Strength and Constitution: Why are these separate ability scores again? I would roll them together into something evocative like "Might."
Dexterity: Probably should be split into two Ability Scores to cover both manual dexterity and agility if you're after "realism," but since I spit in the eye of realism where possible this can stay as is. That said, since Dexterity tends to give you a benefit to both Armor Class and to-hit rolls with missile weapons, it might be something of a "god stat."
Intelligence: A character's Intelligence should purely be a product of how smart the player plays the character. Ever have one of your less-smart friends try to play a high-Int wizard? I would swap Intelligence out for Willpower. Willpower covers both the ability to resist magic and to use magic to enforce your will over reality (and thus get bonus spells for a high stat).
Wisdom: Wisdom has always been used for concepts that don't actually fall under the definition of the word "wisdom": street smarts opposed to the book smarts of Int, willpower, connection to the cosmos, etc. Axe it. Replace it with Perception. Link Perception to surprise rolls, rolls to find hidden doors...hell, put the bonus/penalty to hit with ranged weapons here.
Charisma: Again, how likable or convincing a character is should be the province of role-playing. Also, the things connected to Charisma are silly. Number of henchmen you can have at a time? No. The number of henchmen you can have at a time should only be limited by how many you can afford to employ and your reputation. Morale? No. Morale should be determined by how well your henchmen are paid, how well you treat them, and how fucked the adventure gets.
But, let's face it, we're stuck with the Ability Scores we have because they are part of the shared language of D&D.
Not for nothing, the Ability Scores I use in my Barbarians of Lemuria hack are: Might, Agility, Willpower, and Perception.
Strength and Constitution as separate stats make sense. Small hardy/healthy folk exist that simply aren't strong in comparison to larger muscular folk.
ReplyDeleteWisdom is a little screwy indeed and could be replaced with another stat like Willpower, Perception or Piety.
Charisma should serve as a base not a limit.
Unfortunately, it's easier to mess with the stats in other games than it is in D&D. Despite my own misgivings about the canonical ability scores, I value that "shared language" of D&D more than my own tinkering.
DeleteI like your idea about Charisma though. Reminds me of a houserule I have for followers that I should post soon.
We are using a bit different set of abilities as well thanks to my friend Eero, whose system is best described here: http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=14363
ReplyDeleteAnd the ability set we're using:
Stamina - Physical capability attribute, it's used for everything to do with strength, constitution and physical dexterity. The basic thinking here is that either your character has lived a life that gives him a healthy body or not, and all the physical attributes will basically correlate with each other. Describe your character's physical competence as great strength or well-placed use of strength, it's all about physical competence anyway.
Wits - The capability for quick thinking. This is used to compensate for the fact that we don't much like to play time-based subgames: instead, we can make checks of Wits to see how quickly a character reacts to visual cues or social surprises or whatever. It's used for initiative in combat and for understanding what's going on in confusing situations; it's also used for perception checks and such.
Learning - Not intelligence (intelligence is not modeled in this ability set, it's up to the player to be intelligent), but rather how much your character knows about the world. used in almost all knowledge-related checks whether martial or academic or plebeian in nature. Up to the player to characterize his character's knowledge as book-learning or having lived an interesting life or whatever. Obviously has great use in magic, as mostly magic requires knowing what to do.
Will - The character's clarity of purpose, pretty much. Sees less use than the above three abilities, I'd say, but I like this as a characterization element. Magic both arcane and clerical runs largely on this, it seems. Saving rolls as well - what would be a fortitude or will saving roll in 3rd edition is a will roll in this; getting up from physical punishment is a matter of will.
Charisma - Another ability with slightly less use, although more than Will I'd say. Used as in trad D&D, pretty much, except I openly endorse social checks as partial replacement for player wit; the issue we want the player to consider is what his character should communicate, not how to go about the superficial task of communicating it. Used in hiring hirelings and henchmen, etc.
Thanks for the reply, I'm pretty interested in seeing what variant ability scores are actually seeing use in D&D-type games.
DeleteI have some questions and comments for you:
With Wits, could you give an example of how it is used for something like "understanding what's going on in confusing situations"? I can't quite get my head about that.
Learning wouldn't work for me. I'm increasingly against knowledge checks of any kind, I think. Rather, if a character should know something based on their class or background, I tend to scribble the player a note telling them what their character knows.
And I'm absolutely against social checks that replace a player role-playing their character. In my experience it leads to flat statements like "I Bluff the guard." Hopefully it works out better than that in your games!
Confusing situations can arise in many cases. In combat you could try to figure out the oppositions tactic or how many combatants there actually are etc. Your character might end up in an unfamiliar social situation and a wits check might give you some clues how to behave in the goblin king's court for example. Or you could simply be lost in a forest without a clue where's north.
DeleteWe do use knowledge checks quite a lot. We don't bother with character background so much, since characters die quite often, especially on the lower levels. Instead, we use their learning to find out how much they know about the world.
