Attributes

[Minigiant]

Personally I keep social out my attributes and go for physical and mental in 4 groups.

Physical
Power: Strength
Finesse: Dexterity
Toughness: Endurance
Awareness: Senses

Mental
Power: Charisma
Finesse: Intelligence
Toughness: Willpower
Awareness: Insight

 

[Glyfair]

I really like the New World of Darkness abilities. There are three categories: physical, mental, and social, and each has power, finesse, and toughness.

Heh, when I was taking and modifying a local RPG I copied the concept of Mayfair Games DC Heroes stats. It also had 3 sets of 3 stats. The 3 categories were physical, mental and mystical.

I really liked that you effectively had 3 stats to deal with everything, and then had 3 sets of those depending on what you were doing. For example, on the astral plane you would substitute your mystical stats. If you were dealing with psionic combat, you would use your mental stats.

The DC Hero stats were:

Physical
Finesse: Dexterity
Power: Strength
Toughness: Body

Mental
Finesse: Intelligence
Power: Will
Toughness: Mind

Mystical
Finesse: Influence
Power: Aura
Toughness: Spirit

 

[S'mon]

My d6-based homebrew I've used successfully for PBEMs has Strength Speed Skill Agility Stamina as the base stats, optionally adding Willpower or Magic, with the average human male at 3.

The system was created from first principles looking at all the stats used in combat, then breaking them out. Speed - who goes first Skill -ability at hitting Agility - ability to avoid being hit Strength - ability to do damage Stamina - ability to sustain damage.

 

[roguerouge]

Bookbag Toting
Dice manipulation
Bladder size
Rules Lawyery
Sense DM Motive
Argumentation

What? You said you wanted the perfect system for gaming, right?

 

[Aus_Snow]

If you were designing your perfect game system, what attributes (strength, intelligence, etc.) would you include?

Hopefully I'll get the time to make a game for the competition here on EN World, come January. It won't be my perfect game, I'm pretty sure, but I hope - if it gets made - that it'll be some good for something.

Anyway, for that, I'm probably going with about eight attributes. But I really don't know, just yet. You can expect *magic* to be a central feature, somehow or other.

How would you rate the abilities and how would you generate scores?

Don't know yet. Something a bit different from all the stuff I've become familiar with, through my years of gaming. If it so happens to be similar to something else out there, well never mind.

Hm. Well, the thread has got me thinking about it a bit more, which I suppose is a good thing. . .

 

[howandwhy99]

I don't believe they are attributes, but ability scores. And I'd include whatever I thought was sufficient to define the roles.

The harder part is specifying the level of abstractness and an interchangeable system allowing greater depth of detail for those who want it would be ideal. But beer & pretzels wargaming style is good enough for D&D.

 

[1of3]

If you were designing your perfect game system, what attributes (strength, intelligence, etc.) would you include?

It doesn't really matter what you call them.

(There are also fine games without ANY attributes, that is without stats that any character of a certain type will have at a certain value.)


If you want to have such stats make sure that either you do not have more than six or sort them in smaller packages, like WoD does. (Magic number seven.)

Furthermore make sure that each attribute has a unique mechanical effect that everybody wants. That way it sucks to be bad in any attribute. (D&D is quite bad in this respect, although many other games are even worse.) If you cannot come up with six unique mechanical effects, you do not want to have six attributes.

If you use the traditional split into turn based combat and free play, it's useful to give every attribute some hard use in both areas. (7th Sea is a nice example.)

The result of this considerations is that you are better of thinking about mechanical effects first, then turn them into attributes, then label them appropriately. Not the other way round.

How would you rate the abilities and how would you generate scores?

That depends very much on the game you want to create. Random creations often has the idea of a less serious game associated with it, but that doesn't have to be the case. (See Greg Stolze's Reign for a mechanic that creates a whole character by rolling 11d10.)