Attributes

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 8:38 am

So let's go back to the beginning. Attributes were created to differentiate one character from another. The idea was that various aspects of a character would be put on bell curves normalized to 10.5, and then people would roll up characters on 3d6 to determine where on that bell curve they fell. The corruption of the system where attributes above 18 became possible and then eventually expected came later and represents the attributes no longer meaning anything at all. And while it is debatable whether they ever really did - what with the fact that not a single person can give a consistent description of what the exact difference between Strength and Charisma, Charisma and Wisdom, Wisdom and Intelligence, or Constitution and Strength exactly is - it is clearly true that what they do these days is all kinds of wrong.

But regardless of what attributes were originally for, it is demonstrably true that what they do now is numerically segregate what kinds of abilities that one character or another can use effectively. That is, having a high strength gives you a decent roll for strength related abilities, and having a low strength makes such abilities a bad deal to invest in. Unfortunately, the modern concept of allowing attributes to continuously spiral upwards also means that people end up being forced to "catch em all" in order just to not fall behind. And that's frankly fucked up.

Which brings us to tonight's question: is having attributes even desirable?

I'm looking at this from the standpoint of Fantastic! and I'm really not sure that they are. Here's the thinking:

A speedster of pretty much any power level does not meaningfully register on a numeric speed scale that has non-speedsters on it. It seriously may as well be binary: people have "human speed" or they have "super speed." If it comes to a race, the speedster always wins and the normally fast dude always loses. No exceptions or refunds. But you know what already works like that? Having powers and maneuvers. The guy with a super sprint maneuver where he runs crazy fast for a short period of time basically gets to automatically win a race with another speedster whose shtick is that he just notices shit well while moving extremely quickly.

Same thing for strength really. Whether or not you have a maneuver where you can lift a hundred tonnes is way more important than any slight variation in lifting prowess any normal person has. Indeed, when some people can lift and throw a car, the differences in strength between two gadgeteers is meaningless. Is Green Arrow physically stronger than Mysterio? What difference would it make if he was? Neither one of them has even the ability to take Super Strength maneuvers, so even if we wanted to tie them in numerically like hat it wouldn't make any difference.

Which is the core point: the segregation of powers that is done in a "soft" way by attributes ("you must be at least this strong before taking brutal attack seems like a good idea...") is done in a completely "hard" way by Power Sets and Archetypes. The fact that a Blaster can get a fire blast and a Speedster can't pretty much tells you exactly who should and should not be getting that fireblast. No arbitrary Dexterity or Charisma assignment is required or even desired at that point. Every blaster should be "good" and I dare say "level appropriate" with their fireblast or lightning bolt, so putting on an extra layer of attribute assignment is just another threat to the RNG that accomplishes nothing.

Even skills function more like powers. If you're a forensics guy, you do forensics well. Batman and The Flash can jolly well test for fingerprints and stuff. But that doesn't mean that anyone else who happens to be really smart can do that. If you're Merlin or Cerebello, you probably just don't dust for finger prints. It's not that you don't have an IQ that is over nne thousand, it's just not something that you do. And so it is that advancement in skills is really much better handled with having levels (Skilled, Expert, Grand Master), and just having a straight bonus based on your level of skill rather than doing an Attribute + Skill mechanic.

And finally we get to defenses. The "correct" choice for defenses is always to spread them out as evenly as you possibly can, as you don't actually get to choose what you get attacked by. It therefore becomes necessitant to force players to vary their defenses in some manner. Historically this has most often been done by tying defenses to offenses and thereby forcing people to specialize their defenses (which is bad) if they want to specialize their offense (which is good). And yet, with offenses being tied to power set, and defenses set to defensive style, there's no real need to do that. The very fact that Magic Shield is different from Toughness means that numeric attributes in this regard are pointless.

So the real question is: does that leave enough difference between characters? Is the City of Heroes / Final Fantasy XI model of things where everyone who is a Lasers/Toughness specced Cape has the same offensive and Defensive profile too much of a constraint on character difference?

Certainly two Speedsters will likely be different. One of them has Dodge and another has Psychic Wall (depending upon whether they have a Matrix special effect where everything else slows down or a Flash special effect where they blur into action), and they'll have different maneuvers, and different special attacks, and different skill selections and so on and so forth. So do they really lose anything by not having a Charsma score? Can they really do absolutely everything that they would have done with Charisma just by having a couple of skills? From where I'm standing: it looks like the answer is "yes."

