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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    BlueKnightGuy

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    Default Your favorite attributes?

    I HATE dexterity.

    I hate it with burning passion.

    Spoiler: Rant against dexterity and proposal of different attributes
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    Because it exists strength has a strong tendency to be relegated merely to muscle size and not muscle efficiency, which encompasses controlled and precise, if somewhat broad, movements. A world-class gymnast with maxed acrobatics skills has A LOT of strength and is not a blundering mass of muscles. Maybe a more striking example, not mine sadly, is that strippers, which have very fit bodies and very good scores in acrobatics, are NOT blundering masses of muscle.

    Dexterity also has a plethora of uses in TRPGs (ok, mostly D&D and Pathfinder, but not only them), where it can govern initiative, ranged accuracy, ranged damage, close combat accuracy with specific weapons, dodge, and often a good number of skills like acrobatics, stealth, legerdemain, lockpicking, etc...

    It is spread too wide, does too much and limits the scope of other physical ability scores.

    So what would be a good alternative? Please keep in mind that I am in no way a game creator, and am merely pulling things from my behind.

    Physical ability
    Muscle efficiency, how good you are at moving your body, how fast you run, what kind of acrobatic stunts you can do, governs attacking and damaging with weapons (and without).

    Body control
    What I would gladly replace dexterity with. It governs how good you are at controlling your body with slow and precise movements. It is flexibility, dextrous fingers and artificially lowering your heart rate.

    Tenacity
    Your defense stat, your ability to resist. It governs how tough you are to kill, your resistance to poisons and illnesses, your endurance, and all that both mental and physical. Separating physical and mental resilience always seemed weird to me. Running long distances is tough both physically and mentally, doing debilitating tasks all day long demands as much willpower as horsepower. Besides, I'm always a sucker for "No you don't set me on fire with your combustion spell. I refuse to be affected by it."

    Quickness
    Your reflexes and how good they are, both in speed and precision. Governs initiative and defense in combat

    Perception
    How good your five senses are, as well as balance and intuition (and humor).

    Intelligence
    Your wits, ability to adapt and how discerning your mind is, as well as your character's passive ability to solve puzzles. Govern catching up to lies, logical fallacies piercing illusions and skill points.

    Presence
    Your mental strength stat, allows you to influence the world without brawn. Governs social skills as well as your ability to attack and damage the etheral.

    So, what do you think?


    And you, what is your most hated/beloved stat? From which game is your favorite statblock?

    I am personnally a fan of the Ars Magica stats and stamina/resilience/body/constitution in particular.
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    My favorites are highly game dependent. With that said:

    Fudge: Fudge lets you use whatever set of attributes you please. I generally default to Strength, Agility, Toughness, Perception. They're a functional set that doesn't get in the way.

    WR&M: The attributes are Warrior, Rogue, and Mage. Each is attached to skills that follow the archetype.

    Qin: The Warring States: Qin is a wuxia game, which heavily employs the five Chinese elements. The attributes? Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth. It's thematic, and it works beautifully.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

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    Titan in the Playground
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    The best statblock is from TOON. The attributes are Muscle, Zip, Smarts, and Chutzpah.

    My favorite stats are Wit and Charm from Flashing Blades, and Chutzpah from TOON.

    I like Bardic Voice as a separate stat in Chivalry & Sorcery, and the distinctions but strong relations between between Constitution, Body, Endurance, Recovery, and Stun in Champions.

    The least interesting stat is Wisdom, which was merely invented as a prime requisite for clerics, and has since been used in any number of inconsistent ways. For instance, clueless people can hear just fine, and deep philosophers have no inherent advantages in sight.

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    NecromancerGuy

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    My favorite attributes, accross all games, are Aspec, Domain, Persona and Treasure. All of them from Nobilis.

    High Aspect lets you drink seas, punch out the sun and solve pi.
    High Domain allows you to create, destroy and change one specific aspec of reality. Want to throw fire? Destroy Destruction? Transplant rabbits from their underwater homes to the surface and make it so that this has always been the case? Then use domain.
    High Persona turns you into one aspect of reality. And gives its properties to other things. Now this pebble of advanced science is indistingishuable from magic!
    And High Treasure lets you have stuff. Really nice stuff, like swords that cut through miracles, flying pirate ships and more.


