Li Shenron
Legend
It's not a bad idea per se... it's just that alternative ability scores have been tried countless of times in other RPGs or D&D variants and the conclusion is always that another variant is necessary.
D&D 5E Eight Abilities (Str-Con, Dex-Ath, Int-Per, Cha-Wis)
Even better no ability score! just use the actual proficiency bonus, whether you are proficient and use no bonus 0, when you are not proficient.
Yaarel
He Mage
I care about balance, but I like the mechanics of abilities. Each ability is an "aptitude", a cluster of skills that a character will inherently tend to be good at, even without having training for it. It is an excellent mechanic to quantify talent.
Creating abilities is tricky, because a roleplay game is a complex ecosystem with many and unpredictable variables.
Creating abilities from within the D&D traditions is constrained.
Creating abilities that players either love or can live with is hard.
My system that the original post presents works from within the D&D traditions. Everyone in this thread understands what Perception and Athletics are, and why they can work as a abilities.
Yeah. When the eight abilities pair off into four:
The Strength-Constitution score determines the Size as follows.
Minimum Strength-Constitution Score: Size
• 25+: Gargantuan
• 21: Huge
• 17: Large
• 13: Heavyweight (Medium)
• 9: Lightweight (Medium)
• 5: Small
• 1: Tiny
Personally, I am comfortable with a one-to-one correlation so that the score simply determines the size. Heh, but many gamers love their strong-tough halflings, and so on. So based on feedback, the Strength-Constitution score serves as a minimum requirement if a player wants a larger character concept.
Meanwhile, the Dexterity-Athletics pair represents agility, generally.
Yaarel
He Mage
With regard to the foursome:
• Tough: Strength-Constitution (big brute)
• Agile: Dexterity-Athletics (precision and mobility)
• Knowing: Intelligence-Perception (intellect, observation, and intuition)
• Social: Charisma-Wisdom (social skills, emotional intelligence, and mystique)
Sometimes I play around with a catchy acronym but the above is the gist of the four abilities.
I consider these four abilities the essential archetypes of most gaming systems, and perhaps even most story telling.
Trope of the Five-Guy Band
• Tough Guy (drums) (one-man-army)
• Rogue Guy (guitarist) (bad boy, shrewd, often a foil complementing the jock guy)
• Smart Guy (synthesizer keyboard) (advisor, technician, inventor)
• Heart Guy (accompanying singer) (idealistic hero, inspirational hero, "the chick" in an otherwise all-male band)
• Jock Guy (lead singer) (well-rounded, a little bit of everything, often the hero of the story since Gilgamesh)
• Tough: Strength-Constitution (big brute)
• Agile: Dexterity-Athletics (precision and mobility)
• Knowing: Intelligence-Perception (intellect, observation, and intuition)
• Social: Charisma-Wisdom (social skills, emotional intelligence, and mystique)
Sometimes I play around with a catchy acronym but the above is the gist of the four abilities.
I consider these four abilities the essential archetypes of most gaming systems, and perhaps even most story telling.
Trope of the Five-Guy Band
• Tough Guy (drums) (one-man-army)
• Rogue Guy (guitarist) (bad boy, shrewd, often a foil complementing the jock guy)
• Smart Guy (synthesizer keyboard) (advisor, technician, inventor)
• Heart Guy (accompanying singer) (idealistic hero, inspirational hero, "the chick" in an otherwise all-male band)
• Jock Guy (lead singer) (well-rounded, a little bit of everything, often the hero of the story since Gilgamesh)
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Yaarel
He Mage
The original post describes my creating a system (a character sheet) that allows the DM and players to choose whether to have four abilities, or the traditional six.
I did this by separating out Perception and Abilities as separate abilities. So that the eight could pair off into four, or correspond arrange according to the six.
To my surprise, the eight too as eight separate abilities seem reasonably balanced with each other.
So the system (the character sheet) allows the table to choose during the ability score generation, whether to have four, eight, or six ability scores.
These eight are great, because some gamers are "lumpers" and like to consolidate and some gamers are "splitters" and like to quantify smaller details. Hence, choose four, six, or eight depending on ones own style.
Going beyond the original post.
The eight derive from a bottom-up analysis of the gaming system. Which mechanics do players normally roll during a gaming session? These are the mechanics that need to organize in a way that is salient and useful and about equally balanced with each other.
(Top-down analysis tends to create categories that sound like a comprehensive simulation. But in practice, some of these categories fail be useful during actual gameplay, because they lack meaningful mechanics that make them valuable. Consider the current imbalance between Dexterity and Intelligence. Being "smart" or "educated" sounds like something that should be valuable, but knowledge skills are problematic during gameplay, and there are no other mechanics for Intelligence. Knowledge is problematic because if a DM needs players to know something, the DM will inform them one way or an other regardless of Intelligence score, and oppositely, if the DM doesnt want the players to know something, they will never know it, regardless of Intelligence score. The DM has gamist reasons to divulge information. Thus the usefulness of Intelligence varies from DM to DM. Personally, because my DM style adjudicates narratively, before resorting to dice-rolling, I often use knowledge skills to determine success if a story idea is plausible but uncertain. So, our games get alot of mileage out of knowledge skills − and Intelligence.)
I am surprised these eight seem roughly balanced with each other. One of the benefits of having fewer abilities − four − is the lumping makes it easier to bundle an assemblage of mechanics that is roughly equal to other assemblages. Because the abilities convey assymetric benefits (such as Strength extra damage versus Wisdom charm resistance), I didnt think it was possible to split the abilities into eight and have them balance each other. But I consider these eight comparable. I find it worthwhile to invest pointbuy and increases in any of them.
