Stats Sytem, need advices

[Caracol]

I'm working on some ideas for a fantasy RPG. I came up with a particular idea about the stats and the abilities of the characters, based on the concept of "opposite aptitude".

Every player has different abilities that come in pair. Improving one ability means reducing the other: they represent two different way of being, and they can be balanced as well that imbalanced.

For example: the stat couple Spontaneity/Rationality. Each of them can range from -3 to +3. Having +2 in Spontaneity means you have -2 in Rationality: your character is spontaneous, natural and doesn't think twice on a subject before acting, while it's not good at studying, memorizing and planning ahead. The two stats can be also set both to 0 to represent equilibrium. They can be assigned freely during character creation and are influenced by race, background and other traits.
The ability score works as a bonus or penality for task and conflict resolution (I'll post some about those too). The "basic" stats are also used for the "derived" stats, such as attack, defense, reaction time, magic points... we'll get to that later.

My questions are:
- What do you think about this abilities system? It has been done before by other RPGs? It worked?
- How many couples of abilities would be necessary? I like the idea of 4 ones, but I'm undecided, which brings us to the following question;
- Which abilities should I use? The Spontaneity/Rationality one is fine to me, I also tought of Combat/Insight(I don't know if it's the right word, I wanted to represent an aptitude opposite to fighting) and Agility/Resistance, but I'm confused (and I still one more couple).
- Do these abilities really count as "opposite aptitudes"? Do they encompass the general spectrum of a character's proneness? Even if they do, I still need another couple of abilities to give the players more options to elaborate their characters.

Any ideas, comments, suggestions?

[Eero Tuovinen]

Pendragon and Dead of Night, excellent games both, have set-ups similar to that. It works just fine for them.

The rest of your questions can't be answered without considerably more context. The number of abilities depends on how they are used and what the exact focus of the game is; which abilities should be used depends on the same things. Also note that you don't have any particular need to make the abilities in a pair really "opposite" as long as you can accept their negative correlation towards each other. You could even make more complex correlation chains if you wanted, such as triads - raising ability A lowers B, raising B lowers C, raising C lowers A. That sort of thing. It's not like a duo of abilities like that is any different than just distributing a number of points between the two abilities.

[chance.thirteen]

Conflict vs Compromise (I say compromise, because if it were an option for pure cooperation, you wouldn't need to choose really)

aka

Act against vs act with

Destroy/Understand might also work

[Caracol]

Pendragon and Dead of Night, excellent games both, have set-ups similar to that. It works just fine for them.

The rest of your questions can't be answered without considerably more context. The number of abilities depends on how they are used and what the exact focus of the game is; which abilities should be used depends on the same things. Also note that you don't have any particular need to make the abilities in a pair really "opposite" as long as you can accept their negative correlation towards each other. You could even make more complex correlation chains if you wanted, such as triads - raising ability A lowers B, raising B lowers C, raising C lowers A. That sort of thing. It's not like a duo of abilities like that is any different than just distributing a number of points between the two abilities.

Some more context. Even if I want to set up a particular and "original" fantasy setting (no dwarves or elves), the RPG should have a typical "fantasy" structure: characters go on quests, fight, use magic, solve puzzles, face challenges. Therefore phisical abilities regarding Combat, Resistance, Agility are necessary: psychological ones like Spontaneity and Rationality influence the behaviour and the use of magic.

Maybe if say some more about how I want to resolute Conflicts and Tasks will help. I'll post it later, I need some time to elaborate it.

About complex chains of abilities influences, I'm not so convinced. I want to leave this level of complexity to the derivated stats. For the character basic attitudes, I wanted the system to be "rules lite".

Tomorrow I'll post more about Conflicts and Tasks. For the mods: could you please rename the thread as "Stats and Resolution Sytem, need advices"? so I don't have to make another thread on the Resolution question, since it will be analyzed here.

Conflict vs Compromise (I say compromise, because if it were an option for pure cooperation, you wouldn't need to choose really)

aka

Act against vs act with

Destroy/Understand might also work

Really nice ideas. I'll take some time to think about them.