    Apart from those... I find myself quite fond of charisma, mostly because it means, that even if you yourself are not very good with people, you can still play someone who is.


    Concerning dexterity... I too have been annoyed, when in my old group someone would roll a perfect strength check and then the dm would say that too much force was used...
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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    The intelligence score is garbage. Wisdom has a lot of the same pitfalls.

    I actually really like luck stats for no reason I can articulate.
    It always amazes me how often people on forums would rather accuse you of misreading their posts with malice than re-explain their ideas with clarity.

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    Titan in the Playground
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vitruviansquid View Post
    I actually really like luck stats for no reason I can articulate.
    I've noticed this in Flashing Blades.

    Nothing, nothing, NOTHING, makes more sense than simulating Luck with a die roll.

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    PirateWench

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Once upon a time, a friend had us play in his homemade game. In this game, Luck was a stat. Luck was a unique stat in that you rolled d100 and that was your Luck score. You could then spend Luck points in the game to modify events.

    I rolled a 100.

    A friend who was known for being unlucky rolled rather poorly. But with Luck, you get one reroll. So, he rerolled and got a result of 1. He had 1 point of Luck.

    That was a funny game.

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Favorite?
    That would probably be something like Idea in The Laundry RPG/Basic. I like attributes that actually let you roll to see if the GM can give you a clue (or rather, the GM gets upset with the players blundering about and says "roll Idea"). XD


    Least favorite?
    I think probably Charisma in d20, just because it's a headache in deciding if it is physical appearance or just force of personality, or both, or just "if you're the kind of person people like". Or just a lot of personality.
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    Ettin in the Playground
     
    Kobold

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    I dislike most of the stats in D20:
    STR - as noted by the OP, muscle control is just as important as sheer volume of brawn.
    DEX - again as described in the OP, tries to cover too much in a single stat. Speed of reflexes are one thing, but without self-control (which comes under WIS), all it means is you can jump and scream a few milliseconds ahead of your peers. Ability to control your own body's movement is something else entirely, and fine manipulation with the hands is yet another thing.
    WIS - yeah, this is just a mess. Intuition and perception have nothing to do with self-discipline and willpower.
    CHA - this is probably the worst of all. Imagine a character who's loin-meltingly gorgeous, so a sizeable fraction of all those who see him fall violently in love on the spot - but has no opinions of his own or strength of personality, and can be led into anything by anyone - is that very high or very low CHA? Ask any three players, you'll likely get three different answers.

    Favourites? I like Presence, from Champions/Fantasy Hero (and, separately, from Rolemaster), which seems a much more clearly defined alternative to Charisma.

    Unrelatedly, I also like Focus from Jade Empire, just because it allows you to do the bullet-time thing...
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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Personally, i find that my baby when it comes to stats is Charisma, despite all the hate it gets from most i like being the good looking guy who can talk his way into and out of anything, this also synergizes well with my crippling fear of playing a prepared caster (i am convinced i will screw up majorly if i ever play something with prepared spells) as well as my fondness of the social skills, this tends to leave me playing some sort of spontaneous caster who inevitably can lie, talk, or glare their way out of anything
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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    I've noticed this in Flashing Blades.

    Nothing, nothing, NOTHING, makes more sense than simulating Luck with a die roll.
    Yeah. Weird how sometimes the fun stuff is the counter-intuitive stuff.
    It always amazes me how often people on forums would rather accuse you of misreading their posts with malice than re-explain their ideas with clarity.

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    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    Devil

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    I have no problem with dex, as its a very large abstraction, you can always subdivide further, and strong vs agile is rather common narrative dichotomy. :D I do hate the CHA can be beauty, and the WIS is intuition and willpower thing(especially when CHA is supposed to be strength of personality)
    I actually gravitate toward the Over the Edge system of Attributes. You have X traits and Y flaws (in OtE its 3 and 1, but the exact number is irrelevant). These are broad descriptors, and made up by the player, so if you were a Kung-Fu guy that would be one of the traits, and you would roll extra dice on Kung-Fu Checks(or physical endurance checks, etc--anything that falls under having Kung-Fu training)
    If you do not have a trait, you cannot do the action, or have 2 dice if its something a normal person could reasonably do (like lift a heavy object, or memorize a pattern, or whatever).

