From a pure gameplay standpoint (not considering all the material that hangs on the attribute conceits), why do these need to be separate stats? If physical action resolution could be determined by a Dex vs. Dex opposed roll, what about Str/Con vs. Str/Con effects resolution? Can anyone think of any inherent mechanical reasons that doesn't work?
If you just plain think that flies in the face of dungeon crawling history, feel free to share your opinion too. A mechanic that no one likes is as unworkable as a broken mechanic.
The only thing I could really think is that if hit points were the only physical effect scale, there would be too much weight on a combined Strength Constitution stat and the value of others would be that much more diminished. Still, there are a few games with a 'damage save' resolution that balances equally with a lot of condition effects.
Constitution is a measure of endurance, think marathon runner.
Strength is a measure of ... well strength, think world strongest man competitor.
Yeah, I understand why there's a distinction. I just question whether that difference between the two stats is as large as other stats and whether that distinction is worth giving a melee character an extra base stat to tend over ranged attackers.
In my experience, Con is a chore stat that people boost regardless of character concept. A wizard doesn't usually throw a high roll in Con because he wants to be some big ol' scrappy bear, he only does it because he doesn't want to get murdered when he runs short of spells at low levels.
I've run a necromancer with an 8 Con. Never once did anyone in the party voice the sentiment that he was a liability. He stayed out of melee and rained death down on the enemy. It makes perfect sense from a roleplaying perspective, and was a workable character. That group ran up to 14th level before the campaign ended, and the character never died once.
You wouldn't say that if you knew this DM. Our RotRL campaign's afterlife must have installed a revolving door with all the PCs we've had dying, multiple times. Plus, any DM that thinks to himself "the wizard has an 8 Con; time to one-shot him" is metagaming.
You wouldn't say that if you knew this DM. Our RotRL campaign's afterlife must have installed a revolving door with all the PCs we've had dying, multiple times. Plus, any DM that thinks to himself "the wizard has an 8 Con; time to one-shot him" is metagaming.No, I'm saying that the GM said "The wizard has an 8 con, let's not be a jerk and one-shot him."
Most GMs do that, and it's a good thing. It just also has the effect of masking bad game design.
why is wanting to roleplay a sickly though powerful wizard the function of bad game design? Certainly, it is a common archetype in fantasy literature.
original comic that Stop Having Fun Guys is based on
(Mind you, I'm a Str 10/Con 14 guy... I'll never win an arm wrestling contest but I almost never get sick, never get food poisoning, had heart surgery while I was conscious, survived a car crash where I knocked myself out while driving, resistant to painkillers, great endurance. Str and Con are very different things, and the game should reflect that.)
why is wanting to roleplay a sickly though powerful wizard the function of bad game design? Certainly, it is a common archetype in fantasy literature.Nothing wrong with it at all.
But...why do str and con need to be separate stats to play a sickly wizard?
aha! I got you now. I misunderstood your argument initially.
I am not well versed in the 3.5 ruleset so I cannot hope to argue the various affects of both the stats.
I don't necessarily disagree with you but for the sake of discussion....The best way I can hope to put it is using an anecdote.
I had a friend growing up who could destroy an opponent in a fight if he landed the first few blows. He was an extremely powerful fighter but he had a glass chin. One or two carefully placed hits and he would go down.
I guess the real issue is how unlikely is it for there to be such an inequality between the two stats.
I think we all agree that there's some level of realism reflected in the split. Years ago when I got into pro-style wrestling more (yeah, yeah, yuk it up), you'd see plenty of guys who could lift plenty of weight, but their .0001% body fat left them zero stamina in the ring. On the other hand, there's a lot more weight lent to glass jaws and tendon strength than is necessarily true to life and still there's a lot more difference between an agile build and a strong build than a strong build and a sturdy build. If a weakling has an incredible resistance to illness, that could also be reflected in a save bonus feat or similar ability.
