Ultimate Attributes List?

[Zoetrope10]

Many years ago there was a project called DragonNet, which attempted to design an frpg over the net. By way of comparison, this was their 'ultimate' list of ten attributes:

Physical
Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Constitution, Beauty

Mental
Intelligence, Perception, Psyche, Willpower, Aura

An earlier, 4-3-2-1 division of stats was proposed, but discarded:

Physical
Agility
Constitution
Dexterity
Strength

Mental
Intelligence
Perception
Willpower

Spiritual
Aura
Psyche

Social
Beauty

The attribute descriptions (which I thought were pretty good at the time) were:

Physical
o Agility represents body control (static and motive) and connectivity. It includes balance, rhythm, and flexibility.
o Beauty simply defines how good a character looks in terms of sheer physical attractiveness. It can be particularly important when you have no time to argue or express yourself but must still leave a good impression.
o Dexterity includes hand-eye coordination, fine finger manipulation, and sensitivity of touch.
o Constitution is an indicator of bodily health (including resistance to hardship, injury and disease) and metabolic efficiency. Running is an example of a constitution related activity.
o Strength is a composite of two types of physical power - instantaneous explosive and prolonged and measured. Jumping is an example involving the use of the former, swimming the latter.

Mental
o Aura is the non-tangible complement to beauty. It represents a character's ability to impress, influence, seduce, command and lead people. Qualities such as natural charisma, personal magnetism, and sex appeal are greatly influenced by a character's aura.
o Intelligence encompasses memory, analytical and reasoning ability, and speed of thought. A high intelligence indicates a natural aptitude for the generation, retention, and understanding of linear thought.
o Perception includes alertness and observational acuity. A character with a high perception score has keen senses and is less likely to be surprised by unexpected developments.
o Psyche is the emotional counterpart to intelligence. It rates a character's ability to engage in creative, intuitive, spiritual and transcendental thought. Amongst other things, Psyche enables interaction with the supernatural, including the gods, the spirit of Nature, and the mysteries of the universe.
o Willpower is an indicator of self discipline (determination and persistence) and mental fortitude (resistance to influence, pain and stress).

Z

[artofmagic]

I like the idea there, propably the same as with BESM, but I do not know that system.

You have
Mental
Physical
Social

stats, and you can have flaws or merits for those stats, like quick, smelly, strong grip, weak lungs.

The guy who does a lots of sports, is bound to be strong AND fast. scholar is bound to be smart AND witty.

but there is one rule I hold dear.


NEVER HAVE AN INTELLIGENCE STAT!

How many times have you seen a stupid player playing a smart character? I think it's a rule, when you are really stupid, you want your character at least to be smart, then you can say 'my vassago is really smart, how does he solve this puzzle you GM threw at us?'

Smart characters just have good knownledge skills and some perks to suggest he is smart.

[Scourge108]

Then again, I have known people who score as geniuses on IQ tests who can be pretty stupid at times.  Just because they have the intelligence doesn't mean they always use it.

[M. J. Young]

NEVER HAVE AN INTELLIGENCE STAT!

How many times have you seen a stupid player playing a smart character? I think it's a rule, when you are really stupid, you want your character at least to be smart, then you can say 'my vassago is really smart, how does he solve this puzzle you GM threw at us?'

Smart characters just have good knownledge skills and some perks to suggest he is smart.

Didn't I just cover this in another thread?

Yes, you can have players play characters who are significantly more or less intelligent than themselves; you just have to accommodate that.

Suggestions were in the other thread, but I don't have time to hunt for that at the moment.

--M. J. Young

[Autocrat]

Just thought I'd lob a few bones in for the hell of it....

The first bone is, in another Forum, someone threw a large rock like statement in my direction, stating something like....

  It's a proven fact that when people first start design RPG's, they make the mistake of balanced stats.......which never works........

  or something like that.


Bone number 2 is one that will cause some people to choke.  I keep seeing these posts with things like DON'T, NEVER, UNECCESSARY, POINTLESS etc., regarding the social, appearance and Intellectual stats.... yet no one seems to say that about strong Characters and weak players, of clumsy players and agile characters etc.
  why is this?
  (der-her george, is it preference ?)


Another bone is one of contention.  Preference is the key, so by definition, (and according to certain individuals), you'll never get it right.

