Why have ability scores in skill rank driven games?

[PhoneLobster]

OK, then depending on how many hairs you want to split, they either use some third attribute that's considered acceptable

OK you haven't even replied to me yet and its already clear I need to go into a bunch of additional stuff.

OK now complexity is bad. Even little bits of it. But when you have stuff like a skill list that is tied to attributes but which can have skills that are tied to say, between 0 and 3 different attributes (either any one of the tied attributes or a combination of all of them) then the complexity is REALLY REALLY BAD.

Role master kind of badness.

As it is walking into a game like D20 and trying to pick where to place your attributes to create a desired character concept is bad enough and the skills are tied to only a single attribute each.

Imagine the added overhead when you throw triple attribute skills into the mix.

But wait, there is another implication of such complexity.

If your skill system is so complex as to have all sorts of exceptions with multi attribute skills... it ends up looking more an more like a very inefficient, unbalanced and complex way of just having the same skills with no attribute contribution at all.

After all if every damn skill is a list of arbitrary exceptions to the basic break down of character attributes then why not just have skills be entirely rank based in the first place?

Next are you going to complain that you can't play a stupid, inattentive, uneducated nuclear physicist?

And you know if you put every optional character resource you ever received exclusively into nuclear physics then why SHOULDN'T you be inattentive and poorly educated (in all other fields).

And how many absent minded professor character archetypes who can't tie their own shoes and don't know which way round the gun goes have you seen in fiction?

And the consideration of the specialist problem brings to light two other problems with attribute+skill systems.

1) I didn't want to know things about Ancient Egypt.
To make Professor Fansworth, master of doomsday deviceology (and nothing else) I maxed the crap out of my intelligence.

Now when we go exploring ancient Egypt fricking Hercules and Casanova my travelling companions always turn to me when we need to decipher hieroglyphs because they maxed out their strength and charisma and my untrained Egyptology check is better than both theirs combined. And they Casanova even had a few skill ranks to spare that he blew on Egyptology!

Attributes contributing to skills in this manner means you are paying for aspects of character ability that you don't actually want and may not have envisaged as part of your character concept. You may even be forced to accidentally outshine someone else's actual character concept.

2) But I didn't JUST want to be a babe magnet.

But its not just a problem on the specialists side of things.

The Casanova character wanted to be History's greatest gift to women. But he REALLY modelled his character after Tomb Raider, so he wanted to be sexy AND an archaeologist.

Now if he wanted to be an archaeologist AND a doomsday devicologist he would have been fine, if he wanted to be sexy AND a liar he would have been fine. Because THOSE pairs of skills only require a single attribute to be invested in.

But no, he now suffers from MAD. And MAD makes Casanova Jones sad, very very sad.

[JonSetanta]

zzz

[PhoneLobster]

The system under consideration has this problem already, whether you use attributes or not.

You are so wrong on this it hurts.

So. In the end the entire system has a problem translating between character concept and actual actions.

So you have character concept "Climbing dude" and you have action "Climb something".

Under a Skill only system you have a skill, like Climb and it covers the Climb action.

BUT OMG! It may or may not cover the thing where you go down a cliff on a rope (the name escapes me). AND it may then overlap with the Rope Tricks skill!

OK, so you have a simple choice. Either it overlaps in the actions you can use. Or it doesn't and characters who want to do both things, and here is the shocking bit, NEED TO DIRECTLY INVEST CHARACTER RESOURCES INTO BOTH THINGS.

But hey, maybe he doesn't like ropes, may be he wants to also be good at computer programming actions. So then he just directly invests in Computer programming skill instead.

Doesn't that blow your mind, being forced to invest resources directly in the things you want to do? That is Soooo exactly the same as the alternative, which is...

An Attribute + Skill system.

Where Climbing Dudes Climb action relies on a combination of Climb skill AND Strength. Or maybe Dexterity. Or maybe Endurance, Or maybe two of those things, Or maybe all of those things, or maybe his choice of those things.