-Username17

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 2:43 pm

Really, I've been saying this for awhile.

I don't think you gain much by having attributes. Especially not attack stats. There is no point where it's desirable for your character to be able to choose an ability but suck at it. And as 4E has shown us, when you have attack attributes, it means that you've basically got to pump the shit out of your attack attribute, and the guy who gets hosed is the multiclasser. and that sucks, both because it becomes a no brainer to pump your attack stat (as 4E clearly shows) and because people who try to do other stuff get hosed. Also it leads to weird stuff where you dip for things that don't require rolls, like stoneskin, and in that case it doesn't matter what your intelligence is if you happen to be a fighter/mage. If you want to be spider man instead of the Hulk, you shouldn't get penalized for it.

Attack stats are bad.

Now, I do actually think ability scores are salvageable for defenses. Letting people assign if they want to be focused on fortitude, reflex or will is kind of interesting and generally a balanced choice. Similarly, I like assigning skills to these attributes too. That way most of your rogues end up agile and your wizards are mentally powerful, because if you want to be good at wizard skills, you want the intelligence.

So there's some archetype protection, but it's not totally a straitjacket and people can feel good about mixing and matching ability scores and being as specialized or as generalized as they want to be.

erik · Post by **erik** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 2:45 pm

In a supers game or any setting with extreme power differences then it definitely makes a lot of sense to dump attributes entirely.

I can imagine still wanting to hold onto them for a more pulpy type setting. Sure you could simulate mild gradations in strength for example by letting someone pick a bunch of strength skills, but at some point it may make more sense to just group em all together and say "Yaknowwhat, let's just say you have strength 4, and that weaker guy has strength 2." It seems like if you tried to use skills to cover everything without a blanket attribute, you might wind up with a huge headache in trying to lay out everything your character could do with a monster list of skills. I dunno.

I've been looking at Savage Worlds/Deadlands lately, and definitely the attributes in that game are much more of an annoyance than an asset in character building, and serve very little function in game outside of character building. I could totally just do without them with some minor tweaking.

I suppose that my most recent dabblings in game design have been somewhat closer to this, using attributes as guidelines for how much you can allocate to various skill sets, rather than being a bonus added to related skills. People can point to their character and say "He's a genius, he has Intellect 8 and a bunch of intellect skills to show for it."

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:28 pm

Attributes are a tool to force 'specialization or suckage'. They don't always work out that way, but ideally you'll choose an ability set connected to your attributes rather than some random skill set. That's not necessary if you're making everything class-based, so in a world with everything defined by super hero classes you don't need attributes.

If the "individuality" of your character centers around having a 17 rather than a 15...that's just sad. But there are people who really do feel that way and won't appreciate you doing away with their special numbers.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 6:39 pm

That's fine and all, but what about when you need to know if Batman can beat the Green Arrow in an arm-wrestling competition?

Similarly, by how much does Batman beat Robin in one?

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 8:34 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:That's fine and all, but what about when you need to know if Batman can beat the Green Arrow in an arm-wrestling competition?

Batman wins.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Similarly, by how much does Batman beat Robin in one?

Batman wins by a lot.

But seriously, that's a good point. I'd probably make the first one random. In the second case, robin is a sidekick and should never win. The amount by which he loses is arbitrary.

[Edit] This is assuming that Batman and the lantern are the same level. [/Edit]

fliprushman · Post by **fliprushman** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 9:36 pm

Honestly, this can go either way. Stats can be important or worthless, it just depends on what you wish to achieve with them. In 4e, if you took out the attack stats, you would be left with the same system as TriStat d6.

I think the best option for stats would be the one where each stat has something specific it can do. In DnD, Charisma as always been the dump stat because it serves no purpose for Adventuring. It only comes up when the players want followers or to sell their loot. So besides the classes that rely on the stat as their attack stat, it can be taken out for the majority of the game and not be missed. But if we gave Charisma a true purpose in the game and not just to influence skills or an attack stat, the game would truly flourish because all six stats are something a player would want to pick.

But making all stats equal is a pain in the rear. So going statless may be a better option. Focusing on the skill system may be the route to go. If you want to be the fighter, taking melee weapon skills and ranged weapon skills would be the route to go. But you wouldn't be limited to just those types of skills because maybe you want to use a little magic as well, then dabble in that skill too.

