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Maybe you're just a lot smarter than I am, Alicorn, and as such I'm just not seeing the deeper picture but...
I don't see the point of most of what you've been writing. I don't really know what you're arguing at this point.
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I dunno, I skip all of his posts. He 'wall of texts' worse than you do Ash, but at least your stuff is interesting.
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I dunno, I skip all of his posts. He 'wall of texts' worse than you do Ash, but at least your stuff is interesting.
I thought my only text-masonry rival was Tacticslion. XD
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I dunno, I skip all of his posts. He 'wall of texts' worse than you do Ash, but at least your stuff is interesting.I thought my only text-masonry rival was Tacticslion. XD
Well... to be honest, you and TC 'wall of art' instead of text.
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Well... to be honest, you and TC 'wall of art' instead of text.I dunno, I skip all of his posts. He 'wall of texts' worse than you do Ash, but at least your stuff is interesting.I thought my only text-masonry rival was Tacticslion. XD
Daawwww... (^///^)
Well I admit to being a sucky writer.
To be honest, the points and topics shifted and altered throughout, so how it all started was quite different than the recent topics.
In any case, skipping my posts certainly explains why people sometimes repeat me without seeming to realize it. Kinda funny when they say what I said in a post to tell me how wrong I am.
Of course the two threads I've been in recently have been unusually civil and fun, which is nice.
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Okay, in an attempt to try to re-align the conversation.
You mostly lost me with the color thing way back when. Mostly because I don't agree with the basic premise from which everything else seems to be drawn. I do not think that the color-coded groups are representative of any of the gamers I deal with on a regular basis in all but the most loose senses, and even there, it seems to more commonly be a mixture of many of those traits to varying degrees and a number of other traits not mentioned at all.
Because I don't really recognize the basic premise, it makes it difficult to give any credence to the arguments built upon it. This is especially true because it seems to be a struggle to get anything particularly concrete, and the metaphors are often long and in several cases aren't particularly representative (it went from imagining different skin colors to having sex with people, for what basically amounted to "you had to have been there").
For example, I don't really have a problem with asymmetrical design and balance, even if we're not dealing with limited computer programs. Creativity and using things in usual ways is half the focus of my adventuring guidebook. You haven't actually made a case for why it doesn't work or cannot be balanced, aside from trying to suggest that balance is impossible in any situation where player skill and/or creativity is involved.
To that, I must simply say that you seem to be talking about fairies and unicorns. An imagined ideal that doesn't exist and isn't represented by anything in our reality outside of games of pure random chance.
Perhaps we can try to discuss one particular issue at a time. Then when that issue is resolved, move on to a new topic, but not before resolving the previous one. This should, hopefully, keep the posts shorter and the conversation easier to follow.
Ashiel,
I think you should particularly read the articles in the right column of Alexandrian's Creations page, as there are some great things there particularly his death and dying rules. Although many of his articles can be helpful, such as his 'utility in game design' and 'save or die effects' articles on the left side.
Creations link http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/creations.html
I might also suggest looking at monte cook's world of darkness, a conversion to d20, as he has a great spellcasting system there, allowing you to build spells either on the fly, or make them rotes that are easier to cast.
Something else, in my full system, I made it so that veteran characters are clearly superior than novices, yet novices are not so far behind that they can't even touch a veteran, at least within each tier. I might suggest doing the same in your system to make it easier to stay at whatever tier you prefer such as remaining in gritty fantasy or superheroic. In fact, you might split tier from level, so you could stay in gritty fantasy from 1 to 20, or go from 1 to 20 in superhero mode. I.E. HD might depend on level and tier, so at gritty only 1 hd per 5 levels, but superhero tier you start with 5 and gain one every 4 lvls. Thus each can really feel different, if you go for playing supers in one session, everyone will feel super from the start yet still have 20 levels of advancement.
>I think you should particularly read the articles in the right column of Alexandrian's Creations page
I don't know about others, but I have an allergy to people who suggest I should read something rather extensive because it will, apparently, make me see the light or something. If you can't explain the general point yourself in a couple of sentences, you probably didn't understand it yourself well enough, and at that point, why are you trying to argue it?
You know those annoying jehovah's witnesses? Ones who go from house to house and say things like "Have you read the bible?"? Yeah, unless you have something really good and interesting in mind, don't be like that.
I wasn't arguing anything.