Now there are still confusing actions that might or might not fit into his skill but now we are ALSO confused as to where his skill, or some of the actions that fit into it, fit into his attributes. So we get to do the "where does the action fit" dance TWICE every time we come up with a new action.

Either way Climbing Dude now is also forced to invest in being good at a bunch of things irrelevant to his actual character concept by means of the required attribute or attributes.

And if the Rope Trick problem comes up and falls into Rope Trick Skill and he now needs to invest in Rope Trick he may also be force to invest in an attribute which in no way has any relation to his previous investments and makes him weaker than a specialist adhering to the attribute stereotypes.

Worse still if he should just up and decide to take a skill that is DEFINITELY not related to his other skills, like computer programming.


And seriously pretending it is a valid Genre restriction can bite my ass because that's what CLASSES are for (and they do it in a much more transparent and manageable manner) and though you MIGHT make an argument for them on that basis I don't think I've ever seen an attribute+skill system that hasn't merely been utterly arbitrary in nature.

Indeed I have massive doubts as to whether it is possible for it to be anything else.

[Crissa]

Either your system has enough detail so that you have Physicist and Archeologist as differences or you have Smart and Charming. If your system doesn't have enough detail to differ between Physicist and Archeologist - and if it does, you can do the Archeologist and Beauty - or it doesn't, and you're stuck with two very different things.

Attributes have nothing to do with stacking problems, grouping, or archetypes you can't make. Those are all problems in and of themselves - unrelated to whether you use Attributes or not.

-Crissa

[Username17]

1196652623[/unixtime]]

1196652239[/unixtime]]..."you can have good accuracy either because of high dexterity or because of high intelligence."

The problem with that is there are plenty of stupid clumsy fucks who are none the less very good shots.

Another possibilty is to give people a certain number of signature skills that they can tie to any attribute while the others have to use the default attributes.

Or you could give dicepool/modifier caps based on the total of attribute and skill (by level or overall). This way a highly agile character who is a master marksman is no more of a marksman than the clumsy ponderous guy who is a master marksman - he just spent less of his skill budget (ranks or skill points or BP or whatever) because that's a less surprising and difficult thing for him to master.

Or you could go the Ninja Burger route where you just have skills and one of the skills is essentially "everything else" and you roll it whenever you are asked to roll a skill that isn't listed on your character. Weaknesses in such a system involve listing skills that are worse than your other stuff skill - the equivalent of a negative modifier.

---

There are lots of perfectly valid methods to handle any particular situation which you want to model.

-Username17

[Manxome]

1196659277[/unixtime]]Either way Climbing Dude now is also forced to invest in being good at a bunch of things irrelevant to his actual character concept by means of the required attribute or attributes.

Which is the entire freaking point!

Because "climbing dude" (in the context of this hypothetical RPG) has been judged a lame concept.

Maybe this'll make sense if I quote Frank Trollman at you?

1188152068[/unixtime]]Our classic example is the Citadel of Fire, the castle that is the home of the Efreeti King. It's on fire. Every square is on fire. Every door is on fire. And if you go there, you'll be on fire.

...

And the effect would be pretty much the same if you just had to wade through a moat of Fire. There are literally dozens of rooms in the Citadel of Fire that are on fire without this increasing the difficulty of your assault in any way. And that's OK. In fact, people would be slightly offended if large amounts of the Citadel of Fire were not in fact on fire, which would be the logical way to do it if you were handing out XP or construction costs on a per flaming room basis. It adds to the immersion to have some relatively homogenous fantasy environments.

(bold added)

In the same way, we want people to play characters appropriate to the setting and genre conventions of the story. We therefore want to make it cost-effective to do so, because otherwise good players won't.