[Eero Tuovinen]

About choosing your abilities, let me tell you a little story: I've been wrestling with D&D for this whole decade, on and off, trying to figure out how to improve the fundamental experience. One thing I've done recently has been removing Strength, Dexterity and Constitution as separate abilities; those three just weren't pulling their weight for my purposes, and the reason was that I found them disinteresting fictionally - separate physical abilities like that lead to the ideal character being a freak of nature with an unlikely combination of physical dexterity, strength and constitution, which doesn't normally happen in nature. I found that having just one Body attribute served my purposes much better, each player could then describe their character's bodily quality in the way they find best.

This story tells about many things. One is that your choice of abilities can be very idiosyncratic and based on minor aesthetic reasons. Another one is that you should choose your abilities based on how they are used in the game, not the other way around. Yet another is that it might not be fruitful to strive for simple simulation in your thinking - don't try to figure out what a person is "composed of" in real life when you could be trying to figure out what things you need in your game.

As a very rough tool to start with, consider listing the types of limitations characters will have in your game; just make a list of all the things in your game that might prevent a character from immediately getting what he desires. Is there fights to be won? Is there great weights to carry? Is there ladies to be seduced? List them all. After you've made this list, make every one of the things on your list an ability. Like so:
Fighting-ability
Seducing-ability
Carrying-ability
.
.
.
After you have this list, you can then do two things: clean the list up by combining, splitting and pairing the things in your list, and attach the abilities into fictional properties of the character himself. The latter is important in a traditional fantasy game, while modern games tend to be somewhat looser on it - in D&D your "fighting ability" is called "strength", and it represents how strong your character is. In 3:16, to pick a counter-example, your "fighting ability" is called simply "Fighting ability", FA for short, and the designer has not bothered to tie it into a fixed in-character property; this character has high FA because he's quick and skilled, this one because he's mean and unhesitating in killing.

My point above was that you'll probably get a more functional ability list by starting with what is done in your game, what sort of things characters need abilities for, and tracing backwards from that. I might even say that you should have your conflict resolution system, combat system, magic system, whatever system, all finished and ready before you take a really serious look at what that ability list should, exactly, be composed of. This way you only get necessary and useful abilities on your list.

[Caracol]

My point above was that you'll probably get a more functional ability list by starting with what is done in your game, what sort of things characters need abilities for, and tracing backwards from that. I might even say that you should have your conflict resolution system, combat system, magic system, whatever system, all finished and ready before you take a really serious look at what that ability list should, exactly, be composed of. This way you only get necessary and useful abilities on your list.

That's right: here's why I'll explain better how abilities work.

Ok, something more on the derivate stats and about Resolution. Please express your opinions, critics and suggestions sincerely.

Before I begin, some clarifications: there aren't any classes or levels in the game I want to do. Characters can be personalized with Combat Styles, Techniques and Forms of Magic. They can be picked up freely, in any order and the degree of training in this personalization is the form of character advancement. From now on I will refer to them as "Mastery".

Derivate stats:

The combinations of 2 or more basic abilities determine your scores in the derivate abilities. These are used for various stuff. Here are some of them:

Attack: influenced by the Combat score, weapon, and character's Mastery. Defines how good you are at hitting stuff.
Reaction time (or simply Reaction): determines how fast you can react to sudden perils and attacks. Influenced by Agility and Mastery (maybe Combat too?).
Damage: how hard you hit. It usually depends only by the weapon base damage, although a Mastery can boost it.
Armor and Resistance: how much damage your armor absorbs and how much you can resist. Depend on the armor type and Resistance. Damage and wounds influences your character condition: more about this subject will be added.
Flow: how much magic power flows within yourself. Determines how many times you can use spells and such. Influenced by Mastery, Spontaneity and Whatever-we-said-is-opposed-to-Combat.
Focus: how much you can control your use of magic. Determines how powerful your spells are and influences concentrations and willpower against dominating effects, for example. Influenced by Mastery, Rationality and Whatever-we-said-is-opposed-to-Combat.

And so on. Actually, there could be much more of them, and each one could be used for many different things. Each Mastery will have a detailed description on what stat use for a particular task and how. These are just the ones I think will be used the most.
   
Task Resolution: the easy stuff.
For the task resolution I'm just thinking about the good old Roll Against Difficulty system. The player rolls a d6 and adds the result to the appropriate stat score, which ranges from -3 to +3 (except in case of buffs, curses or other particular effects). A result equal or superior to the Difficulty means that the attempt is successful. I'm pretty convinced about the use of the d6 since the sum of results and scores gives up a simple and easy to learn progression.
The Difficulties are set by the GM and are the following.

