"In my game the Mental Attributes are..."

[OgreBattle]

a game should feature exactly as many classes as it has resource management systems.
If you have several resource management systems, which often comes up for spellcasters, then you need one class per system...

What do you think of games where attributes affect resource systems? Like "More of Attribute W will give you more spell points, but more of Attribute I gives your spells harder to resist". If things are balanced ideally you can have a "power" guy and "endurance" guy of the same class by different attributes.

Does that necessarily mean you need separate classes for those mechanics, or can the "power" guy and the "endurance" guy operate off of the same class with different ways of altering their resource renewal/usage/whatever?
Let's say you have 2 dudes who use the Rage Bar class. One is our control subject, while the other has some kind of 'Slow Rage' feature that reduces the number of actions that add to the rage bar, but doubles their maximum amount? Maybe an 'Arcane Rage' feature entirely changes what actions piss you off, so physical attacks do nothing but blasting dudes with fireballs makes you stronger? I don't think these all need their own class.

I mean you can have one "Sorcerer" class, and one sorcerer focuses on shooting many fireballs (endurance) while another's attribute spread has him shoot a few but more potent fireballs. FantasyCraft did that, don't know how it was in play but their 3 D&D mental attributes are a bit more spread out for casters.

I think a game with a Conan to Lodoss War Berserker can just have a core action point system that refreshes with rest, and the berserker using his action point has a sustained berserking bonus and penalty. "I must use that... forbidden power! ahhhhhh" wizard can have a similar rule where using their action point now gives them an aura of crackling energy and minor action energy bolts or so.

---
I like the look of separating lockpicking from sneaking, a lead footed dorf engineer can be good at the former and a cat can be good at the latter. A game that's not D&D can decide how to do that.

Turn based game movement will be abstracted by being turn based, so moving away from 1ft squares sounds good, it's just that Advance War type movement is pretty straightforward to grasp. A lot of people do theatre of the mind already and Mantic's Deadzone has solid rules for zones occupied by different miniatures firing at each other across zones.

[merxa]

Simultaneously complaining that increasing your dex impacts both sneaking and lock picking by a +1 then turning around and saying you don't care about SLIGHT increases in skills is grade A doublethink. And since PL refuses to define his minimum threshold of care it's impossible to know what he means by weasel words like SLIGHT and MEANINGFUL.

If people want to sit around the altar of GAME BALANCE and sacrifice dice rolls to it then go ahead, but you end up with something like PF2 which no one plays. And so far no one has presented any argument for how a phonebook worth of *not*attributes is going to be even playable, much less balanced to any degree. Base attributes is an organizing force to allow you to coordinate similar activities into one funnel that can be human understandable without requiring a part time job to research and comprehend. Removing attributes doesn't mean you can no longer fail at 'D&D' or the character creation minigame, if anything you're probably more likely to fail if you suddenly need to comprehend how to spend your 300 points across 100 *not*attributes. It reminds me of 3.5 psionics, where suddenly all the defenses you thought you had no longer matter because as far as this new ruleset was concerned, you were walking around naked and helpless to the new attack vectors it opened up.

And again, PL is still going to be bundling things together -- this is basic propositional logic, a distinction can always be made, and as you continue to split hairs in your rehashed zeno paradox, eventually you'll split two things most people are going to look at, shake their heads, and walk away from because your big strong bruiser of a character can't do the (strong) thing you expected them to do because you neglected the bend ironwood bars skill on pg 2034, paragraph 3, option 7.

[Foxwarrior]

I'm with PL on this one. In a game where skills can go from 0-50, +1 skill point is so boring as to be completely fucking forgettable. In a game where skills go from 1-5, +1 skill point might actually be a decision worth considering. People want to feel like hot shit when they level up, not like they're slightly better at everything than before.

I believe that NPLP is being sneaky with this argument here.

Because once you've agreed that skills should go from 1-5 in order to make adding +1 feel like an important decision, then it's easier to argue that having an attribute that adds +1 to ten different, arbitrarily grouped skills is too much.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

I believe that NPLP is being sneaky with this argument here.

Because once you've agreed that skills should go from 1-5 in order to make adding +1 feel like an important decision, then it's easier to argue that having an attribute that adds +1 to ten different, arbitrarily grouped skills is too much.

... how is that too much and why is it bad?

[MGuy]

trying to make ability scores work better is a fool's errand.