  Hell with it, cover as much as possible, permit break downs and overlaps, this means that if you generate 1034 stats, you can reduce them down to just 8, 6, 4, 3, 2 or 1.  Then depending on style, you can have descriptors, traits, tags, skills or what ever other method to tailor the character how you wish.


  To be honest, I can't see why we don't all just throw in as many stats/attributes and there definitions as possible.  Then find a way of organising them, possibly grouping them, and hten my personal favourite, find a way of cascading them so that each one encompasses those below yet is encompassed by those above, thus making it so can reduce them or expand them in a neat little fashion.
  Then we can suggest various ways of altering those stats/attributes, listing the method of each, such as traits etc.

  Wouldn't that make the ULTIMATE ATTRIBUTE LIST ???????

[M. J. Young]

The first bone is, in another Forum, someone threw a large rock like statement in my direction, stating something like....

  It's a proven fact that when people first start design RPG's, they make the mistake of balanced stats.......which never works........

  or something like that.

I'm confused. Are you agreeing with them, or are you complaining that they said it?

I don't think there's any such "proven fact"; I'm not even certain what "balanced stats" means. Is he complaining that designers try to put all attributes on the same scale? Sure, you could create a batch of attributes using different scales--

[*]Strength bench 350[*]Intelligence IQ 120[*]Dexterity targets 79/100[/list:u]--but the complexity of such a system would almost certainly obliviate its usefulness.

Does he mean that having the same scale for every attribute with humans in the same range is unworkable, because there are going to be creatures who outstrip us in strength by far more than those who outstrip us in intellect? Of course all scales are abstractions; consistency in system is a feature, and a desirable one.

So I don't know what he's saying, and I don't know whether you're repeating what he says because you agree or because you disagree.

Bone number 2 is one that will cause some people to choke.  I keep seeing these posts with things like DON'T, NEVER, UNECCESSARY, POINTLESS etc., regarding the social, appearance and Intellectual stats.... yet no one seems to say that about strong Characters and weak players, of clumsy players and agile characters etc.
  why is this?

Actually, while I disagree with the statement (as I just said in the preceeding post), I know why people make it.

Physical stats are easy to codify into the game. It's easy to say that your character is strong enough to lift this, flexible enough to fit through here, dextrous enough to hit that target--these are all imaginary objects being manipulated by imaginary characters, and on some level we need those numbers to make that manipution possible. Sure, I'm strong enough to lift my briefcase; but is my character strong enough to lift that car? Something has to be quantified for this.

People have attempted to design games in which a strength check involved lifting a weight, a dexterity check involved manipulating a physical puzzle, and the like; but these tests break the concept that this is a character whose abilities are distinct from mine.

Where it breaks down with non-physical stats is that somehow we think we have to role play these things, and we think that rolls interfere with that--and they can, used roughly. If every time you thought of a good idea, the referee said, "Roll the dice to see if your character thought of that", it would be a bit frustrating, wouldn't it? And if figuring out what's happening comes down to rolling the dice to get the referee to tell you, it's rather boring. That doesn't mean that there's never a time to roll the dice for either of those reasons--it just means that this approach to play is generally unpopular.

I had a player join an ongoing OAD&D game as a first level cavalier in an established group of characters ranging to about sixth level who had been working together for a long time. The player himself was highly charismatic, but his character wasn't, according to the dice. I used a mechanical leadership system in that game, which in essence combined various factors representing charisma and experience into a simple statement of which characters people were more likely to trust and follow. The new player found it extremely frustrating that his character didn't automatically leap to a leadership position in this established experienced group based solely on his, the player's, personal charisma. It took a while for him to adapt to it (and ultimately he realized that the system worked well, particularly when other new players tried to push their way to take over). But tell players that despite the fact that they were so polite and eloquent in their speech to the prince, the dice roll says he is insulted, and you'll get a pretty negative response. We want our player intelligence and charisma (which we frequently overestimate) to give us success in play.

As I say, there are ways to handle it such that these non-physical stats impact play positively, but for people who have never played that way they don't want to hear it.

Another bone is one of contention.  Preference is the key, so by definition, (and according to certain individuals), you'll never get it right.

Well, they have some point. I would disagree--it isn't exactly preference in itself, but preference in overall design concept.