Difficulty 0: routine action. You don't usually have to roll for this since the success is automatic. However, some particular effects (such as a curse) could reduce character's scores lower than -3, making him difficult to do even the easiest things.
Difficulty 1-3: easy task. Even the most incompetent characters can accomplish these actions with a good roll. Characters that have a stat score equal or superior to the Difficulty don't have to roll since they automatically succeed.
Difficulty 4-6: average task. This is where competences start to make a difference. Competent characters don't need to roll very high, but they can still fail if unlucky. Incompetent ones find those tasks difficult and sometimes they are so bad at them that even the luckiest roll won't be enough.
Difficulty 7-9: hard task. Difficult jobs even trained characters could fail. An untrained one will never be good enough, so don't ever bother trying.
Difficulty 10: just impossible. Like getting the weak spot of the giant dragon's armor from a distance of 200 feet with your sling. Things like this wouldn't even need a roll, since even the most competent character can't reach this result. However, in particular conditions or when the character has some bonus to a certain score, a really lucky shot could be possible, as long as it's not too absurd.

That's how rolls are handled, but how about the stat score? What do you use, exactly, to accomplish a task?
Well, whatever you want. There's not a "skill list" in the game, so you can approach a problem and solve it in the way you prefer, as long as this is consistent within the game universe and the GM and the other players agree. You can use any of the basic abilities, or a combination of them, to represent how you want to solve the problem and how good you are at it. Sometimes is up to the GM to decide and require specific ability scores to be used, but except for that, it should be left to the player decisions how their character choose to behave. Some Masteries describe particular uses and mechanics for specific task resolution as general guidelines.

An example: Thrillian the Telluric Thief could either disarm a trap using Agility (probing it with his tools in dexterous hand movements) or Rationality (analyzing the trap structure and remembering his studies in clockwork mechanisms). Even a combination of the two would be fine. He declares what he wants to do, and if the other players find the action possible within the game universe, and the stat chosen appropriate, it can be done. The GM could also modify the Difficulty judging if the chosen ability represents a good or bad approach to the same problem.

Conflict Resolution: the not-so-easy stuff.

This is not as simple as Task Resolution, since it requires a bit more calculations (nothing complex anyway) and have more possible outcomes. It's (I'm trying to use the proper Forge vocabulary, but correct me if I'm wrong) a combination of Karma with Fortune-in-the-Middle system, with a general rule: who's in disadvantage is the one who rolls.

Direct confrontations like fights or opposite checks (ex. hiding vs. perception) use this system. Characters abilities scores (being them basic or derivate) are confronted, and then the character with the lowest score rolls the dice in order to try to keep up with the opponent. The two scores difference creates a "gap" that the disadvantaged character tries to overcome by rolling a d6. The greater the gap, the greater the difficulty for the character to overcome it. A gap of just 2 points needs a 3+ result on the dice to be filled: a gap of 4 points needs a 5 or a 6.
Depending on how much the gap is surpassed, or how much below the needed score is the roll, the action of the character could have different outcomes.

For example: Athelon the Atheist Alchemist is out of spells and wants to hit Brutus the Buddhist Barbarian (for a matter of religious views) with his quarterstaff. He declares the action, and the two appropriate scores, Athelon's Attack and Brutus's Reaction Time, are confronted. Athelon is bad at combat, and has a -2 as Attack score, while Brutus has a Reaction of +1. Athelon is disadvantaged by 3 points and therefore is the one that has to roll. The player rolls a d6: he needs a 4 or better to land a hit. He rolls a 2, not enough: Brutus parries the blow and now is his turn to attack. He has a Attack of +3, while Athelon's Reaction is +1: Athelon is disadvantaged again and has to roll. The gap is 2, so he needs a 3 or more. This time is luckier and manages with a 5 to dodge the attack.

How is the general outcome determined? How good or bad could be the result for both the contenders? It depends on how distant is the result obtained with the roll from the target number.
For example, here's a chart on the some possible outcomes for an action like the one before, Attack versus Reaction.

