Four Stat System.

[squirrelloid]

So it isn't that you have pairs of stats, it's that you have two groups of stats no matter how many attributes you have... Ick.

Wait, this is generalizeable to any even number, not just powers of 2. I'm pretty sure that's *not* what Frank was talking about.

If only Frank could tell us what he was thinking when he said powers of 2 had unique properties here...

[jadagul]

Yeah, this is definitely different from Frank's position. I think it's accurate. But I'm totally prepared to be convinced I'm wrong, since I'm currently too tired to think straight.

But yes, I think the key properties are "binary choices" and "every attack uses half your stats." Because the important issue is that if you can raise your attack by 1 by lowering one of your defenses by 1 this is almost always a win. You need to be lowering half your defenses by 1.

Note: while this definitely allows the construction of a balanced eight- or sixteen-stat system, I really can't figure out why you'd want to do that. SAME is balanced and also simple and elegant.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Two rolls per attack is great. Pretty much every attack involves an attacker and a victim; when both get to roll, both are physically involved. The cost is a very slight slowdown.

Adding another roll to the mix gains you barely anything at all (nothing at all if the attributes always come in the same triads), and almost doubles the amount of time.

[jadagul]

Oh, I wasn't thinking about adding a roll, just thinking that you could use a holy physical attack or a holy mental attack, and the modifiers on the dice would be different.

But I'm also not actually advocating this system in real life. I'm not sure what adding stats past the fourth gets you. Still, the question was "can using more than four stats be balanced, and if so how?" And it totally can be.

[squirrelloid]

The question was more 'Frank, you said any power of 2 could be balanced. How? Constructive proof wanted!'

Edit: Note that I'm specifically interested in what Frank was thinking when he wrote that, and which is unique to powers of 2. Everything really being a binary choice masked by stat proliferation cannot be what *he* meant, because that's not unique to powers of 2.

[jadagul]

That's fair. And obviously the easiest way to answer it is for Frank to come tell us.

Now, when I started saying this I thought I was coming up with the same answer--I thought my argument required powers-of-two, and I'm still not convinced I'm not just fucking it up.

[OgreBattle]

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think you can make a six stat system work--it would just have to look very different from a D&D-ish six-stat system. Every attack needs to use exactly three stats. It probably works better if these stats are paired off--so that no attack is mental/physical/holy or holy/unholy/mundane or something--but I haven't convinced myself that this is necessary yet. But if you set it up like this, so that your stats are something like mental, physical, holy, unholy, mundane, magic, and every attack uses one of the first two, one of the second two, and one of the third two, then you have 2^3 types of attacks, which I think is the important point.

And this is balanced, because moving a point from holy to magic doesn't increase your attack at the expense of your defense, but moves around both your attack and your defense in tandem.

Riddle of Steel does something like that for magic, in general all of the die pools in that game are formed from 2-3 stats together.

[Manxome]

I've challenged Frank on the powers-of-2 thing several times, across several threads and in PMs, and never gotten an answer that I consider satisfactory. The first and longest discussion is earlier in this thread, starting with this post, where he lays out the idea that any two people whose stats sum to the same number will also have the same relative bonus attacking each other--the 2200 guy and 0022 guy both attack each other at +2, and if either of them fights the 1111 guy all attacks are at +1.

So, several points...


First, that example treats the two stats you use in your attack as interchangeable--which is actually not true in the SAME system as described. The 2200 and 0022 guy aren't attacking each other at "+2", they're attacking at "+2/+2". If you have a 4000 guy fighting a 0400 guy, they're not at +0; one of them attacks at +4/-4 while the other has -4/+4, which means they are not necessarily on equal footing (it depends on the details of the system). Frank's example requires that all stats that add to a given attack do so in precisely the same way.


Second, this is smuggling in quite a few assumptions about the system other than the number of stats. It's assuming that you always defend with the same stats that were used to attack you, and that the attacker can always choose to attack you with the optimal attack type (the attacker choosing the stat to attack with is true of most systems, though still important to note; but this also requires the attacker knows which is best, which requires knowing the defender's stats, which is a more contentious assumption). Things also get messier real fast if we talk about group fights.