To again compare Legends of Alyria with Multiverser, there is an entirely different design concept behind the attributes. In Multiverser, the design concept is to as completely as possible convert a real person, or an imagined one, into a game character; thus there is a heavy emphasis on attributes, fourteen in all, plus several derived attributes drawn from these. Multiverser characters are expected to wind up in all kinds of situations many of which were not imagined at the moment they were created, and so we might need to know how the character functions in a three-grav environment, what is his inherent ability in magic, how long can he tread water--there has to be a solid underpinning for these things. In Alyria, the only question that matters is how effectively this character can interact with other characters. In a sense, all three of the Alyrian stats are social stats, not physical stats--it doesn't tell you how strong the character is, only how forceful a presence that character has, whether that's because of hulking muscle mass or because of a threatening stare or a strong political powerbase. The three attributes do the job extremely well.

So the problem isn't really that it's a matter of preference about how many attributes to have; it's that it's a matter of preference regarding what kind of game you want to play, in general, which then leads to answers regarding what sort of attribute structure is appropriate for that kind of game. Someone recently mentioned a game in which there is only one attribute and no skills--it's just "character effectiveness" which is rolled whenever the character wants to accomplish a goal, and then we assume that they succeeded by some means appropriate to the character. That might be the "ultimate attribute list", as it sums everything else up into a single package. Anything beyond that is a design choice intended to achieve the design objectives of the game--so you have to know what you're going to do with the game before you can answer why you need more than one attribute, and what sort of attributes you need.

Does that clarify things?

I hope you're not feeling like people are picking on you here. One thing that makes dialogue at the Forge so enlightening (and perhaps intimidating) is that no one will let you get away with your presuppositions. We've all got them. As soon as you ask a question that assumes something you haven't stated, someone here is going to challenge that assumption, because knowing what you're assuming is the first step to understanding what you're doing.

--M. J. Young

[Autocrat]

OK......

... M.J.Young ...

1)  
The first Bone of Contention... hmm. yep, I completely disagree with it!
Also, the term balanced stats was that you have 3 Physical, 3 MEntal... or 1 of Phys, 1 of Ment and 1 of Spirit etc.
I consider it a load of trash, yet the person stated that it is the common mistake that most RPG designers make, especially as it's normally the first system they make that uses this approach.
I view it as workable... further, i there are mistakes, I think it more likely to be due to being their first system, not the method they employed!

2)
I'm sorry, but I'm really confused.....

You say...
"... but these tests break the concept that this is a character whose abilities are distinct from mine. ..."

Then you say...
"... We want our player intelligence and charisma (which we frequently overestimate) to give us success in play. ..."

So which is it... are the Players and Character seperate entities, are they merged or are they psuedo P/C's?????

Yes, it's all quantifiable... to certain extents.  Yes it's stupid to roll play every situation.... yet it's distinctly unfair to role play every situation as well.
I believe in having the stats as a fall back, time saver and rescue attempt for those with little experience or that lack the qualities their characters has!

3)
You said...
"... Well, they have some point. I would disagree--it isn't exactly preference in itself, but preference in overall design concept. ..."

Now is it me, or is that still as preference?
Not taking what is said and twisting it, or simply mis-reading it are you?
No, I hope not any way!  LOL


By the way...presuppositions... at what point did I lack factual evidence for my little bones?  They were merely statements of either opinion or previous occurences....no more, no less!
Whats more, at what point did you provide hard evidence or factual points to correct or refute my apparent suppositions?
LOL

Just kidding!

Seriously though, I don't find people intimidating at all, I do find certain individuals hold views and beliefs that prevent them from looking at other peoples, particularly if they hold a strongly oppossing belief!
I have never shouted down another persons view, not stated they were wrong... yet other people seem to do it alot.
I just find it sad and dismally disappointing that I can't have my thoughts expressed without them being beaten, when I attempt to help, suggest and refer others, even being encouraging.
Shame!

[Shreyas Sampat]

Autocrat, I am having difficulty reading your posts. If it's not too much trouble, could you proofread just a hair more closely? Thanks. LOLs particularly peeve me, and do nothing to add content. Better to speak seriously and articulately.

The Character/Player distinction:
Basically, from what I can tell this boils down to, "Generally, unless the point is that the players are better (see kill puppies for satan and people who Explore inferior Character in general), the players don't want their own abilities limited by the character's abilities."
So players like characters who are stronger than they are, or more knowledgeable than they are, or in general posessed of more prestige attributes than they are. I suspect that if a game came out of a herding culture like the Maasai, there would be something like a "Cows" stat that tells you how many cows you own, and the average Cows score represents, IRL, a rather affluent herd. Edit: I realise this is a massive oversimplification of a complicated issue and a huge stereotype of a complex culture with which I am not intimately familiar. It is illustrative, not representative, and should be taken as such.