Attack Result vs Target Number     Outcome of the action
-5                                                        Good stuff for the defender. The attack is a complete miss, the defender is able to dodge, parry or block the attack and to deliver an immediate counterattack, to get a bonus to his next attack or to get a free attempt to disarm, push or trip the attacker.
-4 to -2                                                The attack is a miss, the defender is able to dodge, parry or block the attack.
-1                                                        The attack is a miss, but barely. Next turn the defender's attack will be less effective.
Draw                                                        Stall. This happens when the Attack equals the Target number, or when the two characters have the same score for the confronted abilities so you can't tell who's in disadvantage. In both cases, both characters re-roll the d6: the best roll wins.
+1                                                        The attack is a hit, but slightly. It could only cause wounds to non-vital organs.
+2 to +4                                                The attack is a hit, the damage is applied against the defender's armor.
+5                                                        Good stuff for the attacker. The attack is a good one and could work as a "called shot", in which the attacker decides what part of the defender's body takes damage.

This is an example of how the outcome of an attack could be done. Remember, these are not the only possibilities! There could be different kind of outcomes regarding the most diverse situations and confrontations. You don't even have to make charts like this, or follow them strictly: they should work more like guidelines of possible solution rather than established rules. Just remember to apply the concept of minor or major bonus derived from the result of the roll against the target number. After that it's up to the player and the GM to judge and decide what outcome fits the most, if it's consistent with the context and if it makes conflicts more interesting to be played by the participants.

This is, basically, how Conflict resolution works. It's not just a matter of Attack versus Reaction, just to be used in fights, but also in determining the effects of spells, in social interactions, and so on: whenever there's a need to confront opposite actions or different character's effectiveness, this system should be used instead of the Task Resolution one.

Now that we know this, we can proceed with the discussion to answer my question: what abilities should we put?

I'll post my toughts about your other comments later on, don't worry.

[Caracol]

Conflict vs Compromise (I say compromise, because if it were an option for pure cooperation, you wouldn't need to choose really)

How about Direct Approach/Indirect Approach? It could be merged with Conflict/Compromise. Any suggestions?

Destroy/Understand might also work

Maybe Combat/Comprehension?

[Caracol]

About choosing your abilities, let me tell you a little story: I've been wrestling with D&D for this whole decade, on and off, trying to figure out how to improve the fundamental experience. One thing I've done recently has been removing Strength, Dexterity and Constitution as separate abilities; those three just weren't pulling their weight for my purposes, and the reason was that I found them disinteresting fictionally - separate physical abilities like that lead to the ideal character being a freak of nature with an unlikely combination of physical dexterity, strength and constitution, which doesn't normally happen in nature. I found that having just one Body attribute served my purposes much better, each player could then describe their character's bodily quality in the way they find best.

Good point. The distinction between different physical abilities is wierd, so I think I'll just go for an unique Body o Physic ability to represent them all. I would like to make it opposite with an ability that represent a different aptitude, stressed on mental work more than body work.
What about Knowledge? A character that has spent more time on books rather than in a gym has more Knowledge than Body; a well fit one that privileges physical training rather than academical studies has more Body than Knowledge. Could this work? It makes sense?

This story tells about many things. One is that your choice of abilities can be very idiosyncratic and based on minor aesthetic reasons. Another one is that you should choose your abilities based on how they are used in the game, not the other way around. Yet another is that it might not be fruitful to strive for simple simulation in your thinking - don't try to figure out what a person is "composed of" in real life when you could be trying to figure out what things you need in your game.

As a very rough tool to start with, consider listing the types of limitations characters will have in your game; just make a list of all the things in your game that might prevent a character from immediately getting what he desires. Is there fights to be won? Is there great weights to carry? Is there ladies to be seduced? List them all. After you've made this list, make every one of the things on your list an ability. Like so:
Fighting-ability
Seducing-ability
Carrying-ability
.
.
.
After you have this list, you can then do two things: clean the list up by combining, splitting and pairing the things in your list, and attach the abilities into fictional properties of the character himself. The latter is important in a traditional fantasy game, while modern games tend to be somewhat looser on it - in D&D your "fighting ability" is called "strength", and it represents how strong your character is. In 3:16, to pick a counter-example, your "fighting ability" is called simply "Fighting ability", FA for short, and the designer has not bothered to tie it into a fixed in-character property; this character has high FA because he's quick and skilled, this one because he's mean and unhesitating in killing.