Also note that these assumptions are not true of the elemental damages types in SAME, where your attack and defense in a given element are uncorrelated, and therefore none of this applies.


Third, even if we make all of those assumptions, this has nothing whatsoever to do with powers of two. Zero. Nadda.

Under the assumptions laid out above, a necessary and sufficient requirement to get the "balance" described is that all attacks come in complementary pairs, by which I mean that if your game includes any attack that uses stats A, B, and C, it must also include an attack that uses every stat in the entire game except A, B, and C. If the goal is to make sure that your attack bonus equals my attack bonus when the sum of my stats and the sum of your stats are the same, then the only way to make that true for all stat distributions is if my attack uses exactly all of the stats that your attack does not use--that way, each of us is counting each of our stats exactly once (either on attack or defense).

SAME does this by having an SA attack and a ME attack, but you actually get exactly the same result if you have a SAM attack and an E attack. In fact, you can have all four of those at once (plus any other complementary pairs you like), and it's still "balanced" (in the very specific sense that Frank's example uses).

Which means you can have any number of stats you want. You can have a 5-stat system where one attack type uses stats ABC and the other uses stats DE.

If you add the additional stipulation that all attacks must use the same total number of stats (which is convenient for a number of reasons), then you're restricted to having an even number of stats (and every attack must use exactly half of them). But 6 is still a valid choice; you're not restricted to powers of 2, just multiples of 2.

(Technically, you can also mess around with adding multiples of a stat to an attack--say, an attack that uses 1.5x stat A and 0.5x stat B and actually subtracts stat C--in which case the complementary attack must use some combination of stats such that when you add their stat dependencies together, it adds up to k times everything, where k is a constant that is the same for all pairs of complementary attacks in your game.)


Fourth, if all you really want is to guarantee that your net attack bonus against a target of equal level is always the same as his bonus against you, you could simplify things considerably by just having an "attack" stat and a "defense" stat.


Fifth, this probably isn't how you'd want a real combat system to actually work. This is basically a diagram of how to make your rules more complicated without offering any more depth.

Games are fun because you get to make interesting choices, and the way you make a choice tactically interesting is by making different choices optimal in different situations while ensuring that it isn't entirely clear which choice is optimal in your current situation. Letting the player decide which of several precisely-equivalent stats to specialize in does not contribute to that goal. You might conceivably do it anyway to create choices that are interesting in some other way (narratively, for example), but then it's not really a part of your tactical combat minigame (or at least not in service of your tactical combat minigame).

The essence of game balance is basically making things equal "overall" when they are demonstrably not equal in lots of particular situations and there is no obvious reason that they are necessarily equal overall. Which is a lot harder than checking whether your number of stats is a power of two, which is probably why so many designers get it wrong. There's no silver bullet.

The way D&D traditionally handles stats is a very complicated, and the ramifications for attacking usually amounts to "max one stat and always attack with it", which is inelegant and very restrictive. But that's not because they use 6 stats, it's because of how they use those 6 stats. And there's plenty of room for innovation in that department. I suggest you start by asking: should players be adding any stat at all to attack or to defense, and if so, why?


In conclusion, I'm convinced that Frank was having an off day when he wrote that.

[Grek]

Points 1 and 2 are very closely related, so I'll address those together. Specifically, the assumptions that you're complaining about in #2 are the exact assumptions which result in #1 being the case. The fact that an attack of +2/+2 vs a defense of +0/+0 results in the same average damage as a +4/+0 attack vs a +2/-2 defense is a direct result of the rules of the SAME system making each stat of precisely equal value. More generally, as long as each stat does one of [Red_ToHit, Red_Damage, Blue_ToHit, Blue_Damage] and one of [Red_Dodge, Red_Soak, Blue_Dodge, Blue_Soak] then any combination of stats where the stats for Attacker_ToHit + Attacker_Damage - Defender_Dodge - Defender_Soak equal the same value before elemental/weapon bonuses are factored in will result in the same amount of mean damage. While it's true that if you transplant the stats from SAME into some other system with different rules that these relationships will not hold true, that would be a lot like taking Touch AC, Fortitude, Will and Reflex from your D&D character and transplanting them into SAME and expecting things to work out fine.