-if they contribute to your primary shtick, then you fuck up everything else
-if they only matter for minor checks, then you don't need that level of granularity. People can just be "strong" without trying to parse out Str 14 vs Str 15.

I want to return to this and explain a bit more. PL is already covering classless systems, so let's talk more about why ability scores are trash for class and level systems.

Let's assume that your classes give players level appropriate abilities. I know that's a big assumption, but we're hoping for game balance here.

Now, if characters can do level appropriate things, and ability scores affect their success rates, then ability scores mess it up in at least one of the following ways:

1) characters can get higher scores than expected and their level appropriate actions/defenses are now too high in unpredictable ways and game balance gets fucked.
2) we assume players will max out their scores and bake that into the numbers. Whoops, now players can fuck up the character creation minigame and lose D&D forever, either by rolling low, or by assigning stats in a way that feels natural/cool/balanced but sucks. Fucked up game balance again!
3) characters are locked into fixed scores very firmly (e.g. everyone gets the elite array of 15/14/13/12/10/8) and now suddenly characters all have half their ability scores as identical. Not just similar, literally the entire party has 14 Con. People "defaulting" on wisdom checks are all rolling exactly the same number (unless they're a wisdom caster and get "high wisdom checks" as a hidden class feature). Congratulations, you hid a bunch of class features in a needlessly opaque and baroque subsystem that doesn't actually DO anything. Just make the relevant stuff part of the actual classes and drop the rest.

Meanwhile, what if ability scores DON'T affect your level-appropriate abilities?
1) then who gives a shit about them, fold them into backgrounds instead of into classes.

What if they do?
1) you can set a limit on how high an attribute bonus can go and be disciplined about if it can even be raised from there. Even if you don't, a player getting higher numbers has pretty predictable consequences. I should know enough about my game to know what happens if someone gets another +1, whether or not someone 'can' get another +1, and what I want to do about it.

2) This is an argument against letting players choose anything. What if you let a player pick and mix abilities and they pick a combination that makes them weaker than other combinations of abilities? What if they pick up points in the basket weaving skill when they want to be a master assassin? Well now they are screwed. You should keep this in mind when designing of course. You want to lay out options in a way where players can reasonably understand which ones work best for what they want to do. This isn't a thing that is particular to attributes. If you want to help this maybe put a sidenote in about letting players retrain their skills/abilities/whatever.

3) Numbers aren't class features so nothing is locked behind them. They are typically a number that you use or don't use to add to your success in doing a thing that you could do no matter what. You'd have to actively choose to attribute gate an ability for them to lock anything away. All people using the same stat array means is that point 1 definitely becomes not a problem and no one cares after that. No one cares if everyone's primary stat is +4 and everyone's lowest stat is -1. This is something that only confounds people who have arbitrarily decided that they don't want that to happen. For me, someone designing the game, if this is near universally true, then it is easier to design the game knowing that this will most likely happen.


I don't get why not liking attributes has to be nested in these odd arguments. It is ok to just not like attribute scores because you see them as a useless step in generating a number for other things, believe that class/skill/etc should determine the things attributes regularly represent (effectively doing the same thing in other ways), or you construct a game where 'being strong' isn't a thing that does anything in the minigames in your hb so it is just a flowery detail like one's hair color.

I believe that NPLP is being sneaky with this argument here.

Because once you've agreed that skills should go from 1-5 in order to make adding +1 feel like an important decision, then it's easier to argue that having an attribute that adds +1 to ten different, arbitrarily grouped skills is too much.

... how is that too much and why is it bad?

How much is too much is nebulous and arbitrary. That's the point. Fox is expressing how PL can arbitrarily decide something is a problem or not whenever it is convenient for whatever argument is being made currently. Remember that one of the problem points PL is implying that arbitrary decisions are bad.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

it's impossible to know what he means by weasel words like SLIGHT and MEANINGFUL.

Slight was your word.

I advised you that your game needs a cut off point somewhere. Maybe at the point YOU described as "slightly" different and impossible to value at a sensible minimum value.

It's important for figuring out how to value individual abilities. And that applies to ANY game system you might make classed, attributed or otherwise.

If you don't get that, and refuse to get that, then... WTF? Go home, you're drunk.

this is basic propositional logic, a distinction can always be made

Except we aren't representing or discussing the complex real world.

We are discussing a very finite rules set.

Look at Fox Warriors "I made an atheletics skill!".

