Abilities scores for an universtal system.

[hawkeyefan]

I’d go simpler with something like:

Speed
Strength
Smarts

And then have everything else build off pf that.

 

[Anoth]

Toughness
Guile
Wit
Awareness
Presence
Sanity
luck
Intuition
Will
Education
Honor
Grace
Faith

no physical stats

 

[uzirath]

Toughness

Is toughness not physical, at least to some degree?

Education

Would you consider this to be educational potential or the level of education that one had achieved thus far in one's life? Would this stat degrade somewhat over time? (I suppose many stats would, with age.)

Honor

How would this be connected to one's reputation? If you acted dishonorably, would your stat go down? If one were thought to have acted dishonorably and developed a dishonorable reputation, would that affect the stat?

Grace

I assume you're talking about social graces (courtesy and whatnot) rather than physical grace. Would that change from culture to culture? Is it more about intent than execution?

Faith

Would one need to specify the object of their faith? Or would you use this only in a campaign setting with a hard-coded religious cosmology?

no physical stats

I'm curious why you made this choice.

 

[Anoth]

Is toughness not physical, at least to some degree?



Would you consider this to be educational potential or the level of education that one had achieved thus far in one's life? Would this stat degrade somewhat over time? (I suppose many stats would, with age.)



How would this be connected to one's reputation? If you acted dishonorably, would your stat go down? If one were thought to have acted dishonorably and developed a dishonorable reputation, would that affect the stat?



I assume you're talking about social graces (courtesy and whatnot) rather than physical grace. Would that change from culture to culture? Is it more about intent than execution?



Would one need to specify the object of their faith? Or would you use this only in a campaign setting with a hard-coded religious cosmology?



I'm curious why you made this choice.

toughness as in Clint Eastwood or balls of steel. Not tough like my mother’s chicken.

Education more for starting skill points or something like that. I like how it works in call of Cthulhu.

grace as in “saved by grace” sort of divine favor. God really likes you.

honor I Could see going up and down

faith for me would be for whatever religious system you follow. Atheist have zero. Alternatively I like an older definition of faith that only used belief indirectly. It wasn’t belief as much as it was the ability to act on your religious beliefs. The more i think about it I can see faith offsetting sanity loss. An anchor that atheists wouldn’t have.

the reason I went for no physical stats is because I got tired of every fighter in d&d having a 20 strength or 20 dexterity to be effective. I think tough guys do more damage And can take more damage. So you Can have a tough guy that people fear without being built like Lou Ferigno.

deliberately avoided wisdom and intellect And charisma ecause I think these attributes are easier to roleplay.

 

[Tonguez]

Firstly I really like Fate Accelerated Approaches and that they describe character behaviours rather than attributes, thus first list
Careful, Clever, Sneaky, Forceful, Flashy, Quick

Second I also like systems that go straight to Skills instead of Attributes then Skills so
Athletics - Used for Melee Combat and Skills that require application of physical strength (break, lift, drag) or endurance (carry, hold on) or stamina (resist, hold breath). - When Athletics = 0 PC is Unconcious
Agility - Skills that involve movement, flexibility, balance and reaction time. When Agility = 0 PC is Immobile
Dexterity - Fine motor skills, hand eye coordination, and ranged combat (aim).
Logic Used for Problem solving skills, Academic recall, Procedural knowledge (how to do stuff)
Perception - Used for observation skills, and reading social situations
Persuasion - Used to interact with others and social combat
WIllpower - used to overcome mental limitations (including magic/psionics), morale* and sanity.

Status - a setting specific stat that determined social status in community and thus wealth (ability to call in favours and get stuff) -3 Slave -2 Villein -1 Peasant 0 Freeman+1 Yeoman +2 Aristocrat+3 Noble

* Morale is resistance to running away (run away is assumed to be the default reaction to all frightened effects)

Third For My minimalist list
Wit - used for all mental/social stats
Physique - used for all physical stats
Knack - used for special abilities/magic/stunts
Move - how many actions per turn

my absolute minimalist list though is "There are no Attributes - choose 6 things that your want your character to do and distribute 8 points across them -3 to +3

Oh I forgot my Factions List used for treating organisations/villages and kingdoms as NPCs
Economy (con)-Yield v Consumption
Might (str)- Defense v Offense
Mobility (dex)- Reaction v Stimulus
DIplomacy (Cha) -Rule v Intervention
Society (wis)- Stability v Agitation
Scholarly (int)- Research v Stagnation

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If you were hired to create a open licence TTRPG for all genres, but easy to be adapted from other system, what attributes or abilities scores would use? The list would be 9-12, not lesser 6.

