3.xth Edition: Attributes

[MGuy]

@RC: I agree with that solution.

Edit as I think about it more: As Tzor pointed out the social minigame just isn't as detailed as combat is. I think it would be good if we had clearly defined ways other stats could be used in a social situation.

Strength:
-Intimidate: because being strong should be scary and influential,
-Attracting Followers: because some people (and by this i mean you attract certain classes or types of people) might be impressed by the fact that you can destroy things with your hands.
-Show Off: larger scale intimidate check or maybe just a show in an arena to influence people's attitude.

Dexterity:
-Thievery: because I honestly believe that stealing stuff directly effects a social encounter.
-Show Off: A bid to impress people with tricks, some sleight of hand, show them you're good for a job. In particular cases you can even intimidate people with the right tricks (throwing a knife you retrieved from nowhere next to someone's head)

Constitution:
-Show Off: Whether its through drinking contests where you out drink your opponent, or just showing off how grizzled and tough you are by bouncing daggers off your chest.
-Endurance: Let it represent how long you can keep up the continuous, difficult activity. (I'm in fact debating on a similar use for this for combat but that's something else)

Intelligence:
-Research: Look up information and different dealings here and there that might give you the edge in a debate or negotiations.
-Show Off: be brazen about your knowledge and how clever you are.
-Debate: Use this modifier in place of charisma in situations where it would be more appropriate. Convincing a tribunal of your peers of the validity of your theories, getting an engineer to listen to your advice, debating battlefield tactics, etc. Better example: You need to convince a group of priests of an oncoming onslaught. You can utilize knowledge religion instead of diplomacy to find common ground with them (through scripture) and convince them to have a look.
-Like Minds: Attract followers and cohorts of a certain kind.
-Disturbing knowledge: There's torture and then there is the stuff a scientist can do to you. And he knows how to tell you in excruciating detail. Or he can make thinly veiled threats in much the same manor.

Wisdom:
-Lie Detector: The tried and true use of wisdom through sense motive. Detect fallacies, motives, etc etc.
-Anecdote: Use in place of Charisma in situations where professional experience (those unused heal, survival, profession skills) or first hand observation (this should always lead to a lesser effect or come with penalties because eyewitnesses aren't as convincing ) might be more prominent.
-Coworkers: Attract followers or cohort based off of professional field.

Charisma:
Mislead: Bluff
Reason: Diplomacy
Impress: Perform
Intimidate: Veiled or direct threats.
Leadership: attract cohorts and followers (nothing specific)

[Psychic Robot]

The problem is that you want all characters to be able to talk effectively.

I do not, which is the root of our disagreement, it would seem. All characters can participate in social encounters, but not all characters can lie. I'm okay with that. And, again, the majority of a character's skill bonus comes from his skill points, not his Charisma score.

Stop kidding yourself and believing that a fighter is ever not going to dump charisma. That's just not going to happen. Seriously, you need high strength and that's going to be your main stat.

Well, if we're talking about a stat overhaul...we should probably dump Strength as the attack stat because it doesn't make sense. But then we'd be redoing the AC system, too.

[RandomCasualty2]

I do not, which is the root of our disagreement, it would seem. All characters can participate in social encounters, but not all characters can lie. I'm okay with that. And, again, the majority of a character's skill bonus comes from his skill points, not his Charisma score.

But the problem is that you don't have a skilled liar, a great leader, a scholarly advisor who appeals to reason and an attractive seductress. The charisma character is all of those things rolled into one.

As far as charisma and skill points, that's somewhat true. But this is a game of specialists, not generalists. You're not going to get a low charisma character to pump diplomacy, because that's the job of the high charisma character. People in D&D are given tasks that they're good at, because you must specialize to stay relevant. Cross classing social skills is such a shitty option, it's not even an option.

The only reason you'd really want to do that is if you had a strict DM who wouldn't have NPCs listen to anything your character said unless you made a social check. But at that point, why are you doing that? You can't have fun roleplaying unless you pay a skill point tax?

Really, social ability should be divorced from the skill system entirely.

The first concept with designing a social system has to be that it should be designed to include everyone, not exclude. It can't be SR3 decking. You don't want a single face character who handles all the talking. It has to be something that rewards the PCs for getting involved.

