Stats. Hate them ? Love them ? Think they can be better ? Or an outdated concept ?

[Blue]

Pardon my unfamiliarity with FATE, but it looks like they simply use Skills in place of Stats.

Ummm, no, they use skills in place of skills. A character can have nothing at all that refers to Strength, or Constitution, or whatever. Or maybe they have a Aspect that they are sly like a fox - which make occasionally come into play at times charisma or intelligence or wisdom might, but not at other times.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Ummm, no, they use skills in place of skills. A character can have nothing at all that refers to Strength, or Constitution, or whatever.

FATE uses skills as their stats. If you have Physique at +2 and Athletics at +1, then those are your stats. If you have Drive +3 and Lore +4, then those are your stats.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of an RPG that doesn't have stats.

 

[Blue]

FATE uses skills as their stats. If you have Physique at +2 and Athletics at +1, then those are your stats. If you have Drive +3 and Lore +4, then those are your stats.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of an RPG that doesn't have stats.

Actually, those still are skills. You can't rename something to something it's not and then say "look, it has that something".

Drive +3 ... sure, that's an ability score.

Nope.

 

[Sunseeker]

Actually, those still are skills. You can't rename something to something it's not and then say "look, it has that something".

Drive +3 ... sure, that's an ability score.

Nope.

Except when the system already does that. FATE appears to have numeric denominators that are used to achieve a specified degree of success at a task when combined with rolled dice. FATE may lack base stats, but in reality base stats come into play rarely in actual D&D play, only their mods and mods combined with certain mathematical adjustments (BAB, Saves, Skills) are actually combined with dice rolls. FATE simply skips the stats and goes straight to the mods.

FATE has decided to call it's stats "skills". They are the same thing. If they are two different things, then your argument is still wrong, because you cannot use stats that are not numbers to come to a numerical conclusion. (unless you're using calculus or some kind of theoretical mathematics for your game, but then you'd still be using not-numbers that represent theoretical values) You do not roll a die in FATE and add your Aspect to break a DC.

 

[Campbell]

It's hard to answer this question in lieu of any specific design goals. Since we're talking about role playing games here I'm going to assume we have character sheets that represent characters in the fiction. When resolving what happens in the game we can do one of three things:

• Fortune - Use a random element to decide what happens. This can be influenced by some numbers on the character sheet. Typical skill or attribute checks are the prime example here.
• Value Comparison - We compare two numbers and one wins out. This is how we determine what happens in games like Amber Diceless Roleplaying. Another example is while hp are greater than 0, your character is conscious and can act,
• Somebody decides what happens. The game gives a player or GM the authority to determine what happens in the fiction. Sometimes they will take into consideration some values on a character sheet. Other times they will not.

So a character sheet can include values, qualitative info and permissions. Values can be compared, or alter some randomizer. A permission is just some element that let's a player dictate something in the fiction - basically exception based rules like Feats and Spells in D&D, Charms in Exalted, or Moves in Apocalypse World. Qualitative Info is everything else on the character sheet - it may or may not interact with other rules in the game, but will reflect something in the fiction.What you want on the character sheet is going to depend on the game and what it is trying to accomplish.

I'll have more thoughts later.

 

[GMMichael]

Off the top of my head, I can't think of an RPG that doesn't have stats.

It's called Monopoly. Or Risk, but I can't get anyone to play Risk these days, much less turn it into an RPG.

So, I'm pretty sure the OP is talking about Attributes or Abilities (in D&D parlance), so maybe we should shed the "stats" talk. (A stat is just a numerical fact.) And the last time I defined attributes, it was the measurement of how a character exists in-game. There's not exactly a requirement for that to translate into a skill. A skill is a stat that gives you better outcome resolutions, which doesn't need to be the same thing as an attribute.

If we're going to talk about the 900-pound gorilla, even D&D abilities serve purposes besides providing better outcomes. They can be used for comparison (my character is more dextrous than yours), as special hit points (running low on Con, don't resurrect me again), or indicators of learning (my INT says I speak five languages).

So, to ask the question more specifically: do characters need attributes? No, they need either stats (yes, "stats"), flavor text, or both. I happen to be a fan of multi-use attributes though, and yes, six is way too many

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Actually, those still are skills. You can't rename something to something it's not and then say "look, it has that something".

Drive +3 ... sure, that's an ability score.

Nope.

We're not talking about "ability scores", though. We're talking about "stats". A "stat" is any sort of number that you can use to quantify what something can do.

In some games, you just have very generic stats, and nothing more detailed. Old D&D, with its six ability scores and no skills, was an example of that kind of system. Nowadays, you mostly see that kind of model in rule-light systems, such as Maid.

Some games have basic stats, and also have a bunch of derived or secondary stats. This is how newer editions of D&D work, with both ability scores and specific skills that you need to track. It's also how most games have worked since at least 1990, including both Shadowrun and the White Wolf system which derived from it, along with GURPS and BRP and Palladium and just about everything else I own.

FATE is somewhat unique in that it does away with the basic stats, and only has those secondary stats, which aren't derived from anything. It's a fairly novel way of doing stats, but it's still just a different way of doing stats.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Yeah, if you look in a dictionary, "stats", short for "statistics" of course, is just a number. However in RPG terms IME it pretty much always means ability scores, so unless the OP states otherwise, I'll regard the use of ability scores as the question on the table. Let's not get sidetracked into a terminology argument. Traditionally, that's not supposed to happen until about post #100.

The line between stats and skills is a fuzzy one. Stats can be regarded as a generalized skill, e.g. "strength" can mean any activity that uses physical strength is governed by this stat, in exactly the same way as "throwing" governs a range of corresponding activities.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I dont like 5e stats because you dont really use them - you just use the modifiers.

In Low Fantasy Gaming RPG I used "roll equal or under stats" to make your actual stats relevant again.

Additionally, I split wisdom into Perception and Willpower (willpower is used in short rest recoveries/mental resistance, perception is "perception" - both very handy to have). There is no cleric class as such in LFG, being low magic, there is just the one Magic User class (with a merged cleric/mage spell list)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Yeah, if you look in a dictionary, "stats", short for "statistics" of course, is just a number. However in RPG terms IME it pretty much always means ability scores, so unless the OP states otherwise, I'll regard the use of ability scores as the question on the table.

That must be local vernacular. Around where I am, the local authorities use the term to define anything mechanical on the character sheet, even including things like alignment (e.g. in Synnibarr, you can have a stat value of "psychopath" for your Aura stat, which is an example of the dangers inherent in using natural language in place of game mechanics).

If you take the term to only mean basic physical and mental qualities, such as the ability scores in D&D or the attributes in Shadowrun, then it's definitely possible to have an RPG without stats.

I'm actually working on a game in another window, right now, that doesn't include ability scores in the traditional sense. I'm using the combat values, like attack bonus and magic defense, in place of primary stats. I still have something similar to Strength and Dexterity, to give people a default chance to break down doors or sneak around if they aren't trained, but I just put them as Athletics and Acrobatics skills that are informed by your background. (Which is actually kind of similar to what FATE does, by sneaking Physique and Will into its skill system.)