Players don't like, "Roll to see if you can read this book." Because players can read books.

OTOH, they do like, "Roll to see if you can swallow this castle." Because players can't ordinarily swallow castles.

I don't think I agree with your assessment of "stats as a fallback." That, to me, seems to come from some presupposition that "interaction is superior to mechanics", that is not always or even often the case. What would a happy d20 player say to that? A well-engineered set of game rules should provide a play experience that is far superior to one that the players extemporized, with the same intentions in mind. They can be a highly beneficial core to play, rather than a marginalized "crutch".

[Scourge108]

It seems to me that there are a couple of different ideas about the role of a player and character.  In general, a character is a vessel to explore or interact with the game world.  The character is normally believed to be a seperate entity than the player (even if you're playing a character based on yourself, it's a fictionalized version).  The question, then, is how much of a character's mind and personality are his/her own, and how much of their psyche is provided by the player?

It's one approach to assume that the character is merely a body that the player "possesses" in the game, and that the character WILL have the same mind as the player providing the character's actions.  Personally, I like it when characters have their own personalities, intelligence levels, psychoses, etc.  Yes, it can be a bit of a role-playing challenge to play someone with different mental traits, but that's also part of the fun for me.  I enjoy games that have psychological as well as physical elements to their mechanics.

I see intelligence and charisma as any other character advantage that requires roleplay.  The difference between what a player and what a character knows is always a problem.  If the player doesn't know martial arts, but the character does, it's easy enough to solve.  Just roll a few dice and describe a kick to the head.  But what if the black belt player has his scholar mage stand in a horse stance, and describes the deadly moves he wants his character to perform?  Or if a paramedic player describes the advanced first aid procedures he wants his barbarian PC to perform on his allies?  Or if a mechanic player "invents" a motorcycle with medieval technology (someone tried to pull this off once in a game I saw...they had the blacksmith plans all worked out).  A simple "You don't know how to do that, don't confuse player knowledge with character knowledge" usually suffices.  

To avoid all problems like this, you can have the players BE their characters, but this causes a whole other set of problems.  Like combat.

[M. J. Young]

O.K., Autocrat, I think I'm with you here.

On balanced stats, I understand what you mean; I agree. It happens that Multiverser has seven physical and seven non-physical stats, but we didn't realize it until after it went to press; in fact, if you look at the way they're laid out in the text (which is specifically stated to be nothing more than the order in which we were listing them when we started writing) you'll note that the seven physical stats are sandwiched between three non-physical stats at the top (related more to character/personality) and four more at the bottom (related more to mental abilities, although the last, will power, could be seen either way). There is certainly nothing wrong with symmetry in a game design, but if it interferes with function it's nonsense. I think we agree there.

I'm sorry, but I'm really confused.....

You say...
"... but these tests break the concept that this is a character whose abilities are distinct from mine. ..."

Then you say...
"... We want our player intelligence and charisma (which we frequently overestimate) to give us success in play. ..."

So which is it... are the Players and Character seperate entities, are they merged or are they psuedo P/C's?????

The first quote is from a paragraph in which I was describing a rare type of game in which resolution of physical tasks is done by performing physical tasks--in essence, if you can do this, your character can do that. It occurs to me now that LARPs which use boffer weapons fall into this category, to a degree (some of them have advantages given to the character who has higher stats). This sort of game concept comes down to, if you want to see whether your character can pick up the front end of the Volkswagon, let's step into the weight room and see if you can deadlift a three hundred pound barbell. My objection to this sort of play is that I want to play a character who is stronger than me, faster than me, physically better than me (usually), so my own abilities should not be relevant. Rarely do we have situations in which we're talking about whether my character can't do something that I can, in the physical realm--few of us are registered sharpshooters, martial artists, olympic weight lifters, champion acrobats, and those who are usually understand that their characters are not. If you told me that my ninety-eight pound weakling character can't carry a forty pound pack, I would accept that; if you told me he can't lift a ten pound sack of flour, I might want to argue with you--but that's not because I can pick up such a weight, but rather because anyone should be able to do so.