Man in Black makes a good point of it being a game issue though in mentioning the wizard has three dump stats and really only one stat that needs to excel. The melee fighter has to cover much more ground, especially a paladin or ranger.
From a pure gameplay standpoint (not considering all the material that hangs on the attribute conceits), why do these need to be separate stats? If physical action resolution could be determined by a Dex vs. Dex opposed roll, what about Str/Con vs. Str/Con effects resolution? Can anyone think of any inherent mechanical reasons that doesn't work?
If you just plain think that flies in the face of dungeon crawling history, feel free to share your opinion too. A mechanic that no one likes is as unworkable as a broken mechanic.
The only thing I could really think is that if hit points were the only physical effect scale, there would be too much weight on a combined Strength Constitution stat and the value of others would be that much more diminished. Still, there are a few games with a 'damage save' resolution that balances equally with a lot of condition effects.
I don't have a problem with Str and Con, but Dexterity could reasonably be split, if you are willing to sacrifice streamlining. Dexterity means being good with your hands, but the ability score is a catchall for coordination, agility, and general athleticism. There's no reason that being a genius weaver or a crack shot should also mean being a great dancer or being exceptionally adept at evading blows, except that it's tradition and that adding another ability score would bloat the rules.
Opinions on the topic from the point of a specific play style are welcome, but arguing that play style is going off topic.
Dexterity does seem like a reasonable conceptual split especially when you consider how many games bundle manual dexterity and speed together. To me, this represents a precedent for stream-lining that could be fairly applied to a Strength/Constitution bundle.
Charisma is a stat I have a problem with too, mainly because the word 'charisma' has a better language connotation than the general force of presence it's come to represent. Even players that understand the concept completely will ask me for the Cha score on a barmaid.
On a side note, I think it would be fair to add a Faith stat that would compliment Charisma well. If Charisma is force of natural presence, Faith could cover the intangible side of things...sort of a compliment to the Intelligence/Wisdom dynamic.
Comeliness, I always had a problem with though. Beauty is pretty subjective already, so it doesn't stat well. It really imposes a lot on a player's perception of their own character too. I've seen a lot of characters who excelled at everything but Charisma and the player would be fine with jokes about being completely socially inept, but after a night of jokes about how ugly they were, they're rolling up a new character. This is the same reason I avoid maiming or scarring PCs, that's just taking too much liberty in the one thing that's their own domain.
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Because they address different things. You can be a scrappy little guy who isn't strong but never gets sick and can take a beating, or you can be a muscle-bound weight-lifter who is anemic and has a persistent case of the sniffles.Okay. Now, name a hero who's like that.
Constitution is a completely dumb stat in 3e because everyone just takes 14 con and is done with it. Characters who aren't tough enough to occasionally take a hit just aren't adventurers in 3e, at least not for very long.
Nifft the Lean (a character in Michael Shea's fantasy novels) is a scrappy guy who's not strong but has high endurance and can take quite a beating.
As a DM, I've seen more than one second line warrior-type (archers, monks, multiclassed rogue/fighter) with so called "sub-par" CON stats. And they survived both the Shackled City AP and even the Age of Worms AP.
Nifft the Lean (a character in Michael Shea's fantasy novels) is a scrappy guy who's not strong but has high endurance and can take quite a beating.
As a DM, I've seen more than one second line warrior-type (archers, monks, multiclassed rogue/fighter) with so called "sub-par" CON stats. And they survived both the Shackled City AP and even the Age of Worms AP.
The Constitution stat has created a new class of RPG stereotypes where every character is as healthy as their proximity to melee combat. Someone can list hundreds of archers with low Con and high Str scores because that's the new cliche specific to the game. It's the same with wizards who can take a thousand punches but couldn't lift a kitten. When's the last time you saw a player roll up a stereotypical weak and sickly wizard? Or are they rolling up wizards with 18 Int, 16 Con, and dump rolls in everything else?
