Attribute theory

[Sensuki]

A question for anyone reading the thread: if you saw a list of stats presented like this:

 

Might

Constitution

Dexterity

Perception

Intellect

Resolve

 

or

 

Power

Constitution

Dexterity

Perception

Intellect

Resolve

 

What would you assume the stat that affects damage would be? Based on that answer, if you discovered that stat affected all damage and healing, including damage and healing from sources like guns and wands and bows and fireball spells, how would you feel about it?

Usually might or power, IMO.

 

To be honest - Attribute names don't really matter. In a gamist system you could call stuff "Valor", "Rigor", "The Serpent's Poise", it doesn't really matter. It may even be better if PE de-couples itself from D&D attributes.

 

I'll brainstorm some things, and post later.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Sensuki

[Endrosz]

Personally, I think that someone with a high intellect will try to stay out of fights with muscly giants.

 

Heh, a good friend of mine, avid PnP roleplayer, likes to quote this when it comes to assessing relative combat strengths.

 

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

 

There's more to combat than accelerating an object designed for hurting.

 

This reminds me of NWN2's "opening vignette", the Harvest Festival in West Harbor. Georg, the militia leader tells you the story of how Cormick beat Lorne, who was strong as an ox -- a big brute, as you find out yourself later in the campaign. Cormick evaded him, but not with the intent of tiring him out, Lorne had great stamina, too. He knew Lorne would get angry, and "his anger made him smaller", and Cormick simply delayed engagement "until Lorne was so small that he could beat him". In PoE's current terms, he used his much higher Resolve (patience, steadiness, perseverance, unswaying will) to beat Lorne by not trading hits until he had the advantage. I know this is not a real-life example, but it feels 'right' to me. I can relate this to real-life experiences. For example, I would argue that looking for a job in a bad situation requires at least as much Resolve as Intellect and skills and ****.

[Sensuki]

Here's my suggestion.

I think the all attributes attribute to Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower spreads the other effects of combat stats around attributes a bit too thinly. I think Damage, Accuracy and Health/Stamina are equally as important (if not more important) than defenses.

Here I propose a system where Damage, Accuracy, Health/Stamina and Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower are considered semi-equal for this proposed system. The defenses have been placed with higher efficacy secondary combat stats.

Attribute #1 (Might?) - Damage, Healing
Attribute #2 (Perception?) - Accuracy, criticals
Attribute #3 (Constitution?) - Health/Stamina, inventory size
Attribute #4 (Vigor?) - Fortitude, hostile effect reduction
Attribute #6 (Dexterity) - Reflex, Action Speed
Attribute #7 (Resolve) - Willpower, Durations, AoE Size

Might increases damage and healing - healing could mean Stamina Regeneration and adding the same amount of "damage" to Healing Spells, so any class with a flat heal also benefits. Stamina regeneration in combat only occurs from ability/spell use for all classes other than Fighters who naturally regen stamina in combat. Fighters in PE don't really need damage, but if the increase in Stamina Regen is good, then this would be valuable for them. 

Perception increases accuracy and does something to augment criticals, this might be increasing the critical damage or making criticals easier to get - but it should not have as huge of an impact as it would in PE's current system as it is the secondary effect of the attribute.

Constitution increases Health and Stamina, which are gained at the same rate. I think it's better to keep Health and Stamina married because it is a more intuitive system. I think the Health & Stamina ratio is a more interesting mechanic, and perhaps the game could include a "Toughness" talent that reduces the Health Damage taken by 5% or something - giving a small taste of Barbarian toughness, but they could also take it to be even tougher. Also handles the inventory size thing.

Vigor is the best name I could come up with for this one, but is essentially the character's resistance to ailments and such. It increases their Fortitude defense, and reduces the duration of hostile effects. This could be a percentile reduction. I think this would make for an awesome attribute with Fortitude and effect reduction, as Fortitude on it's own is boring. If this became an attribute you could bump the durations of all effects a bit to compensate.

Dexterity increases Reflex defense and Action Speed - this includes all actions such as attack speed, cast time, item/consumable use and reloading and has a percentile reduction on the "downtime" between actions. Max speed increase could be like 30-50%, making max Dex characters still perform actions faster than an unarmored character with no dex increase. This would have to be kept finely granular as to not be overpowered, but I think it is a better representation of the Dexterity attribute this way. 

