Knowledge 1.

Because I'm adding and not averaging, it is less "muddy". At the same time, the fact the character is big and muscly is pretty obvious from the stats.

[87blue]

I don't think "take the average" is the best way to describe "these two stats combine to make this one".

You appear to have changed the big 6 stats; you should be more clear about that. Also you seem to use different abbreviations for the same stat.

You have doubly-derived stats (the average of average), which due to repeated averaging become "muddy" in range. Repeated averaging means you end up with the mathematical equivalent of a blurry picture.

I fixed some of the abbreviations. Thanks for pointing that out. As for the math, I admit, I am not good with the statistics here. Can someone help check the math?

Now that I think about it, the derived stats I already gave tend to make things more samey and don't allow for any one stat to outshine the other....