What would D&D look like with different ability scores?

[Blue]

I was inspired by the joke at the end of d20Monkey comic: http://www.d20monkey.com/comic/ravensfired-up/

The game we play has plenty of mechanical links to the Ability score (well, to the modifiers in most cases). They shape the fundamentals - this character is agile with quick reflexes, so they are good at THESE skills, THOSE weapons, and THIS LIST of classes.

While they aren't a huge change, and you can play "standard" D&D even with substitutions/additions fairly easily (see back in AD&D adding Comeliness or AD&D 2ed Skills and powers splitting the ability scores into six pairs). But they are a fundation that so much else rests on.

As a thought experiment, give me your out-of-the-box ideas for how the game could have evolved if instead of describing the "natural characteristics" of the character, they instead measured the, well, character of the character. What if instead of STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, CHR (order for us grognards) we had things like:

DETERMINATION
CURIOSITY
EMPATHY
HONOR
INDEPENDENCE
ORDER

(Feel free to come up with your own list or change that one, it's off the top of my head. Though I did remove Justice and Altruism/Benevolence from my first pass as too "hero focused")

Yes, many of these are secondary characteristics in some variant rules. We can easily add these things either through things like that, or the bond/flaws, to D&D as we have it. I'm asking you to imagine what else could change if these were how we rated characters (and possibly everything else). If we wouldn't measure if a character is particularly strong. What type of classes would grow out of that? What type of skills? Would this change the "three pillars of play", and even the nature of adventures?

Let your imagination run free.

 

[Grognerd]

If I were to do something like this, I'd probably adopt a method similar to what Pendragon did with the vices/virtues, or like Stolze did with the attributes in A Dirty World. I thought both were elegant examples that balance out abilities nicely, while also offering tangible role-playing hooks for the stats. Plus... no true dump stats that way.

 

[Nagol]

A lot (and I mean an awful lot) of games, both D&D Heartbreakers and RPGs focused on other milieus have gone with different categories of attributes.
Some, like Rolemaster, decided to be more granular and to split the 6 naturalistic talents into a dozen or more. Others, like The Fantasy Trip went the opposite route and condensed the stats even further. Others such as Chivalry and Sorcery (social standing and leadership in this case) and Pendragon (mirrored pairing of virtues and vices) built out new types of stats to help mechanistically reflect additional areas of especial concern to the developers.

Fundamentally, the reason to quantify attributes is so a system can mechanistically use those quantities. If D&D had used a different set, then the sub-systems used in resolution would use them.

It's unlikely to change the three pillars since they are in effect, learning about your environment, establishing your place in that environment, and dealing with hostiles. The focus between the pillars and how mechanistically a player or table is expected to deal with each aspect would likely change. Those social pillar with its limited mechanical expression would likely be the most affected.

 

[Blue]

It's unlikely to change the three pillars since they are in effect, learning about your environment, establishing your place in that environment, and dealing with hostiles. The focus between the pillars and how mechanistically a player or table is expected to deal with each aspect would likely change. Those social pillar with its limited mechanical expression would likely be the most affected.

It's interesting that changing something that affects almost every d20 roll, that the primary point of change is the place with the least rolls.

But saying the pillars wouldn't change - to me that has the assumption that how things get dealt with doesn't change. And if a designer picked those ability scores as how they want to represent the character in the world, I would think that the nature of interaction (and therefore also the classes) would be altered.

As I said in the original post, it's really easy to just swap in different ability scores. But what could that mean? It's possible to swap these in with minimal disruption - what does swapping them in with maximal disruption mean instead?

 

[Nagol]

It's interesting that changing something that affects almost every d20 roll, that the primary point of change is the place with the least rolls.

My guess is the social pillar would change the most because it currently has very few mechanical considerations. Combat has a strong system. You can decide to change how combat works -- what causes damage, how much damage, and how well that damage is handled, but the system being modelled isn't altered particularly. New subsystems, for example morale, would provide a larger change to the pillar.

But saying the pillars wouldn't change - to me that has the assumption that how things get dealt with doesn't change. And if a designer picked those ability scores as how they want to represent the character in the world, I would think that the nature of interaction (and therefore also the classes) would be altered.

The reason I don't think the pillars would change much is the pillars don't represent any form of mechanical expression of the game world. They represent the abstract essence of what a person can do -- fight with the other, talk with the other, examine the surroundings. And other than combat are very ill defined to boot.

As I said in the original post, it's really easy to just swap in different ability scores. But what could that mean? It's possible to swap these in with minimal disruption - what does swapping them in with maximal disruption mean instead?

Quantitative attributes are a reflection of game concepts and expectation. The amount of disruption you'll see from different attributes is a reflection of the conflict between play styles in game A and game B.

For example Fantasy Wargaming is in many ways a very old-school D&Dish RPG which makes some sense as it was published in 1981. One of the major gameplay differences from D&D is the concept that the PC is only partly under the control of the player. The player wishes can be negated by the character giving into temptation "Player:Bob won't fall asleep on guard duty because he very vigilant and responsible. DM: It's dark and cold. Near the fire is warm. It is so easy to close your eyes after the day you've had...". A tempted character may try to resist the temptation with something that looks sort of like a saving throw. Additionally, the operating relationships between PCs is also partially controlled by mechanics. The orders of the "leader" of the party can only be denied through a leadership challenge and if the PC loses that challenge not only must the order be followed, but the leadership cannot be challenged again for a specific period of time.