Resolve is essentially exactly the same as Josh Sawyer proposed, except the effects on Durations and AoE size are not as wide as previous, because it is the secondary combat stat to improving the Willpower defense.

I think that's a pretty good system tbh, gives every class a reason to take every attribute and is even more intuitive than the current one, but if you'd prefer that all attributes add to defenses then that's fair enough. I just think that Damage, Accuracy and Health are equally or more important and when the defenses are taken out of the mix it makes it hard to make six equal attributes.

 

edit: This reduction of  F/R/W to one attribute each means that they can be better balanced with the class deflection score.

 

Problem with dropping the "Intellect" name is it probably fúcks up currently written dialogue and scripted interactions, so that may be an issue? I don't know.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

After thinking a bit longer - Vigor needs a little something else to make it a bit more effective. I'll have a bit more of a brainstorm.

 

First thing to mind is a small reduction to Health damage. If Attributes use a 10 point scale then 0.5-1% per point?, if a 20 point scale then 0.25-0.5% per point?

 

Don't worry about the Toughness health reduction talent I put under the Constitution description, maybe incorporate that into Vigor.

 

Vigor - Fortitude defense, small reduction to Health damage, reduced hostile effect duration.

 

Resolve is looking a bit sad now maybe.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Sensuki

[Silent Winter]

Ok, don't know what happened to my actual post but it disappeared - no time now to re-write it.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Silent Winter

[PrimeJunta]

@Sensuki, I like the way you're thinking. I think "Speed" would be a more descriptive name for "Dexterity," though, going by your mechanical effects. If you wanted to keep more D&D-ey names, you could rename "Perception" to "Dexterity," since the effects are similar.

Here's my reshuffle of the attributes, still going with the "six stats with no dump stat" design goal –

 

POWER – Damage, Healing

DEXTERITY – Accuracy, Criticals

VIGOR – Inventory, Health, Stamina

CONSTITUTION – Resistance to hostile effects, Fortitude defense

SPEED – Reflex, Deflection defense, Action Speed

RESOLVE – Effect duration (reduces negative effect durations on self, increases caused effect durations)

 

Personally I'd just merge Vigor and Constitution and leave it at five stats.

[Sensuki]

Yeah maybe, although nostalgia requires that we have six. You can't have Reflex and Deflection on the same attribute that is imba.

[PrimeJunta]

Move Deflection from Speed to Dexterity?

 

Edit: Man, this is trickier than you'd think.

Edited December 20, 2013 by PrimeJunta

[Sensuki]

Josh doesn't want deflection governed by an attribute.

[PrimeJunta]

OK, then drop it. Action speed is actually pretty powerful already so I don't think removing it would nerf Speed.

 

I'm starting to see why Josh would rather get rid of attributes altogether...

[Abel]

I'm not sure to understand what all the debate is about, but just one thing that i never liked in D&D.

 

When i play a fighter-like female character i just can't think about giving her 18 strenght... Kind of weird to imagine a female more body builded than Hulk (scary thing!). I've always figured out that strengh (in that case) was kind of strenght + Dexterity + martial proficiency. Because all these made you use your weapon in a more efficient way. It's like when you play tennis. If you have the wrong gesture, you can hit the ball as hard as you can, it won't go as fast as if you put less strenght with the right movement... plus just hitting it stubbornely with no care should harm your shoulder.

[Caerdon]

I'm not sure to understand what all the debate is about, but just one thing that i never liked in D&D.

 

When i play a fighter-like female character i just can't think about giving her 18 strenght... Kind of weird to imagine a female more body builded than Hulk (scary thing!). I've always figured out that strengh (in that case) was kind of strenght + Dexterity + martial proficiency. Because all these made you use your weapon in a more efficient way. It's like when you play tennis. If you have the wrong gesture, you can hit the ball as hard as you can, it won't go as fast as if you put less strenght with the right movement... plus just hitting it stubbornely with no care should harm your shoulder.

 

What, you're afraid your female warrior doesn't comform to the modern western criteria for physical attractiveness?

