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View Full Version : Attribute Applicability [Idea/Brainstorming]



Seerow
2013-04-29, 11:32 AM
So there was a lot of discussion recently, both here and over on the WotC forums, about what an attribute means, and what it's good for, and what they actually do.

Several of the more recent discussions (particularly over on the WotC forums) have been leaning towards using feats/abilities to represent things that are representative of a very high stat. Like you get to 20 strength, and rather than getting a bigger modifier, you qualify for an ability that quadruples your carrying capacity and makes you count as one size larger for all grapple/bullrush/trip/etc checks. You get 20 constitution, and you qualify to pick up things like regeneration, or immunity to poison.


Well I've been thinking about this, and was wanting to take it a step further. My idea is this: Every odd attribute value, you get to pick a benefit related to that attribute. Every even attribute value, you get the normal +x bonus. Attributes start off with their bonus applying only to skills (or maybe only a single benefit), but you get to pick one benefit to apply each time you hit an odd value. There's then a separate set of abilities for 19+ (ie the outside normal human range) that give you more powerful/superhuman things.



But while the idea is cool in concept, hashing out enough actual abilities to make this worth it for each attribute is pretty rough. Like super-human strength and constitution stuff is relatively easy, but regular strength and constitution stuff I'm hard pressed to come up with even 3 or 4 abilities, much less enough options where someone would have choices to customize. (Or is it okay to just have 4 total options and someone with an 18 can do everything?).

On the other hand Dexterity is really easy to come up with normal options (it has so much riding on it cutting down to 4 might be hard), but superhuman dexterity is much harder to think of things to represent. Most things I can think of are things that would probably fit better as skill tricks (ie stuff like hide in plain sight, freedom of movement, etc).

Similarly, the mental attributes I'm hard pressed to think of even a handful of things they can apply to without going to spellcasting or skills. Superhuman Wisdom I could see getting stuff like immunities (I seem to remember this being the case in AD&D), and Charisma could probably eat the Leadership feat among other things, but I can't really think of anywhere near enough options to flesh this out.

Ideally I'd like to have at least 4 regular, and 4 super-human options for each attribute to make this work (though more, especially at the super-human level, is better). And I guess that's why I'm posting here. I'm hoping the playground can be a bit more creative than I am in coming up with stuff to come from attributes. I really do think if done right this could solve a lot of fundamental problems with the system while making attributes (especially the ever-problematic odd-numbered attributes) far more interesting.

Grinner
2013-04-29, 12:01 PM
D20 Modern's Talents would be a good start.

If that's not enough, you could look through monsters' abilities for ideas, and I think there was a third-party Talents supplement by Bloodstone Press.

Seerow
2013-04-29, 12:05 PM
D20 Modern's Talents would be a good start.

If that's not enough, you could look through monsters' abilities for ideas, and I think there was a third-party Talents supplement by Bloodstone Press.

Never played D20 modern, but a quick look at it shows this is something that could be more or less on the right track, at least as far as getting non-superhuman options.

Thanks!

Deepbluediver
2013-04-29, 12:50 PM
I know that the SRD lists a few epic-level uses for skills, things like "Balancing on a cloud". If you need more ideas, maybe check there.

Seerow
2013-04-29, 01:12 PM
The trouble I'm running into is I really don't want to steal cool stuff from skills. I mean I can if it comes down to it, but ultimately I think if I have to, then that's a sign this idea probably isn't all that great to run with. The idea is that the abilities you get from the attribute are things that are part of the wider attribute.

I don't mind stealing weaker feats (ie dodge or toughness), or feat tax feats (ie add this stat to hit type thing), because that means these new abilities give a new outlet where such things are acceptable and balanced.

Well here's what I've got after going through d20 modern. Rules of note:
-You gain one ability listed at every odd numbered attribute above 10. So at 11, 13, 15, 17.
-The below only covers 10-18. While at higher attribute levels you may take a lower level one, there will be more powerful options available to 19+.
-You only gain these abilities from natural ability increases. If you get a belt of giant's strength you do not suddenly get to pick 3 new abilities.
-No attribute applies to hit by default. You may not apply more than one attribute bonus to hit. Casters would get a note saying they can choose to add one mental stat to their save DCs by using one of their attribute abilities to get it.
-No ability may be taken more than once unless the description specifically says otherwise.

