Substats: Yes, I know it's been done before...

[CustosObscurus]

A lot of the people that I've gamed with have thought that while the game does the best it can with six stats, some of the combinations of abilities don't necessarily make sense. For example, Dexterity covers both coordination and fine motor control, and Charisma covers personality, force of will, and physical beauty. This has led me to mess around with the idea of creating substats for the six stats, and trying to balance it. This is just an idea that I've been toying with for a while, and I wanted to get some feedback/suggestions on it. Here's what I have so far:

Every stat has two substats associated with it.

A person rolls the dice/does point buy for the six stats as normal.

Then, a person may add zero, one, or two points to one of the two substats in each pair of substats. However, if they choose to do so, they must subtract an equal amount from the other paired substat (I guess you could think about it the other way around if you want - you can subtract points from one but you have to add them to the other).

This means that the dice rolled/points spent give you an average score for your Constitutuion, but your Stamina (one of the substats of the Con stat) could be higher than that average. This means that your Resistance (the other Con substat) would have to be lower than that average to balance it out.

Every four levels, rather than giving +1 to one stat, you can give +1 to two different substats. For example, at 4th level you could give +1 to Fast Twitch and Agility, or +1 to Stamina and Resistance. The "superstat" always remains as an average of the two substats, rounded down.

The substats are, with examples:

Strength
Fast Twitch - Short-term feats of strength: swinging a weapon, breaking down a door
Slow Twitch - Long-term feats of strength: carrying, lifting, holding a door shut
Dexterity
Agility - Ability to manipulate specific muscle groups quickly: dodging attacks, balancing, Reflex saves
Control - Fine motor control: writing, aiming a ranged weapon
Constitution
Stamina - Ability to keep going despite pain, tiredness, or other such obstacles
Resistance - Ability to resist drugs and poisons, Fortitude saves
Intelligence
Wits - Ability to think/reason quickly
Knowledge - Size of knowledge base, what you "actually know"
Wisdom
Common Sense - "Street smarts"
Enlightenment - Actual understanding learned through life experience
Charisma
Personality - Persuasiveness, force of will, charm
Physical Attractiveness - Beauty

So, for example, if John rolls a 14 for his Constitution, his Stamina could be one of the following:

12, 13, 14, 15, 16

and his corresponding Resistance would be

16, 15, 14, 13, 12

Make sense? Right now I'm having two problems:

1. I don't know whether to have Will saves based on Enlightenment or Personality. It seems that a strong case could be made for either one.

2. I've heard that a sourcebook for second edition had rules for something like this, and there was a problem with min-maxing. With the way this system is now, a level 1 halfling could start out with a 22 Control (which would be used for finessed weapons), and a level 1 wizard could start with a 20 Knowledge. Now, this would assume that they rolled/bought an 18, then applied the racial bonus, and gave a +2 to one substat while subtracting 2 from the other. Do you think that the low balance check, tumble check, and Reflex save make up for the bonus on To Hit rolls?

 

[the Jester]

Based on the way 2nd edition did substats, I would predict severe min-maxing issues will crop up.

To make this work, you'd really need to make sure each set of substats were balanced against each other. Even then, a lot of the time a given character type will lose nothing from one of the substats, making which way to throw the 2 extra points very easy to decide (if all I get from one of my substats is bonus spells, and I'm a fighter, I'll take the other substat as high as I can).

 

[Nifft]

Here's a new take I've been thinking about -- combine Traits / Flaws with sub-stats. So for most people, stats are unified -- but you can choose to split one or two particular stats for your character concept. For example, to emulate body agility vs. manual dexterity:

Heavy Body, Light Hands
You gain +2 to these checks: Sleight of Hand, Open Locks, Craft (any one)
You suffer -2 to these checks: Tumble, Balance, Perform (dance) and Escape Artist
You gain +1 to ranged attack rolls
You suffer -2 AC

Light Body, Heavy Hands
You gain +2 to these checks: Tumble, Balance, Perform (dance) and Escape Artist
You suffer -2 to these checks: Sleight of Hand, Open Locks, Craft (all)
You gain: +1 dodge bonus to AC
You suffer: -2 to range attack rolls

- - -

Basically, split the bonus / penalty blocks out and make sure any given choice is internally balanced. Also, restrict characters to only taking one or two of them at character creation.

(Just to make sure it's clear: these are traits, not feats, so they don't take up a feat-slot. That's why the penalty is greater than the bonus. It's a free choice to take them or not.)