 

Whenever you're representing a person's capabilities with just six attributes, those attributes by necessity represent rather high-level concepts. Strength as an attribute refers to more than just raw physical strength. It also represents your skill of applying your physical strength in an optimal manner so that you can intuitively take advantage of such concepts as leverage and momentum, even if you don't understand or be aware of those things at an intellectual level. It represents your skill in coordinating your body as a whole so you get the most out of it and can use your physical strengh in a manner that suits your needs (explosively, for example). And so on.

 

Attributes are abstractions. If two characters have the same value for strength it doesn't mean they have the same amount of muscles. It just means that they are, on average, equally good at applying strength and generating and manipulating physical force. They don't have to use strength in the same manner; one of them might excel at "brute strength", the other at "smart strength".

 

Of course, anyone with max strength is going to be rather well built. But not necessarily a mountain of meat.

[Tamerlane]

Pictured: 18/00 strength.

 

[decado]

A question for anyone reading the thread: if you saw a list of stats presented like this:

 

Might

Constitution

Dexterity

Perception

Intellect

Resolve

 

or

 

Power

Constitution

Dexterity

Perception

Intellect

Resolve

 

What would you assume the stat that affects damage would be? Based on that answer, if you discovered that stat affected all damage and healing, including damage and healing from sources like guns and wands and bows and fireball spells, how would you feel about it?

Haha. BAM!

[decado]

I've never understood the "strength" attribute in DnD, especially in AD&D. Out of all the attributes for a character to have, Strength is the most liquid. As an adventurer on the road, you are bound to get stronger and tougher as you get older, more experienced, get into more fights and scrapes, etc. I guess this is the old DnD'er in me talking, because I know they have changed it since then. But it always struck me as weird that a character that started out at, say, age 17 would have 16 strength, but in five years of adventuring, lugging around armor, building muscle from strenuous combat, etc, they would always be at 16 strength? Nonsense.

 

Having said all that, I seen no problem with keeping the "Strength" attribute in PoE. I mean, it is really now different from "power" or "might" insofar as we all understand what idea is trying to be communicated -- physical prowess, usually in the spirit of doing damage in combat.

 

I agree with a lot of what Josh says on attribute theory but I honestly think this topic is extremely easy to nuke, i.e. make more complicated than it needs to be.

 

The best way to avoid dump stats IMO is to give every stat a offensive, defensive, and role playing benefit. If you take a game like DAO, Cunning is a worthless stat for Fighters because 1) Their damage is based off str/dex, 2) There is no real difference between persuasion/intimidation, and they are based on those stats, so there is no reason to dump points in cun if you have str anyways and 3) Whatever bonuses cun provides (armor penetration, etc) are superseded by STR/DEX and other characteristics. There is no reason to make a Cunning-based Fighter in DA:O. None. Same thing with the magic attribute. It is a pointless stat, since all the benefits a fighter receives from it (increased mental resistance) are cheaper to get somewhere else.

 

I think by focusing on combat damage, we are maybe missing out on some other valuable contributions that Strength can make.

Edited December 20, 2013 by decado

[Jotra]

@Sensuki, I like the way you're thinking. I think "Speed" would be a more descriptive name for "Dexterity," though, going by your mechanical effects. If you wanted to keep more D&D-ey names, you could rename "Perception" to "Dexterity," since the effects are similar.

Here's my reshuffle of the attributes, still going with the "six stats with no dump stat" design goal –

 

POWER – Damage, Healing

DEXTERITY – Accuracy, Criticals

VIGOR – Inventory, Health, Stamina

CONSTITUTION – Resistance to hostile effects, Fortitude defense

SPEED – Reflex, Deflection defense, Action Speed

RESOLVE – Effect duration (reduces negative effect durations on self, increases caused effect durations)

 

Personally I'd just merge Vigor and Constitution and leave it at five stats.