    I like that A: you can simply specify what your character has abilities/skills in, and not have to itemize each little sub-skill, and
    B: it gets rid of having to figure out what attributes you 'need,' by simply assuming normal human capabilities unless otherwise stated.
    (now OtE has its own problems, but that's another topic )

    (oh and I don't see how using dice to represent luck is counter-intuitive )
    Last edited by Susano-wo; 2014-12-17 at 01:05 AM.

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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    Geostationary's Avatar

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Orderic View Post
    High Aspect lets you drink seas, punch out the sun and solve pi.
    I've always liked how Aspect sidesteps the traditional problems of physical/mental stuff entirely. It 1)encompasses all physical and mental actions, so no nitpicking about the finer points of dex v str v whatever (along with the arguments about mental stats, too!), and 2) because the resolution of actions works on different fundamental assumptions than most other systems and Aspect is just as codified and miraculous as the other Attributes, we can entirely ignore the ideas of magic v. mundane actions that plague many systems thus putting the punchy guy at the same level as the guy with Domain 5: Time guy or what have you.

    For similar reasons the skill system is also successful in this regard, and I love it.
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    Barbarian in the Playground
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    I really like the attribute and skill system in Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye). You have the following attributes:
    • Bravery
    • Intelligence/Wisdom (depends how you translate it)
    • Intuition
    • Charisma
    • Dexterity
    • Agility
    • Constitution
    • Strength

    For each skill, you roll against (up to) three attributes, which may even differ depending on the skill use. Skill rolls are "d20 roll under attribute", with skill ranks being used to compensate roll-overs and difficulty penalties.
    Example 1: For Tracking, I roll on Intelligence/Intuition/Intuition to find the tracks, and on Intelligence/Intuition/Constitution to follow them.
    Example 2: For acrobatics, I roll on Bravery/Agility/Strength.

    What I like about this system is that, much as you wrote, any skill/talent is not governed by only one attribute. The downside is, of course, that any character is quite MAD and it is fairly complex, especially since there are more than 100 talents (including combat talents) as of 4th edition. Spells work just the same.

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    Doorhandle's Avatar

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post

    The least interesting stat is Wisdom, which was merely invented as a prime requisite for clerics, and has since been used in any number of inconsistent ways. For instance, clueless people can hear just fine, and deep philosophers have no inherent advantages in sight.
    With you on wisdom, particularly as I imagine figherlike types should have really high, and not really low, will.

    I like strength, not as a stat in of itself but to have with characters. Nice to have a fallback of "smack things real hard" if other tactics fail.

    The Awesome System handles it's stats pretty well. While Speed is powerful, it balances itself out by having few skills attached to it, and by having a cap built into the very system on how many actions it gives you (which is expensive to lift.) Likewise, flow, which has the majority of skills attached to it, has no other befit but improving those skills, so it again balances itself out. Between brawn giving you health, brains giving you stunt-able skills and soul giving you awesome points, you really want some amount into all of the stats.

    And for a video-game example, I have mixed feeling on how Dark Souls 2 handles stats. On one hand, there's no real dump stat that's universal for all builds, and they're no lone "godstat" (Every build will need some vitality, endurance, adaptability and health, but you need to boost all of them. ) On the other hand, it still weirds me out that strength doesn't help you much with heaver Armour, and dexterity does't help dodging much, let alone the split between attainment and wisdom/intelligence.

    edit: Holy crap, I thought I could spell. Apparently I can't. whelp.
    Last edited by Doorhandle; 2014-12-17 at 07:55 PM.
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    My personal favourite split is Unknown Armies, which uses the following attributes:

    • Body: a mixture of strength and constitution from D&D, with some agility. It equals your HP, and is what your attacks will probably be based off.
    • Speed: essentially dexterity from D&D, although it looses many of the full body agility skills to body. It's used to determine initiative, ability to dodge, and various other skills.
    • Mind: this is essentially the only mental attribute that you have, and it functions as a mixture of a standard intelligence stat and willpower. It's main use is to avoid going mad.
    • Soul: looks like the social attribute at first glance, but actually reflects your character's ability to connect, and so also functions as the standard attribute for magic.

    Although the book does admit that it can be hard to differentiate rolls based on body and speed, the spread gets across the idea of what your character is generally good at, and then you use skills (explained below) to show how your character is different from every over character who dumped Body and Speed to focus on Mind and Soul (serious, when I played we had one mundane who dumped soul, and three mages who pumped it, and then the mundane was the most effective).