Just some thought on the matter.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 9:37 pm

Actually Green Arrow has recently added heavy martial arts training to his suite. Conner Hawke in particular is apparently considered one of the best martial artists in the world.

SunTzuWarmaster · Post by **SunTzuWarmaster** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 9:44 pm

Batman is higher level than Robin, so should win [some percentage] more of the time.

Batman versus Green Arrow could be decided by the die roll + character level, making it effectively a toss up.

I think having stats is lame for a superhero game, where things should be binary. The Flash has crazy-high "dexterity" and can juggle an "almost infinite" number of things. However, in contests of stuff for normal PC in a fantasy/gritty game, there is not such a clear discrepancy.

baduin · Post by **baduin** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 11:43 pm

Such attributes as Strength or Charisma should be more of a background thing, without direct translation into attack bonuses. Strength alllows you to carry that much, and Charisma alllows you to do some basic diplomacy, some haggling etc. Constitution gives you eg some extra hp at first level and some bonuses against poison and disease. Intellligence allows you to learn languages and to solve puzzles.

But they shouldn't have direct influence on attacks or skills. If you want your strongman to get some skills and attacks reflecting his high Strength, you can do it - using the general rules, just like anyone else.

Additionallly, certain classes could require minimum levels in attributes. Generally Fighters using armor need high strength, wizard Intelllgence etc. In practice, anyone selecting such a class would automatically receive a high enough attribute.

On the other hand, such things as Dexterity and Wisdom have no business being Attributes. Both are quite clearly skills, or groups of skills - they are not inborn, but leared.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 1:13 am

Strength can also be learned.

There's a little thing called weight lifting. I did it once, i got to the point where i could dead-lift those big plastic water cooler bottles with one arm (and shoulder/chest).

Constitution is not very easy to improve, but can be improved.

People who work out are always tougher and more resiliant to endurance work than those who don't. People who repeatedly scar, maim or break their bones are physically more resiliant to physical damage.

As can Charisma.

If you talk to people who know how to manipulate others you learn how they act when they decieve others. If you learn how lying works and what people do when lying you'll be a better lier. If you practise lying, then you'll get better at it. If you learn about other people you'll know what makes them tick and will say and do the things that you need to do in order to comfort, enrage, frighten, inspire, seduce, enbolden or charm other people.

... and Intelligence.

If you read, and read and read and read, you will re-work your head so that you retain what you've read.

If a person goes through college, and succeed in their program of study, don't they learn new things, thus increasing their Intelligence score?

either nothing is trainable, or everything is.

As for the traianble issue that was made in 3.0ed, every stat is trainable, and one in 6 stats goes up every 4 levels.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 4:03 am

I'm increasingly starting to think that attributes are really only useful if they affect the kinds of skills/powers you can have. Since Fantastic! is going to use a bunch of archetypes to determine available powers, attributes probably aren't necessary for that particular game.

ckafrica · Post by **ckafrica** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 4:05 am

I've toyed with the idea of eliminating attributes all together too.

Why does my character need to be strong to hit? why can't he be quick or intelligent to achieve the same thing without burning an ability slot for the option? Why can't I just have the ability "hit shit good" and let me explain why it is that I can?

Make a list of abilities that all "normal" characters should generally have and give them to them for free at average level. Then allow them to increase the ones they want to be better at as part of a class/leveling or point buying system.

The main problem with this is you need to think of every ability people might need/want to use and have a write up for each one

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 4:41 am

How about attributes that have exponential effects instead of linear ones? Say each attribute represents a power of two, so you have:

2^attribute = how awesome you are.

The average person has straight zeroes in all stats, so they will have 2^0, or 1. That is, an average person is as strong, swift, smart, etc., as one average person. The Flash can buy, say, ten points of dexterity, making him 2^10 = 1024 times as fast as the average person. Someone with a strength of 10 literally has the strength of a thousand men, and so on.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:06 am

ckarfrica: You're right, it shouldn't be one stat.

Personally, I liked the way that BESM determined your attack and defence ratings.

Add your stats (Body, Mind, Soul), divide by number of stats (3); the result is your Attack Combat Value (ACV), subract 2 from your ACV to get your Defense Combat Value (DCV).

So average characters compete as well in combat as high body or high mind or high soul characters.

Of course, there were attributes that increased your ACV with certain weapons, or just ACV in general (weapon focus, battle mastery).