Strength:

Default-Adds to damage, carrying capacity
Options:
Piercing Strikes-Allows the character to apply their strength modifier to hit.
Melee Smash-The character increases damage of non-light melee weapons by 50% of his strength modifier (round up).
Extreme Effort-Allows the character to take a full round action to treat his strength as 4 points higher than normal when making a strength check. This ability may be taken multiple times, each time add 4 to the character's effective strength.
Sunder Savant-The character ignores his strength mod in points of hardness or damage reduction with every attack. This ability may be taken multiple times, each time allowing the character to ignore his strength mod in additional Damage Reduction or Hardness. (So if a character has 18 strength and takes this option 4 times, he could ignore 16 points of DR or hardness)


Dexterity

Default-Adds to Armor Class, Initiative
Options:
Weapon Finesse-Add dexterity modifier to hit with a ranged or finessible weapon.
Deadly Aim-Add dexterity modifier to damage rolls with a ranged or finessible weapon.
Uncanny Dodge-As the Uncanny Dodge ability.
Combat Reflexes-You can take an additional number of opportunity attacks each round equal to your dexterity modifier.

Constitution

Default-Add constitution score to hit points
Options:
Damage Reduction-You gain your constitution modifier as damage reduction X/- against all attacks.
Energy Resistance-You gain three times your constitution modifier as energy resistance to Cold, Fire, Electric, Acid, or Sonic energy types. You may take this option multiple times, each time picking a different energy type.
Robust-You gain your constitution modifier as a bonus to your hit points, plus an additional time for every 5 levels you possess. (So a 20th level character adds 5x con mod to HP). You may select this ability multiple times, each time gaining the same amount of HP again (so a 20th level character with 18 constitution would gain 40 hp after taking this ability twice).
Stamina-Your constitution is considered to be double its normal value when determining how long you can run, hold your breath, or swim. Additionally you regain twice as many hit points as normal from a long rest

Intelligence

Default-Add intelligence modifier to skill point gain.
Options:
Insightful Strike-The character may apply his intelligence bonus to hit with a finessible weapon.
Cunning Plan-The character is able to spend one minute coming up with a plan, which provides a circumstance bonus equal to his intelligence modifier (capped at +3) to all skill checks, initiative rolls, and attack rolls made by the character or his allies. This bonus is reduced by 1 per round until it is gone completely. Only one Cunning Plan may be in effect at a given time, if multiple characters with this ability make a plan together, add +1 per additional character taking part in the planning (capped at +6).
Savant-Choose one intelligence based skill, you gain a +3 bonus to that skill. You may take this ability multiple times, each time applied to a different skill.
Linguist-The character is extremely skilled at picking up new languages. The character knows one language per point of intelligence modifier, and may learn new languages beyond that with a DC15 intelligence check and a week of study.

Wisdom

Default-Bonus to perception checks.
Options:
Skill Knack-The character has a knack for a specific skill, gaining a bonus equal to his wisdom modifier (max +4) to that skill. This ability may be taken multiple times, each time applying to a different skill.
Cool Under Pressure-The character may take 10 on a number of trained skills equal to their wisdom modifier, even when in combat or some other stressful situation. This ability may be taken multiple times, each time adding wisdom modifier number of skills to those which the character may take 10.
Aware-The character is intuitively aware of their surroundings, gaining a bonus equal to their wisdom mod to perception checks made to avoid being surprised.
Zen Archer-The character may apply their wisdom mod to attack rolls with ranged weapons.

Charisma
...I've got nothing here. It does nothing by default in 3.5 besides skills, and the charismatic talents from d20 modern seem to be all about stealing the Bard's stuff. Some suggestions here would be great.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-04-29, 01:30 PM
Most things I can think of are things that would probably fit better as skill tricks (ie stuff like hide in plain sight, freedom of movement, etc).
This kind of thing was a concern back when G&G was being worked on, as I remember. Options for character building are good... but have too many different sources, and things start getting messy-- characters have too much going on to keep track of, character creation takes too long, it takes too long to write abilities, you add more broken combos...

Look at 3.5. Before you even touch class abilities, you've got:

Skill uses
Skill tricks
Feats
Magic items


And now we're going to add a fifth option to the list? It's another layer of complexity, and-- probably-- redundant in a well-designed system. Ability tricks, Skill tricks, and Feats have way too much overlap between them, methinks.

Seerow
2013-04-29, 01:44 PM
This kind of thing was a concern back when G&G was being worked on, as I remember. Options for character building are good... but have too many different sources, and things start getting messy-- characters have too much going on to keep track of, character creation takes too long, it takes too long to write abilities, you add more broken combos...

Look at 3.5. Before you even touch class abilities, you've got:

Skill uses
Skill tricks
Feats
Magic items


And now we're going to add a fifth option to the list? It's another layer of complexity, and-- probably-- redundant in a well-designed system. Ability tricks, Skill tricks, and Feats have way too much overlap between them, methinks.