This approach to the problem is useful. There are many things that the character could do, but the most part of the stats used in their action could be merged together and should be derivate rather than basic. Basic abilities shouldn't be more than 4/5 couples. After listening to your advices, so far I'm oriented towards these ones:

Rationality vs. Spontaneity

Body vs. Knowledge

Combat vs. Comprehension

Conflict vs. Compromise (could be merged with Combat/Comprehension)

and maybe Steadiness vs. Agility? (Not only to represent your ability to withstand damage or to be quick and agile, but also to represent your mental approach: being firmly convinced about your doing vs. thinking fast and changing tactics and ideas.).

Any other toughts and suggestions? I would really like to hear your opinion on the Conflict and Task Resolution system too.

Gotta go, this time I don't have the time to proofread so forgive me for my bad writing.

[dindenver]

Carrie,
 I think there are two distinct design approaches:
1) Pre-gen: In this instance, you setup the polar opposites. There are two important considerations:
a) It should be something that you can't achieve simultaneously. Strength and speed would be a bad slider, because there are people who have both. Where as Power and Humility might be better, I don't know of anyone who has both.
b) They both have to be desirable traits, that is Valor and Cowardice is a bad slider, because few people want to be a coward. While, Ambition and Compassion are probably a good slider as both are desirable.
  The advantage of pre-gen is it defines the constraints of your games' setting.

2) Let the players make context sensitive sliders on their own. The advantage of this is, it allows for the player to create a situation where things that normally aren't polar opposites become polar opposites, for that character. The disadvantage is, you have to include advice and guidance for GMs and players to help players come up with good opposites and how/when to change them if they aren't working.

  Point of Collapse has almost the exact system you describe. It was available as a free download until the site it was on went down. PM me if you want to see it and I will make sure you get a copy.

[Caracol]

Carrie,
 I think there are two distinct design approaches:
1) Pre-gen: In this instance, you setup the polar opposites. There are two important considerations:
a) It should be something that you can't achieve simultaneously. Strength and speed would be a bad slider, because there are people who have both. Where as Power and Humility might be better, I don't know of anyone who has both.
b) They both have to be desirable traits, that is Valor and Cowardice is a bad slider, because few people want to be a coward. While, Ambition and Compassion are probably a good slider as both are desirable.
  The advantage of pre-gen is it defines the constraints of your games' setting.

This is the approach I prefer. I think the ability couples I posted before respect both the prerequisites. Every side of the slider makes you better at something but bad at something else. So every choice has its drawbacks, but you can always be "in the middle". This is also for discourage complusive stat-boosting or powergaming.   

2) Let the players make context sensitive sliders on their own. The advantage of this is, it allows for the player to create a situation where things that normally aren't polar opposites become polar opposites, for that character. The disadvantage is, you have to include advice and guidance for GMs and players to help players come up with good opposites and how/when to change them if they aren't working.

Not so happy about that. While it really makes the characters free to create and experiments, it also confuses the process of character creation. The abilities scores aren't just numbers, but also represent how your character usually behaves.
In the game I have in mind every character starts with 0 in every ability: then your race, backgroud, role in the group (not strictly necessary) and personality traits modify the equilibrium. Personality traits, in particular, are really good for the players to build their own character freely: they can be picked up by anyone, without restriction (as long as they aren't contradictory) and are good cues for roleplay. Even if this system is more restricted, it's also more consistent and easy-to-follow.

  Point of Collapse has almost the exact system you describe. It was available as a free download until the site it was on went down. PM me if you want to see it and I will make sure you get a copy.

Check your PM.

To all the other members: thanks to your advices and the articles, I've eventually reason out and started writing down the actual game. I've started from easy stuff (such as Equipment and Weight rules), next step is abilities and some resolution rules. The game is still far from being well outlined (it doesn't even have a name), so I will still need a ton of advices and suggestion. I'll keep you informed about the progress and the problems that will rise up: meanwhile, if anyone else has something more to add about the subject, his help is always welcome.

If there are other kinds of advices I might need to ask (such as "what name should I give to it?), it's better to start another more specific thread or we can just continue the discussion here?

[soundmasterj]

I've been toying around with something pretty similar.