It also had skill ranks that increased your ACV/DVC (+1 per rank in a skill for weapons/attacks of a certain type and you get a minimum of one speciality that has "ranks +1" added with rolls for that specialty.

One of the tricks to maxing your to-hit and damage was to find the sweetspot between the cost of stats (1 per character point; so 3 per ACV you want); the cost of Battle Mastery (2 per rank, but it doesn't boost HP, Energy Points (i.e. mana/ki/force/bullshit)); the cost of Weapon Mastery (1 pt per rank, but only 1 weapon, so not too bad, but could bit you in the end); and skill points (ranks in the Skilled attribute cost 1 and give 10 skill ranks; skills don't all cost the same, and weapon skills that are appropriate for a setting always cost the most; something like 6 skill points per rank).

Once you had a sweet-spot found, you could make up for the fact that you have low damage with the fact that you can make targeted/critical hits at a penalty to your attack rolls; that deal double damage. The penalty was usually pretty minor if you planned on making use of the 'critical/aimed' attacks rule.

Of course, if you wanted to make a 'rogue' the above sort of makes sense. You use a crappy weapon, in the right spot onm your enemy, to deal a ton of damage.

Gelare.... what about a Fibonacci sequence? 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 ... It scales, but not exponentially.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 11:55 am

On a slightly different note: what should attributes be doing in a fantasy setting? Here we have two big things to concern ourselves with:

A Giant may well be 10 meters tall. He is arbitrarily stronger than you.
Practically every character is a "humanoid adventurer" (or near enough). The strength differences between them are important, and yet very tiny, lending themselves rather well to the bell curve model of ages past.

Now the original game of D&D wrapped up this particular dilemma by simply giving attributes to adventurers and not giving attributes to monsters. Monsters were assumed to not be on a human scale, so you weren't really expected to be able to out-strength a giant or a manticore. It just wasn't going to happen; and on the fli side a pixie or a brownie was again not on the human scale - you were just assumed to be able to overpower it. That's a defensible position of course, but of course it comes around and bites us as soon as we start dealing with medusa (who probably should be on the human scale), or asking ourselves how many adventures are needed to drag down a chimera. So ideally we'd actually like to put these big and tiny things somewhere on the scale that we use for ordinary people.

Which is of course the big problem: we have a single strength scale that's supposed to cover cyclops and and cats. And cyclops cats. And Catclops. And that can I think be handled somewhat by having an iterating strength scale. That is, you can keep numbers from getting too far out into crazy town by having size classes and the discipline to just put everything on the same strength scale. That is, rather than simply allowing a giant to get strength scores of 40, 80, or over nine thousand, their strength scores would simply be the same as the strength scores of anyone else. They would belong to a larger size category and that would make them automatically win any fair contest of strength with smaller enemies.

And that pretty much works I suppose. You can have groups of sprites attach cables to humans and drag them down collectively, and humans can do the same to ogres, and ogres can have crazy strength abilities without pushing the game into unmanageable numbers or causing the game to lose granularity at the level of human strength. But that's just strength. And while strength has always been the poster child for measurable attributes that doesn't mean that anything else actually works that way.

The original six attributes are highly problematic because no one, not even the original authors, could really tell you where any of them begins or ends. I mean seriously: Charisma? What he fuck?! How many hours have people spent banging their heads against the fact that people don't even know where to raw a line between Charisma and Strength, let alone what the exact difference is between Charisma and other mental attributes? The mental attributes are frankly a mess and always have been. Not only is there not one pair of people who will be able to give you the same definition of them, but frankly I doubt that there's one person anywhere on Earth who has a really consistent personal definition of these things that they can articulate.

So I could easily see putting down a different list of stats, because even nailing down the original six to specific and consistent meanings is just like writing a new batch.

Now it is a matter of fact that people who do strength training get stronger, speed training get faster, and endurance training likewise. And it is equally factual to say that training in any of these endeavors is essentially divergent after a point. People who are generally athletic may be the strongest man in the fire station and also win the wharf to wharf race, but at the high end a world marathon winner is never going to place highly in the hundred meters or dead lift. Advancement beyond a certain point requires specialization, and that specialization ensures that the best in any category is never going to be the best in others.