Tough guy who can't throw a punch and strongarm with a glass jaw are examples that show distinction, but they are exceptions to the general anatomical rule of sturdy frame = powerful build. For every powerhouse with no stamina, there's a few thousand healthy strong guys or sickly weak guys. That powerhouse is usually pushing his body beyond its limits to maintain that kind of power ratio over the limits of his constitution too.
Anyone who's strong but overweight is justification for a high Str, low Con. The scrawny marathon runner will outlast him every time. We just don't see them in "serious" fantasy movies because the fat guy is usually relegated to comedy roles.
And guess which type of hero category the martial artist typically falls into? Answer: skinny but durable.
Rasputin is a notable example. He was a Russian monk and wasn't exactly famed for his bulging muscles. He was and is however the poster child for Constitution :)
Anyone who's strong but overweight is justification for a high Str, low Con. The scrawny marathon runner will outlast him every time. We just don't see them in "serious" fantasy movies because the fat guy is usually relegated to comedy roles.
And guess which type of hero category the martial artist typically falls into? Answer: skinny but durable.
A scrawny marathon runner and a lithe martial artist are results of a specific fitness regimen and someone who's overweight is a result of genetics or disease or eating and exercise habits. They're exceptions that you suggest a game's baseline standards should be adjusted to reflect.
These exceptions could still be reflected with a combined Str/Con stat through feats, the mechanic for exceptions. Great Fortitude, Skill Focus, Toughness, Run, Endurance, Athletic; these pretty much cover any of the special Con distinctions that have been mentioned in this thread and offer fairly beefy bonuses to boot. I'd list the strength feats, but that's something like half the list.
As far as 'stop having fun' goes, I'm not starting a petition to strike Constitution from Pathfinder. I'm not suggesting it as a houserule, that'd be completely unworkable. I'm not even sure it's at all good idea. It's just general d20/OGL game design tinkering and the makers of Microlite20, at least, also felt it was something worth looking into.
Actually, it makes a good case for "sub-scores" the way we used to have Sub-classes. If you want to combine Str/Con and Int/Wis then break them back out into sub-scores. Do the same with Dex and Cha.
Now you have a 4-Ability system where each ability is comprised of (the average of?) 2 "sub-Abilities".
I could live with that. The question, then, is what mechanic keys to what Main- or Sub-Stat.
Hoo, that was kind of a tough quote to strip out.
I like this idea. With something like this you could assign or roll up four stats and boost a sub-stat over the other. One guy could have Str 16 and 16 Con, another could have Str 14 and 18 Con based on the same roll or however.
Hmm...
Fitness:Strength and Constitution
Speed?:Dexterity and..Reflexes?
A mental stat could re-assert Intelligence and Wisdom as...
Intelligence:Comprehension and Knowledge
But your clericish wisdomosity can still be reflected in...
Persona or Presence:Charisma and Faith or Will
I tried to collapse the saves into sub-stats there too.
The Player's Option sub-abilities were Stamina & Muscle (Str), Aim & Balance (Dex), Fitness & Health (Con), Reason & Knowledge (Int), Intuition & Willpower (Wis), Appearance & Leadership (Cha). Hope that helps!
I was thinking more:
Fitness: Strength & Constitution
Dexterity: Manual & Agility
Mentality: Intelligence & Wisdom
Personality: Charisma (aka "Social") & Resolve (aka "Force of Personality" or "Willpower")
I tried to avoid terms that are already part of the lexicon of game mechanics (Reflexes, Willpower, etc.).
The break-downs should be pretty clear in this case. Strength and Constitution basically do all the same things. Concentration checks could become Wisdom- or Resolve-based, however. Manual is used for Ranged Attacks while Agility for Reflex saves and AC adjustments. Will Saves IMHO should become Resolve-based.
You could roll 4 stats, then tell the Player these are averages, and for each point they add to one sub-stat the subtract a point from its compliment.
