No Attributes

[Crazy Jerome]

Look at it from the pure modeling angle. Let's say in some future version you are quite happy to model "great strength" or "98 lb weakling" or "beautiful" or "ugly" as traits. Then what you are saying is that for this version of the game, such questions are rather coarse in the model. Most people are average strength. A few are significantly enough strong or weak to justify the trait. And so on. Presumably, you'll handle things like enormous creatures (giants, dragons, etc.) being so unreasonably off the scale by having a separate mechanic for handling size/scale differences. You may have weak, average, and strong giants, too, but that is only in comparison to other giants. So this alternate mechanic needs to bring its own elegance, streamlining, etc. to the game.

But the moment you start comparing across such boundaries, or deciding that you need to start stacking similar traits into tiers--you are more than 80% back to having attributes anyway. You might as well keep the attributes as a more straight-forward way of handling this issue.

So my question for any game with no attributes is, "what is your elegant mechanic to handle size and scale issues?" Answer that, and having attributes, or not, will take care of itself.

 

[jmucchiello]

But there are a lot of such challenges.

Define "a lot". I see 5 players at my gaming table. If none of them are playing Barbarians or Druids, I don't have to address those changes AT ALL. If I don't create an encounter vs Shadows, I don't have to address Strength drain AT ALL. If one of them does want to be an affected class, I'll deal with it then and there.

Since the fun is in the game, not in writing rules (unless you're group is odd like that), the goal should be to make the game as fun as possible. Which usually takes a fair bit of time. Time that I'd rather spend on writing plots, adventures, and NPC motivations than on rules tinkering.
You seem to disagree with this sentiment, and I would like to know more about your disagreement.

IMO, you can play the game without attributes at about the same speed you can play a 1e adventure with a group of 3e or later characters with the DM translating the adventure on the fly. Sure, there might be a few hiccups along the way, but overall, the gaming session itself should be just as exciting.

There seems to be an expectation that the entire ruleset needs to be rewritten completely in order to even consider playing without attributes and I don't see the need to evaluate any rule that is not "on stage". It can be done on the fly. You need 5 minutes at the front of the session to change all the existing modifiers on all the characters sheets to +1 and recalc all the values. Spellcasters probably lose 2-4 spells, oh well.

The DM can hunt through the monsters in the adventure and replace anything completely broken (shadows, for example) with a similar threat of similar CR. Hopefully he took a few minutes to do this when he decided to run attributeless before game started. But once ready, I don't see the game play experience being fundamentally different with or without attributes.

could D&D or Pathfinder work under such a model?

I find it hard to believe I'm the only person who thinks the answer is "yes" (and not "Yes, but it would be too hard to actually write") to this question from the OP.

 

[kitsune9]

I guess if I was to eliminate attributes, then I would have to consider skills for handling all sorts of myriad of situations (i.e. Climbing skill, Door Bashing skill, Stealth skill, etc) or if I wanted to keep skills relatively small and have "attribute" checks handled by another mechanic, I guess it would be a simple die roll that determines success or failure. But then how complex do I want it? I could have it modified by level (granting a bonus), by situation (bonus or penalty) and then against a set DC (which could be one DC so that the situation list is large or a bunch of DCs to keep the situation list small).

Another aspect is hand-wave such rolls altogether with the exception for only extreme cases. If someone wants to bash a door, they do so. If someone wants to climb a cliff, they do so. It's only if someone wants to bash a door that's made of stone and 2 feet thick or if they want to climb a sheer cliff in the middle of a thundering rainstorm the mechanic for success or failure is applied.

Eliminating attributes requires me to ask questions such as how much can my character carry? Do I create skill, set a default value, or don't care about it all unless a situation comes up that requires an judgment call? An example is the mage wanting to carry a suit of magical full plate mail, his fallen comrade, and both their gear over his shoulder. With no Strength score, is this a skill check, a roll, or just no? Or we could build this into the classes or templates themselves--a fighter can bash the door, a wizard cannot. A rogue can climb the sheer cliff, everyone else better have some rope.