Point 3 is incomplete. You don't specify what the stats are opposed by. There isn't a plain ABC attack. It has to be ABC vs. something. SAM vs. SAM would be fine, since that's the same number of stats. You add Agility + Moxie to your attack roll, Strength to your Damage and then add the defender's Agility+Moxie to Dodge and their Strength to the soak. That comes out to being equal on average to SA and ME attacks, just with a higher variance, sure.

But it overlooks a key fact: Under the normal rules, a fight between a 1111 paladin statline vs. a 0004 beserker statline goes +1/+1 vs. +0/+0 when the paladin is attacking and +0/+4 vs. +1/+1 when the beserker is attacking. But under your ruleset, it looks like +1/+1/+1 vs. +0/+0/+0 on the paladin side and +4/+0/+0 vs. +1/+1/+1 on the beserker side - a 33% advantage to the "dump all your points into one stat" tactic.

Point 4 is obviously retarded in a way that does not need explained.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I'm actually glad this was necro'd. I'd like to see some more resources as far as the elemental opposition stuff.

[Manxome]

Grek, you have failed your reading comprehension check. Several times.

The SAME system does not make accuracy and damage of precisely equal value--Username17 actually worked out an example in this post showing that they're not (they're close in his example, but they could be vastly farther apart if you chose a different starting point). So your whole first paragraph is based on a premise that is not only false, but the actual designer of the game personally posted the math to prove it false.

And I'm not saying that they should be precisely equal, except that the one and only argument I'm aware of that anyone has used to defend the whole "powers of 2" thing implicitly assumes that they are, so any system where they're not cannot use that argument to justify its design.

Point 3 is incomplete. You don't specify what the stats are opposed by. There isn't a plain ABC attack. It has to be ABC vs. something.

Point 3 does specify what the stats are opposed by--it says "under the assumptions laid out above", the one of those assumptions (point 2) was "you always defend with the same stats that were used to attack you."

But it overlooks a key fact: Under the normal rules, a fight between a 1111 paladin statline vs. a 0004 beserker statline goes +1/+1 vs. +0/+0 when the paladin is attacking and +0/+4 vs. +1/+1 when the beserker is attacking. But under your ruleset, it looks like +1/+1/+1 vs. +0/+0/+0 on the paladin side and +4/+0/+0 vs. +1/+1/+1 on the beserker side - a 33% advantage to the "dump all your points into one stat" tactic.

Except that you're not following my ruleset. My example had a SAM vs. SAM attack and an E vs. E attack. Your example has a SAM vs. SAM attack and a AME vs. AME attack. That doesn't meet the criterion I defined (i.e. "that all attacks come in complementary pairs").

Under the actual example rules I gave, the paladin is using a SAM attack at +3 (1+1+1 vs 0+0+0) and the berserker is using an E attack at +3 (4 vs 1).

If the berserker makes S his high stat instead, then the paladin attacks with E at +1 (1 vs 0) and the berserker attacks with SAM at +1 (4+0+0 vs 1+1+1). Or, if this system also allows SA and ME attacks, then each of them attack at +2.

Either way, the math works perfectly as long as you actually follow the rules.

[Ganbare Gincun]

Some questions regarding how SAME works:

1) How many points is a player given to build their character, and how many points do attributes and skills cost?

2) What resource system is used to determine what powers/spells a character may use in an encounter? Are there multiple resource systems available at character generation? How much do powers/spells cost to purchase with experience points?

3) If the system is meant to be classless, how are powers/spells organized in order to keep people from deploying powers that are synergistic with themselves?

4) How does healing work?

5) How do magical items work?

6) What is the intended power level for this system - mid fantasy? High fantasy?

[squirrelloid]

Some questions regarding how SAME works:

1) How many points is a player given to build their character, and how many points do attributes and skills cost?

2) What resource system is used to determine what powers/spells a character may use in an encounter? Are there multiple resource systems available at character generation? How much do powers/spells cost to purchase with experience points?

3) If the system is meant to be classless, how are powers/spells organized in order to keep people from deploying powers that are synergistic with themselves?

4) How does healing work?

5) How do magical items work?

6) What is the intended power level for this system - mid fantasy? High fantasy?