The Alexandrian Creations page links to a wide variety of articles by Alexandrian which are good resources for a game designer. They cover many topics, some are good for rules and such, others for being a better gm or player, others are reviews or discussions.
In any case, 90% or more of his stuff is worth reading, I was merely pointing out a few in particular.
Daawwww... (^///^)Well... to be honest, you and TC 'wall of art' instead of text.I dunno, I skip all of his posts. He 'wall of texts' worse than you do Ash, but at least your stuff is interesting.I thought my only text-masonry rival was Tacticslion. XD
Ninja'd on all 'counts! ^_^
I wasn't arguing anything.
The Alexandrian Creations page links to a wide variety of articles by Alexandrian which are good resources for a game designer. They cover many topics, some are good for rules and such, others for being a better gm or player, others are reviews or discussions.
In any case, 90% or more of his stuff is worth reading, I was merely pointing out a few in particular.
The Alexandrian is great. The guy is really smart, and he's really good at explaining lots of things and making them interesting. I think that, for the 3rd/3.5 edition of the game, he's one of the better writers.
Buuu~uuuut, the guy's not perfect. He's made several errors (though the most notable one I recall is the whole "weight of weapons" thing). This is not a knock against him, by the by - Ash has done similar in this thread, and holy cow do-I-ever... it's pretty much a universal truth of humans. But the point is this: taking someone's word as gospel risks ignoring the places they make mistakes or applying what they say beyond the limits of where it should be applied. The Alexandrian's pretty great, but he has his limits of where it should be accepted or applied.
I've also not read everything that he's written - he could have made several great things and several lousy ones since I was reading his stuff... I dunno.
The thing is, though, the design goals you're presenting are different from Ashiel's. I think you have the potential for a solid system design in mind, but you might want to work on that one, and present it as itself, instead of persuading Ash to change his to be like it. Certainly compare notes, but the way that it's being presented is, "Everything you're thinking of doing is bad game design, so only change the everything, and it'll probably be fine."
Beyond that... I'm with Ash in that I don't agree that the color wheel represents as strong or rigid a rule as you're presenting. I think the color thing can be nice as a set of general guidelines, so that people can "lean" more towards one end than the other, but the clean and clear delineation of people within that system isn't deeply representative of either the people I run into either in real life or on the forums.
Some certainly lean in one color or the other. Certainly some design principles can be loosely inferred. But it's not as absolute as it may seem. It's more of a "vague" representation of some tendencies that doesn't actually cover the whole of most people in a genuine way. Much like how, on the alignment spectrum, there are nine alignments, but the vast majority are some shade of true neutral, except I suspect the color-thing is even more vague.
I don't know about others, but I have an allergy to people who suggest I should read something rather extensive because it will, apparently, make me see the light or something. If you can't explain the general point yourself in a couple of sentences, you probably didn't understand it yourself well enough, and at that point, why are you trying to argue it?
You know those annoying jehovah's witnesses? Ones who go from house to house and say things like "Have you read the bible?"? Yeah, unless you have something really good and interesting in mind, don't be like that.
On that topic, I'm less allergic to such things - as, inevitably, whatever whoever it is is talking about is, in fact really good and should be interesting - and more the fact that many utilize ignorance of those things as a method of swaying others about said things or attempts to demand you come to the same conclusions as they about <thing>, even if you've been exposed to it and don't (though, truth be told, the former is a normal human reaction; and the latter is difficult to prove if that's what they're doing one way or the other - they could be attempting to be genuine in their presentation of information).
*
*
To that end, I'll note that the Alexandrian is well worth pursuing... but, as noted, as with all things and people, with a grain of salt.
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I have read Alexandrian, and he writes good stuff. My point wasn't that he was bad, but rather that linking to long articles and saying "read this, it says why you are wrong" is bad practice.
To Ashiel:if familiars get HD with levels, do their special abilities also rise in power? E.g. a faerie dragon originaly has 3 HD and can cast spells as a lv3 sorcerer. Does that mean that, by the time their master reaches level 20, it would be able to cast spells as a lv 20 sorcerer?
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To Ashiel:if familiars get HD with levels, do their special abilities also rise in power? E.g. a faerie dragon originaly has 3 HD and can cast spells as a lv3 sorcerer. Does that mean that, by the time their master reaches level 20, it would be able to cast spells as a lv 20 sorcerer?
