Base Classes Tied to Ability Scores

[Prak]

Ok, lets say you're doing a d20 hack, and for whatever reason you wanted base classes to be tied directly to the six ability scores, and anything outside of that would come from prestige classes. Yes, like d20 Modern, but the number of base classes wasn't the problem, the abilities were, so lets assume you're not Slaveksic and can tell good design from a pile of feces.

So you have Strongman, Speedster, Tank, Schmot Guy, Wise One and Jack HarknessCharismatic.

In the whole of popular culture and myth, who are the iconics you look to for what, say, a Strength focused character should be able to do?

[Dogbert]

You mean Hercules? Nah nevermind, he also built the Delphi oracle as part of his tasks, so he's also wise.

If I can suggest, give them one primary and two secondary stats. No fictional protagonist is really one-dimensional, they just happen to have a schtick they excel at.

[Prak]

Now there's a thought--if you basically had three classes, one primary and two secondary, with the ability to take abilities from the secondary ones at a reduced effectiveness?

Yeah, something got my mind on the Urban Arcana setting yesterday, and made me want to hack together a "D&D creatures are coming into the modern world and only a chosen few can see them for what they really are" game, but d20 Modern was just a giant ball of awful.

I'm kind of thinking something like:
Strength: Yeah, Hercules. But also Porthos, Hellboy, Fezzik
Dexterity: River Tam, Statham's Transporter character (because Drive uses Dex), The Waco Kid (Blazing Saddles)
Constitution: John McClane, Chev Chelios (Crank), Marv (Sin City)
Intelligence: Sokka, Lucius Fox, Hermione Granger
Wisdom: ???
Charisma: Jack Harkness, Handsome Rob (The Italian Job), Flynn Rider

[erik]

If I can suggest, give them one primary and two secondary stats. No fictional protagonist is really one-dimensional, they just happen to have a schtick they excel at.

I definitely like this more. It's still a bit of a loser concept since you have shitty stats like Constitution.

I say even better to divorce yourself from stat attributes and have special ability tags that are grouped in fields like: physical, social, technical. Then different classes can prioritize different fields. And everyone gets an equivalent amount to put into a 4th field magic/spirit/qi/spark/weeaboo.

That way everyone has magic/combat-fu, but some do it while holding a giant sword, some do it with their mind-fu, and others do it while wearing shiny tight pants.

But if you don't want to branch that far from d20 roots *sniff* then at least strive for some variety and multi-dimensionality and go with Dogbert's recommendation.

[Dean]

You would just design six classes like the Fire Mage. They would just have a wide variety of powers that were thematically tied in with the word "Strength" or "Wisdom" or whatever.

So you'd have a wisdom paragon and you'd call him the Seer. His combat powers would be based on him knowing where people were going to strike before they did it, granting him AC buffs and maybe sneak attack. He'd also get divination powers and things like detect lies and whatnot.

Then you'd have the dexterity paragon and you'd call him the Swift. His combat powers would be about getting good group attack abilities and maybe messing with the action economy a bit. He'd get sneaking powers that let him act as if invisible and movement powers that let him climb walls and eventually move so fast it would basically be teleportation.

Just make up six classes around the Captain Planet themes of Strength, Speed, Toughness, Brains, Wisdom, and Heart.

[Prak]

Yeah, pretty much. I'm just wondering what people would consider "Strong Hero talents" and such so I could do that.

[erik]

Attributes are just so blah. Fire Mage is a good example. No attribute can really lay claim to fire mastery. Whether my fire mage is smart, strong or nimble is practically fluff. I want him to burninate things. Yes, a PrC can do this, but why not just dump the crummy attribute-based leadup and start here instead?

There is just about nothing worth emulating from d20 modern. The further you get from ability-centric classes the better off you'll be.

Name the attribute that these iconic characters focus on:
Batman
Aquaman
Iron Man
Harry Dresden
Karrin Murphy
John Watson
Toph
Lina Inverse
Kitty Norville
Jack Sparrow
Aragorn
Misty

I mean, even looking at Prak's list of ideal candidates, I can't find myself agreeing with even half of them (of those I recognize) since they don't shoe-horn well. Interesting characters do not always center around a single characteristic.