If you're trying to tell a story in which warriors conventionally run around with huge, heavy weapons kicking in doors and breaking down walls and wrestling bears, it is offensive if some smartass decides to train his "wield a huge fvcking hammer" skill but not his "bash in walls" and "wrestle bears" skill, because it breaks the conventions of the story and doesn't make any sense. But if you make players buy each of those skills individually, and if wielding a giant hammer is more useful than wrestling bears--both of which are quite plausible in a strict skill-based system--that is exactly what you are encouraging players to do.

What we want to do is to make it so that you can't be a totally awesome strong guy with a giant hammer without also being able to wrestle bears and bash in walls. Those are really fringe benefits that go with the character concept and make a more interesting story.

A simple and direct way to accomplish this is to make it so that players can't effectively wield a giant hammer unless they're strong, and make it so that being strong also makes you good at bashing in walls and wrestling bears.

In another setting or story, that might not make sense. You could have a comic setting where you totally have feeble midgets wielding freaking huge hammers for bullshit reasons, or a setting where archaeologists can analyze the stress points in a wall and cause it to collapse by poking it with a needle in just the right spot.

And you don't want the same game engine for those stories. But for the story about big, hulking guys with giant hammers that wrestle bears, it's a perfectly valid system.



And you still don't seem to get the concept that skills are not (and will never be) one-to-one with either character concepts or character actions, either. Being forced to buy a bunch of abilities you don't need through "strength" is not really different than being forced to buy a bunch of abilities you don't need because the "athletics" skill covers both climbing and swimming or because "small arms" skill covers both SMGs and sniper rifles. No system covers every possibility.

[PhoneLobster]

Another possibilty is to give people a certain number of signature skills that they can tie to any attribute while the others have to use the default attributes.

Better than nothing, but ultimately at that point one asks the question...

Why stop there?

That's now every single skill on the list usable by any attribute archetype. And up to the number of skills allowed that's a potentially massive number of combinations of skills and attributes.

And for every single character there are X major skills that may as well be attribute independent.

So if that is OK, or even a damn good idea, then why no just make everyone's life easier and break the skill attribute association entirely?

Which is the entire freaking point!

Which if you would pay attention I contend is a bad thing. Because you are creating a stereotype that characters must adhere to or be punished and you AREN'T doing it in an up front, simple, and transparent manner as classes do.

Because "climbing dude" (in the context of this hypothetical RPG) has been judged a lame concept.

You just used the word "hypothetical" but you seem to have used it in a way that suggests you don't understand its meaning.

Maybe this'll make sense if I quote Frank Trollman at you?

Maybe if you could actually quote a RELEVANT statement. Frank stating that genres are cool and if you want to use one you should actually make sure to use it... that's kind of grasping at straws to contend that it is your own recent words echoed long ago by a prescient Frank.

As I said, attributes+skills as genre enforcement can bite my ass because it just ain't done right, and as I suggested probably CAN'T be done right.

I mean if we are throwing "hypothetical" to the dogs then your example of a setting that finds it utterly offensive if anyone dares create a character that wants to knock down doors, wrestle bears or hit things with hammers without doing ALL THREE is a prime example of what should not be done.

Because after all as an RPG that has been judged a lame concept.

But since me and "hypothetical", we get along, lets consider that you want to enforce the archetype of the bear wrestling door hammer man. And that somehow that is OK.

Even though you have admitted that wrestling will be less useful, fun and frequent than other things (thus making, say, the hammer wielding necromancer illusionist a totally cooler more fun character archetype) then why are you doing it with an attribute?

Are you being up front about this.

Does your attribute include a bit of text telling players that they are opting in to the bear wrestling door hammer man archetype and that it is "offensive" to the setting if they want to ever be the necromantic death hammer man?

Are there REALLY no other hammer wielding archetypes valid in your genre? I mean that's a pretty broad thing to be so narrowly associated with bear wrestling...

And how many archetypes are there in this system where your archetypes are driven by attributes? 2, 4, 6? One for each attribute? Somehow more than that? (somehow?)