Now, doing that is pretty hard mechanically if you want the social encounter to look anything like a conversation. It's the reason why most games just handle things via magic teaparty or some variant thereof.

But the first key in that is going to be dropping the idea of the face. The prettyboy charismatic character isn't always going to be the best for a situation. If you're talking to hardcore barbarians, they're going to be suspicious of the smooth talker and more likely to respond to the crude alpha male badass archetype. A council of wizards is going to respect intelligence and knowledge. Reputation has to factor in as well. But in the end, no one character should be good in all social situations.

Social skills are in fact a total opposite to that, because like any D&D skill task, they encourage having one specialist and letting the others dump it. You don't have 4 guys that can disable traps moderately well, you have one disarming guy and that's it. It also means that it's possible to be totally incompetent socially. Neither of those are something we want, so the skill system has to go.

Well, if we're talking about a stat overhaul...we should probably dump Strength as the attack stat because it doesn't make sense. But then we'd be redoing the AC system, too.

I don't know what this has to do with anything.

[MGuy]

I am opposed to reducing social encounters to MTP. I think out of combat encounters should have some kind of framework if it can't be as detailed as combat. You should have the same "skill tax" to be able be convincing and charismatic as the "skill tax" you have to swim, climb, or jump. Hell I'd say Bluff, diplomacy, and intimidate are even more useful than climb, jump, and swim but both sets have their place.

[Psychic Robot]

But the problem is that you don't have a skilled liar, a great leader, a scholarly advisor who appeals to reason and an attractive seductress. The charisma character is all of those things rolled into one.

What. I'm not sure what being a "scholarly advisor" has to do with Charisma, but the rest of the things that you mentioned are all things that are primarily handled through roleplay, at least in my games. In some instances, I make players roll, but in others, I do not.

Even comparing a character with 18 Charisma to a character with 8 Charisma, the difference is only five points. Sure, that matters at the beginning of his career, but at the end, when he has a +22 bonus to his skills (compared to the +27 bonus that the Charisma guy has)...well, he can still give a damn good speech.

Likewise, that 18 Charisma guy might start off better at making speeches, but the gruff warrior with 8 Charisma has an equal skill bonus by level two. (Assuming that the 18 Charisma guy doesn't train in speaking and that we're using a not-retarded skill system where fighters can learn skills, of course.)

Heck, in a system where feats were balanced and good, the fighter could take Skill Focus: Leading the People and he'd be a pretty competent speaker from the get-go.

As far as charisma and skill points, that's somewhat true. But this is a game of specialists, not generalists. You're not going to get a low charisma character to pump diplomacy, because that's the job of the high charisma character. People in D&D are given tasks that they're good at, because you must specialize to stay relevant. Cross classing social skills is such a shitty option, it's not even an option.

I agree with what you're saying, but, again, I was under the assumption that we were talking about playing in the Almost Perfect System. So, yes, what you are saying is true, but I feel that's more of an issue with the 3e skill system than Charisma-related skills.

The only reason you'd really want to do that is if you had a strict DM who wouldn't have NPCs listen to anything your character said unless you made a social check. But at that point, why are you doing that? You can't have fun roleplaying unless you pay a skill point tax?

This ends up supporting my position. The fact is that you don't need to make a skill check for every social interaction, which allows characters with lower Charisma to still Do Something.

But the first key in that is going to be dropping the idea of the face. The prettyboy charismatic character isn't always going to be the best for a situation. If you're talking to hardcore barbarians, they're going to be suspicious of the smooth talker and more likely to respond to the crude alpha male badass archetype. A council of wizards is going to respect intelligence and knowledge. Reputation has to factor in as well. But in the end, no one character should be good in all social situations.

Again, what you say is true. However, I would handle this with situational modifiers and going light on the skill checks.

It also means that it's possible to be totally incompetent socially. Neither of those are something we want, so the skill system has to go.

I'm okay with that, actually. Again, we just have very different viewpoints on this issue.

I don't know what this has to do with anything.

It was merely a tangential point.

[Username17]

What. I'm not sure what being a "scholarly advisor" has to do with Charisma, but the rest of the things that you mentioned are all things that are primarily handled through roleplay, at least in my games. In some instances, I make players roll, but in others, I do not.