The second quote is given as the argument people make (implicitly) against such non-physical attributes. It's a difficult issue to tackle. If I'm playing a smarter character, and I can't solve the puzzle, should I be allowed to roll to see if he does? If I'm playing a dullard and I can solve the puzzle, should I be forced to roll to see if he can? To complicate it, does my dullard get a roll to solve a puzzle I can't solve, or is my genius forced to roll when I've already solved it? No one wants to solve the puzzle only to be told that their character didn't do so; that's why people object to such checks. Since they see the stats as doing nothing but this, they think the stats stand in the way of good play. My answer is that the stats can be used to effectively manipulate situations without this sort of egregious mechanic, and therefore have value.

Thus I think the stats are good, despite understanding the objection to them.

Is that clearer?

You said...
"... Well, they have some point. I would disagree--it isn't exactly preference in itself, but preference in overall design concept. ..."

Now is it me, or is that still as preference?

Yes, it is a preference; perhaps I misunderstood you. It seemed you were using it in the context of questions like "how many attributes should you have--well that's a personal preference; what kind of dice should you use--well that's a personal preference." It sounds like whether you use one attribute or three thousand is merely a matter of personal preference; whether you use a percentile, a dice pool, or a bell curve is merely a matter of preference, directly. It isn't. It's a matter of preference indirectly. That is, if you want linear probabilities within a minimum and maximum through which you can make direct adjustments that have similar impact throughout the range of ability, you probably want a percentile or single-die resolution system. If you want open-ended rolls that can escalate, you probably want dice pools or something similar. If you want most rolls to land near the average, you probably want a bell curve system. Thus it isn't "I like percentiles" (although it is often expressed that way), but rather "I like systems that provide linear results with plenty of granularity that are easily manipulated to get the probabilities I want", of which percentile systems are among the most common choices.

But maybe you didn't mean it that way.

Regarding presuppositions, you have (several times in this thread, if my memory is functioning) suggested that the ultimate set of attributes should fully define a character. You never actually said that, but rather kept going for how many stats and which ones do I need to accomplish this? In the post to which I was immediately responding, you suggested a system of 1034 stats, which could be divided in several ways, as the ultimate attributes list. In response, I suggested that a single stat of "character effectiveness" could be viewed as the ultimate attributes list. Your assumption seems to be that a more detailed mechanical description of character abilities makes for better role play; that's a judgment. It may as easily be that less mechanical description of the character permits better role play. Do I think that? Patently not--I don't know a game with more attributes than Multiverser's fourteen, and I think they do an excellent job of doing exactly what you're trying to do. On the other hand, I've seen games do what they're trying to do extremely well with a lot fewer. Which is better depends on what you're trying to accomplish. There is no ultimate attributes list because of that. Your suggested thousand is not better or worse than my suggested one; it just approaches the concept of what is a character in this game very differently. Without answering that question, you can't really know what attributes matter to him.

Really, I'm closer to you than most here--I like a detailed character definition in mechanical terms. I just think you're assuming that it's better generally, rather than better for a narrowly defined sort of approach to role playing design.

(And Shreyas is correct: indications of laughter are only confusing. Do they indicate that you don't mean what you just said, so we should ignore it? Do they mean that you are intentionally being nasty but want to pretent you're not? If you made a joke and it really is funny, we should be able to recognize it. If you're laughing at your own jokes and we can't see them, maybe they're not all that funny.)

I hope this helps.

--M. J. Young

[F. Scott Banks]

I'm new here, and since I came for advice I figure I'll jump on in headfirst...

Why are balanced attribute systems worthless?  I'm working on my first game, I've got all these lofty ideas and goals and basically, I'm trying to get them dirty to see if they'll work.

However, I pretty much figured that balanced attributes was a given.  If one race could be the best fighter possible, then wouldn't players (who wanted to be fighters) use that race almost exclusively?  Same for magic-users, thieves...etc.

My approach would be to make races (traditionally, this is where the difference in attributes takes place) basically even, that way any other race can be the equal of a "fighting race" or a "magical race".  I thought that taking a step away from "All halflings are natural thieves" would go a long way towards keeping the lore of my story from becoming useless.

But, like I said, I'm new to all this.  I'm just curious why balance is a mistake.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Basically, balance is one of those lofty impossible goals, not the least because actual play can be very different from a designer's expectations. Like, suppose that I have a game where every point of "Speak Languages" gives me a new language I can speak, and I can buy a special ability to raise any one skill at half the cost. Blah.