Do you suffer from attribute bloat because of this methodology? Or an Archetype drought? How do you avoid both?

How does this methodology encourage individual character diversity within its archetypes? Is the only difference between Bear Wrestling Door Hammer Men the way they distribute the skill components of their three main schticks? Is that especially dumb when you yourself explain that only the Hammer bit really matters?

Do you realise now that attribute distribution is effectively this system's equivalent to multiclassing, and by its very nature you have built it such that the standard "everything is level appropriate" attempt at solving the problems with that is going to be hard or impossible to use.

And why the fuck can't bear wrestling door hammer man be a CLASS? If you have a genre convention that those three skills must be bought together then be a man about it and make it a REAL rule, none of this stealth/accidental bullshit.

Indeed in a skill heavy system why the hell not just sell those three skills as a single "Bear Wrestling and Door Hammering" skill if never the three may be parted?

And you still don't seem to get the concept that skills are not (and will never be) one-to-one with either character concepts or character actions, either. Being forced to buy a bunch of abilities you don't need through "strength" is not really different than being forced to buy a bunch of abilities you don't need because the "athletics" skill covers both climbing and swimming

No it is distinctly different in both granularity and complexity.

You suggest TWO layers of poor fits compared to one should apply to EVERY attempt at an action using a skill. That is distinct and needless added complexity and a significantly increase in situations where actions either fall through the gaps or confusingly span multiple categories.

Similarly with athletics you invest in a narrower band of potentially unwanted actions. And since both the skill system AND the skill+attribute system are going to have athletics ANYWAY then the attribute+skill system performs relatively poorly in regards to paying for unwanted character abilities while having GREATER complexity to achieve it.

As you keep insisting like it means anything, neither system is covers every possibility so why the hell use a system with less choice, higher complexity of use, less transparency as to its actual enforced archetypes, and an entire additional layer of opportunities for confusion and contradiction?

It ain't no way to run a railway.

[JonSetanta]

This is like a Buttlord GT battle in text, sans lewdness.

[tzor]

1196582197[/unixtime]]It's a fairly simple question. Why bother with attribute scores if you're assigning numbers to abilities anyway?

I like to look at how things evolved and to see why some things were kept even when they no longer made sense. Sometimes it seems that they really do need to be kept and the thing what causes them no no longer apply should be dropped. This might be true for "skills."

Basically you could say that a skill was the application of an attribute. Back in 1E these things were generally fudged by seat of the pants gaming DMs, "You need to jump over the pit, make a strength check." But this had a very flat effect - so when it was decided to make a more formal system for this, the notion of skill points were added to allow the system to grow with level.

There is a major problem with that. Attributes are flat (more or less even in 3E) while level and skill points are linear. Eventually skill point growth makes the attribute seem meaningless. (Magic bonuses only push the envelope slightly.)

So riddle me this, why don't we see this problem in combat? Is it because the strength attribute has a double effect (to hit and damage) and while it becomes meaningless as BAB increases it still has a viable effect for the damage side.

Going through NaNo I've been looking at the C&C system. Yes it's crap, but it's a different crap and besides it's a simple crap ... if you want to spit out a novel in a month. One of the interesting things they have is that not all attributes are equal. Characters get the ability to declare "primary" stats (humans get 3 non humans get 2) one is choosen by class the others by player. In effect (although in theory they word it exceptionally crappy) this gives a bonus to what would be both skill checks and also saving throws.

The purpose of a skill list is two fold. The first purpose is simply to map actions to attributes. The second purpose is to have "slots" to assign points to. Back in 2E this was actually a binary feature with Non-Weapon-Proficiencies. But the problem still remains. You need to have attribute influence be at least 1/3 of the total adjustment factor or else if the points are greater than twice the attribute factor the later will seem meaningless, even though it really should be all about the attribute.

[Lago_AM3P]

So if you have a skill-only system, how do you handle (like in Frank's hypothetical example) obstacles that a character hasn't put points in but a human being could still logically try?