If you aren't going to consistently allow the attribute to modify the task, you shouldn't have the attribute at all.

-Username17

[Psychic Robot]

Charisma always applies to Charisma-related skills. I just don't force my players to roll all the time.

[shadzar]

Silly questions if it doesn't derail the thread?

Do you need any attribute for anything other than encounters?

Can't Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma just be dropped and let the character's player handle those things?

Should D&D be the place where someone tries to be the life of the party getting laid by every bar wench?

Then you could replace those 3 with things not doable by the player, but in this case handle the magic functions with one, physical attractiveness for "reaction adjustment", etc.

[MGuy]

IMO attributes hardly mean anything in DnD. The only thing that is directly tied to an attribute is Carrying Capacity (Strength) and Endurance (Constitution). The modifiers are only really useful at lower levels and are used just as another kind of bonus at levels beyond 5. The average player can be perfectly average in logic, perception, and personality just by leaving the attributes at 10.

IF you are using attributes for anything beyond a number with a modifier than they are a good representation of the mental faculties of your PC. You don't lose much to the other attributes by setting the three at 10. Hell if you're willing to to not pump points into a stat just to get it to 18 instead of 16 (only a +1 modifier worth of difference) you can even get these to 12 and be above the norm. Will it cost you a bit to be a well rounded person? Yes. I don't really think that is a bad thing.

I don't think physical attractiveness should be an attribute because it really doesn't help much. That's the kind of thing I'd make into a trait that would give minor bonuses and penalties to skills when used on certain npcs. Again I don't think mental stats should be MTPed any more than physical stats.

[shadzar]

Well I just listed physical attractiveness, because the player isn't representative of what the character looks like. So physical qualities of a gnome aren't possessed by every player. Two or three that I have net would fit, but most don't resemble gnomes...

But you think you really need nothing other than the physical attributes for the character? STR, CON? Would you not include DEX because while you can think it up, you cannot portray it for your character. Like the spellcasting attribute you wish to create, that serves for something in the game only, that cannot be done by roleplaying.

[Username17]

Charisma always applies to Charisma-related skills. I just don't force my players to roll all the time.

If you don't force players to roll attack rolls, why should there be Strength?

-Username17

[MGuy]

But you think you really need nothing other than the physical attributes for the character? STR, CON? Would you not include DEX because while you can think it up, you cannot portray it for your character. Like the spellcasting attribute you wish to create, that serves for something in the game only, that cannot be done by roleplaying.

I'm not entirely sure what your question is but I will try and elaborate. Its not that I don't want the other attributes. What I'm saying is beyond Strength and Constitution the numbers don't stop you from doing anything as long as they are above 0 (above 2 for Intelligence). While having a 1 in strength means you can hardly carry anything, having a 1 in constitution prevents you from having hp and holding your breath for longer than 1 round, and now that i think about it Intelligence once again makes its case in that it prohibits you from getting skill points (but this is related to its modifier and not the actual score itself). Having negative modifiers in other scores doesn't really stop you from getting anything. Having a low dexterity doesn't stop you from firing a bow or making a reflex save, low wisdom doesn't stop you from attempting a spot check, low charisma doesn't stop you from rolling a bluff check they are just modifiers.

[shadzar]

OK, gotcha. I can completely agree with that.

The stats shouldn't stop you from being able to try anything in an RPG. Succeeding in what you try like in strength matters, etc do need those 2 stats. Or something that tells you how much you can push/pull/carry/lift/etc.

[RandomCasualty2]

Again I don't think mental stats should be MTPed any more than physical stats.

Here's a brief explanation of why MTP tends to take over.

The main issue is one of the scope of the game. In any game, there's going to be some things that are part of the game and some things that are not part of the game and fast forwarded through. In Halo for instance, part of the game involves shooting stuff, but not flying space ships or negotiating with NPCs. When the time comes for piloting or talking, the game just takes over and you get a cutscene where Master Chiefs innate diplomacy or piloting skills take over and something happens. Whether he fails or succeeds has no bearing in player skill. The only thing that involves player skill are the parts where you're blasting aliens with plasma rifles.