And that model is actually pretty close to the 4e D&D thing where sometimes all your stats go up but mostly you just pick your main stats and those rise alone (and put greater and great distance therefore between themselves and your remaining stats). But as we know, this divergent model ends up just coming down and crushing character concepts and granting virtually nothing in return. A character with four 14s may be kind of viable at level one, but we all know that this character is going to suck beyond reason by level 20. While I don't think that a game has to allow all character concepts to be good or even playable, I think it's pretty non-contentious to claim that playable and viable character at level 1 should be playable and viable at level 10 and vice versa.

-Username17

Falgund · Post by **Falgund** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 4:49 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Which is of course the big problem: we have a single strength scale that's supposed to cover cyclops and and cats. And cyclops cats. And Catclops. And that can I think be handled somewhat by having an iterating strength scale. That is, you can keep numbers from getting too far out into crazy town by having size classes and the discipline to just put everything on the same strength scale. That is, rather than simply allowing a giant to get strength scores of 40, 80, or over nine thousand, their strength scores would simply be the same as the strength scores of anyone else. They would belong to a larger size category and that would make them automatically win any fair contest of strength with smaller enemies.

And that pretty much works I suppose. You can have groups of sprites attach cables to humans and drag them down collectively, and humans can do the same to ogres, and ogres can have crazy strength abilities without pushing the game into unmanageable numbers or causing the game to lose granularity at the level of human strength. But that's just strength. And while strength has always been the poster child for measurable attributes that doesn't mean that anything else actually works that way.

That's kinda like the French roleplaying game Thoan:

Google translation with minor corrections of http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoan_(jeu_de_r%C3%B4les) wrote:Any object living or inert, from bacterium to Earth, has a scale ranging from 1 (molecule) to 6 (planetoid). This scale itself has assigned an index between 1 and 6 (actually 7 because there is a level "6*"). Any attribute is set in this scale. A human has a typical average of 3.2 Strength, Intellect, Ruse, Flexibility, etc.. By contrast, a blackbird will be 2.4 in force, but in Agility 3.6* (try to catch a blackbird bare hands: it must be good). And an elephant will be 4.1 in Mass and Strength (he can demolish a wooden house, which has a Mass 4.1).

Needless to say we did that very unlikely to affect the larger scale, because even a weightlifter Strength 3.6 will be hard to move an elephant Mass 4.1.

The powers follow the same scale. They derive from an attribute, unless they start at an arbitrary level, for example, "Ruse -3" (you must remove 3 levels in Ruse) or "Strength" (the power is equal to the Strength). A level of 1.1 to 1.6 is ridiculous, a level of 2.1 to 2.6 novice, 3.1 to 3.6 is confirmed, 4 is great, visionary 5.1 to 5.6, 6.1 to 6.6 cosmic. For example, for machinery, 1.x can activate a button (standard rat), 2.x to use levers complex without understanding the principle (the level of a regular user but not educated), 3.x to repair the machine (the level of an artisan or repairer confirmed), 4.x of the design in detail (level of an engineer), 5.x to invent new (level of a researcher) and 6.x reflect on its physical principles for the same change at all (level of a genius). A user with 3.6 will be much more effective than another with 3.1, but it can not really do more.

Then when two people work together, you add their attributes this way:

Code: Select all

Y.x + Y.x = Y.&#40;x+1&#41;

Code: Select all

Y.6 + 1 = Y.6*

Code: Select all

Y.6* + 1 = &#40;Y+1&#41;.1

So 4 Strength 3.6 wrestlers had an equivalent of Strength 4.1 and could affect (difficultly) 4.x scale.

Now, the biggest problem with these rules are that some PC could start with 4.1 Strength and kill every 3.x Resistance targets in one hit, (and even 4.1 ones because targeting vitals dropped Resistance by 2, and 4.1 - 2 = 3.6), while PC with 3.x Strength could not affect at all targets with 4.x Resistance. Thus the equivalent of being pushed out of the RNG.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 5:00 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: A Giant may well be 10 meters tall. He is arbitrarily stronger than you.

On a side note, I think we really should focus on arbitrary strength.

The old simulationist crap of recording your lifting ability in pounds is stupid and really needs to go. Because seriously, your DM probably has no idea how much that stone statue weighs and neither do you, so saying you can lift 500 lbs is entirely unhelpful to most games, because I don't want to have to guess weights of shit. I want approximations.

And even if your DM did bother to try to figure out the volume and weight of the object, it's a math problem and we shouldn't be doing that kind of crap at the table. This isn't a physics class, it's an RPG, and I don't want to be perpetually obsessed with trying to guess the weight of imaginary objects.