This isn't a full game, it's a resolution mechanic. You'd have to build most of this stuff yourself.

Some specific points:
1) Any number of points can work so long as everyone receives the same amount. 1 pt = +1 to a stat. It's recommended you put a limit on how far you allow stats to diverge. Ie, a maximum spread of 4 is a good limit.

2) While any resource system could work, the given example frank doesn't suppose any resource limitation at all (besides health, which has 10 levels in his example).

3) The system could be classless or classed - you'd have to balance options to taste.

4+5) That's entirely up to you.

Keep in mind if magic items scale in damage, armor has to scale up at about the same rate. I imagine magic items could just provide alternate damage types or even count as multiple types (use the weakest defense).

6) Really depends on the decisions you make on healing, magic items, advancement, etc... And, well, what you allow characters to actually *do*. Could be anything from low to high.

[Red_Rob]

I've been looking over the SAME system as a potential base for the MTG:D&D thread and I had a few questions. Firstly, the balance of the setup seems predicated on the fact that Mental and Physical attacks are equally common, but it seems to me that Physical attacks would outweigh Mental attacks. Even in a fantasy world things that try to bite or sword you are more common than things that try to fry your brain, because whilst anything can try to claw your eyes out, it takes special powers to be able to carry out a Mental attack. Does that make Physical stats more valuable than Mental ones?

Secondly, I don't really like the idea of having to track where every wound came from. If I take 3 Mental Fire wounds, 2 Mental Ice wounds, 1 Physical Void wound and 3 Physical Glass wounds that is a pain to have to keep listed separately in case any of them happen to add up to 10. I'd prefer a system where you just take Wounds, and a special attack simply lists what happens if that attack takes you over 10 wounds. Would that be doable?

Thirdly, how would you handle debuffs? I'm happy with Save-or-dies working by accumulating wounds but it seems that tactically you'd want effects that did something other than damage. How would you work a Slow or Weaken effect into SAME?

Lastly, what would the existence of Agi/Elan or Moxy/Str attacks do to the game? Wizard shooting bolts of fire with their mind or a physical blast that caused Mental damage both seem like something you might want, are they toxic in some way to this setup?

[echoVanguard]

I've been looking over the SAME system as a potential base for the MTG:D&D thread and I had a few questions. Firstly, the balance of the setup seems predicated on the fact that Mental and Physical attacks are equally common, but it seems to me that Physical attacks would outweigh Mental attacks. Even in a fantasy world things that try to bite or sword you are more common than things that try to fry your brain, because whilst anything can try to claw your eyes out, it takes special powers to be able to carry out a Mental attack. Does that make Physical stats more valuable than Mental ones?

Not necessarily. For example, Dark Sun is a fantasy world, and mental attacks are extremely common there. Additionally, what is a "mental attack" is pretty loosely defined - it could track damage from things like intimidation or social embarrassment just as easily as it could track a synapse-frying blast of thinkotronic energy. Maybe Intimidation deals Mental Life damage, and the eventual results are capitulation and heart attack.

Secondly, I don't really like the idea of having to track where every wound came from. If I take 3 Mental Fire wounds, 2 Mental Ice wounds, 1 Physical Void wound and 3 Physical Glass wounds that is a pain to have to keep listed separately in case any of them happen to add up to 10. I'd prefer a system where you just take Wounds, and a special attack simply lists what happens if that attack takes you over 10 wounds. Would that be doable?

The whole point of multiple damage types is that it makes you easy to disable but hard to kill - any number of wounds from any number of sources totaling 10 disables you (3 mental fire + 2 physical void + 5 physical glass = disabled), but it takes 20 of one single wound type to kill you (20 physical glass = dead). If you just combined all wound types into a single pool of damage, it would be just as easy to incapacitate someone but much murkier as to whether they were actually dead. If you just say "you die at 20 wounds of any type", then characters have become much squishier - if you say "you die at 40 wounds of any type" characters have just become more resilient to harm. It really wouldn't be any harder to just write damage as numbers with a two-letter superscript - 8 (MF) + 1 (PF) + 3 (PV). You instantly know how much of a given damage type you have, what your total damage is, and you never have to write more points of damage of a given type than you've actually taken (no need to write 0 (ML) for example).