The key thing to understand though is that the parts that involve player skill *are* the game. The cutscenes are purely tangential and exist only to create background story, but they're not shit we want to really focus on. Now seriously we don't have players whining about how they should hit every time because they're playing the role of master chief and he's a super space marine with godly skillz. Nobody says that, because part of the game is shooting people. In fact, that is the entire game pretty much. If you take out the player skill from that, then you're just watching a movie.

In an RPG you have to decide on a good scope for the game. Some games are about raiding dungeons and finding loot, and that's it. When it comes time to talk to the king, the PCs just want to fast forward that. Other games want to treat social encounters as minigames.

Now just like Halo, any RPG is going to have parts that are all about player skill. Obviously since this is a tabletop game, there is no physical component, therefore all the skills that end up being required are mental or social ones. One of the key concepts of the game is that you make decisions for your character. This alone tends to override your character's intelligence, just like the player for Halo overrides Master chief's aiming skill with his own.

Some groups even tend to take it a step further and adopt social/acting skills for RP scenes, declaring that you actually have to take on and act out how your character is saying something. Generally this is handled via MTP since social scenarios are so freeform. Different games tend to have different choices as to what player skills they're making part of the game, though almost all require some kind of tactical thinking for combats.

Now, none of these choices are right or wrong, but they do create the basis for what the actual game is. Remember that like Halo, if the character's mental stats aren't overridden in some manner, you're no longer playing a game, but rather running a simulation. Putting player choice into the mix is actually a good thing.

Now, it's very hard to get a social system that works without any MTP. The main reason for this is because social scenarios aren't something that can easily be simulated. There is of course the choice of turning a social encounter into some new minigame that isn't complex, but that tends to divorce players from the feeling of actually talking to someone. It's more like you play a game of chess and then the guy magically agrees with you if you win. Most players don't really like that. The best way to create that feeling of talking to someone is by using a freeform MTP style system. Sometimes people layer dice rolls on that as well at various junctures. But the end result is really the same, in which the success or failure of the social encounter tends to be based on arbitrary judgments by the DM.

[Archmage]

Now, it's very hard to get a social system that works without any MTP. The main reason for this is because social scenarios aren't something that can easily be simulated. There is of course the choice of turning a social encounter into some new minigame that isn't complex, but that tends to divorce players from the feeling of actually talking to someone. It's more like you play a game of chess and then the guy magically agrees with you if you win. Most players don't really like that.

This is a key issue, I think.

You can run social encounters as "social combat" where one side is rolling "offense" (bluff, proposition, rhetoric, intimidate, etc.) and the other side is rolling "defense" (gullibility, agreeableness, stubbornness, courage, etc.), and there are actually a number of systems that attempt to do this. I'm pretty sure some of the White Wolf games do, and there are certainly others, but I haven't played any of them and therefore can't say much about how they work in practice.

The trick is coming up with a social encounter resolution system that is as interesting as the combat encounter resolution system, especially in a game that really is, at its core, hack-and-slash (like D&D). And, generally, people who gather at the table to play D&D are expecting that hack-and-slashery, otherwise they'd go play some other system that catered better to their desires. Or so I'd think.

One thought might be to have hit points or "attitude levels" or whatever that track how many points or boxes of "social damage" you've taken. You'd need to give the opposition a suitable variety of options and approaches depending on how they wanted to attempt to alter the attitude of the "opponent." Most social encounters are at least as complex as fights, if not more so; the question is how to turn it into an interesting mini-game.

An obvious problem that comes to mind is that for consistency the system has to work both ways, which means PCs also have attitude levels or sHP or whatever. I think some players would heavily object to being told "your character agrees to do X because the king convinced you to do it" because they failed a social combat encounter. The idea that you are always the final arbiter of what your character thinks and does seems sacrosanct to a lot of gamers; I think that's kind of natural, actually. If the DM represents the impartial forces of the world, the idea that not even your mind is safe from those forces is bound to make some people uncomfortable. How many players react well to NPC use of the Diplomacy skill on their characters? Even "legitimate" effects like dominate or charm tend to piss players off at least partly because they're reduced to watching instead of playing the game (usually).

[Username17]

The thing is that people seriously don't replace their character's cognitive abilities with role playing. You can't role play your way to translating a document in Old Draconic, you can't roleplay library research to determine whether you can piece together a workable map to the Hruskian Peninsula. That stuff requires a mini-game. It can be a simple mini-game like "roll a die and see if you win" or it can be a more complicated mini-game that involves resource management, choices, and sub-events to respond to. But it's got to be a mini-game of some kind.

