I have skills grouped by attributes, which are: Brawn, Dexterity, Acuity, and Spirit. Due to the metaphysics of the setting, I absolutely have to keep it to these four attributes. The problem is that I'm on the fence with regards to where I would put "perception"-based skills. It's kind of a mix of Dexterity and Acuity. Just to give you an idea of my rationale, this is my current skill list:

---Brawn

Running
Climbing
Swimming
Trekking
Jumping
Wrestling
Fortitude
Lifting

---Dexterity

Brawl
Staves
Axes
Knives
Swords
Clubs
Chains
Acrobatics
Skulk
Legerdemain
Riding

---Acuity

*Conceal
*Archery
*Throwing
Lores (Religion, Government, etc.)
*Craft (Weaponsmith, Bowcraft, Leathering, Armoring)
Tracking/Surveil?
Sailing
Medicine
Profession
Appraise
Tactics

---Spirit

Animal Handling
Perform (type)
Socialize (Haggle, Gather Information, Etiquette)
Diplomacy (Negotiation)
Bluff
Charm
Command
Intimidate
Cleromancy (casting lots - need to be made of various materials)
-only spellcasters
Spellcraft
-only spellcasters

This is nowhere near the final draft, just a bunch of stuff from my notes to give me direction with what I want to build. Some skills might get dropped, others elaborated, but you can see what I'm going for. I marked the perception-based skills with a *. There might be a couple others in there, but these are the most notable ones. Frankly, I can see it going either way, so I wanted to get some insight from others. Thanks.

I think they fit just fine in the Acuiity category. I usually think of ranged combat skills to be more perceptual than dexterity oriented. Though there are probably a number of instances where other characteristics may influence some of these abilities, this list gives you a nice distribution of skills, so I would stick with it.

Hope that helps,

Ken

So the question is where to place things that rely on hand-eye coordination: at the hand, or at the eye...
There's various possible ways to look at it. What is your goal?

To distribute skills evenly across the attributes?
Shuffle them around and make up a justification.

To link them to the single most appropriate attribute?
Decide which attribute is 'primary' and assign based on that. (Your current approach, which causes trouble so might be abandoned.)

To link them to all appropriate attributes?
Assign a skill to more than one attribute. You could either apply the lowest, the highest, their sum, their average, or another combination, based on what makes the most sense.

Personally i wonder: Why only those four Attributes?

Curious Cat

I think they fit just fine in the Acuiity category. I usually think of ranged combat skills to be more perceptual than dexterity oriented.

Assign a skill to more than one attribute. You could either apply the lowest, the highest, their sum, their average, or another combination, based on what makes the most sense.

Personally i wonder: Why only those four Attributes?

that's weird, my post was cut off.

as I was saying...but these four seem to pretty much cover everything.

Why are you writing a stats & skills game to begin with? Of all the possible ways to design a game, does this really best serve your design goals?

-Vincent

In short, yes. That question is a whole other topic, though, and I'd rather not digress.

Then it should be easy - put perception-based skills where your design goals demand you put them. If you're really on the fence about how they should work, there's some mismatch between them and your game.

-Vincent

lumpley wrote:
Then it should be easy - put perception-based skills where your design goals demand you put them. If you're really on the fence about how they should work, there's some mismatch between them and your game.

Not really! The basic question is: what is perception in your game for? Creatively, socially, in the interface between the players & GM and the game's fiction - what is the function of perception in your game's gameplay?

Once you've answered that, how perception works - including what stat it's related to, if any - will follow naturally.

-Vincent

Interesting question on Vincent's part...

Personally, for my game "The Eighth Sea", I put perception as a spiritual skill and simply called it Awareness. It was one of the easiest skills to slot into the scheme.

Magic and psychic powers are instinctive things in the game, and a high degree of perception is often considered to border on clairvoyance. It's a gut reaction, an intuition rather than a specifically trained or practiced feat.

V

"Perception" is a very broad term, which is part of why it causes trouble, I believe.

There's a difference, IMO, between:

- seeing something (note that I'll be using sight as an example but all senses work the same way)
- noticing something (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_blindness for at least one difference)
- interpreting it correctly (friend or foe?)
- reacting on it correctly

Yet, when you observe human behavior, all of these happen so fast and are so intricately linked that it's very difficult to separate them. So yeah, my answer is that you can put "Perception" anywhere you want. You can ask our opinion, but that's never going to be more than an opinion. *You* need to decide in what place it will do the most good for *your* game, which is where I redirect you to Jasper's questions. I'll also quote your subsequent post a bit:

Another weird thing about it is that under Acuity, Throwing and Archery will correspond to a water element. On the other hand, Dexterity is a Wind element, which sounds like a better fit.

My original plans did something like this, but it got real messy real fast.

Perception is a mental faculty. Sense acuity is a limiter, attention is a limited resource.

Hand-eye coordination and spatial sense is not related to the creative ability to paint, nor to the ability to sense an ambush. You can probably sell me on the photographers who can spot the odd person in a crowd, but not on the hunter who excels at archery also being an excellent judge of character.

You mentioned attributes linked to elements.
Is this is matter of linking general attributes to skills, or is this a matter of linking mystical elements to skills?
Is the elemental part a side-effect, or is it a core part of your game?

If the elements are at the root of your system, you can link those to skill directly and don't bother describing attributes as an intermediary step. If you can't find a suitable element for a skill, then you probably need more elements.

Is the elemental part a side-effect, or is it a core part of your game?

Hand-eye coordination and spatial sense is not related to the creative ability to paint, nor to the ability to sense an ambush. You can probably sell me on the photographers who can spot the odd person in a crowd, but not on the hunter who excels at archery also being an excellent judge of character.

Well my actual point is that things that even typical rpg games pair up aren't really directly related. For those games and your own the question may be simply what do we think is appropriately correlated. Legend of the Five Rings and Weapons of the Gods did a fine job of equating Japanese and Chinese elemental theory into the groupings. And that's what you should do. :D

My caveat is really to break apart the pairings from our world and it's assumptions and go with your elements instead. Perhaps the blacksmith is best at sailing because he must show his strength in his work, yet bend to the properties of what he works with. The sea would like that better than someone whose approach is to stand from afar and try to be precise in their effects on it.

Hey, so Punkbohemian, I know I'm making a pest of myself, but any chance you could tell us what perception skills mean to the players and the GM who are playing your game? I get that they mean something in your game world, and that's important, but it's also important that they mean something in the real world too.

A bishop in chess doesn't only represent a religious personage, right? It also has a way that it moves in the real world, on the board. Perception skills in your game don't only represent the characters' perception, they also have a real-world function to the people playing the game. Tell us what that is! Tell us how you imagine the GM and the players using them.

-Vincent

So I just had a goofy thought.

Reading this:

punkbohemian wrote:
The elemental system, as it stands is based on the setting relgion's understanding of the nature of the universe. One of the core themes/goals of the game is for the players to discover that this isn't true, and to search for the true nature of their world/existence.

Hand-eye coordination and spatial sense is not related to the creative ability to paint, nor to the ability to sense an ambush. You can probably sell me on the photographers who can spot the odd person in a crowd, but not on the hunter who excels at archery also being an excellent judge of character.

I agree with that, but the judge of character bit would fall under Spirit (intuition) with this system. But, considering what you said, answer me these questions. Do you think a blacksmith would likely be better at pick pocketing or sailing? Or, do you think a knife thrower would be better at fist-fighting or surgery? And why?

That reminds me of the veils between the divine and humans in certain mystic thought. As you learn, the veils are parted.