Thirdly, how would you handle debuffs? I'm happy with Save-or-dies working by accumulating wounds but it seems that tactically you'd want effects that did something other than damage. How would you work a Slow or Weaken effect into SAME?

Stat penalties, lasting a fixed number of rounds +/- the net outcome of the defense roll.

Lastly, what would the existence of Agi/Elan or Moxy/Str attacks do to the game? Wizard shooting bolts of fire with their mind or a physical blast that caused Mental damage both seem like something you might want, are they toxic in some way to this setup?

Yes, much in the same way that letting a wizard use his intelligence for hit points, attack rolls, and carrying capacity is bad for the game. A character who rolls to hit with Strength and soaks physical with Strength has dramatically reduced incentive to care about their Agility score at all. Strength is the physical defense/damage stat, and Agi is the physical offense stat. Moxy is the mental attack stat, and Elan is the mental defense/damage stat. Tying the success of an action to the same stat that determines the effectiveness of the action immediately produces a marginal benefit function that has no upper bound.

echo

[Red_Rob]

Thanks for the response Echo.

Additionally, what is a "mental attack" is pretty loosely defined - it could track damage from things like intimidation or social embarrassment just as easily as it could track a synapse-frying blast of thinkotronic energy. Maybe Intimidation deals Mental Life damage, and the eventual results are capitulation and heart attack.

I had considered that, but the problem there lies in the recovery of wounds. It breaks verisimilitude if wounds recover at the same rate as being threatened, and if Mental wounds heal at ten times the rate of physical wounds, physical is still better.

It really wouldn't be any harder to just write damage as numbers with a two-letter superscript - 8 (MF) + 1 (PF) + 3 (PV).

I was imagining it as a Shadowrun style health track, with two lines (Physical and Mental). I guess you could write a letter in the box when you take the wound, it just seems a lot more fiddly than D&D's system or Shadowrun's system or White Wolf's system, and I'm not sure thats a good sign.

Stat penalties, lasting a fixed number of rounds +/- the net outcome of the defense roll.

Nice and simple, I like it.

A character who rolls to hit with Strength and soaks physical with Strength has dramatically reduced incentive to care about their Agility score at all. Strength is the physical defense/damage stat, and Agi is the physical offense stat. Moxy is the mental attack stat, and Elan is the mental defense/damage stat. Tying the success of an action to the same stat that determines the effectiveness of the action immediately produces a marginal benefit function that has no upper bound.

I think you misunderstood me a little (although possibly it won't change your response). I was talking about an attack that rolled to hit with Agi vs. Agi but then used Elan vs. Elan for damage, and vice versa. Or possibly even Int vs. Agi to hit and then Elan vs. Str for damage. My reasoning is that plenty of stuff Mages do seems like it wants to target physical defenses - Fire blasts, Ice shards, Black Tentacles etc. seem like you should be able to dodge/resist them by being strong or agile. Does it mess up the basic math if you allow mix-n-match attacks like that?

[echoVanguard]

I had considered that, but the problem there lies in the recovery of wounds. It breaks verisimilitude if wounds recover at the same rate as being threatened, and if Mental wounds heal at ten times the rate of physical wounds, physical is still better.

I don't particularly see why mental damage healing at the same rate as physical damage is a problem. People who are traumatized by unpleasant events in real life sometimes take years to recover, if at all.

I was imagining it as a Shadowrun style health track, with two lines (Physical and Mental). I guess you could write a letter in the box when you take the wound, it just seems a lot more fiddly than D&D's system or Shadowrun's system or White Wolf's system, and I'm not sure thats a good sign.

Don't get me wrong, you certainly could have an explicit area on the character sheet for damage that looks like this:

Damage Type	Physical Damage	Mental Damage
Air
Earth
Water
Fire
Life
Death
Void

But there's no reason to do it; just writing down what you've taken is both faster and simpler. Yes, it's much more complicated than, say, 3E hit points, but it removes a lot of other complexity that would be supplemental systems in 3E...and it's really not much worse than damage systems from Shadowrun, White Wolf, or FATE.