 

I really like the way you think except for one part. Completely agree about merging vigor and constipation because just resistance to hostile/fortitude defense can't compete with stats at all. However it still leaves on problem which is that resolve is significantly weaker than all the other stats. I think it really needs another reason to exist. My idea is to change stats to this:

 

POWER – Damage, Healing

DEXTERITY – Accuracy, Criticals

VIGOR – Inventory, Health, Stamina,  Fortitude defense

SPEED – Reflex, Deflection defense, Action Speed

RESOLVE –  Effect duration, Resistance to hostile effects, AND Extra Stamina Regen

[butterfly]

Keep the system as is and rename stength to body/constitution/endurance. Problem fixed.

[rjshae]

 

I quite like Ganrich's suggestion of changing the names of "strength and constitution", to "constitution and endurance". I would also suggest willpower as a replacement for strength, it seems more fitting with the in-game mechanics than strength does.

 

Willpower - increase health and inventory slots

Endurance - increase stamina

Dexterity - accuracy

Perception - critical damage

Intellect - damage and healing

Resolve - duration and AoE

 

You've now got four mental and two physical stats, with Perception being mainly mental. Personally I like having physical strength being represented by its own stat--removing it seems unintuitive.

Edited December 20, 2013 by rjshae

[Abel]

 

I'm not sure to understand what all the debate is about, but just one thing that i never liked in D&D.

 

When i play a fighter-like female character i just can't think about giving her 18 strenght... Kind of weird to imagine a female more body builded than Hulk (scary thing!). I've always figured out that strengh (in that case) was kind of strenght + Dexterity + martial proficiency. Because all these made you use your weapon in a more efficient way. It's like when you play tennis. If you have the wrong gesture, you can hit the ball as hard as you can, it won't go as fast as if you put less strenght with the right movement... plus just hitting it stubbornely with no care should harm your shoulder.

 

What, you're afraid your female warrior doesn't comform to the modern western criteria for physical attractiveness?

 

Whenever you're representing a person's capabilities with just six attributes, those attributes by necessity represent rather high-level concepts. Strength as an attribute refers to more than just raw physical strength. It also represents your skill of applying your physical strength in an optimal manner so that you can intuitively take advantage of such concepts as leverage and momentum, even if you don't understand or be aware of those things at an intellectual level. It represents your skill in coordinating your body as a whole so you get the most out of it and can use your physical strengh in a manner that suits your needs (explosively, for example). And so on.

 

Attributes are abstractions. If two characters have the same value for strength it doesn't mean they have the same amount of muscles. It just means that they are, on average, equally good at applying strength and generating and manipulating physical force. They don't have to use strength in the same manner; one of them might excel at "brute strength", the other at "smart strength".

 

Of course, anyone with max strength is going to be rather well built. But not necessarily a mountain of meat.

 

 

 

Pretty much exactly what i meant friend :=). i use to figure out which "kind of strenght" is more suited to the character i play. A big barbarian with 18 strenght is very brute force in most case for me, while a 18 strengh female-with-no-male-hormones-that-shift-muscular-power is more about technicity. Just examples, the male orc barbarian may be a swift guy too. That's why i think differents attributes influencing damages may be a good idea. Strenght+Intellect, or dex, or whatever.

 

Finally, sorry if i can't make all that clear. English is definitively not my native language, maybe the 3rd, at best...

Edited December 20, 2013 by Abel

[aluminiumtrioxid]

I like the original system proposed by Josh simply because it has way more potential to use the stats outside of combats than these offshoots you people came up with. It's a lot more intuitive to say that "you have high Perception, so you can read body language and notice stuff easier", or "you have high Strength, so intimidation is easier for you", or "you have a high Dexterity, so you can do sleight of hand-type stuff" than thinking about when would "power" and when "vigor" apply, or whether pickpocketing should be a purview of Dexterity or Speed, or what to base intelligent or perceptive answers at all. 

 

His version was fairly intuitive and balanced from this standpoint (although Con's still useless).

[Sabotin]

Another idea would be to just drop the base stats entirely and be able to invest directly into the derived ones. They're translating at a 1:2 ratio at best and a couple of those could be switched to being talents anyway.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Sabotin

[Adhin]

So I dunno how to explain my thoughts on this but I've spent years thinking about this kinda stuff so im gonna try my best. First I think tying damage and healing to a single stat isn't a good idea. That's like having HP and DMG all on one stat, you ultimately only need 1 reason to take the stat and giving it 2 fundamental mechanical reasons just makes it to good to pass up. So the way I see it, an attribute should do 1 main thing, and if it does anything else that should be secondary. Healing I don't consider to be 'secondary'. Also with an attribute called Resolve, and healing being more of a 'second wind' then actual wounds closing up magically... Resolve just 'makes more sense' for the attribute that makes you play nicer with 'healing effects'.