How often have you enjoyed playing a character because they were so strong, dexterous, intelligent, etc? For me it's about never. Conversely I have enjoyed playing characters because they were weak at particular traits oddly enough.

I'll shush now and hope other people can do their dernedest to prove me wrong and make something fun out of focusing on attributes.

[Josh_Kablack]

Strong hero Talents

(low level):

• Lift and carry a lot
• Use bigger / better than standard equipment
• Break down doors
• Bend bars, lift gates
• Hit things harder - either more damage and/or better knockback or riders
• Throw things further
• Leap, Climb, Swim better
• Special Attack: hit multiple melee opponents via swinging large object around.
• Disrupt or prevent enemies from using magic or creature abilities via grappling with them.

(mid level)

• Break down bars and gates
• Tunnel through earth and stone
• Pre-battle terrain alteration via moving earth and stone with Strength instead of teams of men with shovels.
• Spend action to negate crushing room trap and similar magical effects
• Special attack: one-hit KO on unnamed / low level opponents link
• Wire-Fu impossible leaping
• Special Attack: area of effect ranged attack which damages and entangles/pins via throwing boulders, trees or other large objects
• Fastball Special: grant movement to an ally via throwing them a long distance.
• Disable creature abilities via ripping pieces off the creature.
• Disrupt spellcasting via blows that damage relevant stat or set up anti-magical harmonic vibrations or other phlebotinum.

(high level)

• Leaping that is indistinguishable from flight or teleportation
• Special Attack: hit and render prone a large group of enemies in a line AoE via ripping a large chunk of the ground out from underneath them
• Special Attack: hit, knockback and render deaf a large group of enemies in a radius AoE via the shockwave generated by a handclap
• Special Attack: hit and knockback and potentially freeze a large group of enemies in a cone AoE via superbreath.
• Combat time terrain alteration via impossible feats of strength - picking up and moving the castle, punching a river to redirect its course, generating instant craters or throwing mountains are all options here, depending where you want the power level to be.
• Totally negate traps or magic by counter-punching them.

[Laertes]

Spirit of the Century might be a good source to loot for inspiration when it comes to abilities. "Character who has a schtick and themes all their activities around that schtick" is the core of what that game does.

If you're going to make a game where the classes are themed around the six core abilities, the ability scores themselves become basically redundant and should probably be removed. Otherwise you end up with a mess like asking whether a Str18 Level 4 Strongman is stronger than a Str16 Level 8 Strongman., which I can't see adding a great deal of fun to the game.

[Username17]

The distinction between "builds" and "classes" is essentially meaningless. It's a question of presentation, not content. So in 4th edition the Grindadin and the Tronadin are nominally different "builds" of the same "class," but that doesn't actually matter. From the standpoint of functionality, the Grindadin, Tronadin, Inferlock, and Feylock constitute four distinct playable units, so for this discussion we can call them four "classes" rather than two.

That out of the way, if you give each player a single core stat, you have a mandate for 6 classes. I hold up 4th edition as proof positive that this is woefully insufficient for a class based game. If you give each character 2 equally necessary core stats (like most 4e characters), you have mandated a classplosion of 15 classes. This is actually in the ballpark of how many classes you'd want, so it's worth considering. Having a primary and a secondary stat for each class would mandate 30 classes, which is too many to do justice to in a reasonable amount of time. Having a primary and two secondary would require sixty classes, which is just this side of laughably retarded.

That being said, stat based procedural generation of character classes is still pretty stupid. Some concepts like the Strength/Charisma "Hero" are just a lot stronger than others like the Wisdom/Constitution... Survivor? Philosopher? I don't even fucking know. Wisdom/Constitution are the racial bonuses of the Dwarf in 4e D&D and they still never came up with a class that used that stat combo. All you got is weird funky builds like the Battlerager Pitfighter and the Hammer Brother. They don't even have a snappy title.