I mean, even if someone who has never seen a car could attempt to operate it if it was otherwise working. Should Thomas Jefferson have a better chance of figuring out how to drive a car than a caveman? Neither of them have points in an 'operate motor vehicle' skill--but given enough time almost everyone says that Jefferson should be able to operate it first and at a better proficiency.


And frankly, if someone is really complaining about 'unwanted' character abilities then they should shut the fuck up about it. It's free character depth. If for some dumb reason they want their character to be able to bend bars in half but still suck at wrestling bears then they should self-assign themselves a penalty. If it isn't free character depth (as in, they want a premium) then they should still shut the fuck up about it. We don't let wizards trade their hp and poor fortitude and reflex save for better spellcasting--we don't even let wizards trade their hp and poor fortitude and reflex saves for dumb cross-class rank skills.

[tzor]

1196966966[/unixtime]]Should Thomas Jefferson have a better chance of figuring out how to drive a car than a caveman?

Good question. Is TJ smarter than the caveman? He might or he might not be. I think we get into that really odd area that no skill is pure. Know how to drive a car (for example) and you have a better chance of piloting a ship. Even Captain Kirk klutzed on the clutch skill.

One of the problems, that I see, is that there is a false illusion here. Combat, for example, can be balanced in fine detail because we can determine both the attack and the defense in high detail. Trying to determine the appropriate level for a skill check can be for the most part a seat of the pants calculation.

[PhoneLobster]

So if you have a skill-only system, how do you handle (like in Frank's hypothetical example) obstacles that a character hasn't put points in but a human being could still logically try?

There are a number of ways.

You can for instance have an attribute and skill system where the attributes DON'T contribute to trained skills. You then get to still have the attributes floating around for inferior untrained checks.

You can do what Frank and others suggested of uncoupling skills from any specific attribute, you still have attributes around for untrained checks and ranked skills are effectively independent of all attributes.

Or you can realise that hey, these are actions unaccounted for by the system. Pretty much by definition you are setting entirely arbitrary situational DCs. If that side of the equation is entirely arbitrary, well its basically meaningless to have a number on the other side. So its a +0 roll vs arbitrary DC (which is no better or worse than a +Attribute roll vs arbitrary DC) and you can simply account for Jeffy and the Caveman (the latest odd couple crime fighting cop duo) with a differing arbitrary DC.

But I think its important to note that the first thing I mentioned on this thread is how attributes are useful for the unaccounted for actions. What I'm objecting is the claim that no, thats not what attributes are good for, the really COOL thing about attributes is how they totally screw valid character concepts in the ass.

And another thing. I object to the car example. Its driving a car, this is Jeff and The Caveman we are talking about, these guys should just be able to drive it with no check, at best there is a fifteen second montage of them driving backwards, grinding gears and turning the radio on by accident. Then BAM screen refresh and they are doing a hundred in a car chase after the man in the mysterious murder car. The untrained skill check BS can come when they try and jump the convenient ramp just after the "bridge out" sign.

It's free character depth.

It isn't free, you invest in Strength at the cost of Intelligence and visa versa. Its tying all the abilities in the game up in bundles and telling people they can only get pretty pony ability if they ALSO purchase angry alligator and mangy monkey ability while saying they can't have pretty pony along with cute kitty because cute kitty is bundled with strange snake and inscrutable insect.

And thats the fundamentally bad thing about attributes. And I ain't having anyone bullshit me by telling me that is actually the good, or even maybe BEST thing about attributes.

We don't let wizards trade their hp and poor fortitude and reflex save for better spellcasting--we don't even let wizards trade their hp and poor fortitude and reflex saves for dumb cross-class rank skills.

OK several points right there.

Hp, fortitude, reflex and spellcasting. All not skill rank based. So slightly less relevant to the question "Hey, why is it that skills are attribute+rank instead of just rank?"