I think you misunderstood me a little (although possibly it won't change your response). I was talking about an attack that rolled to hit with Agi vs. Agi but then used Elan vs. Elan for damage, and vice versa. Or possibly even Int vs. Agi to hit and then Elan vs. Str for damage. My reasoning is that plenty of stuff Mages do seems like it wants to target physical defenses - Fire blasts, Ice shards, Black Tentacles etc. seem like you should be able to dodge/resist them by being strong or agile. Does it mess up the basic math if you allow mix-n-match attacks like that?

You're right, I did misunderstand; and no, it doesn't change anything. A "wizard" character who can dump Agi without worrying about his physical attacks missing is still problematic in the same way that it is in 3E - if a wizard can use his Int for attack rolls, AC, and initiative, he has no reason not to dump dexterity, giving a larger allocation of his points into Int. For any stat system to matter, every character must care about every stat all the time. You can care about some more than others, but that has to have a cost that you accept.

echo

[Red_Rob]

I don't particularly see why mental damage healing at the same rate as physical damage is a problem. People who are traumatized by unpleasant events in real life sometimes take years to recover, if at all.

Be that as it may, we're talking about heroic fantasy here. Throgar the Berserker doesn't take days to recover from being threatened by an owlbear. That's part of my issue with Mental attacks in general - if everyone gets them through intimidation or whatever it seems weird if they heal slowly, but if only magic attacks or seriously traumatizing creatures (Ghosts / Banshees etc.) get them they are less common than physical attacks. Although that could work - if Mental attacks are less common then defenses against them will be less common, which means when you do have one, it will be more effective. Kind of like Sonic vs. Fire in 3e?

Don't get me wrong, you certainly could have an explicit area on the character sheet for damage that looks like this:

Actually I was imagining it more like this, with you filling in each box with a letter depending on the element used:

Physical

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

Mental

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

__

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__

I originally read the damage paradigm as 20 wounds of a single type (Mental or Phyical) kills, and I think I prefer that to it taking 20 wounds of a single type and element, for simplicity and verisimilitude reasons.

A "wizard" character who can dump Agi without worrying about his physical attacks missing is still problematic in the same way that it is in 3E - if a wizard can use his Int for attack rolls, AC, and initiative, he has no reason not to dump dexterity, giving a larger allocation of his points into Int. For any stat system to matter, every character must care about every stat all the time. You can care about some more than others, but that has to have a cost that you accept.

I'm not sure you are correct about that. By allowing a character access to attacks that target different defenses using the same attack stats you are effectively allowing him to attack the target's weakest defense. This incentivises him to dump everything into his attack stats, however his defense will still be weaker when using the dumped stat. Now, if everyone has access to these "choose the defense" attacks then having a dumped defence becomes more of a weakness, because more people will be able to target it. So it simultaneously pulls you towards specialising your attack and generalising your defenses, which suggests there are still tradeoffs, right?

I'm thinking that the resource model wouldn't allow everyone access to all their attacks all the time, so allowing each class access to some odd-defence attacks would introduce some tactics and interesting decision making.

[echoVanguard]

Be that as it may, we're talking about heroic fantasy here. Throgar the Berserker doesn't take days to recover from being threatened by an owlbear. That's part of my issue with Mental attacks in general - if everyone gets them through intimidation or whatever it seems weird if they heal slowly, but if only magic attacks or seriously traumatizing creatures (Ghosts / Banshees etc.) get them they are less common than physical attacks.

I don't understand your logic here. Everyone can punch (deal physical damage using a mundane method) - why shouldn't everyone be able to intimidate (deal mental damage using a mundane method)? If you are worried about characters not recovering quickly enough to be consistent with the tone of the game you're trying to set, just increase recovery time for all wounds - it's not exactly consistent with heroic fantasy if Throgar spends six months bedridden recovering from a nasty sword wound and then spends an additional two years in physical therapy, either.

Although that could work - if Mental attacks are less common then defenses against them will be less common, which means when you do have one, it will be more effective. Kind of like Sonic vs. Fire in 3e?

This is already represented in the system by armor types. If a ghost's Unearthly Woe attack deals Mental Death damage, a character would need Death armor to defend against it (potentially Mental Death armor specifically!).

I originally read the damage paradigm as 20 wounds of a single type (Mental or Phyical) kills, and I think I prefer that to it taking 20 wounds of a single type and element, for simplicity and verisimilitude reasons.