-Username17

[Zaranthan]

Keying classes to the six stats seems like a decent thing to include on your internal design documents, but not release to the players. You can design around the idea that every class has one primary and one secondary stat, so you don't wind up with the Paladin trying to wear five stat boosters and the Wizard dumping everything but Int, but you just don't make classes for every single combination, only the ones that are actually inspiring or mechanically interesting.

[K]

Considering the "What mechanics are you 100% done with"," I think I'll just state in threads that "I'm 100% done with [this mechanic]. "

I'm 100% done with linked attributes. They poorly emulate the characters that people are trying to emulate and they lead to conformity of PC design.

[fectin]

Can you do half classes?
So you pick "Strong____" and "___detective" and thats your base class?

[Username17]

Considering the "What mechanics are you 100% done with"," I think I'll just state in threads that "I'm 100% done with [this mechanic]. "

I'm 100% done with linked attributes. They poorly emulate the characters that people are trying to emulate and they lead to conformity of PC design.

I'm keeping linked attributes for After Sundown. Now, they aren't monolithic like D&D's "Intelligence is linked to Wizarding" or anything, but they exist. Fundamentally, you need to set base dicepools (or bonuses, if you're using a non-pool based RNG) for untrained tasks to something, and having strong guys get a good basic dicepool on strong-guy tests and smart guys get a good basic dicepool on smart-guy tests is as good a place to start as any.

Now admittedly, that has the problem of channeling character builds. If you want to have a character who has a bunch of Charisma based actions they can do, obviously you're incentivized to load up on Charisma. And that could seriously lead to a certain sameness in character builds, which is unfortunate. But if you de-linked stats it would still produce incentives - just incentives that are weird. You could have it that your Charisma themed actions only used Charisma if you didn't have the relevant skill, and then used the skill value instead if you had one. But that would incentive characters who wanted to use a lot of Charisma themed actions to dump Charisma, because obviously they'd be maxxing the relevant skills and then the attribute itself would be worthless.

So the best solution I've come up with is the one I'm already using: each sorcery gives two different attribute + skill combination that you can use it with. Which still incentivizes you to maximize certain attributes, but at least gives you a little bit of wiggle room so that there are different builds that can use the same magical powers effectively.

-Username17

[Gnorman]

Keying classes to the six stats seems like a decent thing to include on your internal design documents, but not release to the players. You can design around the idea that every class has one primary and one secondary stat, so you don't wind up with the Paladin trying to wear five stat boosters and the Wizard dumping everything but Int, but you just don't make classes for every single combination, only the ones that are actually inspiring or mechanically interesting.

I want to echo this. Once, in my younger and stupider days, I tried to design a class system around the intersections of six stats. It was terrible. The classes I tried to shoehorn into the non-interesting combinations were awful, like "oh hey Swashbuckler (Str + Dex) seems like a good idea for a base class" awful.

Generally, Con + anything is boring as fuck. Constitution is a passive attribute; characters focusing on Constitution tend to be passive as a result. Hence "boring as fuck." I wouldn't really want to play the dude whose job it is to sit there and take the hits; "tanking" is not an adequate character role by itself. But try and turn Constitution into an active attribute? Now it's "overpowered" by virtue of also contributing to HP. Go figure.

But yeah, having a primary and a secondary stat does allow you to even out the attribute dependency of your classes, which is nice.

[MGuy]

I'm of the opinion that if you're doing attributes at all its better to tie them to 'things you can do' rather than classes themselves. If at all possible I think that you should make it so that different classes get relevant things they can do from a list of varied things that can be tied to different attributes. So you can have a character "Knuckles" have class "The Muscle" and be good at things that might involve different attributes. You could make him into a primary brawler [Strength/Constitution], a gunman [Dexterity/Wisdom], a leader type [Strength/Charisma] while still having access to stuff that he doesn't specialize in.

[K]

Considering the "What mechanics are you 100% done with"," I think I'll just state in threads that "I'm 100% done with [this mechanic]. "

I'm 100% done with linked attributes. They poorly emulate the characters that people are trying to emulate and they lead to conformity of PC design.