Cheers, -- N

 

[CustosObscurus]

How about this:

Strength
Fast Twitch - Melee attack bonus
Slow Twitch - Lifting objects, Encumberance
Dexterity
Agility - Dodge bonus to AC, Reflex saves, balance & tumble checks
Control - Ranged attack bonus, Finessed weapon attack bonus
Constitution
Stamina - Determines bonus HP, resisting fatigue, how long you can hold your breath
Resistance - Fortitude saves
Intelligence
Mystic - Bonus Wizard Spells, Knowledge (arcana) & Spellcraft checks
Normal - Other INT checks, Bonus Languages, Skill Points.
Wisdom
Common Sense - Listen, Sense Motive, Spot, Survival checks
Enlightenment - Bonus Cleric Spells, Will saves
Charisma
Personality - Bonus Sorcerer Spells, Most CHA checks
Physical Attractiveness - Bonus to NPC Reaction rolls

I've made a few little changes: I moved Will saves into Enlightenment, and I changed the substats for Intelligence because I couldn't codify what Wits would do as far as stats go. Obviously this isn't everything that the substats would influence. Control, for example, couldn't just be for those two things, it would also cover things like lockpicking, disabling traps, writing, and other things that require fine motor control.

Nifft - Well, that's one way to go about it. I'll suggest that at my next game as one option we can use. If you have any more examples, feel free to share them.

Should I rewrite the first post to match this new information?

 

[GreatLemur]

Here's a new take I've been thinking about -- combine Traits / Flaws with sub-stats. So for most people, stats are unified -- but you can choose to split one or two particular stats for your character concept. For example, to emulate body agility vs. manual dexterity:

Very, very nice. That solves the issue relatively unobtrusively, I think. You can have a skilled locksmith who trips over his own feet, and still avoid the nightmare of trying to evenly split up all six attributes into twelve equally-useful parts.

 

[Nifft]

Very, very nice. That solves the issue relatively unobtrusively, I think. You can have a skilled locksmith who trips over his own feet, and still avoid the nightmare of trying to evenly split up all six attributes into twelve equally-useful parts.

Thanks! Since it's clearly impossible to make six stats equally useful...

CustosObscurus -- I'll start a new thread for the trait thing, so as not to pollute yours. I'll add what I've got so far, and what looks immediately obvious.

Cheers, -- N

 

[silvermane]

Why not use the ADND 2e S&P names? Some of these are identical to yours, some not. What is a twitch anyway in this context?

 

[CustosObscurus]

Why not use the ADND 2e S&P names? Some of these are identical to yours, some not. What is a twitch anyway in this context?

Well, mainly because I don't have that rulebook, hehe. Plus the fact that this is more of a thought experiment rather than an actual rules change that I'm planning. I mean, if it develops into a balanced system then I might, but right now I'm just trying to figure out how it would work.

As for twitch (from Wikipedia):

There are two broad types of voluntary muscle fibers, slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow twitch fibers contract for long periods of time but with little force while fast twitch fibers contract quickly and powerfully but fatigue very rapidly.

 

[Wik]

SKills and Powers Substats:

STRENGTH
Muscle - Damage, To Hit
Stamina - Lifting, Carrying.
DEXTERITY
Aim - Ranged Attack
Agility - AC.
CONSTITUTION
Health - Resist Disease
Endurance? - Hit Points.
INTELLIGENCE
Wit - Other Intelligence Stuff
Knowledge - Skill points
WISDOM
Perception -
Will? -
CHARISMA
Leadership - NPCs
Appearance?

Wow... I can't believe I forgot a few. BAck in the day, I was a S&P FREAK.

And, yeah, they're not really a good idea, in my book. Far too customizable, and there's nothing that can be done to fix that. Nifft has a closer idea, but even that is something I'd go against. Really, while the six ability scores are a bit broad, that's fine for what D&D is -a fantasy game.

you *could* break the game into twelve stats that are rolled seperately... and then two stats could be related to each other (Muscle and Stamina, for example). Then, take an average of those two to get your overall Strength Score (used to determine skill scores, maybe). If either stat is more than three points away from that general strength score, it gets brought either up or down to fit the lowest number. So a character with a Stamina of 5 and a muscle of 17 would have an average strength of 11 (5+17/2)... meaning his stamina would self-correct to 8 and his muscle would drop down to 14. This would encourage players to keep their scores relatively close, while still allowing a bit of tweaking.

I dunno... just an idea.

 

[Felix]

Here's a new take I've been thinking about...

<snip>

I smell Fallout.

Favorite game of yours?