Not by RAW, since it never calls out their ability to cast spells as a 3rd level sorcerer as being affected by their HD. RAW, a faerie dragon with 5HD still casts as a 3rd level sorcerer.
That said, the save DCs for their breath weapon would because the DC is tied to their HD (10 + 1/2 HD + stat), and they would gain ability score increases every 4 effective HD because ability score increases (like feats) are an effect related to HD.
What about in D20 legends? You have mentioned that there would be less of a difference between HD and levels.
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On the subject of The Alexandrian's articles, I've always been a big fan of the Alexandrian, but I also don't agree with everything he says on every subject. For example, I for one actually do think Save or Die spells are fun and have built characters around those types of characters, and have often professed that Save or Die based characters are more about team-play and comboing than your average character because you're relying on your team to set up the shot (through debuff bombing) and you taking it.
For example, blowing a 6th+ level spell on a 5-15% chance that it will do something isn't very smart. It's even less smart when your opponent is outright immune to it or will bounce it back at you. So if I wanted to finger of death someone or cast flesh to stone and make it stick, in a timely fashion, you pull out a combo.
One member dispels (could be a cleric or another arcane caster) wards and stuff that would block the spell. Your warrior tears apart their saves with things like Intimidate, life-drinker, or class features (like the antipaladin's aura, bestow curse, or witch hexes), and then you get your SoD caster to drop the ball on them. With the defenses removed and sufficient penalties applied to their saves, you've gone from a near-certain wasted spell to "That guy is dead this round, even if he had 1 million Hp".
Of course, there are counter measures to this because there's a lot of abilities that characters can use to raise their saves too. For example, spells like greater heroism make a good counter to save bombing, and a decently built Paladin can do the breaststroke through a sea of save-bombing and still emerge on the other side with a 95% chance to save.
However, the binary nature of save or die spells is something that makes them questionable. It makes them dangerous in large quantities just by pure chance, which makes them unbalanced when used by NPCs. For example, if you have a bunch of efreeti who all mimic flesh to stone via wish, even though their CL and save DCs are pretty bad, if you've got a bunch of them using it at once you're pretty likely to simply roll a 1 eventually.
So the change to the way saves and especially save or die effects in my system was born. The system makes it so that spamming a lot of SoD effects vs higher level foes isn't practical, because if you can't overcome their defense significantly enough, you will not one-shot them. This means that team tactics like save-bombing are still viable vs appropriate tiers of play, and you won't even need to save-bomb mooks.
So the Alexandrian's suggestion to have all SoD spells deal Con damage isn't really a direction I'm interested in pursuing. I see the appeal, but I also don't think it's a good fit for all save or dies, or save or suck spells in general (because a spell that completely removes you from the game in some other way, such as a hostile plane shift spell is effectively a save or die in its own right). I mean, if you're fighting and you make a save vs being dead, a save vs being a statue, or a save vs being on the 9th level of hell, or a save vs being turned into the pit fiend's soul gem, the result is more or less the same in the short term.
Especially if you're a class that is an underdog in the balance department (a magic class might just use their next turn to plane shift right back, a fighter is stuck in hell until his friends come save him at some point after the battle, possibly several adventures from now as they have to find out what plane of existence he was hurled to first).
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What about in D20 legends? You have mentioned that there would be less of a difference between HD and levels.
We intend to remove HD completely. We're aiming to make monsters of X levels roughly equivalent to NPCs of X levels in terms of power. So if you've got a 10th level succubus, she's roughly equivalent to a 10th level character.
This is to both make it easier for new GMs to build diverse encounters, and also to make it easier to use monstrous creatures as NPCs or PCs, and I plan to have them advance in similar ways.
Also, by removing HD, creatures will not be shoehorned into having particular base statistics based on type. This means you could have beefy fey, or physically weak monstrous humanoids (who had more magical abilities). Essentially, you'll progress monsters along a martial/hybrid/magical path just like PCs are advanced (and you can mix and match to taste).
The big challenge will be explaining where certain abilities fall in the level spectrum, but frankly this needs to be addressed anyway. You shouldn't have to rely on some vague notion of common sense or intuition to know that a CR 3 creature shouldn't be able to steal your soul or cast you into hell. Even WotC dropped the ball with the Monster Manual II having CR 8-9 constructs who had at will mage's disjunction and disintegrate (when disintegrate was save or die instead of damage).