Basing bonus HP off Fitness, bonus spells off Mentality and so forth might be an idea here. Grappling would tend to use Dexterity as a Primary Stat rather than a sub-stat. Effectively, you have 3 options for any Ability-modified roll.
Anyway, I'm personally not for slimming down the system in my game, but if I were to do it, that's how it might look.
FWIW,
Rez
Yeah, that looks good. I was thinking of the sub-abilities being active and re-active variations (or reflective or whatever in case of Wisdom) of the main stat and these seem to work along those lines. Mechanically, it could work out in an offensive/defensive split across the board instead of physical stats plus a handful of special offensive or defensive case-by-case stats. Resolve adds a nice save option specific to social effects like charms and enchantments too. Simple as four stats for players that don't want to tinker too much, complex as eight stats for someone who wants to go in depth. Avoids clunky averaging for derived stats too.
What do you think of basing HP on just Constitution instead of fitness? I know that goes against just about everything else I said, but I'm digging the active/re-active angle.
Thanks, Arakhor! I like that Reason and Knowledge split, but there's one of those nasty appearance stats again.
Hrm...I'm thinking somebody might have some goofy copyright or trademark claim on those terms as split stats though. Anyone know?
I removed a post. No need to make things personal.
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Maybe this is an argument to keep con and decouple con from some of the things it does? I'm just having trouble finding the specific character that you want to make who has all the high-str stuff and all of the low-con stuff.
Con-based Concentration really threw a wrench into both the mechanics and RP, but now it's based on level and caster stat in Pathfinder. Now, if there aren't any Con-based skills and the Fort saves get a lot fewer in higher level play, I'm not sure Con does all that much mechanically except for that HP bonus.
The thing about the high Str/low Con or vice versa is why would it be important to have a hero that's heroically strong and just kinda heroically tough? Most of these examples suggest someone with, say, a 16 Str and a 7 or 8 Con, but there aren't too many people that are going to roll that guy up and actually throw him on the front lines, expecting him to live long.
Sure, everybody here can give one or two character examples like that, but the tendency is a guy with an 18 Str and a 14 Con and that four points of difference is explained away as the guy having a glass jaw. That's a glass jaw for Super campaign maybe, but otherwise, it's game mechanics putting a ridiculous spin on role-play. With a Fitness stat and sub-stats, you at least have a general bar of fitness to go by.
It reminds me of another thread here where people were talking about how much of a dumbass the thief iconic was because she had something like a 10 or 11 Int. We should really get away from letting mechanics inform the narrative view like that, if we can.
It reminds me of another thread here where people were talking about how much of a dumbass the thief iconic was because she had something like a 10 or 11 Int. We should really get away from letting mechanics inform the narrative view like that, if we can.This seems to argue for scrapping stats entirely. Now, I'm personally a fan of dropping base statistics entirely and just rolling the contribution they would make into class/feat or advantage/skill expenditures, but that's not very D&D-like. But there you're stuck. D&D has str/dex/con/int/wis/cha because it's always had those stats. Once you agree that you don't need those six stats any more, why do you need any stats at all?
Roll the to-hit and damage bonus of high str into the classes that use high str (and likewise for all the other stats), and then just allow people to buy Being Awesome At Lifting And Carrying the same way that they buy the Endurance feat. Let people buy a pool of "boosting skills" and "boosting stat checks" feats (possibly with separate resources from their combat feats), tie stat checks to level/class the same way saves are, and you've got a workable system where people can make sickly, hardy, or fat characters to their heart's content without having to do something silly like make a fighter who can be one-shot.
I do like the idea of stats, it's something most people can tune into out-of-the-box. You can say your character has an 18 Str to a total non-player and once they ask, 'Is that good?' they have an idea of what's better and what sucks. +4 physical action modifier or a Fuzion sort of Strong trips them up though. I think the ideas of stats and levels have just wormed their way so deeply into, not just gaming culture, but general modern culture that it's hard to strip away the illusions for the sake of clarity and dynamic. One thing I wanted to ken out with this thread was how married people were to the D&D set, specifically, but I just can't tell from the feedback and it's a D&Dna family I'm asking anyhow.