More pools of abilities makes things easier to balance. If you have one big pool of abilities, you're going to have a bunch of stuff that's really strong compared to the average, and a bunch of stuff that's really weak. Look at 3.5 feats. You basically have two choices. Eliminate a bunch of the options entirely, to create a more balanced pool of abilities, or separate the pools of abilities.

There's also the issue of ability concepts. As pointed out, the concepts for what you want an attribute to do are different from what you want a skill to do, and both of these are very different from what you want a magic item to do. While there may be some overlap, they are very much distinct. Again, the big exception here is feats because the term feat became so absolutely meaningless in 3.5 that a feat could conceivably grant anything at all.

I guess what I'm saying is I'd rather drop, or at least more narrowly define, feats and explore this idea further. It helps add some meaning and importance into attributes that has generally been missing. Making attributes actually mean something I think is a valuable goal in of itself, the trick is coming up with suitable things that make it so.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-04-29, 01:50 PM
True. I would probably have


Skills, representing training, and being largely active, out-of-combat things.
Ability Tricks, representing raw... err, ability, and largely being passive buffs.
Feats, being largely active, combat things.

Seerow
2013-04-29, 01:55 PM
True. I would probably have


Skills, representing training, and being largely active, out-of-combat things.
Ability Tricks, representing raw... err, ability, and largely being passive buffs.
Feats, being largely active, combat things.


I actually question whether feats are needed as a general resource pool at all, if they are going to be active combat things.

I mean, does a spellcaster need active combat stuff? No, pretty much just martial characters do. Why not shunt feats over to being the martial equivalent of spells (ie full casters don't get them. Partial casters like a Paladin Ranger of Duskblade will get some, but a Fighter or Barbarian gets more), and just let the specialization aspect of things get taken over by Skills/Abilities?

Deepbluediver
2013-04-29, 02:04 PM
I actually question whether feats are needed as a general resource pool at all, if they are going to be active combat things.

I mean, does a spellcaster need active combat stuff? No, pretty much just martial characters do. Why not shunt feats over to being the martial equivalent of spells (ie full casters don't get them. Partial casters like a Paladin Ranger of Duskblade will get some, but a Fighter or Barbarian gets more), and just let the specialization aspect of things get taken over by Skills/Abilities?

I think that the idea of Feats works well because the system is very open to customization. You can still limit it with things like "Fighter Bonus Feats" if you want one character to have more combat abilities, but otherwise I can use any selection of feats I want to tweak my build.

If you want to divide out or rework a few of the weaker feats then that can be fine too, but it doesn't require you to take feats away from some characters.


I'm just kind of at a lost for where to go next with your idea. Feat's aren't the equivalent to spells, nor do I think they need to be. If we shore up some of the worst ones, and make maybe offer them a little more freely, would that improve things?

Grod_The_Giant
2013-04-29, 02:07 PM
I suppose you can get away with removing feats if all classes are very modular. As I see it, feats exist to help distinguish Bob the Barbarian from Fred the Barbarian. They provide access to abilities which are either too generic (TWF) or too narrow (Trophy Hunter) to really be a class ability. I also kind of like the 5e idea of using feat chains to replace PrCs.

Seerow
2013-04-29, 02:24 PM
I think that the idea of Feats works well because the system is very open to customization. You can still limit it with things like "Fighter Bonus Feats" if you want one character to have more combat abilities, but otherwise I can use any selection of feats I want to tweak my build.

If you want to divide out or rework a few of the weaker feats then that can be fine too, but it doesn't require you to take feats away from some characters.


I'm just kind of at a lost for where to go next with your idea. Feat's aren't the equivalent to spells, nor do I think they need to be. If we shore up some of the worst ones, and make maybe offer them a little more freely, would that improve things?

Consider what I was responding to, the assumption that all feats are reworked to be active use abilities used in combat. In this scenario, you are getting rid of all of the non-combat feats and all of the passive feats. In this case, why does a wizard need feats? Like I said, why not make feats into the non-caster version of spells. That is to say you have a nice big feat list that different martial characters can tap into, and all of them give you cool stuff you can do in combat.

Basically it's what people always say they want when talking about feats, the only difference is you're taking them away from casters who have no use for that sort of bonus.


I suppose you can get away with removing feats if all classes are very modular. As I see it, feats exist to help distinguish Bob the Barbarian from Fred the Barbarian. They provide access to abilities which are either too generic (TWF) or too narrow (Trophy Hunter) to really be a class ability. I also kind of like the 5e idea of using feat chains to replace PrCs.