Now social scenes, like travel scenes, are ones that you can actually turn into total cut scenes or turn into MTP affairs completely. But you don't have to, and indeed I don't think that is even necessarily a good plan.

If you want to find a buyer for a stolen painting or someone who knows where the shape-ups are to get hired as goons for the Lich-Baron of Drachoster, you need to speed that up with some kind of montage. Actually asking around is going to take possibly several days. Even the meaningful negotiations are going to take hours. Unless you're playing a detective game, where that's literally the entire game, you're going to need to speed up the process or it will eat up the entire evening.

But here's the thing: once you "speed it up" you have no choice but to make it a mini-game or simply have stuff happen without player input. Once you aren't gong sentence-for-sentence with what your character is saying (which in any protracted negotiation you probably are not), you need to have some system or another to generate the stuff that's happening off camera.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

Charisma always applies to Charisma-related skills. I just don't force my players to roll all the time.

The fact that you use magical tea party to obviate the function of charisma is not an arguement in favour of keeping it.

[MGuy]

Well no. I don't expect my players to roll every time they talk to an NPC. Only when talking to an NPC matters. Getting some tail or picking up a girl/guy who isn't important, no, I don't require a roll for that because it doesn't matter to me. I may make a rough call as to whether or not that PC should get the girl/guy at my leisure but when we're talking about a hard negotiation that actually matters, picking up allies, making a rousing speech, anything that has tangible a effects on the game I do indeed make a roll out of it.

[RandomCasualty2]

The thing is that people seriously don't replace their character's cognitive abilities with role playing. You can't role play your way to translating a document in Old Draconic, you can't roleplay library research to determine whether you can piece together a workable map to the Hruskian Peninsula. That stuff requires a mini-game. It can be a simple mini-game like "roll a die and see if you win" or it can be a more complicated mini-game that involves resource management, choices, and sub-events to respond to. But it's got to be a mini-game of some kind.

Well my point isn't that you never replace mental abilities, but that you must replace some mental ability to even make it a game. You seriously can't run the entire game on your character's cognitive abilities. At some point, you have to say "It's my decision to decide to attack from the rear and not my character's."

Otherwise there is no game, and you're just running a simulation to write a random novel using dice.

As far as minigames, not everything has to be a minigame. Researching information may well not be a minigame, and it may just be something your DM hands out to you, or doesn't hand out to you, based on whatever the story happens to be.

A good example of why not to minigame everything is 4E skill challenges. You end up with a boring and dull generic minigame that involves just tossing dice at stuff until you either fail or it goes away.

As far as what becomes a minigame, it has to be something interesting. Combat for instance, makes a great minigame because there are plenty of unique abilities. But writing minigames is a lot of work. It's not like you're just going to be able to magically translate existing skills into a social minigame, at least not a good one. Look at how complicated combat is. That's pretty much exactly how complex all your minigames need to be, otherwise you end up with 4E skill challenges.

The advantage of MTP is that it comes with the complexity built right in, because you pretty much have infinite options of what to say or do. But MTP does the simplification trick of mostly taking character skills out of it.

[hogarth]

The thing is that people seriously don't replace their character's cognitive abilities with role playing. You can't role play your way to translating a document in Old Draconic, you can't roleplay library research to determine whether you can piece together a workable map to the Hruskian Peninsula. That stuff requires a mini-game. It can be a simple mini-game like "roll a die and see if you win" or it can be a more complicated mini-game that involves resource management, choices, and sub-events to respond to. But it's got to be a mini-game of some kind.

Well my point isn't that you never replace mental abilities, but that you must replace some mental ability to even make it a game. You seriously can't run the entire game on your character's cognitive abilities. At some point, you have to say "It's my decision to decide to attack from the rear and not my character's."

RC, you beat me to it. Requiring a skill roll (or other minigame) every time you want to make a logical argument to an NPC makes about as much sense as having to make a skill roll every time you want to use intelligent tactics in a fight.

[Username17]

Requiring a skill roll (or other minigame) every time you want to make a logical argument to an NPC makes about as much sense as having to make a skill roll every time you want to use intelligent tactics in a fight.