    The game gives you the 'basic' skills everyone has, encourages you to rename them (although I suggest not renaming initiative and dodge) so that they reflect your character, and then you get to spend points on whatever skills you want, making up the names and arguing with the GM about what they do. Then in-game when a skill roll is required you use a skill that has a name that fits the situation. It's a lovely mix of attributes+freeform stats.

    The only major problem I have with the system is that, as is, Mind is the most important attribute (because nobody wants to go crazy). But the skill system allows almost any build to work.
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    For sheer simplicity, Roleplaying is Magic gives you just 3 stats-- Body, Mind, and Heart. Body for all physical skills, Mind for mental skills (and magic), and heart for interacting with others. I find the system really useful for casual PbP games.

    On the same vein some might just say it's a copy of the Tristat system. And it probably is. But hey, the simplicity works for me.
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    See, in my RPG I'm making I've split off lots of DEX and a bit of STR into agility, and then split wisdom into awareness and will. So you end up with Might (Strength, basically), Intellect (Intelligence, basically) Personality (Charisma, basically), Vigour (Constitution, Basically), Dexterity, Agility, Will and Awareness. Also initiative is now Awareness-based, because having it be DEX-based-except-if-you're-tied-up-then-it's-WIS-based made no sense to me (it also leads to hax whereby a cleric goes around tied up so that he can go first and bombard everyone with still spells, but that's not the point).

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    Ettin in the Playground
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Of the six attributes found in D&D and many of its derivatives, my favorites are Strenght, Constitution and Intelligence. Mainly because they can actually be defined in a way that's measurable, so you can take one table from a game and another one from reality and compare people in an useful way.

    Dexterity, Wisdom and Charisma, on the other hand, are awful, because as written they include traits that correlate only very weakly, or not at all. As a result, you can't measure them and can't do comparisons between characters and real people.

    Of all various traits I've seen used as "basic attributes" in games, I have to say my favorite is "Sisu", roughly translating to Willpower or "grim determination". While it's hard to measure scientifically, it's very easy to grasp intuitively and immediately informs something of the character's personality, ie., their role.
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Vitruviansquid View Post
    The intelligence score is garbage. Wisdom has a lot of the same pitfalls.

    I actually really like luck stats for no reason I can articulate.
    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    I've noticed this in Flashing Blades.

    Nothing, nothing, NOTHING, makes more sense than simulating Luck with a die roll.
    The problem is less with having "luck" as a stat, and more with the fact that stats are expected to increase. How on earth do you train luck? You either have it or you don't.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    The problem is less with having "luck" as a stat, and more with the fact that stats are expected to increase. How on earth do you train luck? You either have it or you don't.
    Stats being expected to increase is very game dependent. It's a standard in D&D, and an option that might happen in a lot of other games. There are also plenty where stats are generally static.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    The problem is less with having "luck" as a stat, and more with the fact that stats are expected to increase. How on earth do you train luck? You either have it or you don't.
    Perhaps it represents those experienced adventurers that gain an 'intuition' or '6th sense' of when to be at the right place at the right time. Another way to look at it is that the longer a PC explorers, the more likely they will be killed on an adventure. So the high-level, long-lived ones could be seen as having greater luck scores over time to represent their continued victory over the ever-increasing odds of death.
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    Ogre in the Playground
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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Ah, I think I've got it.

    I like the luck stat because it lets you decide to play truly mundane characters without becoming irrelevant, or without becoming irrelevant unless your fellow players "go easy" or your GM making special allowances for you. On the flipside, it also allows you to be the Milhouse of a group.
    It always amazes me how often people on forums would rather accuse you of misreading their posts with malice than re-explain their ideas with clarity.

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Wuthering Heights has Rage, Despair, and Oldness. The first two go between 25 and 75, and the third is somewhere between 16 and 25 unless you have a Problem that says otherwise. Rage and Despair can go up or down depending on how your life is going.

    In a duel? Roll under your Rage.
    Trying to keep your cool? Roll over your Rage.
    Need to make a confession? Roll under your Despair.
    Want to see how someone else feels? Roll over your Despair.

    I haven't gotten Despair to work well in practice, but for Rage I like the balancing act where being better at one thing also means being worse at another. It's also a percentile system and you have to roll over your Oldness to be wise, which is part of why everything tends to go so badly for everyone.