I've also been thinking more, lately, about what could be tied to general character level over class levels, even just to clear up some of the multi-classing messes. Along the lines of the thread, that got me thinking, since Hp generation is basically a level-based re-active effect multiplier, why not throw in a level-based active effect multiplier that could work with more than spells? That way, depending on the available abilities, Str wouldn't lose it's weight against Con at higher levels. Of course, spell-casters may not be happy about losing a few dice off some of those 600dX spells.
The thief girl example was more about how some of the intentions and assumptions get twisted around based on how some of the stats weigh up against each other. Whoever rolled her up figured they'd give her an average humanoid intelligence, 10 or 11, but since Int is such a heavy stat, a lot of players look at her being 5 or 6 points behind the curve and figure she's dumber than a box of rocks. On the other hand, Str is a dump stat for a wizard, so nobody would claim a wizard with a 9 or 10 Str was at all a weakling. 12 is usually seen as seriously low for Con.
Because they address different things. You can be a scrappy little guy who isn't strong but never gets sick and can take a beating, or you can be a muscle-bound weight-lifter who is anemic and has a persistent case of the sniffles.Okay. Now, name a hero who's like that.
Constitution is a completely dumb stat in 3e because everyone just takes 14 con and is done with it. Characters who aren't tough enough to occasionally take a hit just aren't adventurers in 3e, at least not for very long.
Not eveyone.
My goup rolls their states so my wizards have a high INT,then high Con,then str and finally a decent charisma. dex and wis are the dump stats. My last 4 wizards have had a 17+ con starting out and by 10th lvl or so it was up to at least an 18 with improved toughness. I had as many if not more hp than the cleric and rouge in my group. My wizards rarely bother with magic missle when a crossbow bolt at low level has more damage potential, plus at low level 3rd or lower I can melle just as well as the non-fighter classes so why wouldnt I. BTW the method of creation is 4D6 drop the lowest no rerolls.
But you don't even need to explain that a fighter or a barbarian is strong, if you just roll that +4 to physical stuff into the fighter and barbarian classes. There's nothing about gaming culture or general modern culture that favors base stats from which the operating values are derived; most video games that aren't deliberate throwbacks have abandoned base stats for simply having players adjust the operating values directly (or not at all, leaving level the only measure of base values).
Hmmm...I don't, personally, know of any examples of video games showing the player the actual operating value, but I've been a little out of the mainstream loop in recent years. Could you throw me some examples?
Most of what I know is JRPGs like Shin Megami Tensei and the Gust games where you still have the base stat with derived operating values. SMT and Pokemon get pretty complex in this area with with stats pulling double duty providing derivations for both active operations as well modifiers for the new base stats of combined monsters.
I think the current game culture caught on to the idea of base stats only five to ten years ago, they've been growing to like them over that time and from now on, I think it's sort of a coin flip whether people might gravitate towards cutting out more middleman operations or piling more functions and derivations onto the bases. More likely, you'll just have two camps burrowing further into their own design concepts. That's just my personal prediction, though.
I don't see the value of having a stat that says that Fred is more agile than Barry, if Barry can have higher dex skill mods and a higher reflex save and initiative modifier despite this. (Fred is a plate-wearing paladin with high dex; Barry is a rogue with Improved Initiative.) If the only way that Barry is more dextrous is that Barry is more resistant to dexterity damage, then the value of base stats for like-to-like comparison is fundamentally broken.
There are other issues with stats: wisdom lumps a bunch of random junk together strength has almost nothing to do with athleticism other than Climb and Swim checks, straight stat checks are almost completely useless, and so on. But those are more warts of 3e than of base stats from which you derive operating stats.