As for familiars and such, I currently plan to have them advance with their masters similar to how they do in normal d20. As to what that advancement or the options around it will fully entail hasn't been determined yet (I've considered making them the more magical equivalent to having an animal companion), but that advancement will assuredly include advancing things like HP, BAB, Saves, Feats, and Ability scores.
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How flexible will casting stat choices be?
While a CON caster won't surprise anyone these days (Kineticists are kinda that, Rage Prophet are kinda that, Scarlet Witch Doctors were that), will it be possible to, say, make a true muscle wizard who has STR as the spellcasting stat?
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How flexible will casting stat choices be?
While a CON caster won't surprise anyone these days (Kineticists are kinda that, Rage Prophet are kinda that, Scarlet Witch Doctors were that), will it be possible to, say, make a true muscle wizard who has STR as the spellcasting stat?
That'll depend on what you intend to cast. My current projection is that casting will be entirely a mental thing by default, which means things like your Concentration checks and bonuses with spells will be mind-based.
However, I've strongly considered removing the minimum ability score to cast spells (it already doesn't exist for things like SLAs, and it's trivially easy to meet the minimum score requirements at every level of play with a mere 12-13).
I could see creating a "wizard" who was Strength based and just didn't bother using spells that required any magical attack rolls (things like buffs, summons, travel spells, and a number of terrain-altering things). You can technically already do something similar to this as I explained in another thread not long ago (in fact, the iconic "god wizard" of fame really doesn't need much Int at all).
That said, I really want to reduce to X to Y stat jumps in d20 legends. I think they're bad for gameplay overall, because it makes it significantly harder for anyone to design things for when someone could pick up an ability or feat or whatever and suddenly be a single-ability character.
So the short answer is, "It will be viable to make casters with low casting stats and high other stats, but you won't be able to make casters with high other stats that get to pretend to have high casting stats".
How flexible will casting stat choices be?
While a CON caster won't surprise anyone these days (Kineticists are kinda that, Rage Prophet are kinda that, Scarlet Witch Doctors were that), will it be possible to, say, make a true muscle wizard who has STR as the spellcasting stat?
I believe Ashiel was thinking about turning CON and STR into a single stat anyways, so your point is a bit moot.
To Ashiel:in regards to this, how many stats would there be in D20 Legends? I think last time 3 and 4 were two discussed possibilities.
Also, how are INT/WIS/CHA balanced against each other?
CHA is kind of a bummer in 3.5/PF, being the single most worthless mental ability score for the vast majority of characters, resulting in there being loads of options to use CHA for literally everything in the whole game (I think it's possible, given enough dedication, to add CHA to every single parameter on a character sheet outside ability scores, using only 1pp Pathfinder content), which feels a tad wrong.
How flexible will casting stat choices be?
While a CON caster won't surprise anyone these days (Kineticists are kinda that, Rage Prophet are kinda that, Scarlet Witch Doctors were that), will it be possible to, say, make a true muscle wizard who has STR as the spellcasting stat?I believe Ashiel was thinking about turning CON and STR into a single stat anyways, so your point is a bit moot.
To Ashiel:in regards to this, how many stats would there be in D20 Legends? I think last time 3 and 4 were two discussed possibilities.
Oh, didn't see this while writing my post.
Yeah, my question might be irrelevant then.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
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You can find the relevant post here
Thanks. I like the concept of reducing the number of ability scores (in part since finding a reasonable niche for charisma feels hard), though I do find an odd number of ability scores somewhat aesthetically displeasing compared to an even one.
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Palladium has 8 :P
IQ - Intelligence Quotient - Booksmarts, bonus to skill checks
MA - Mental Affinity - magic/psionic potency and actual charisma
ME - Mental Endurance - Mental saves, spell points based on this
PP - Physical Prowess - Most combat bonuses
PS - Physical Strength - Damage bonuses/lifting capacity
PE - Physical Endurance - Physical damage and poison/disease saves & HP
PB - Physical Beauty - Appearance, can also give bonuses to influence people
SPD - Speed
Needless to say, less is probably better :)
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I'm personally very attracted to three primary scores (Strength, Dexterity, and Mind) as I feel it improves martials, works nicely with 15 point buy, and makes the game more intuitive. Strength = tough, Dexterity = agile, Mind = magical.
Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma being rolled into a single stat is heavily influenced by the fact that each of the stats already have a ton of overlap in regular d20, Charisma is typically the red-headed stepchild (except when you start adding X to Y mechanics in which case it might end up being the stepchild after the death of all the king's other heirs), and Intelligence serves little purpose outside of providing bonus skill points unless your class is called Wizard.
Given some of the mechanical changes that were already in the works (such as disassociating skill points from Intelligence score, and allowing you to pick between the better of two scores for each defense), I finally came to the conclusion that with all the overlap and lack of worth outside of casting spells, there was little reason not to go ahead and merge them.
It's also an ideal chance to slay some old dragons. The mental stats are things that are described as certain aspects of a character's mental faculties, and in some cases were attributed to beauty, but there was no reasonable way to measure these aspects, and so people started doing stupid things like trying to compare the culture, behavior, and appearances of monsters with similar ability scores to determine what they mean, or assigning (ridiculous) values for equating them with things like IQ.
So now, rather than trying to "play your scores" (because nobody really has any idea what the **** that means, even those who say they do), you play your character. Mind is now a much "harder" stat like Strength and Dexterity, representing how magically inclined your character is and affects a few skills (but since we've seen time and time again that skill points matter infinitely more than your ability scores when it comes to things like social skills, the raw impact of Mind on things like social skills is minor).
It also has the side effect of making it easier / faster to generate characters. :)
Also, if three scores seems aesthetically displeasing, imagine it being like a Valknut, with each representing one of the three prime elements of a character. :)
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3 is also a powerful number, mythologically speaking, 3 Fates, 3 Elder Gods of Olympus, 3 Gorgon Sisters, 3 pyramids at Gyza, Father/Son/Holy Ghost etc.
3 is also a powerful number, mythologically speaking, 3 Fates, 3 Elder Gods of Olympus, 3 Gorgon Sisters, 3 pyramids at Gyza, Father/Son/Holy Ghost etc.
Yeah I like it. ^-^
I guess.
Though maybe something like this would be reasonable?:
Splitting Mind into Cunning and Will (obviously, random names, whatever else works just as well for names).
Under this split, Will would be married to magic and primarily used for magic, while Cunning would give less magical mental benefits like maybe tying some roguish or tactician-ish abilities to it.
Potentially this could involve returning skill points for ability scores and tying them to Cunning - this wouldn't make Wizards boast immense skill points simply due to being casters, but would allow one to invest into the appropriate ability score to be able to get more skill ranks.
This would also allow a pretty reasonable distribution of saves:
Body saves against things that attempt to alter your body.
Agility saves against things like fireballs that you kinda want to dodge.
Cunning saves against things like illusions which try to deceive you.
Will saves against things like mind control which try to alter or control your mind.
I'm probably getting a bit annoying with this, but I just think that a symmetric 2:2 physical:mental distribution feels nicer than 2:1.
And it also splits away being smart from magic.
But it also means that someone who is skilled at lots of things is also, by default, a cunning person. Or someone who is cunning is also, by default, very skilled in a wide variety of things. I mean, someone who is a highly creative person, like an artist skilled in a number of art forms (painter, sculptor, drawing, carving, pottery etc) would also be innately deceptive and cunning.
But it also means that someone who is skilled at lots of things is also, by default, a cunning person. Or someone who is cunning is also, by default, very skilled in a wide variety of things. I mean, someone who is a highly creative person, like an artist skilled in a number of art forms (painter, sculptor, drawing, carving, pottery etc) would also be innately deceptive and cunning.
This is a fairly reasonable objection. Yeah, tying skills to stats feels like a bad idea no matter what you tie them to.
Still, though, having a mental score that is useful to martials feels just proper, since fighting isn't only about beating the enemy hard (or quick) with a stick.That said, I kinda like the idea of most characters focusing on 2 of 4 stats. Masterful combatant? Strength and Agility. Sneaky infiltrator? Agility and Cunning. Smartass? Cunning and Will. Battlemage-y type? Strength/Agility and Will. Master Tactician? Strength and Cunning.
Nonetheless, I'm probably rambling stupid ideas right now, so I won't mind much if they're disregarded.
I'm ok with the 3, but would be happier with 4. Dunno if that'd cause an IP problem with GURPS or not...
I'm ok with the 3, but would be happier with 4. Dunno if that'd cause an IP problem with GURPS or not...
I don't think a number is protected IP.