To kill somebody when you want to, roll under your "KILL" stat. To NOT kill somebody when you don't want to, roll over "KILL".
You choose how many dice to roll. If you roll twice the stat, raise it by 1. If you roll half the stat, reduce by 1.

[Caracol]

I've been toying around with something pretty similar.

To kill somebody when you want to, roll under your "KILL" stat. To NOT kill somebody when you don't want to, roll over "KILL".
You choose how many dice to roll. If you roll twice the stat, raise it by 1. If you roll half the stat, reduce by 1.

Nice, but not really what I'm looking for. I want combats to be full of hazards and uncertainity to create a good narration.
But damn, isn't this quick and to the point. Really useful in games with lots and lots of fights to be resolved in little time.

[dindenver]

Carrie,
 I think you are close, but maybe need a little tweaking:
Rationality vs. Spontaneity
  The problem with this is, a normal character will embrace one of these and not see any use for the other. Maybe you need to name them in a more appealing/essential way. Like Planning vs. Improvisation. You need to be able to both plan and improvise, but usually, you can't do both.

Body vs. Knowledge
  So, you are saying, in your setting, there there are no supremely fit people who are not also smart. Is that the message you intend to give? An Olympic athlete is necessarily a dimwit?
  What about Streetwise vs Nobility I think this gets at the heart of what you are trying to say, but comes at it from a different angle. Certainly any character would want both, but by necessity, could never attain it.

Combat vs. Comprehension
  So, again, you are overlooking great generals who were soldiers and scholars. Alexander the Great, Patton, Napoleon, etc. What about Valor vs Compassion or Strategy vs Tactics?

Conflict vs. Compromise
  This one is actually pretty good. I think I would use another pair for what this symbolizes. But I don't think mine would be any better than what you are already using.

  Either way, you have a great base to build your game on. Keep up the good work.

[soundmasterj]

I want combats to be full of hazards and uncertainity to create a good narration.

Uncertainity is easy. Suspense is hard. It depends more on you valuing the outcomes, less on you not knowing the outcomes. I'd rather focus on making people care. But this is a different topic and shouldn't be further adressed here I think.

Really useful in games with lots and lots of fights to be resolved in little time.

Nah, it was meant for a game with as little fighting as possible. If the more I kill, the sooner I turn into a monster, I will probably try solving situations without killin'. I'd think it would be a game about what to kill for (less "how to kill").
Another stat could be "Getting away". Roll under to get away, roll over to stand and fight when it counts. "Magic": roll under to fry the evil henchmen with magic fire, roll over to overcome the horrible temptation to just get her love through wizardry. "Nobility": roll under to rule the easily impressed, roll over to care for the dirty and poor. "Smarts": roll under to see the details, roll over to not miss the big picture. And so on.

What I would do if I was you is I would write down a few example conflicts, purely prose, a few different, but satisfying outcomes for these conflicts, and then I would check if my rules cover, no, ENFORCE that. Like, every single solution the rules should allow for should be fun and enjoyable.
Right now, you got a certain numerological beauty going on, the aesthetics of symmetry, but personally, I'm not too sure what kind of play it should make for. This is not bad, not in the slightest, but it helps, I found, when I try to see rules outcome based, not process or justification based.

I mean, your rules are probably fine, but I guess it would help if you checked with yourself what they are fine for.

[chance.thirteen]

One form of suspense could be had by allowing some sort of accumulation towards an actual resolution check, without knowing what the results along the way are.

For instance, let us say a player wants to use  insulting comments to get an aristocrat to lose his cool, and challange him to a duel. If you had a limited number of attempts, but did not know how far to go, and insulting someone itself definitely carries a social cost, you are investing without knowing what will actually happen.

Likewise, you could say that it takes 3 successes before you check to see if he loses his cool. If there is other action that is pacing these checks, you are working on some other conflict, while trying to accumulate a chance at success in a side conflict.

For instance, fighting a duel while making jibes and leading comments hoping they will blurt out something inciminating. So every round we check on the fights progress, but meanwhile we are hoping to survive long enough to get him to the point he might break and blather something good.

I'm just making up stuff. To me, Suspense is about wondering what is going to happen, and you wonder more if you have both current effort invested in the outcome, as well as further consequences when the result is revealed.