Second if you are talking d20 then, at least ostensibly, we DO let wizards swap their poor hp, fortitude and reflex for better spell casting, thats what the Class explicitly is supposed to do (it doesn't especially perform as advertised especially compared to say a cleric, but that's what the designers tell us wizards trade off).

And thats a class, a mechanic designed to explicitly openly and in your face bundle various abilities together.

But further still, if you are talking d20, we still use attributes to allow a wizard to trade improved fort, reflex and hp for improved spell casting DCs and number of spells by means of trading Con and Dex off against Int.

We even DO let wizards trade off poorer HP Fortitude, and reflex against shitty cross class ranks by means of the Int skill rank bonus and a shitty little class skill list.

The problem is, that being a bundled trade off of attributes you make BOTH those trade offs at the same time. And isn't it a pity that in order to be the best at Tumble you just screwed your Swim check?

[PhoneLobster]

Good question. Is TJ smarter than the caveman?

Because remember, as learned from the Tick, in a room full of historic figures the caveman may be a woman named "Wheel".

[Catharz]

1196668692[/unixtime]]
...
There are lots of perfectly valid methods to handle any particular situation which you want to model.

-Username17

Yeah, the cap system seems to work well for that, provided that caps are only for total bonus. Depending on attribute and skill cost some characters might be objectively worse, but they can always be level-appropriate.

I question the 'ninja burger' tactic, as depending on the cost of 'everything else' you either want to only buy it or not buy it at all.

1196669040[/unixtime]]
If you're trying to tell a story in which warriors conventionally run around with huge, heavy weapons kicking in doors and breaking down walls and wrestling bears, it is offensive if some smartass decides to train his "wield a huge fvcking hammer" skill but not his "bash in walls" and "wrestle bears" skill, because it breaks the conventions of the story and doesn't make any sense. But if you make players buy each of those skills individually, and if wielding a giant hammer is more useful than wrestling bears--both of which are quite plausible in a strict skill-based system--that is exactly what you are encouraging players to do.

What we want to do is to make it so that you can't be a totally awesome strong guy with a giant hammer without also being able to wrestle bears and bash in walls. Those are really fringe benefits that go with the character concept and make a more interesting story.

A simple and direct way to accomplish this is to make it so that players can't effectively wield a giant hammer unless they're strong, and make it so that being strong also makes you good at bashing in walls and wrestling bears.

What you're describing is an attribute-based system. There are three 'skills' (bear wrestling, wall bashing, and giant hammer), each of which are keyed to strength.

• 
  
• We can't have the skills be binary and bought. If they were, you could just not buy bear wrestling and wall bashing (and you'd suck at both despite your strength).
  
• We can't make the skills ranked (because, again, you could buy only giant hammer ranks, and things would diverge).

So our system does one of two things:

• Buying ranks in skills does not make you any better with them, meaning that the only factors are your attributes (a pure attribute system).
  
• Or, when you buy giant hammer you have to buy an equal amount of bear wrestling and wall bashing. Then you would effectively by making them a single skill, and attributes would be superfluous (e.g. a pure skill system).

The Lobster pretty much already said this, but I think it's worth repeating as it illustrates perfectly my original point.



Also, regarding Jefferson and the troglodyte:

In real life, figuring out how a car works is very different from being able to drive it. If you don't understand the concept of an keyed ignition, you can't even drive the car badly. IRL, neither Jefferson nor the troglodyte would understand the device well enough to break the clutch. As soon as someone explains the concept and shows you, you have the option of breaking the clutch.

Driving itself (not just declaratively knowing where everything is) is a skill which is not obviously tied to any anything like 'strength' 'wisdom' or 'dexterity'. It's just a skill that people learn with practice, some better than others.