The most important thing about any set of ability scores is that you can easily distinguish between them. It's easy to see the problem in D&D, which fails to properly distinguish between Intelligence and Wisdom. There's no point in writing down two different numbers, if we can't even agree on when we should be using each one.

Strength is good. Everyone is in agreement on when dumb muscle is the relevant factor.

Agility or Dexterity is useful. Most people can agree on when a problem needs finesse, rather than power. A lot of games try to use both stats, under the observation that tying so much into one stat might be unbalancing, but that leads to ambiguity. Does it require Agility, or Dexterity, to avoid an incoming sword swing? You could argue equally for both, so a good system should only include one of them. I'll go with Agility, so nobody assumes that Dexterity is only manual dexterity.

Constitution is solid. The ability to withstand a hit is distinct from the ability to dish out hits, even if most people who have one will also have the other. It is not a requirement of this exercise that every stat be independent. I'll go with Toughness for the name, though, because Constitution is too strongly tied to D&D.

You need some sort of mental stat, to delineate the fact that the character knows different things than the player. Intelligence and Wisdom are too nebulous, though, so I'll go with Mind. If it has anything to do with knowing or understanding things, it's Mind.

Wisdom is nebulous. Perception isn't. You need a stat to determine whether or not you notice something, and this solves the whole problem. Never again do you have to worry about the difference between Spot and Search. This also gives you a convenient place to stick a species bonus, if a class has good senses.

Appearance is in the eye of the beholder, and Charisma is famous as a dump stat, so you might as well combine both together with every aspect of etiquette and diplomacy into a Social stat.

Actually, Social sounds more like a skill than a stat, but there's no requirement that this hypothetical system has to have both stats and skills. Following on that, you might as well introduce stats for Crafting, Magic, Melee and Ranged Combat.

I feel like we're missing some, but this is a good start. That's ten stats for use in any game, or nine stats for use in any game that doesn't have magic.

 

[GMMichael]

The most important thing about any set of ability scores is that you can easily distinguish between them. It's easy to see the problem in D&D, which fails to properly distinguish between Intelligence and Wisdom. There's no point in writing down two different numbers, if we can't even agree on when we should be using each one.

You're such a blasphemer.

It's a good point, though. And one that needs to be considered every time another attribute is added to the list.

Also, you can keep Magic as an attribute in multiple genres. Because: the Force, Vulcan neck-pinch, and whatever the heck MacGyver was up to. But since we're already having trouble with the line between "abilities," "attributes," and "skills," would you save "stats" for a different thread?

 

[steenan]

If you were hired to create a open licence TTRPG for all genres, but east to be adapted from other system, what attributes or abilities scores would use? The list would be 9-12, not lesser 6.

How wide range do you have in mind when writing "for all genres"? Both in the sense of kinds of settings and in the sense of kinds of stories. Depending on that, the attributes need to be more or less abstract, fit different thematic areas and different kinds of activities.

Does the game you envision cover:

• AIs and body-skipping post-humans for whom any physical characteristics don't really matter?
• Gods ruling various aspects of reality in a world similar to our own?
• Typical high schoolers with no supernatural abilities?
• Talking and tool-using mice?
• Hundred mile long snakes living on the World Ash?

Should it be able to support a story of:

• An epic conflict where the fate of the world is at stake?
• Teens fighting in a desperate uprising, doomed to lose?
• A budding romance between two mature people with complicated past?
• A cooking contest against an enemy of existence?
• Purging a society of demonic corruption?
• Finding out who you are and what is your path in a world full of conflicting expectations?

None of the examples above are made up - they are settings and themes of existing RPGs. If you want your game to be fully universal, it should work for each of them, which puts very different requirements on the set of stats it uses than a narrower thematic range would.

 

[RSIxidor]

Power
Wisdom Courage​

Half joking, but I do prefer systems with less stats than some of the suggestions here. I truly think we could move D&D to five stats and it still work well.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*