I'm keeping linked attributes for After Sundown. Now, they aren't monolithic like D&D's "Intelligence is linked to Wizarding" or anything, but they exist. Fundamentally, you need to set base dicepools (or bonuses, if you're using a non-pool based RNG) for untrained tasks to something, and having strong guys get a good basic dicepool on strong-guy tests and smart guys get a good basic dicepool on smart-guy tests is as good a place to start as any.

Now admittedly, that has the problem of channeling character builds. If you want to have a character who has a bunch of Charisma based actions they can do, obviously you're incentivized to load up on Charisma. And that could seriously lead to a certain sameness in character builds, which is unfortunate. But if you de-linked stats it would still produce incentives - just incentives that are weird. You could have it that your Charisma themed actions only used Charisma if you didn't have the relevant skill, and then used the skill value instead if you had one. But that would incentive characters who wanted to use a lot of Charisma themed actions to dump Charisma, because obviously they'd be maxxing the relevant skills and then the attribute itself would be worthless.

So the best solution I've come up with is the one I'm already using: each sorcery gives two different attribute + skill combination that you can use it with. Which still incentivizes you to maximize certain attributes, but at least gives you a little bit of wiggle room so that there are different builds that can use the same magical powers effectively.

-Username17

True, but this problem only exists because the core of your system is to use stat + skill for action resolution for all actions.

Even in a Storyteller-esque game, you could easily just unlink stats from actions by giving actions base die pools. Thus, you could have everyone using Presence 1 get four dice and thus have unpleasant low Charisma characters who had mind control along charming bastards who also had the same powers. This would allow for people to have minor access to powers without being useless in those actions (action characters with a few social powers, for example)

I mean, the only reason to make powers and skills use the same action resolution system is for the aesthetic symmetry.

Stats linked to powers means that there is always going to be wrong choices in character creation, possibly fatally wrong choices. I'm not really sure that there is an argument for why that should be possible when the only advantage is making a few people with OCD about aesthetics happy.

Specialization is still possible with Merits and Flaws in a Storyteller-type game. Just allow some Merit that says, "Presence Natural" or something that gives bonuses to the base dice for greater than average success rates for those characters. That should satiate the people who have a concept like "I'm Harry Potter and thus better at everyone else at Broomstick Rugby."

[CatharzGodfoot]

If your attributes represent meaningful, interesting things, tying base classes to them might work. If your attributes are strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma, you're SOL.

[PhoneLobster]

I see interesting discussion of concepts I might like to also discuss. But the actual premise of this thread seems to instead be "Name a bunch of well known fictional characters representing some stat based stereotypes!".

Which is a significantly less interesting topic, and indeed over all stupider and generally trivial topic than "How do you make stat based d20 classes work?" which is what everyone seems to want to answer (including me).

edit: And to answer the question Prak Anima never asked.

To do what d20 modern wanted to do but failed to do you should attempt to avoid a number of pitfalls.

1) Make multiclassing work.
The d20 modern "solution" to the "hey you should totally have a primary attribute and like 2 secondary ones or some shit!" was to just have a robust flexible multi-classing system.

Only d20 modern didn't actually have that. So you want to get that as right as possible.

I would recommend something like say, all base attribute classes get the same base attack progression (good), you set your base good/bad saves based on your initial class selection and then advance the same regardless until you get out of base attribute classes into prestige, and instead of using pure class based defence progressions like d20 modern there are selectable (limited stacking or totally non-stacking) defense "abilities" you pick up as a one level dip in any attribute class that progress somehow (and at least fairly uniformly) based on total character level and the relevant attribute.

2) Every level of your attribute classes should give you something new.
And then that something new should scale to be level appropriate with your base character level and never with your class level in an attribute class. So you can take one level of strong for "Strong Defence" and one level of smart for "Smart Attack Trick Thingy" and they are always level appropriate and you can mix them all up however you like.

3) Every class ability needs strong utility, usually combat utility
No bullshit where pure smart characters get screwed hard on the combat mini-game in return for minimal advantages in the entirely borked to hell "knowledge and craft" skill use "minigames".