Depends on how the stats are defined, I'd say.
You can turn anything into a number, that's how computers store information. Therefore at least some numbers are IPS.
You can turn anything into a number, that's how computers store information. Therefore at least some numbers are IPS.
Touché.
Depends on how the stats are defined, I'd say.
Well, GURPS has three physical primary attributes and one mental primary attribute, which also feels a bit awkward.
And GURPS also has the concept of secondary attributes, and I see no indication of anything similar being here.IP breach feels like a huge stretch here, really.
>I'm probably getting a bit annoying with this, but I just think that a symmetric 2:2 physical:mental distribution feels nicer than 2:1.
Think of it less as "2 physical, 1 mental" and more as "one for each save defence". That way it feels more symmetrical than 4 attributes.
To be fair, three saves are just as arbitrary as any other number of saves.
It is a nice number that covers most bases, and it has already been settled on. I would think really hard before adding another save to keep track of.
I guess.
Though maybe something like this would be reasonable?:
Splitting Mind into Cunning and Will (obviously, random names, whatever else works just as well for names).
Under this split, Will would be married to magic and primarily used for magic, while Cunning would give less magical mental benefits like maybe tying some roguish or tactician-ish abilities to it.
Potentially this could involve returning skill points for ability scores and tying them to Cunning - this wouldn't make Wizards boast immense skill points simply due to being casters, but would allow one to invest into the appropriate ability score to be able to get more skill ranks.
Well, honestly, we're not going to tie skill points to an ability score at all. As noted before, we want having more skill points to be a big deal and it's directly opposite to being better at magic (full casters have the least skill points, martials have the most), and being able to subvert that by simply having a higher ability score complicates things by creating situations where you could very easily have your cake and eat it. Every few levels everyone would just gain a bunch of new skill points because their *insert stat name* went up again.
It also doesn't really reflect how stuff is learned. Very frequently people who are less intelligence/cunning/whatever can have a wide variety of skills, often more than people who are, because of their choices and experiences. In regular D&D, we end up with situations where Intelligence severely hinders people's ability to learn how to climb, jump, and swim, as readily as it hinders your ability to give lectures at a university. :P
This would also allow a pretty reasonable distribution of saves:
Body saves against things that attempt to alter your body.
Agility saves against things like fireballs that you kinda want to dodge.
Cunning saves against things like illusions which try to deceive you.
Will saves against things like mind control which try to alter or control your mind.
It seems that Cunning would probably end up as the redheaded stepchild of saves. Illusions are a single school of magic, but virtually every other mental-save in the game would end up targeting Will (charms, compulsions, fear effects, morale effects, etc).
I'm probably getting a bit annoying with this, but I just think that a symmetric 2:2 physical:mental distribution feels nicer than 2:1.
And it also splits away being smart from magic.
Any reason why? At the moment, I can't really find anywhere that the split mental stats (with all of their overlap) really improve upon the game, and I don't immediately see any benefit to having 4 scores over 3, other than just to have 4. I'm not innately opposed to the idea, though I'd need to have a solid idea as to why more is better in this case.
2Ashiel:
I guess you're right. It does make sense. Though I do agree with Lumipon - the idea of a stat called "Mind" being dumpable for all magicless martials (I assume that will still be an option for those who don't want magic at all) feels a bit pushing the concept of a Big Stupid Fighter, while something like Magic or Soul or <insert whatever> feels much more neutral.
As for where I stole the idea of Cunning saves from:
The Kirthfinder conversion of Pathfinder splits Will saves into Intuition and Will.
“Intuition” saves against illusions and charm effects (see below) are modified by Wisdom, whereas compulsions and other more forceful Will saves are modified by Charisma (see below).
Intuition saves (modified by Wisdom), which apply against curses, divination, illusions, and charm effects; and Will saves (modified by Charisma) which apply against compulsions, fear, and most other core rules Will save effects not specifically enumerated under Intuition saves.
Some people say it is better to be late than never. Others say that it is better to be never than so late as to be embarassing. What is your opinion?
Instead of splitting mind into two, how about adding soul? Soul can then determine fatigue and endurance (of the keep on going sort), as well as charisma (as in social magnetism) and willpower/focus.
Also, people have different learning styles, not to mention different types of intelligence, but being smarter does learn faster, but that is when you compare folks using their best learning styles and similar intelligence types.
You could encode that into the system if you wanted, but I don't see the benefit.