A bit of a non-statement, but it will exist in a finite rules set. It might well bundle several genuinely distinct things game mechanically. I don't know.

But, because this is how finite rules systems work, it COULD be that everything it does game mechanically... is one single thing. If the rule itself only describes one game mechanical action there isn't anything there to differentiate.

If all it does is use the athletics value in the athletics mechanic to perform the athletics action. Then no. You DON'T get to say "I can infinitely differentiate that into a bundle of options forever!". The finite rule stopped at "athletics action" and you are spinning off into the fantasy realm purely under your own power.

What next? "Ah I see you have game mechanically described a dagger, well, turns out I can use set theory to infinitely differentiate that single game mechanical representation into infinite different weapons and items!". No. Go home. You are drunk.

[Foxwarrior]

Nah what the athletics check stat (named Agility) does is be something to default to that's more interesting and thematic than +0. A variety of different actions and item effects here and there call for Agility checks, the DM is encouraged to ask for Agility checks to accomplish physical stunts (which is, according to magical tea party theory, potentially infinite different activities), and if for some reason a designer wanted to make something in the future where an acrobatic sort of person should be better at it, they could do that with no effort and it would be compatible with existing characters. There generation of the Agility stat is such that smaller, more martial artist-like characters tend to be better at it than mages, giants, and heavily armored people, so you can look at a creature you just met and make a semi-informed guess about whether it's good to try to run from it through stunty terrain.

In a way it's a lot like defensive stats, there are potentially infinite different attacks that might attack each of the defensive stats you have, and trying to attack a defensive stat not all characters have is a bit of a game design disaster.

I guess you could have a point buy system where you bought "ability to use this one kind of Agile item" for each item individually but why would you want that

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Nah...

Or rather yah.

Since you basically just say "Nah, that IS exactly how it works, but it's called agility. Now watch me ramble pointlessly about the derivation of the value. And insist on using the word Stat a lot just to cloud the already muddled jargon on the matter."

I mean, it doesn't even matter that it happens to work the way which I described it COULD work (it is functionally one uniform "do an athletics check" mechanic). Even if it didn't do that (apparently it does) it certainly still could have.

As an equally unrelated aside.

You sold your game just there as being inspired by "action movies" and rather clearly indicated that you wanted dynamic movement action to be just, a real highlight lets say, of your design.

And what you delivered was not just a shallow uniform across the board athletics check.

It also turned out to be just THE typical lazy shit can MTP mechanic normally reserved for junk actions.

I hope this game is otherwise a similarly lazy rules lite throw away.

Otherwise that is really rather damning as a design decision.

[Kaelik]

Love it when PL get's so mad about someone saying he's wrong about something that he suddenly divines an entire game he's never read from a summary of the agility score and explains why it's not as good as his non functional game, and in fact, the shittest game ever!

[Foxwarrior]

I mean, it doesn't even matter that it happens to work the way which I described it COULD work (it is functionally one uniform "do an athletics check" mechanic). Even if it didn't do that (apparently it does) it certainly still could have.

Ah, I guess I overestimated how narrow a "do an athletics check" mechanic had to be in order to count. So you could choose to differentiate it into an infinite bundle of options forever, by writing like, an option for climbing, and an option for jumping, and an option for ice skating, and one for each other movement sport. But without still having a "do an athletics check" stat you can't have any differentiation of ice skating ability for people who didn't pick up Ice Skating Master at character creation.

It also turned out to be just THE typical lazy shit can MTP mechanic normally reserved for junk actions.

Well, the game is a bit less MTP than 3.5, but it's heavily inspired by 3.5, so it still has the same sort of "btw, when you want to do things outside the rules, make something up" stuff in there. I know you love any time someone can technically argue that there's an infinite list of infinite options in the rules somewhere so that's why I mentioned that at all.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

so it still has the same sort of "btw, when you want to do things outside the rules, make something up" stuff in there.

You understand the jarring chasm between that description and presenting something as an example of a good novel game mechanic that also meets one of your primary goals of "being like an action movie"?

I'm fine with having a junk mechanic for junk actions. But an "action movie" game that wants to focus on mobility stunts shouldn't be using it's junk mechanic for what seems to be intended to be a fairly major play feature.

[Kaelik]

so it still has the same sort of "btw, when you want to do things outside the rules, make something up" stuff in there.

You understand the jarring chasm between that description and presenting something as an example of a good novel game mechanic that also meets one of your primary goals of "being like an action movie"?