SphereOfFeetMan · Post by **SphereOfFeetMan** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 5:09 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:So I could easily see putting down a different list of stats, because even nailing down the original six to specific and consistent meanings is just like writing a new batch.

So the questions then are: What things do we want characters to test against each other? How many stats should there be? I don't fully understand why 4 are better than 6, but will that be changed?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 5:20 pm

On a side note, how do we handle superhuman characters? Is that an option, or should it even be one? Do we want six-foot chalk-white guys to be able to break the grip of minotaurs and Colossal-sized golems?

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 6:25 pm

Maxus wrote:On a side note, how do we handle superhuman characters? Is that an option, or should it even be one? Do we want six-foot chalk-white guys to be able to break the grip of minotaurs and Colossal-sized golems?

Is there really an alternative? If the minotaur can grab you in its fist, you need to be able to escape, and you need to be able to do it in your prefered way. Merlin might teleport out, Odysseus might slip out or trick the minotaur into letting go, but Beowulf should be able to force his way out of the minotaur's fist because he is just that strong. A character that has to resort to other means in a superhuman contest of strength is not a good strength-based character.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 8:34 pm

I'm just curious, which chalk-white guy is being referred to here?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 9:19 pm

SphereOfFeetMan wrote:
FrankTrollman wrote:So I could easily see putting down a different list of stats, because even nailing down the original six to specific and consistent meanings is just like writing a new batch.
So the questions then are: What things do we want characters to test against each other? How many stats should there be? I don't fully understand why 4 are better than 6, but will that be changed?

Powers of 2 are better for "balanced" choices, while uneven factors favor "unbalanced" choices. Unbalanced choices generally favor specialization, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The classic base would be some sort of segregation between "Mind," "Body," and "Spirit." Since moving a point out of Spirit would just get you a point in Mind or Body (and not both), a character who tried to keep up on a mixture of Mind, Body, and Spirit maneuvers would suffer vs. someone who specialized.

Certainly you've doubtless noticed that 4e D&D's 6 attribute wheel distinctly and severely favors maximization. To the point that people seriously talk about starting 18/12 rather than 16/16. It's that frickin stark.

Now as it happens, people want to chase each other (comparing speed), they want to push each other (comparing strength), they want to wear each other out (comparing endurance), they want to get the jump on each other (comparing initiative), they want to trick each other (comparing wits), they want to spot things first (comparing perception), and they want to stare each other down (comparing willpower). Any or all of those things could be a skill, and the whole world would in no way come crashing down.

So there comes a point where one is forced to ask what exactly it is that an "attribute" is supposed to do that is separate from a "skill" and the answer is frankly vague. For TNE purposes I am supposing that attributes represent skill categories and are essentially your defaults. We can also use them for defenses, based on the idea that a defense is passive and essentially a skill default situation. I am ambivalent about using them for attacks. On the one hand, the strength of a hero adding to the power of his mighty axe slash is evocative and obvious, but of course that kind of forced specialization is inherently problematic.

-Username17

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 11:23 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: I am ambivalent about using them for attacks. On the one hand, the strength of a hero adding to the power of his mighty axe slash is evocative and obvious, but of course that kind of forced specialization is inherently problematic.

Attributes represent the most obvious way to have the potential of a character represented by something other than what unique powers she has. Your Fantastic! system instead represents a character's potential by what attacks she has, so that a character with 'Hulk smash' and 'Tactician's gambit' is by definition both smart and strong, rather than being 'fairly strong' and 'fairly smart' because she has to make a split. As has already been said, both systems have their strengths.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Oct 13, 2008 12:00 am

Judging__Eagle wrote:I'm just curious, which chalk-white guy is being referred to here?

Kratos, from God of War.

Edit: I mean, Kratos routinely out-maneuvers and out-muscles his enemies. I don't own the games (to my regret), but I was watching a friend play it during a boss fight against some giant Colossus. Kratos was able to set himself up in a siege crossbow, cock it, and fire himself at the Colossus. And catch its foot when it tried to step on him

Here's a video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siChsJmJ ... re=related

Edit: Actually, watching a few of these...It strikes me that there is some synergy going on. Kratos's own bodyweight is *nothing* from his own point of view, which helps him perform downright awesome jumps and flips and acrobatics.