 

And before I get into naming stuff, whoever said Crit damage 'and' damage on one attribute? No, that's another bad combo. I mean why would you use anything else? Imma take the one that gives me damage with my damage so I can do more damage with my damage? That's not really a choice at that point... anyway.

 

So generally I kinda liked the original stuff that was mentioned for attributes but I think the naming is a bit off. But then I don't think 'Resolve' as a name fits with the rest. It's more of an ideal, or idea, something you muster like courage. I definitely agree it fits as an attribute just not with the other ones listed. To that end I'd say your best off removing the names all together, coming up from a balance perspective what you guys think best fits from a balance stand point and then come up with a 'theme' for what to call them.

 

Personally, I like resolve and would recommend using that style of naming for all the rest and get rid of stuff like Strength and Intelligence. They're to specific for what your trying to do anyway. So yeah, that's my 2 cents, like the direction but think you should just rename ALL of the attributes (except resolve) and come at the naming with more of an ideal-style theme for it (like resolve already is).

Edited December 20, 2013 by Adhin

[IndiraLightfoot]

I would wager that knowing the best places to strike and the best techniques to use for maximum effectiveness (ergo "damage") is more an issue of knowledge than it is of Intellect. Granted,[...]

 

Lephys raises a very important point here. In fact, more than one of those attributes are in fact rather degrees of knowledge than any inherent mental or physical entity/essence/capacity. I wonder what would happen if we reviewed all the attribute suggestions, discarding those that actually has to do with acquiring knowledge, i.e. experience and skills.

 

If we take Power, Constitution, Dexterity, Perception, Intellect and Resolve, there won't be much left of these "attributes". CON, DEX, PER, INT, they all can be honed, even if it's clearly a matter of predisposition and genetic advantages involved as well. RES sounds like a personal trait, a temperament. And POW, is that just a big pool of abstract force? Then it's perhaps not based on knowledge, skills and training so much.

 

In many RPGs you get to increase these attribute slightly at a certain interval, often based on levels. And what is levels? Experience, and thus acquired knowledge and skills. If these attributes should be used, they surely must be regarded as abstract baselines of capacity, some springboards of predisposition that grows along with acquired experience. I'm fine with that, but then I think Resolve has to go, since it doesn't fit the bill. That perhaps goes for Power as well. I'd prefer to have STR instead, which certainly fits, just like Aluminiumtrioxid pointed out. Perhaps Resolve can be replaced by Discipline, as that could be something more easily moulded and honed?

 

Just some confused thoughts from a tired RPG-ODer...

Edited December 20, 2013 by IndiraLightfoot

[aluminiumtrioxid]

I would wager that knowing the best places to strike and the best techniques to use for maximum effectiveness (ergo "damage") is more an issue of knowledge than it is of Intellect. Granted,[...]

 

Well, it isn't unusual in RPGs (looking at you, anything post-3E D&D, Fallout, Wasteland) for Intelligence to increase skill points gained per level. Look at it this way: Intellect represents how much of his class' specific skillset a character has absorbed - therefore, healing-oriented characters gain a bonus to healing, while damage-dealing classes get a bonus for dealing damage.

 

(But I don't really think the system Josh has proposed needs to be explained or rationalized. It works, and accomplishes its goals extremely well. You can fiddle around with it, but you can't really improve it without significant changes to the underlying mechanics, too.)

[Tsuga C]

in real life more strength means using a weapon with more ease, resulting in steadier aim and faster swings.  some how people think that more muscle means more damage, which though intuitive is in fact false (like cars exploding).

Force = Mass x Acceleration Holding dexterity as a constant, the stronger you are the more acceleration you can impart to the swing of that hammer, thus the more force (potential damage and loss of stamina) you can inflict upon your opponent. Color me less than happy with the nerfing of strength.