Then my GM decides, "Hey! I'm going to introduce a lot of linguistic puzzles into the game, and NPCs who like you better if you speak their native tongues." Suddenly, the Speak Languages skill is overvalued in my game, compared to other games being played in the same system.

The same thing can happen to any game stat, and that's why balance doesn't.

[M. J. Young]

Why are balanced attribute systems worthless?  I'm working on my first game, I've got all these lofty ideas and goals and basically, I'm trying to get them dirty to see if they'll work.

However, I pretty much figured that balanced attributes was a given.  If one race could be the best fighter possible, then wouldn't players (who wanted to be fighters) use that race almost exclusively?  Same for magic-users, thieves...etc.

Welcome to the Forge.

First, one of the problems that plagued this thread was that no one was quite certain what the original poster meant by "balanced stats". It turns out (if I've got it now) that all he meant was the idea that there should be X physical and X non-physical, or the same number of physical, mental, and spiritual, or some similar system in which the number of stats you have is in part determined by balancing different aspects of one character, so that no one part of the character has more attention than another. There are people who come up with these systems where they try to do everything in threes, something like

I've got three main stats, Physical, Mental, and Spiritual.

Under Physical, I have strength, coordination, and endurance.

Under Mental, I have intelligence, insight, and memory.

Under Spiritual, I have faith and gentleness, but I don't know what the third thing should be; can you help me?

The point is that you shouldn't have a "third thing under Spiritual" just for the sake of making it balance Physical and Mental. You should only have that stat if it has some purpose in the design of the game, and if you don't know what it should be, it probably doesn't have such a purpose.

*****

Now, on your question, there's an entirely different sublayer to what you're after. Should different (fantasy or sci-fi) races have different strengths and weaknesses? Should elves be better archers because of their dexterity and eyesight, halflings better thieves because of their surreptition and stealth, dwarfs better infantry because of their hardiness and physical strength, humans more well-rounded because they are the baseline for everything else?

The answer to that question really raises another: why do you have fantasy races in a fantasy game, and what meaning is there in choosing one over another? If elves really are just pointy-eared people with slender bodies, and halflings and dwarfs are just short, what function does that have in play? Why should anyone choose one race over another, and why should these races even be included in play?

Certainly, you could create a fantasy game in which all the races were functionally the same, such that you could have the expert archer a dwarf, the hobbit the powerful knight, and the elf the great thief. Race in this world would be primarily color: we have fantasy races because the players expect the world to be populated by fantasy races and like to play these. However, part of the appeal of playing different races is that they are different, even if only in very superficial terms. You could make the differences essentially cultural, but for this to have any real impact on play the players would each have to study the culture of his own character and commit to making that matter in play--as soon as you wind up with player characters working together without regard to their differences, the differences evaporate and the races are immaterial.

So there's nothing particularly wrong with races which are functionally identical, but there's nothing particularly right with it either. Just because Minotaurs make the best Barbarians and Elves make the best Archers doesn't mean that the game is broken. If you're going for balance and functional difference, incorporating advantages and disadvantages in each race gets you there more easily.

--M. J. Young

[F. Scott Banks]

Hmmm, well, in my game, races do have slight advantages over other races as far as combat skills go, but attaining a skill level of "grandmaster" in any combat skill negates all racial bonuses or penalties.  So while it is possible to equalize any race to another, it is difficult and it requires that the character "specialize" or essentially, choose a class in a skill-based RPG where there are no classes and it generally benefits a player to make characters that are as diverse as possible.

I guess I should have mentioned (or remembered myself for that matter) that there is a craft system in my game as well and that is where the racial bonuses and such really stand out.  A human could be an excellent archer in my game, but she'd never make as beautiful a wand as a Hasper (sort of a magical halfling).  I kind of threw that intentional imbalance into the game to pull focus away from hack-and-slash (nothing wrong with it, but what about when not a lot of people are online) gameplay.


BUt yes, as far as Physical/Mental/Spiritual attributes being the base for some sort of ultimate attribute list.  I guess I'd have to say that it would depend on gameplay.  A RPG filled with so much magic as to make physical combat pointless would not need physical attributes or, at the very least, the playerbase would lean towards those who weren't particularly physical.

So to quote a lot of other people here, it depends.