As long as the stats are pulling their weight in multiple areas, then there's a use for them. Most of the 3.x derivatives work off only the modifier, so the stats themselves are a little useless. You've had some attempts to play off the bases more with death at -Con score or Con + Blah = static Hp and you have carrying capacities no one pays attention to, but I guess that's all more justification than reason. Honestly, I think the 3.x stats and the derived modifiers are a decent balance between streamlining for ease of use and complexity for table look-ups and book sales. If the physical and mental stat sets could, at least, use consistent attack mechanics, that would already be a huge improvement to the system. But then you piss off everyone who digs the all-in mechanics of choose your own spell-stat though.
Haha, your Fred and Barry example is edging into that nature vs. nurture territory. I think cutting out character stats or skills completely would make game sense, but then nature or nurture, respectively, no longer exists in the game world. It's the same way the idea of a GM or RaW can appeal to some people who believe in some sort of divine architect and 'players running the game' offends them to their very core. There's a lot of gaming conventions I just chalk up to human nature caveat whether the mechanics work or not. Now certain racial stat adjustments, on the other hand, may be worth challenging as a eugenics throwback, but people love their Tolkien.
The only thing I could really think is that if hit points were the only physical effect scale, there would be too much weight on a combined Strength Constitution stat and the value of others would be that much more diminished.
This +9. Strength is an incredibly powerful stat as it is. It affects your attack roll, grapple, trip, disarm, damage, climb, etc. You don't need to make Strength anymore powerful than it already is.
Personally, I think Strength should be taken down a few notches. For example, one of the few things that I like about 4E is that abilities which require endurance, like grapple, are now based on Constitution. I think it evens things out just a little.
Making the stats even more complicated or tying them to even more arcane stuff doesn't solve things at all, because most of that stuff comes up rarely or not at all. If you added three different rarely-used things on par with "resistant to dexterity damage," that doesn't make Fred feel more agile than Barry.
Right, I wasn't suggesting that. To me, there's a problem with choosing the stat that fuels magic attacks, not to mention the defensive stats, Con, Wis and Dex, are static. It over-complicates how many things are balanced on the number and it undermines the worth of the stat's purpose as character attribute.
But if Charisma determined attack ability, Intelligence determined the power of effect and Wisdom served as a mental health attribute, that reflects the way physical attacks work, so gameplay is streamlined better and it reduces mental stats becoming internally overweighted to a character. As to the 'realism' of that set-up, debate is the best example of a mental attack that we have. You present an argument based on charisma, a badly worded argument isn't even worth a response. The power of that argument is constructed from your knowledge and reasoning abilities, nonsense just isn't effective. Finally the defender weighs the attack against his personal beliefs and sensibilities. The idea that a magical attack would work differently is akin to the idea of a high Constitution fueling a physical attack or that dodging a blow may cause damage to your attacker because you're awesome at not getting hit.
This +9. Strength is an incredibly powerful stat as it is. It affects your attack roll, grapple, trip, disarm, damage, climb, etc. You don't need to make Strength anymore powerful than it already is.
Personally, I think Strength should be taken down a few notches. For example, one of the few things that I like about 4E is that abilities which require endurance, like grapple, are now based on Constitution. I think it evens things out just a little.
That's assuming a system that uses Strength to hit though. Part of the reason for this discussion was scoping out the viability of lumping together Str and Con in a Dex to hit system. Sooo...Dex to hit would help alleviate a lot of the weight on Str's shoulders and makes more sense.
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You get lots of characters and people who are tough but not strong. But where's an example of a hero who's strong but not tough? Hell, where's an example of a fantasy hero who's not tough?
Achilles. Strong as hell, great warrior, but truly had one glaring weakness in his makeup.
Rincewind. Not tough by any stretch, but not a weakling in the classic sense.
Samson. Stronger than pretty much anyone, but shave his head and he's toast.