Every class individually needs good combat options, and good "utility" or "other" options. And there should be some sort of strong encouragement to a player that they should damn well take some combat options from their class or classes. If they eternally dip for "other" utility only... that's gonna suck so maybe you should prevent it somehow. I suppose you could alternate (character not class) levels Utility/Combat or something, or have every ability option provide both a combat and an "other" effect (though that might be worse).

4) Better prestige classes
As bad as the base classes in d20modern were, the prestige classes were generally worse. Also, really they lacked a coherent concept or power level of when or how they should kick in.

You should probably pick one of two options and EITHER prestige/profession classes are basically dead on equal to advancing in you base attribute classes and you just do that whenever with little to no limitations/requirements starting with your second level onwards.

OR

You decide everyone gets X levels of Base Class and when that runs out they pick a Prestige Class for Y levels, and fuck it if you want then an Advanced Prestige Class for Z levels. No fucking about on a fixed schedule of general power advancement.

5) Decide if the actual attributes actually matter to the actual attribute classes and fucking stick to it
D20Modern has a serious issue where sometimes you need to be really Smart to be a Smart Hero, you don't actually need to be Fast to want to be a Fast hero, and you might actively want to not actually be Strong, or Tough, or Wise to be those respective hero types etc...

You need to decide how much if at all your attribute classes actually REQUIRE you to have an investment in a relative attribute, and try and avoid situations where you contradict that by say, deciding you want investment incentive and then instead giving out abilities which aren't tied to investment and instead mitigate lack of investment.

And it's probably actually OK to decide that attribute based investment isn't important. But if you do THAT then while you can tie some abilities to attribute investment (since people can for instance dip an attribute investment based defense bonus from ANY attribute based class), you then need to have plenty of, if not the majority of options be attribute independent. AND you need to make sure all the classes get an appropriate number of those options.

D20 modern's problem was it decided some classes were bitches that had to be tied to class specific level progression and heavy attribute investment... and some others weren't, and some others were so badly designed you actively would build counter to their attribute theme. Just... don't do that...


6) Fix the crappy skills more
And while you are at it you should try and fix Craft and Knowledge and Computer use and Surgery and all that other utterly broken underlying shit in d20modern.

And about a bazillion other things. But that is a start.

Personally though I wouldn't use d20 as a base at all. Why the hell would you do that?

You COULD just be running a points based system where you shop from lists labelled "stuff strong guys do" and "stuff smart guys do".

You COULD be running a system where character advancement differentiates between breadth of abilities and depth of abilities with separate advancement resource types.

You could be doing a lot of things that you might want to do in a "Modern setting RPG based heavily on "base attribute" themed abilities and latter advanced profession themed abilities"... if you don't saddle yourself inexplicably with d20. And considering how much you would need to write/rewrite just to meet the basic recommendations I or anyone else might present to "make a d20modern system that works" I don't see why the hell you wouldn just write a new system from scratch.

[Prak]

I didn't ask that specific question because I expected it to be met with "why the fuck are you using d20 for a modern game? D20 SUCKS FOR GUNS!!!" I am in fact wondering about tinkering with d20 modern to make it actually usable.

As for why I might want to do this, there are a couple of reasons (Keeping in mind, for one of them, that I'm specifically doing the Shadow Chasers/Urban Arcana thing)
1- My group knows d20. Anything outside of that, and we have to deal with the time commitment to learn for one player, and a giant debate about what system should be used with another player. If we're talking supers, he wants to use Hero, if we're talking Fantasy, he wants to use D&D, if we're talking futuristic post apocalypse, he wants to use Rifts. If we're talking "things that go bump in the allies," he wants to use WoD.
2-

I'm not saying all the monsters are good, but there's certainly a volume of monsters to use if your Buffy/Grimm-esque game is d20.

[Username17]

True, but this problem only exists because the core of your system is to use stat + skill for action resolution for all actions.