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen_Feet View Post

    Of all various traits I've seen used as "basic attributes" in games, I have to say my favorite is "Sisu", roughly translating to Willpower or "grim determination". While it's hard to measure scientifically, it's very easy to grasp intuitively and immediately informs something of the character's personality, ie., their role.
    And if the character is not Finnish?

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    The problem is less with having "luck" as a stat, and more with the fact that stats are expected to increase. How on earth do you train luck? You either have it or you don't.
    Actually, the idea that stats are expected to increase is fairly new. They didn't increase in D&D without powerful magic until 3E. They rarely increase in Flashing Blades, which is the only game in which I've seen Luck as a stat.

    In Flashing Blades, the only Luck-based skill is gambling, at which you can certainly improve. But it's primarily for things like having a body of water under you when falling, or some such. Also, Luck of 15+ at the start of the game gives one more skill point, and +1 to your combat expertise.

    For an attribute to increase in Flashing Blades, you must deliberately use it many times in an adventure, for several adventures. I don't know how to do that with Luck, and have never had that attribute increase.

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    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Ok, fair enough, stats increasing is a new thing. But it is a thing, and it's still not clear how you can feasibly increase luck without magic. I can pump iron or juggle or run cross-country or study or meditate or learn etiquette, sure, but how do I make myself luckier? The only real way to get better at, say, games of chance is to lower the amount of chance involved.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    Ok, fair enough, stats increasing is a new thing. But it is a thing, and it's still not clear how you can feasibly increase luck without magic. I can pump iron or juggle or run cross-country or study or meditate or learn etiquette, sure, but how do I make myself luckier? The only real way to get better at, say, games of chance is to lower the amount of chance involved.
    It's only a thing in some places still. I generally don't expect stats increasing unless the game explicitly states they do - there are so many games where they are static, and more than a few where they inexorably decrease.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

    I'm not joking one bit. I would buy the hell out of that.
    -- ChubbyRain

    Current Design Project: Legacy, a game of masters and apprentices for two players and a GM.

  29. - Top - End - #29
    Bugbear in the Playground
     
    PirateWench

    Join Date
    Jan 2012

    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    Ok, fair enough, stats increasing is a new thing. But it is a thing, and it's still not clear how you can feasibly increase luck without magic. I can pump iron or juggle or run cross-country or study or meditate or learn etiquette, sure, but how do I make myself luckier? The only real way to get better at, say, games of chance is to lower the amount of chance involved.
    Eh, you just surround yourself with four-leaf clovers and rabbits feet. And nail up those horseshoes (with the ends pointing up so the luck doesn't drain out).

    I mean, it's not like luck is a real thing, so naturally, there's no real way for a fictional thing to increase.

    But, in the real world, it's not like a grown adult tends to actually be able to get smarter. A person might learn more things, but they're not going to become more intelligent. Realistically, people's stats don't make much in the way of changes after a certain point. If you're not the sort of person to exercise, you are unlikely to become such a person. And realistically, there's often a trade-off. If you're exercising in your free time, then you're not reading as much as you used to, so your intelligence should go down. Or if you're a muscle-bound hero who starts reading a lot, then you're not exercising as much, so your strength should go down.

    But I haven't see any game systems where your stats can decrease from non-use.

    So, if there's any argument about realism regarding ability scores in any game system, I would find that to be very strange.

  30. - Top - End - #30
    Titan in the Playground
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Dallas, TX
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Your favorite attributes?

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    Ok, fair enough, stats increasing is a new thing. But it is a thing, and it's still not clear how you can feasibly increase luck without magic. I can pump iron or juggle or run cross-country or study or meditate or learn etiquette, sure, but how do I make myself luckier? The only real way to get better at, say, games of chance is to lower the amount of chance involved.
    Then in that subset of games in which stats go up, Luck might not be an appropriate stat. No problem with that.

    More importantly, there is no clear way to get more intelligent. You can get stronger, more dextrous, or build up your constitution by spending months on campaign fighting the bad guys and walking all day, but it's ludicrous to suggest that after doing so you can choose whether to become smarter, or more charismatic, or stronger, so stats growing the way they do in D&D and d20 games is just as infeasible as increasing Luck that way.

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