Depending on the game, there are any number of ways you might want to gloss over driving. In a skill-based game I'd lean towards an 'understand device' check (which, OK, might be Int-based), with a heavy bonus from the 'aid another' if the other understands the device.
Then you make your 'drive' check, which (in the case above) is untrained (and therefore has the default bonus, probably 0 unless you have some perk or something). Whether you can use 'drive' with space ships really would depend on the game.

[Lago_AM3P]

What I'm objecting is the claim that no, thats not what attributes are good for, the really COOL thing about attributes is how they totally screw valid character concepts in the ass.

You can for instance have an attribute and skill system where the attributes DON'T contribute to trained skills. You then get to still have the attributes floating around for inferior untrained checks.

Of course, here's what happens the other way around.

Say you have two characters. They're both parkour/free runners of average height and weight. They compete ferociously for two years and they're relatively equal in skill.

But then one of the competitors, tired of tying, decides to boost his edge. While still training in parkour as much as his competitor also engages in intensive strength training. He spends a few months building his leg and arm muscles. Then they compete again and he, of course, wins because he can jump farther and climb harder.

So how would a skill-only system handle this?

[Catharz]

1196990001[/unixtime]]
So how would a skill-only system handle this?

Probably as an increase in the Athletics or Acrobatics skill, of which parkour is a specialization.

[Lago_AM3P]

I suppose that makes sense. You put on a belt of giant strength and it gives a +2 bonus to athletics/fighting/surviving heights/whatever rather than just your strength score.

[PhoneLobster]

So how would a skill-only system handle this?

I'm leery of a specialist sub skill thing since that's could easily end up being a narrower synonym for an attribute+skill system.

So I'd say. WTF, who cares, lets just not handle it.

You want to get better at parkour? Put points in parkour (or the skill the related action falls under) and SAY you got bigger parkour muscles.

And its not like an attribute system by its nature handles it any better anyway. After all along comes d20, you train the ying yang out of your strength, and that did what for your dex based acrobatics skill again?

[Lago_AM3P]

The system you described is totally doable and I take back what I said about it being unworkable. In that light it is.

Though I still disagree with the whole 'shiny kitty + angry snake' shotgun issue of stats versus skills. It's not even a problem; just keep the points from skills and stats separate and refuse to let people exchange them.

I agree it is a problem in most point-based systems but games like D&D can completely avoid the issue by just giving you arbitrary, indivisable amounts of points in each. That way if you don't want to wrestle bears or bend bars you can just not put points in those skills and let it atrophy.

[Catharz]

1197039171[/unixtime]]
Though I still disagree with the whole 'shiny kitty + angry snake' shotgun issue of stats versus skills. It's not even a problem; just keep the points from skills and stats separate and refuse to let people exchange them.

I agree it is a problem in most point-based systems but games like D&D can completely avoid the issue by just giving you arbitrary, indivisable amounts of points in each. That way if you don't want to wrestle bears or bend bars you can just not put points in those skills and let it atrophy.

Yeah, I guess that would be the way to do it.


I've actually been trying to conceptualize a way of describing attributes and applying them to skills which makes sense to me, because I also like the 'short skills trees' way of doing things.

One really important attribute would basically represent one's ability to figure out how to do new things on the fly, which is what primitives like Jefferson use to figure out how to drive a car. It might also be applied to some skills (call it "G", and say it applies to math checks), but that's not necessary.

So you make a G check to see if you can shoot a rifle (assuming you aren't trained in their use). If you succeed, you make a 'perception'-based attack roll (or something). If you fail, the safety is still on. If you glitch (over-fail), the gun is jammed. If you critically glitch, you shoot yourself.
If you're a member of the NRA, you just make the perception-based attack.

G is a really useful attribute, but its usefulness decreases in direct proportion to how many skills you've already mastered.

The problem is balancing the cost of G against the cost of perception.


All in all, games like D&D and Shadowrun do attributes pretty well. They just tend to over-extend them sometimes. Which isn't always a bad thing: I'm a fan of Frank's 4-stat system, after all. It really depends on the game.