Even in a Storyteller-esque game, you could easily just unlink stats from actions by giving actions base die pools. Thus, you could have everyone using Presence 1 get four dice and thus have unpleasant low Charisma characters who had mind control along charming bastards who also had the same powers. This would allow for people to have minor access to powers without being useless in those actions (action characters with a few social powers, for example)

I mean, the only reason to make powers and skills use the same action resolution system is for the aesthetic symmetry.

Stats linked to powers means that there is always going to be wrong choices in character creation, possibly fatally wrong choices. I'm not really sure that there is an argument for why that should be possible when the only advantage is making a few people with OCD about aesthetics happy.

Specialization is still possible with Merits and Flaws in a Storyteller-type game. Just allow some Merit that says, "Presence Natural" or something that gives bonuses to the base dice for greater than average success rates for those characters. That should satiate the people who have a concept like "I'm Harry Potter and thus better at everyone else at Broomstick Rugby."

You're always going to be able to make a fail character, the question is only what a fail character looks like and how "obvious" a fail character is.

Let's consider your Presence example for a moment. The power makes people talk to you. That is what it does. Now once you start talking to them, you can either roll your regular socialization roll or not. Yes, you could get various bonuses or whatever, but at the core we are looking at a true dichotomy. Either your base socialization dicepool counts or it doesn't and there is no option three.

If when you use your Presence power to get people to talk to you, you subsequently roll your normal socialization roll (with or without bonuses or difficulty modifiers or whatever), then failing to pump up your socialization roll to back up your Presence makes you a fail character. But if you don't, then any and all investment in mundane socialization is a complete waste if you have Presence. The fact that you bought skills you aren't ever going to use then makes you a fail character.

It is in essence the same problem as to whether or not to add Charisma to the Presence roll itself. Either you do or you don't. And if you do, a character with Presence needs Charisma and if you don't, a character with Presence needs to dump Charisma. Things can stack or they can not stack and there is no option three. And both options create the possibility of bad builds, they just change what the bad choices are.

That's why the best practices I've come up with is simply to give the powers two dicepools to choose from. That way from the standpoint of a single stat, your power can either stack or not stack with it. That allows you make a character that either invests heavily or dumps a particular stat and is still able to be made competent. It's still not perfect, obviously, but by giving someone two choices they at least do not get locked into the "one true way."

-Username17

[K]

You're always going to be able to make a fail character, the question is only what a fail character looks like and how "obvious" a fail character is.

Let's consider your Presence example for a moment. The power makes people talk to you....

Or not.

If you set up Presence as either granting the same results of Social rolls or substituting for social rolls, then the problem exists of making social stats meaningful. It's a circular design where you've created the problem you need to solve.

That being said, there is no reason to not give Social abilities potential results of A, B, and C, and then saying that Presence gives an option D. For example, social rolls with stats could be used to Convince, Interrogate, and Intimidate and takes many turns to use, but Presence 1 offers Social Paralysis in a single turn. You then go on to describe Social paralysis as some kind of altered state of mind where vampires can feed on you and you only follow them around and take no other actions, a clearly supernatural effect outside the results you'd get simply by talking to people.

The only reason to link stats to abilities is if your abilities are just minor boosts to stats already. At that point, you might as well collapse Presence until it's just bonus dice to social rolls in the same way that Potence is handled.

[Username17]

You're always going to be able to make a fail character, the question is only what a fail character looks like and how "obvious" a fail character is.

Let's consider your Presence example for a moment. The power makes people talk to you....

Or not.

If you set up Presence as either granting the same results of Social rolls or substituting for social rolls, then the problem exists of making social stats meaningful. It's a circular design where you've created the problem you need to solve.

That being said, there is no reason to not give Social abilities potential results of A, B, and C, and then saying that Presence gives an option D. For example, social rolls with stats could be used to Convince, Interrogate, and Intimidate and takes many turns to use, but Presence 1 offers Social Paralysis in a single turn. You then go on to describe Social paralysis as some kind of altered state of mind where vampires can feed on you and you only follow them around and take no other actions, a clearly supernatural effect outside the results you'd get simply by talking to people.

