[TAROT] attributes & such.

[7VII7]

for my game Tarot I've planned the following seven attributes;

Force: Sort of like strength in a traditional ttrpg system but also includes magical, social, and mental attacks
Persuasion: Used to persuade people (obviously) but any type of persuading, just talking, intimidating, even seduction & such.
Protection: The overall deffensive stat though it'd includes defending from physcial, magical, mental, & social attacks
Restoration: Used to recover from stuff, can be spent to reduce the severity of an injury but also heal from disease or poision & such
Mental: Used to determine what you know.
Speed: Used for intiative and other stuff
Analysis: Used to determine what you can learn.

As you can see I have some problems, some of the stats are only half defined, others overlap, etc. I have some possible solutions for this both would include combining the attributes with something else as needed to get sub attributes.

Idea A) Combine attributes with a secondary type of attributes for different events, curently I've thought of Physical, Magical, Social, & Craft such that force + physical might be strength while force + social would be how well you are at attacking your opponents ideas

Idea B) Combine the attributes with themselves, which would get you things like Force/Mental or Speed/Analysis.

Both would solve the worst problem but B might open up a different can of worms so currently I'm currently leaning to A but I dunno. . .

Any questions, comments or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Vulpinoid]

If your game is called Tarot, why not work off the suits and their traditional connotations?

As an example...HERE is one of many sites that could give you ideas.

There are plenty more.

Or use the 4 hermetic elements, since these commonly have an association with the Tarot and there are plenty of games with a precedent of using elements as attributes.

If you really wanted more, you could split things out into an internal attribute and an external for each suit/element.

But I'm not sure what your after, so I'm not going to throw much more in your direction just yet...

Just some ideas.

V

[7VII7]

I have thought of doing something like that but I had trouble covering everything I need to, but now I'm thinking of doing something with it, maybe a 4x4 grid combing the four suits with themselves. Hmmm... I must think...

[Vulpinoid]

Well, if you're thinking about Matrixes...look here or here.

I've been playing with them as a character defining tool for a couple of months while trying to nail my new game system into place.

V

[7VII7]

I'm also starting to think about instead of combing them in a grid just have sub attributes for each of them...

[Vladius]

Another problem is that some of them are skill-based for individual situations, while others are not. They either need to be increased in number and more specialized, or less specialized and more broad in their use.
For example, Persuasion has really only one use - to persuade. Force, however, as you said, is used for almost every attack and lots of other things. Persuasion is something that can be learned, but Force is something that should probably come naturally.

[7VII7]

I've thought on it and came up with the following:

Pentacles- represent physical skills & abilities
Strength- How physically strong you are.
Endurance- How much damage you can ignore.
Constitution- How good you are at resisting stuff like poision & disease
Reflexes- How good you are at reacting to something

Cups- Social skills & stuff
Presence- Simply how powerful of a presence you have, would be used for things like intimidition
Allure- How good you at attracting somebody, would be used for things like trying to charm somebody
Manipulation- How good you are at manipulating somebody
Prestige- Pretty much what you and others think of yourself (a farm boy would have low prestige, a farm boy that saved the world would have high prestige)

Swords- Mental stats
Craft- How good you are at making / using objects
Intelligence- What you know
Instinct- What you just know
Analysis- How good you are at learning stuff.

Rods- Stats dealing with powers & magic
Will- How willfull you are (there's a reason this isn't a mental stat)
Flare- How much sheer power rolls off of you, used to intimidate monsters.
Control- How good you are at controlling your power, when you use alot of your power you might need to do a control check to make sure it does blow up on you.
Utility- If you need to see if you can use your power for something it's not normally used for you make a utility check before other things

Basically, at character creation you do the sub stats as normal, while you do a pool of stat points for each grouping, for conflict resolution the GM decides on a target number but doesn't tell the player, at most just a broad range, the characters can then pay from the points pool for that grouping to increase their default score as much as they want (or perhaps with a limit...), and if they meet or excede the target number they succede, there's more to it then that but that's the basics.

[Vladius]

That's great, and I love it.

So will there actually be twelve attributes, or will there ever be a separate score for "Pentacles," "Cups," "Swords," and "Rods?"

[7VII7]

Basically the players would increase the 16 sub stats like in a traditional game, when you come to something that uses that stat that value is the default amount for that stat, they also create a points pool for the 4 stat groups, the player can then spend those points to increase the value for a task. (I go into this in more detail in the TAROT resolution thread) also, I've replaced endurance with dexterity.