Just for comparison and possibly to spark some ideas for you, In my system, I just assume people use their best learning style, I also have all advancement affected the same way and affected by difficulty (so having trouble hitting your target will increase your advancement in hitting targets.). I like that because it makes having trouble with an encounter an acceptable thing for a player, also it becomes a bit of a catch up mechanic, so someone who is behind the others will improve faster until they are more on par with the rest of the party.
I might also put forth a rough concept that if you are minimizing base ability scores so much, you might consider making them something other than inherent ability and go more for inherent talents instead, i.e. Power fighting, speed fighting, magic, energy, knowledge, crafting, socializing, etc. Power fighting can cover hitting harder and more accurately with melee weapons, grappling, and taking more damage, speed fighting can be evasion and accuracy, magic is talent for magical techniques, energy can be mana/fatigue (I prefer them as one but you could split them), etc. Basically making the core scores broad categories of types-of-actions rather than basic attributes like strength or agility. In doing this, you can make each stat cover improving the associated skills, thus someone high in muscle will learn strength based skills more quickly than someone with a low muscle score, but yet it doesn't actually stop anyone from learning strength based skills. It also allows you to split mental based things in a more sensible way, such as keeping book smarts away from street smarts and diplomacy. Or perhaps try athleticness to cover strength combat and acrobatics to cover speed combat. Just ideas for you to play with.
Also, do you any of your posted somewhere for us to glance at?
I have read Alexandrian, and he writes good stuff. My point wasn't that he was bad, but rather that linking to long articles and saying "read this, it says why you are wrong" is bad practice.
Except I didn't say "it says you are wrong."
It is ideas and concepts. It isn't about just the end result, his suggestions, but about the sorts of things he thinks about in terms of why he chooses to do things the way he does. What I was saying was "read these, they might give you ideas to better achieve whatever you are trying to achieve."
Honestly the only thing I tried convince ash about was that playstyle needs to be considered heavily in design decisions and that playstyles are not so simple as folks believe and thus can't be reduced to a one best method that covers everything. (ironically folks seem to think I'm trying claim simplicity)
Other than that, I either tried to clarify something, provide reasons why I thought something, offer rough ideas, share a bit of knowledge on a subject, maybe offer a few personal opinions on things (not that many though), that sort of stuff.
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Some people say it is better to be late than never. Others say that it is better to be never than so late as to be embarassing. What is your opinion?
Overcoming embarrassment is part of growing, as is learning to resist being embarrassed. I'd rather someone make an effort than no effort at all.
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2Ashiel:
I guess you're right. It does make sense. Though I do agree with Lumipon - the idea of a stat called "Mind" being dumpable for all magicless martials (I assume that will still be an option for those who don't want magic at all) feels a bit pushing the concept of a Big Stupid Fighter, while something like Magic or Soul or <insert whatever> feels much more neutral.
Well, I opted for mind because it represents overall mental strength but not necessarily where that strength manifests. For example, magic, psionics, SLAs, and stuff like that would fall here, but it would also be the score that determines certain things like Divine Power, Bardic Performance, Alchemical Concoctions, etc.
Since a defense (Fort, Ref, Will) is derived from each statistic, there's incentives to not super-dump things unless you're pulling for a certain kind of character.
Further, any sort of ability that isn't governed by Strength or Dexterity but is instead based on some quality of the person's will or mental faculties would fall to this score.
I really don't want to include some sort of Charisma score, however. All my time dealing with RPGs have taught me that nothing good comes from Charisma scores. Nobody can really nail down what Charisma really represents in game terms and it has too much overlap all over the place, and people always end up adding to Charisma with stuff that isn't in the rules (I've had many an argument on the Paizo forums about Charisma in the past, before I realized it was a worthless stat in a mechanical sense).
Also, do you any of your posted somewhere for us to glance at?
Not currently, because I believe it's not at a state that is presentable yet. I'd rather have it closer to its finished state before I make any public presentations because first impressions matter a lot. When I feel like the necessary editing and adjustments are done and that what you're looking at is more or less representative of what you're intended to be getting, then will be the time.
Put shortly, when you can reasonably play something with it, then I'll just link everyone to a google drive folder with everything in it, and then playtesting and dissection can begin.
At the moment, things being discussed are in progress or were thrown together as a rough prototype. I don't want to present it half-assed. :)