There is still value in lumping. For example. For the Strength-Constitution pair, one aspect gives active abilities that help compensate for the boringness of the passive aspect. For the Intelligence-Perception pair, the perceptive aspect is very useful mechanically and happens often during a gaming session, whereas the intelligent aspect of lore is useful for controlling a narrative but more nebulous mechanically. The pairing combines aspects that complement each other, and make each of the four overall choices more holistic and robust choices.
I prefer mechanical "elegance", making the abilities as simple as possible but not simpler. So both consolidation and flexibility are valuable to me. This is why my gaming style prefers four abilities.
But splitting is a legitimate gaming style too, and having eight separate abilities can finetune a concept carefully.
I did this by separating out Perception and Abilities as separate abilities. So that the eight could pair off into four, or correspond arrange according to the six.
To my surprise, the eight too as eight separate abilities seem reasonably balanced with each other.
So the system (the character sheet) allows the table to choose during the ability score generation, whether to have four, eight, or six ability scores.
These eight are great, because some gamers are "lumpers" and like to consolidate and some gamers are "splitters" and like to quantify smaller details. Hence, choose four, six, or eight depending on ones own style.
Going beyond the original post.
The eight derive from a bottom-up analysis of the gaming system. Which mechanics do players normally roll during a gaming session? These are the mechanics that need to organize in a way that is salient and useful and about equally balanced with each other.
(Top-down analysis tends to create categories that sound like a comprehensive simulation. But in practice, some of these categories fail be useful during actual gameplay, because they lack meaningful mechanics that make them valuable. Consider the current imbalance between Dexterity and Intelligence. Being "smart" or "educated" sounds like something that should be valuable, but knowledge skills are problematic during gameplay, and there are no other mechanics for Intelligence. Knowledge is problematic because if a DM needs players to know something, the DM will inform them one way or an other regardless of Intelligence score, and oppositely, if the DM doesnt want the players to know something, they will never know it, regardless of Intelligence score. The DM has gamist reasons to divulge information. Thus the usefulness of Intelligence varies from DM to DM. Personally, because my DM style adjudicates narratively, before resorting to dice-rolling, I often use knowledge skills to determine success if a story idea is plausible but uncertain. So, our games get alot of mileage out of knowledge skills − and Intelligence.)
I am surprised these eight seem roughly balanced with each other. One of the benefits of having fewer abilities − four − is the lumping makes it easier to bundle an assemblage of mechanics that is roughly equal to other assemblages. Because the abilities convey assymetric benefits (such as Strength extra damage versus Wisdom charm resistance), I didnt think it was possible to split the abilities into eight and have them balance each other. But I consider these eight comparable. I find it worthwhile to invest pointbuy and increases in any of them.
There is still value in lumping. For example. For the Strength-Constitution pair, one aspect gives active abilities that help compensate for the boringness of the passive aspect. For the Intelligence-Perception pair, the perceptive aspect is very useful mechanically and happens often during a gaming session, whereas the intelligent aspect of lore is useful for controlling a narrative but more nebulous mechanically. The pairing combines aspects that complement each other, and make each of the four overall choices more holistic and robust choices.
I prefer mechanical "elegance", making the abilities as simple as possible but not simpler. So both consolidation and flexibility are valuable to me. This is why my gaming style prefers four abilities.
But splitting is a legitimate gaming style too, and having eight separate abilities can finetune a concept carefully.
Why is this bad?
The end product of making it difficult to dump anything at all means that everyone keeps their ability scores around average...at which point why have them at all?
If I were to have complete freedom to redo the "Six Stats" and have it actually accepted, rather than backlashed against, I would break it into three categories, offensive and defensive.
- Physical
- Offense: Might, perhaps. Or let players self define it as either Strength or Dexterity for imagery's sake.
- Defense: Durability or Constitution. Maybe Deftness for people who want to have their extra HP as "Dodge Points"
- Mental
- Offense: Cunning, Intelligence, maybe something Erudite.
- Defense: Wisdom, maybe Insight?
- Social
- Offense: Charisma in how well you can affect people.
- Defense: Poise or Certainty. Both in your own identity and in other people's perceptions of you.
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Yaarel
He Mage
Yeah, when comparing various popular gaming engines, the foursome emerges as a useful reference for comparison.
"Strength Agility Smarts Spirit" ≈ "Strength-Constitution Dexterity-Athletics Intelligence-Perception Charisma-Wisdom"
Yaarel
He Mage
Here is an attachment to a PDF of the first page of a character sheet in progress. I intend to implement something like this in the future.
Any thoughts on it?
Note, Athletics and Perception format as abilities. (But players can still treat them as if skills, if they wish.)
Also note, the tweaking of the physical skills. The "Mobility" skill combines the Athletics/Acrobatics skills and relates to gymnastics, parkour, and things like stunt flying. The "Precision" skill is mostly manual dexterity, slight-of-hand (disarm trap, pick pocket).
I hope the other formatting decisions are self-explanatory, including borrowing from the monster stat block.
Any thoughts on it?
Note, Athletics and Perception format as abilities. (But players can still treat them as if skills, if they wish.)
Also note, the tweaking of the physical skills. The "Mobility" skill combines the Athletics/Acrobatics skills and relates to gymnastics, parkour, and things like stunt flying. The "Precision" skill is mostly manual dexterity, slight-of-hand (disarm trap, pick pocket).
I hope the other formatting decisions are self-explanatory, including borrowing from the monster stat block.
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