I'm OK with people going "I'll pretend to be a member of the staff so the guards will let me through." or "I'll try to keep the guards distracted by talking with them so my friend can sneak past" and then rolling if the players don't feel like acting it out. As it's up to the players to be intelligent, and we therefore don't have an intelligence ability, we don't require the players to have strong verbal skills, so we have an ability to model that for us.
If someone did flatly state "I Bluff the guard" I'd ask them to elaborate a bit. In what way are they trying to do that? What or who are they pretending to be, what exactly are they trying to achieve, etc.
Also, interesting! That's for explaining that further.
DeleteI think what you say about Str and Con makes some sense. The separation of them really just depends on how abstract vs. "realistic" a game is. Dex could also be replaced with "Skill" as that seems to be a lot of what it does.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't think that Charisma necessarily should be a stat, I don't think social interactions should be cover strictly by role-playing. I don't want player's saying "I bluff the guard" but nor do I want to judge the seductive skills of a Don Juan character by how convincing the player is! If you never have oratorical rousing of army to battle, fast-talking of a crime lord, or seduction of a princess as important game elements then I probably works well just judging player performance, but I like those sorts of tense interactions to get there dramatic due just like combat. It's all a question of the type of game one plays, I guess.
I'm interested in hearing what you do with Charisma to span the divide between rolling for it and role-playing it, if you don't mind! I'd love to hear some options here. One thing I sometimes do is take how the interaction is role-played into account with a roll (a really convincing blather might get a bonus, someone just mumbling a few non-convincing words gets a penalty).
DeleteWell, I rely on social pressure (I'm pretty much always playing with groups of friends) to make them at least make an attempt to role-play it. Then often I add a bonus for the skill of it. For some sort of "social skill" sort of things what they are doing (the particular angle they're taking with a bluff) is important. "I bluff him" doesn't get a roll, but describing how you pretend to a superior officer and and suggest, etc. is worth one.
DeleteInteresting! I would be fine with that in a game.
DeleteAlso, the things connected to Charisma are silly. Number of henchmen you can have at a time? No. The number of henchmen you can have at a time should only be limited by how many you can afford to employ and your reputation.
ReplyDeleteThere's a big difference between henchmen and hirelings. What you describe here is hirelings. Unlike the hireling, a henchman's loyalty is primarily based on the character's personality and not how much money they're paying, thus making Charisma relevant. A henchman is a sidekick while a hireling is someone paid to do a job.
Again, how likable or convincing a character is should be the province of role-playing.
Having played the last several years with a gaming group that is largely made up of children I can see how important the ability score categories are. What I've found is that children, lacking the life experience of adults, are not as good at roleplaying as the adults are. They have lots of imagination but fall far behind the adults in player skill. The ability score types help the kids learn how to roleplay their character.
Much of this is dependent upon the DM doing his job. Players have a tendency to use Charisma as a dump stat, but a good DM will have NPC and monster reactions reflect the character's Charisma. A party in which every player has used Charisma as a dump stat, especially if stats are adjusted by swapping points, should find it harder to get good service in town, less likely to gain henchmen, more likely to have hirelings bugger off, and definitely more likely to have monsters react negatively.
Player skill is important but a big part of player skill is roleplaying the numbers on the sheet.
You're right, I was paying fast and loose with the word "henchmen," but I think the problem remains the same. If you get x number of henchmen, but how you treat them/look after them doesn't matter because you've got a Cha of Y...
DeleteI would also say that gaming with children is a whole 'nother Oprah and not really applicable to what I'm talking about.
"A party in which every player has used Charisma as a dump stat, especially if stats are adjusted by swapping points, should find it harder to get good service in town, less likely to gain henchmen, more likely to have hirelings bugger off, and definitely more likely to have monsters react negatively."
But why would I have that dependent on a number on the character sheet instead of actual role-playing? That's not the DM's job, in my opinion.
No worries Jack, since we strongly disagree on every point, to agree to disagree seems the best option. :-)
ReplyDeleteNo worries at all, it's just gaming after all! I'm sure your games are as fun as mine.
DeleteI am definitely a person with a high constitution and low strength.
ReplyDeleteI got lucky and rolled 18s across the board!
DeleteI don't think D&D needs ability scores. However, if you have them, and if the aim is simulating fantasy, Luck and Courage should be stats (Wisdom gets used as courage among other things).
ReplyDeleteWell, at some point it becomes a question of "does this feel like D&D still?" I don't think an ability score-free version would fully feel like D&D to me.
DeleteYou're right, Wisdom does get used as a weird default "courage" sometimes. If I'm not mistaken it figures into Fear and/or Horror checks in Ravenloft...
A few people have pointed out that you can have a high Con and a low Str, and that makes sense. However, I can't figure out what someone with high Str but low Con looks like, so I'm definitely in the "merge the two together" camp.
DeleteWorse yet, I can't think of any fantasy characters that have a high Strength and a low Con.
DeleteTo accomodate the 'tough little old lady' type who has a high CON but a low STR, maybe they should be separate but STR can't be higher than CON?
ReplyDeleteHeh, is that really an archetype?
DeleteThe witches from the Discworld series would be like this.
Delete