CustosObscurus
First Post
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?
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?