To be honest, I'm not particularly sure what Frank intended on that front either, but my interpretation is "10 combined physical wounds or 10 combined mental wounds incapacitates, but it takes 20 of a single wound type (ie fire/mental) to kill". Otherwise the "death type" is determined by the type/element matrix of the killing blow, and it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense for a character who's taken 19 points of Physical Void damage (ie sword wounds) to take 1 point of Physical Earth damage and be petrified while a character who takes 8 points of Physical Earth is fine.

I definitely acknowledge that your interpretation very well could be the one Frank intended, though. Hopefully he'll drop in and clarify, or you could PM him.

I'm not sure you are correct about that. By allowing a character access to attacks that target different defenses using the same attack stats you are effectively allowing him to attack the target's weakest defense. This incentivises him to dump everything into his attack stats, however his defense will still be weaker when using the dumped stat. Now, if everyone has access to these "choose the defense" attacks then having a dumped defence becomes more of a weakness, because more people will be able to target it. So it simultaneously pulls you towards specialising your attack and generalising your defenses, which suggests there are still tradeoffs, right? I'm thinking that the resource model wouldn't allow everyone access to all their attacks all the time, so allowing each class access to some odd-defence attacks would introduce some tactics and interesting decision making.

This is fairly implementation-dependent, I think, but the fact is that there's a tradeoff involved in dumping Strength or Elan wherein your defenses are reduced, but allowing a character to use Elan for physical damage changes the tradeoff from "reduced physical damage and soak" to just "reduced physical soak", which is a clear win since that character was probably going to dump Strength anyway. When you allow substitution, you increase incentive for specialization, which in a system like this is an unambiguous numerical advantage. Additionally, gimping one defense to boost another component of your character isn't a "tactical decision" in a TTRPG the way it is in, say, a board game - people will intentionally leave defenses low and then complain that they're being unfairly singled out when those defenses are targeted. It's better just to leverage the cross-synergy of the system as it stands and create tactical decision points in other ways, such as abilities that let you redirect soaked damage into your next attack or something.

echo

[Red_Rob]

If you are worried about characters not recovering quickly enough to be consistent with the tone of the game you're trying to set, just increase recovery time for all wounds - it's not exactly consistent with heroic fantasy if Throgar spends six months bedridden recovering from a nasty sword wound and then spends an additional two years in physical therapy, either.

Okay, fair point. I guess if a sword wound heals over the course of a week that's not particularly realistic either. Maybe giving Wolves and Goblins some Mental attacks will work if they are flavoured correctly.

This is already represented in the system by armor types. If a ghost's Unearthly Woe attack deals Mental Death damage, a character would need Death armor to defend against it (potentially Mental Death armor specifically!).

I assume the idea is each armor provides defence against multiple element types, rather than you having to be incredibly lucky when being attacked?

it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense for a character who's taken 19 points of Physical Void damage (ie sword wounds) to take 1 point of Physical Earth damage and be petrified while a character who takes 8 points of Physical Earth is fine.

I don't see why not. When someone takes 25hp in D&D from sword hits then takes the last few hp from a Fireball it seems reasonable to say the fireball killed them. Similarly, in your example whilst the first character was petrified after being beaten into a weakened state, the second resisted the petrification attack as they were still strong enough to fight it off. Seems reasonable to me.

the fact is that there's a tradeoff involved in dumping Strength or Elan wherein your defenses are reduced, but allowing a character to use Elan for physical damage changes the tradeoff from "reduced physical damage and soak" to just "reduced physical soak", which is a clear win since that character was probably going to dump Strength anyway. When you allow substitution, you increase incentive for specialization, which in a system like this is an unambiguous numerical advantage.

So if I allow Berserkers to have a Str vs. Elan attack (Say a Mighty Intimidate) and a Mage gets a Fire Bolt (Moxy vs. Agi) would that screw over the Paladin? I guess he wouldn't get as much benefit from the fact his stats are split into each attack, only each defence. It just seems like so much of a typical Mage's arsenal shouldn't be purely Mental - but then basing the power of a Fireball off your Str seems wrong.