Other mechanic to simulate these attribute checks is spending "action points". Each character gets a pool of action points. When a difficult situation comes up, he's got to pay the cost to get a success. If he doesn't have enough, he's failed the task. He can pay more points to get an even better success. Do all actions cost 1 point or do some cost more than others?

 

[Fanaelialae]

A Song of Ice and Fire RPG is a great example of how a system without ability scores can work.

I don't recall ASoFaIRPG having an encumberance system, but it would be simple enough to add one to the Athletics trait (alternately, you could make it a trait derived from adding Athletics and Endurance).

Bashing a door down is also a use of Athletics.

Because all of your traits in ASoFaIRPG start at 2 (untrained), you can assume that value for any new traits you introduce to the game. Essentially, unless you're especially bad at something (trait of 1) or especially good (trait of 3+), the game assumes you to be equal to the average person.

This is nice because if I suddenly decide that Westeros is experiencing a steampunk revolution, I can add the Inventor trait and be done. I don't have to worry that adding yet another skill under the Intelligence umbrella will make Int too good a stat, or that adding Comeliness may have unintended effects on my reaction system. Everything is out in the open, where you can see it. It's much easier to deal with a single toggle than a myriad of toggles that subtly influence each other.

Essentially, you still have ability scores in one sense. It's just that ability scores and the skill system are fused into a single, unified system. That system doesn't worry about whether you're good at influencing others because of innate talent (Charisma) or training (Diplomacy), but rather only asks how competent you are at influencing others (Persuasion) and leaves it to the player to decide why that is so.

 

[Voadam]

I find it hard to believe I'm the only person who thinks the answer is "yes" (and not "Yes, but it would be too hard to actually write") to this question from the OP.

Nah, I think it would not be too hard. Even for 3e.

It would eliminate ability score based disparities between PCs.

It would mean less attack bonuses, melee damage bonuses, grapple scores, initiative and AC bonuses, and less hp. This would hurt noncasters a little more than casters. It would mean skill checks would be a little lower and skill choices more important.

It would require ignoring stat prereqs for spells and feats and such.

Ability boosters and damage/drain could just give the follow through bonuses they normally give or be removed from the game. A belt of giant strength +4 could give +2 on melee attack and damage rolls and any strength appropriate checks, for example, and be just the same as it is currently.

Feat modifiers like the +4 from improved trip become more significant.

Stuff like poison and undead could assume a base 10 or give penalties forever without killing someone.

It would place a little more emphasis on magic, equipment, class, race, feats, and skill choices.

One way to keep the power level somewhat more comparable to where things are now is to assume everyone has some above average base line, say 14 or 16 so they have +2 or +3 across the board. You could have instead of powerful point buy everything be set at across the board defaults based on desired point buy, all 20s or 18s is superheroic, all 12s is lower end.

All 20s for stats for everybody is kind of a neat idea.

 

[Bedrockgames]

You certainly could do it, but I think eliminating elimates would be too much of a change to the recipe.

 

[Wiseblood]

You could do it without attributes but if I did I would feel like a Fathead stuck to a dungeon wall.

I can accept the limitations of a platform system but we can process 5 senses while facilitating movement in a three dimensional environment, and not inconsequentially, we can think too.

 

[delericho]

IMO, ability scores (and, in fact, those six ability scores) are a true sacred cow of D&D. Remove them, and it simply isn't D&D any more.

That said, you could certainly design an RPG that didn't have stats, or had them work in different ways (there could be a "great strength" feat that gave a +2 to the equivalent rolls, or whatever).

I wouldn't bother trying to adapt either 4e or Pathfinder to work without the ability scores. Virtually every roll in the game is modified by one or more of them, and so removing them throws a huge amount of the math out of alignment. A better approach might be to give a fixed 'base' set of stats for each class, have the races modify them, and go from there - that way, all the math works as normal, but you've sort of moved them off the table.