I'm fine with having a junk mechanic for junk actions. But an "action movie" game that wants to focus on mobility stunts shouldn't be using it's junk mechanic for what seems to be intended to be a fairly major play feature.

It's not an action movie that focuses on mobility.

I understand why you think that, but the part about emulating action movies was specifically about this mechanic, not the entire game.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

It's OK that it's not the entire game. We can talk about the bit we've been told about. It's kinda the only viable option for discussion.

[Foxwarrior]

Someday I aspire to make a game so popular that other people describe it inaccurately to each other without my input instead of me having to do it myself.

[Kaelik]

It's OK that it's not the entire game. We can talk about the bit we've been told about. It's kinda the only viable option for discussion.

You weren't talking about the part explained, you were criticizing the part explained specifically because it was bad to have such a simple mechanic for such a large part of the game.

[JonSetanta]

Someday I aspire to make a game so popular that other people describe it inaccurately to each other without my input instead of me having to do it myself.

Oh damn, that's my life goal right there.

Gygaxian RPG: Charts after charts, an XP progression for every class, racial classes (ripped straight out of Tolkein) and level limits, alignment absolutism

Setantistic RPG: "Wait, is this just Final Fantasy Tactics mashed up with Chrono Trigger as an RPG? Where's the ability scores?"

[Dogbert]

Setantistic RPG: "Wait, is this just Final Fantasy Tactics mashed up with Chrono Trigger as an RPG? Where's the ability scores?"

Considering that, unlike most TTRPGs, videogames are made by, you know, actual game designers, aping systems from videogames is something I see as rather reasonable.

My fantasy heartbreaker apes things from Danganronpa UDG and Disgaea (and it came up all too much like Code Vein, except I wrote it one year before CV).

[JonSetanta]

Heh. You and Koumei with the Disgaea!

Yeah, I'm more old-school than that, but the funny thing about using JRPGS with mathematically solid design, fun interaction between character roles, and relative balance between classes (if they have any) or even equipment based class abilities like in FF7 and that pop-singer sequel one I can't recall but you class is pretty much "whichever costume the performer wears" is that it's not built on assumptions but rather "what does it do?" consideration.

[erik]

Could you clarify what the heck this means?

the funny thing … is that it's not built on assumptions but rather "what does it do?" consideration.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

That means he thinks really hard about what he's making, instead of assuming it all works and shipping it without testing.
I think.

[erik]

Grammatically he said using JRPGs as a structure are not built on assumptions. So kinda the exact opposite of your translation. And he doesn’t even mention his own process. So your translation isn’t just wrong it’s making up additional things to be wrong about too.

But when I take his enormous rambling sentence as a whole I have no idea what the point was, what he is trying to convey. So I don’t fault you for trying to invent meaning for it.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

You're right, I'm sorry. Divination is not my strong suit.

[erik]

I nearly fell for that trap. I read it and was like “this is wrong” then reread it. And reread it. And I amended my thought to “I have no earthly idea what his point is or even in what direction he is pointing towards”.

[JonSetanta]

I nearly fell for that trap. I read it and was like “this is wrong” then reread it. And reread it. And I amended my thought to “I have no earthly idea what his point is or even in what direction he is pointing towards”.

I may be neurodivergent but you're absolutely smoothbrain NPC. I'd say worse since this snarktastic bullshit is the standard from you and a few others lately, but I don't want FBMF to ban me.

Yeah, you bait, and I bit. I can't believe I even wasted 5 minutes reading you bash on my previous statements.

I want my time back.

[erik]

Is it so hard to believe that your insanely long run on sentence was hard to follow?

I literally have no idea what you were trying to say. It’s something a manager would say when they have nothing to say and a couple hundred words to say it.

The only phrase in there that was at all with purpose…

Not built on assumptions but rather “what does it do” considerations.

If I heard someone saying that on the street I could go insane trying to figure out what the hell it meant. It’s literally “If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college” territory.

[edit: I may be caustic but I’m not baiting. I feel fuckin smoothbrain trying to figure out what that phrase means. I have spent a lot more than 5 minutes trying to assign meaning to those words in that order

Further edit. I threw in the relevant Lewis Black bit for elucidation and enjoyment. If that phrase doesn’t give me an aneurism it isn’t because I wasn’t straining hard enough. How can anything be without assumptions? What would that look like? Is it even possible? What does it do considerations… like game relevance, math wise, jobs/roles? Aiiiiigh. ]