Additionally, gimping one defense to boost another component of your character isn't a "tactical decision" in a TTRPG the way it is in, say, a board game - people will intentionally leave defenses low and then complain that they're being unfairly singled out when those defenses are targeted.

My actual plan with this was to give each class fixed starting stats, so the abilities of each class could take into account their strengths and weaknesses. If specialising is slightly stronger, those classes with averaged stats can be given slightly stronger abilities to compensate.

[jadagul]

From what I remember, the plan was to incorporate this system into a world where there wasn't a clear distinction between "mundane" and "magic", basically to sidestep the whole fighter problem. The world is magical, that's part of the physics of the world, and so everything is "magical." Or nothing is. Some characters will have more mental-type attacks, and some will have more physical-type attacks, but hitting someone with a sword is just as magical as throwing a spell at them.

Also, I don't think the physical/mental split was supposed to track the SA/ME split--I think Frank somewhere specifically said that a fireball would be a physical fire attack powered off of ME and resisted by SA, or something like that.

[echoVanguard]

I assume the idea is each armor provides defence against multiple element types, rather than you having to be incredibly lucky when being attacked?

Your guess is as good as mine - how armor really works in SAME is never thoroughly elucidated, and I asked a bunch of questions about it back on page 4 and was never answered.

I don't see why not. When someone takes 25hp in D&D from sword hits then takes the last few hp from a Fireball it seems reasonable to say the fireball killed them. Similarly, in your example whilst the first character was petrified after being beaten into a weakened state, the second resisted the petrification attack as they were still strong enough to fight it off. Seems reasonable to me.

Personally, the nebulous relationship between hit points and actual physical trauma is one of the things that most frustrates me about traditional Dungeons and Dragons (and in Nemesis Age, Health Damage is specifically defined as "physical trauma" to resolve this problem). That being said, your interpretation certainly could be what Frank intended...I just don't know. As I said before, this is probably not going to be clarified further without a post from him on the subject.

So if I allow Berserkers to have a Str vs. Elan attack (Say a Mighty Intimidate) and a Mage gets a Fire Bolt (Moxy vs. Agi) would that screw over the Paladin? I guess he wouldn't get as much benefit from the fact his stats are split into each attack, only each defence. It just seems like so much of a typical Mage's arsenal shouldn't be purely Mental - but then basing the power of a Fireball off your Str seems wrong [....] My actual plan with this was to give each class fixed starting stats, so the abilities of each class could take into account their strengths and weaknesses. If specialising is slightly stronger, those classes with averaged stats can be given slightly stronger abilities to compensate.

That could work. You're still creating complexity, but basically shifting it from character creation to the design phase. As long as you don't mess up designing your classes and don't allow mixing-and-matching of pre-statted class vs roll-your-own, it might be workable.

echo

[CatharzGodfoot]

Allowing Dex Vs Ela / Str Vs Mox attacks makes the game less mathematically interesting. As long as you allow attacks like Ela Vs Dex / Str Vs Str, no particular attribute layouts get screwed over. What does happen is that every character will always attack their opponent's weak attributes. So battles become two-dimensional: there are battles between characters that have one attack and one defense attribute maxed, battles between characters that have attributes evenly distributed, and everything in between.

In other words, the tactical distinction between mental and physical attributes in completely destroyed.

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As far as armor, in the original conception wearing, e.g., iron armor would give a character resistance Vs Void (both mental and physical).

[Red_Rob]

In the abstract, yes, allowing every character to pick a stat they attack with and a stat the opponent defends with whenever they attack would be boring. I'm talking about characters having restricted usage of these abilities (due to charges, Winds of Fate, recharge or other mechanics) that make them a limited option. I'm thinking this will give an effect akin to 'targetting the weak save' in 3e. It's something players can do that makes them feel clever when they get to use an attack against an opponents weak defense they wouldn't normally have been able to target.

Also, noone said this system has to have perfect player knowledge. Sure that Ogre probably has a high Str and the Mind Flayer has a high Will, but what about the Ogre Mage? Which is the best attack to use there?

Regarding armor, I'm leaning towards basic armor giving full value against physical attacks and half against 'elemental'. Then specific armors can get bonuses against different elements as needed.