The only reason to link stats to abilities is if your abilities are just minor boosts to stats already. At that point, you might as well collapse Presence until it's just bonus dice to social rolls in the same way that Potence is handled.

Even if you go completely non-numeric and are card based or something, things either stack or they don't. There still isn't an option three. It's a true dichotomy. If Presence gives you Result D and therefore bypasses mundane social abilities, then purchasing social abilities that allow you to get Result C is you flushing chargen resources down the drain. On the other hand, if Presence allows you to invoke your mundane social abilities to get Result C when you would otherwise not be able to, then failing to purchase the social abilities that give you Result C represents a wasted opportunity and chargen resources down the toilet.

It doesn't matter how abstract you go. It doesn't matter what RNGs you use or don't use. It doesn't matter how many conventions of modern gothic horror gaming or fantasy adventure gaming you reject. Things still either stack or don't stack. There is no option 3 and there can be no option three. It is a simply "zero" or "any other thing that isn't zero." And both have precisely the sort of "character failure" that you're complaining about. It's literally completely unavoidable.

Put in the most abstract terms possible: if you have limited character generation resources, and you have two abilities that operate in the same field, then they can either synergize or they can fail to synergize. If they synergize, then people will set their expectations of what players are capable of to the levels attained through synergy and failure to get the agreed upon synergy points will leave the character underpowered. If they do not synergize, then investing character resources into both things is a waste of resources and people will set their expectations of character breadth based on people not wasting resources on redundant abilities and failing to do so will leave the character underpowered. That's it. That's the entire run of possibilities as long as you have multiple abilities and any limits at all on what you can write down on your character sheet.

The only way you are going to be able to knot cut this particular dilemma is to literally define away the concept that there are multiple abilities in the first place. So if Presence literally is just what you call Charisma values of 7+, then obviously there is no question of whether or not Charisma synergizes with Presence because they aren't different things. But it's going to come off as strange and excessively limited in some cases, like how that means that Firebolt has to be a higher level of Firearms skill.

-Username17

[hogarth]

I definitely like this more. It's still a bit of a loser concept since you have shitty stats like Constitution.

Yup. Wisdom and Constitution are terrible stats to specialize a PC around. The concept of "my PC is good at not dying" is something every PC should have.

[K]

If they do not synergize, then investing character resources into both things is a waste of resources and people will set their expectations of character breadth based on people not wasting resources on redundant abilities and failing to do so will leave the character underpowered.

This bit is the flaw in your assumptions. Assuming that different options makes other options redundant only happens if you don't make the options actually different from each other in a real way.

For example, if you enter a situation and have have no options, like a fighting vampire in a social situation, then getting even one option from a limited investment in an ability that opens up that single option is huge. Enter Presence.

That doesn't invalidate the fact that the social vampire has many options in that circumstance. That's because those options are different and many will be radically better in some situations.

Imagine both the Social Vampire and the Fighter Vampire With Presence is trying sneak into one of the Prince's properties, but they get caught. Killing or attacking the ghoul who caught them would be considered an act of war, so both need a way to smoothing things over before the ghoul calls the vampire cops.

Social Vampire gets several of the best options. Convincing the ghoul to not talk about this to the Prince results in no loss in social capital and opens up the best options like the ghoul just showing them where the thing they are searching for is hidden or doing something to cover for them, but it takes all of the social skills available to Social Vamp to get the best options.

Fighter Vamp has one option, and that is to mind-fuck the ghoul with Presence. He'll "succeed" at this social test, but he won't get any of the good options like getting to convince the ghoul to set a fire after he's left in order to cover the theft. The ghoul will be sitting addled in a corner somewhere instead.

Making the various options produce authentically different outcomes makes them all valuable. Social Vampire also wants Presence because being able to force minor successes in social situations does synergize with what he does because getting to do something after a social check has failed is huge, but Fighting Vampire wants it because it covers a lot of social situations with minimal success options when he'd otherwise have no options.

The fact that the same Presence power is also a nonlethal and untraceable and concealed weapon combat option also makes it valuable to both of them because there is nothing else in the game that offers that particular combo.