I really don't like the idea of using feats to replace PrCs, so that's pretty much out for me.

Also using feats as a catch-all for everything that doesn't work somewhere else is pretty much the issue I was complaining about earlier. Also, you were the one who said that feats should be active combat abilities, how does TWFing or Trophy Hunter fit into that? TWFing is a passive benefit to a specific fighting style. Trophy Hunter is an elaborrate bonus to intimidate checks with an active use will save bonus.

Anyway, like I said you'd still have feats to differentiate your two barbarians from each other, or your two fighters from each other, or your fighter from your barbarian. I'm not sure where Fighting Styles would fit in with this, but having feats as a martial-class specific resource rather than a all-character resource opens them up to be much more interesting and balanced because you no longer have to figure out what the caster is doing with theirs, and how to balance that against the fact that non-casters generally can't use any of the caster feats.

Deepbluediver
2013-04-29, 02:54 PM
Consider what I was responding to, the assumption that all feats are reworked to be active use abilities used in combat. In this scenario, you are getting rid of all of the non-combat feats and all of the passive feats. In this case, why does a wizard need feats? Like I said, why not make feats into the non-caster version of spells. That is to say you have a nice big feat list that different martial characters can tap into, and all of them give you cool stuff you can do in combat.

Basically it's what people always say they want when talking about feats, the only difference is you're taking them away from casters who have no use for that sort of bonus.

Ok, when you put it like that, its a little easier to understand, I guess. My question then becomes- if you replace the non-combat feats with Attribute Abilities (that's what you're calling them, right?) then what benefit does it offer over the current system?
Casters and meleers already take the feats that fit best for their class or build, without needing too many mechanical restrictions.


Also, having all feats as active non-spell effects makes them seem an awful lot like ToB manuevers. And I'm concerned that it will still be difficult to hash out appropriate categories for everything. For example, where do Metamagic Feats end up?
Or something like Iron Will, which is usually considered a weak Feat, but is the kind of thing that a player might want as a trait of their character.

Seerow
2013-04-29, 03:22 PM
Ok, when you put it like that, its a little easier to understand, I guess. My question then becomes- if you replace the non-combat feats with Attribute Abilities (that's what you're calling them, right?) then what benefit does it offer over the current system?
Casters and meleers already take the feats that fit best for their class or build, without needing too many mechanical restrictions.

The main benefit would be in making attributes more important. It makes them a central part of customization. It also opens up more customization opportunities earlier, because where in the current system you have one, maybe two feats at level 1, you instead have a number of abilities (judging by the 3.5 standard array you're going to have ~8 to play with right from the start). While some of those things will be things that are currently free, many of them will be little customization things that they wouldn't have been willing to spend a feat on normally, but helps differentiate a character. A strength 15 int 11 character is going to feel and play differently from a strength 11 int 15 character. And ideally the flexibility in what attributes offer will provide more room for characters to use non-standard attributes for a class.

To go along with this I'd like to use something like the increasing point buy system I've suggested in the past (where characters gain extra point buy to invest as they level up), so a character can choose to invest a bunch of points into +1 to their prime stat, or get several points in a secondary/tertiary stat. This system helps to both make saving up for an odd point feel like less of a waste (and indeed might even become the more desirable number to shoot for, how odd would that be? [pun intended, shoot me]).

Additionally, the intended superhuman attribute abilities for 19+ makes becoming superhuman in an attribute really mean something. A character with 24 intelligence feels much the same as a character with 10 intelligence, just some extra skill points. If this system is made right, a character with 24 int will have interesting advantages. The trick is figuring out what those advantages are.



Also, having all feats as active non-spell effects makes them seem an awful lot like ToB manuevers. And I'm concerned that it will still be difficult to hash out appropriate categories for everything. For example, where do Metamagic Feats end up?
Or something like Iron Will, which is usually considered a weak Feat, but is the kind of thing that a player might want as a trait of their character.

Metamagic feats either go away entirely (seriously they're either too weak by default or too strong with metamagic reducers), or become class abilities (a la Warmage getting free Sudden _____). Something like Iron Will would make a good attribute ability (though 'trait' seems like it would be a good alternate name for this), possibly tied to Wisdom.

And yes, making them effectively Maneuvers would be the general idea. It probably won't sit well with everyone, because feat has become such a meaningless term that everyone has a totally different idea of what they are, but in general it seems like most people (due to the Fighter legacy) associate feats with martial capabilities. So if we're going to narrow the scope of feats, it seems pushing feats into martial capabilities is more likely to satisfy people than making feats into the passive specialization options (which 4e tried and people complained about how boring the feats were)