You do have to make a roll to use good tactics in a fight. You do some attacking thing, and then you roll a die to see whether it worked or not. If it worked, it was presumably better than the tactics being used by your opponent to not get hit. If it didn't work, I guess it wasn't.

But seriously, you roll dice to see whether your tactics work. Why would it make no sense to roll dice to see whether arguments work?

-Username17

[MGuy]

What's more is that having skills/attributes that cover the territory doesn't stop you from making a logical argument. There is nothing hard coded into the rules that says a person who has a character with an intelligence of 8 can't make logical decisions as well as a player who has an intelligence of 12. It would be up to the DM present to make that the rule. The only thing with mental stats that are actually in the rules and based purely on the number you have in it is that once they reach 0 you are incapacitated some how, if you don't have the score you're some kind of creature or object, and if your intelligence is below 3 you have animal like intelligence.

[mean_liar]

Requiring a skill roll (or other minigame) every time you want to make a logical argument to an NPC makes about as much sense as having to make a skill roll every time you want to use intelligent tactics in a fight.

You do have to make a roll to use good tactics in a fight. You do some attacking thing, and then you roll a die to see whether it worked or not. If it worked, it was presumably better than the tactics being used by your opponent to not get hit. If it didn't work, I guess it wasn't.

But seriously, you roll dice to see whether your tactics work. Why would it make no sense to roll dice to see whether arguments work?

-Username17

The distinction is between planning and execution. A good game puts planning (say, movement) in the hands of the players and execution (the result of actual weapon attack) in the hands of the dice. hogarth is referencing maneuvering for flank attacks and the like.

You can abstract it all out to dierolling so that you skip the direct role in planning and let your character's "tactics" skill take over but to me that doesn't feel very satisfying.

[hogarth]

Requiring a skill roll (or other minigame) every time you want to make a logical argument to an NPC makes about as much sense as having to make a skill roll every time you want to use intelligent tactics in a fight.

You do have to make a roll to use good tactics in a fight. You do some attacking thing, and then you roll a die to see whether it worked or not. If it worked, it was presumably better than the tactics being used by your opponent to not get hit. If it didn't work, I guess it wasn't.

But seriously, you roll dice to see whether your tactics work. Why would it make no sense to roll dice to see whether arguments work?

-Username17

I said it doesn't make sense to roll dice every time you use a tactic:

"We're fighting trolls? Fire worked on them last time, so I get out my flaming sword."
"Make a Knowlege: Common Sense roll to draw your sword."

I suppose you could say that's going on in the background (e.g. it's a DC -5 Wis check to draw your flaming sword, so there's no point in rolling), but the same thing can apply to social encounters (e.g. it's a DC -5 Diplomacy check to convince Lord Suchnsuch that it's not a good idea to attack Freedonia, so there's no point in rolling).

[Murtak]

Requiring a skill roll (or other minigame) every time you want to make a logical argument to an NPC makes about as much sense as having to make a skill roll every time you want to use intelligent tactics in a fight.

You do have to make a roll to use good tactics in a fight. You do some attacking thing, and then you roll a die to see whether it worked or not. If it worked, it was presumably better than the tactics being used by your opponent to not get hit. If it didn't work, I guess it wasn't.

But seriously, you roll dice to see whether your tactics work. Why would it make no sense to roll dice to see whether arguments work?

-Username17

I said it doesn't make sense to roll dice every time you use a tactic:

"We're fighting trolls? Fire worked on them last time, so I get out my flaming sword."
"Make a Knowlege: Common Sense roll to draw your sword."

I suppose you could say that's going on in the background (e.g. it's a DC -5 Wis check to draw your flaming sword, so there's no point in rolling), but the same thing can apply to social encounters (e.g. it's a DC -5 Diplomacy check to convince Lord Suchnsuch that it's not a good idea to attack Freedonia, so there's no point in rolling).

Now this is just silly. You roll attacks, right? So rolling "social attacks" like "convincing someone to do something detrimental to himself" seems appropriate. You do not roll to draw weapons, hence you do not roll to use your fork during dinner. Some DMs may have their players roll to draw weapons while swinging from a candelier, those same GMs can have their characters roll to use their fork in foreign cultures.