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I feel most people are likely going to be aware of the alternative scores variant rule, but for those that aren't aware of its existance, its a variant rule that changes the current six attributes to Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Charisma, Wisdom, and Intelligence, with Constitution being merged into Strength and Charisma applying to Will saves. I think its widely accepted that this variant rule solves a few problems (it takes an arguably boring attribute like Constitution and merges it with Strength that, while strong on its own, its arguably limited in its scope, plus make Charisma not an automatic dump stat for non-Charisma based characters) but creates new problems as well (it makes Agility take the place of Constitution since it mostly applies to defenses and that's it) which kinda defeats the purpose of the variant rule in the first place since we pretty much end up in the same place as before.
I had an off-topic discusión on another thread about how the six attributes could change in a future edition, so I thought about it more in-depth and...what would be the stat distribution most people would want ina future edition or as a new variant to replace the alternative score variant rule?
I'll provide a few examples I came up with, but I would want to see what the community thinks about it too.
I also want to note that this is more like a thought experiment than something I'm seriously expecting to happen, so have fun with it.
5 Attributes; Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma: I think this would be the simplest one to implement to PF2e since it pretty much takes the good parts about the alternative scores variant rule (merge Constitution into Strength, use Charisma for Will saves) while keeping stuff like the Dexterity/Agility split out. I ironically think this one would be more of a buff for Dexterity than Strength since it would allow them easily get +4 Dex and +3 Str with ease (explaining why the Dexterity/Agility split was possybly added to the variant rule) but its also huge buff for Strength-based characters too and specially for those with access to heavy armor and the bulwark trait because they can get a decent mental attribute modifier for stuff like skills, Perception, or Will saves.
4 Attributes; Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma: This one is a follow-up of the previous one but also merging Wisdom into Intelligence too. I think its agreed upon the benefits of a high Intelligence modifier are arguably the weakest in the system since languanges rarely have an impact on most campaigns and a few additional trained skills barely matters when its so easy to cover the basic skills you actually want without it with ease. This change would also make Intelligence the universal RK attribute again like in older editions since Nature and Religión would now be Int-based too. As I said in the thread I mentioned earlier, these 4 attributes also have some nice symmetry with Fortitude, Reflex, Will, and Perception since each applies to one of them. A simpler variant of this, well, variant could made by decoupling Strength into Strength and Constitution again while keeping Charisma being used for Will saves if people would think both changes would be too much.
0 Attributes; proficiencies take their place: This one would certainly require the biggest overhaul to the system since it would require not only to change the math of the system but possybly adding more in-between proficiency tiers to have a bit more granularity. It would also probably require the introduction of a new system to kinda replicate the role that attributes used to have, which is to glance at the attributes of a PC or monsters and immediately get an idea of what they are all about in general terms. In the case of PCs, backgrounds will likely need to be buffed with something that makes you better at certain skill over others, like a reroll, auto-scaling proficiency, or free access to certain line of skill feats over the course of your career. I find this proposal to be the most likely one for a future edition, since merging or removing certain attributes while keeping others is always going to feel weird for some, so ditching them entirely is probably the easiest and best thing to do.
I'm curious to see what people think about the possibility of attributes changing in the future.
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I think I would be fine with Int if it just had a more tangible combat skill action tied to it other than RK.
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IMO if intelligence bonus were be able to increase the number of skills that you increase with Skill Increases this would make intelligence way more interesting keeping these high intelligence characters so skillful like they were during level 1 and 2 without break the game. What will happen is that high intelligence characters would be skill monkeys like rogues and investigators but these two still more skillful due same reason and due access to more skill feats.
This also a thing that anyone can homebrew easily without big consequences for the game balance beyond the party have higher chances to pass in different skill checks. However, this already happens when a party is balanced with 4 different key stat characters.
4 Attributes; Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma: This one is a follow-up of the previous one but also merging Wisdom into Intelligence too. I think its agreed upon the benefits of a high Intelligence modifier are arguably the weakest in the system since languanges rarely have an impact on most campaigns and a few additional trained skills barely matters when its so easy to cover the basic skills you actually want without it with ease. This change would also make Intelligence the universal RK attribute again like in older editions since Nature and Religión would now be Int-based too. As I said in the thread I mentioned earlier, these 4 attributes also have some nice symmetry with Fortitude, Reflex, Will, and Perception since each applies to one of them. A simpler variant of this, well, variant could made by decoupling Strength into Strength and Constitution again while keeping Charisma being used for Will saves if people would think both changes would be too much.
This looks like DC20 playtest stats.
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4 Attributes; Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma: This one is a follow-up of the previous one but also merging Wisdom into Intelligence too. I think its agreed upon the benefits of a high Intelligence modifier are arguably the weakest in the system since languanges rarely have an impact on most campaigns and a few additional trained skills barely matters when its so easy to cover the basic skills you actually want without it with ease. This change would also make Intelligence the universal RK attribute again like in older editions since Nature and Religión would now be Int-based too. As I said in the thread I mentioned earlier, these 4 attributes also have some nice symmetry with Fortitude, Reflex, Will, and Perception since each applies to one of them. A simpler variant of this, well, variant could made by decoupling Strength into Strength and Constitution again while keeping Charisma being used for Will saves if people would think both changes would be too much.
I really like this a lot with a couple of tweaks:
1. I'd use the name "Wisdom" instead of "Intelligence". Purely personal preference, but I find "Intelligence" is a loaded term in some circles and people take it to mean a lot of different things. Mechanically it's as you describe and moving Will to Charisma makes this an interesting split.
2. HP doesn't scale off an ability score at all. In addition to everything else STR is doing here, having it also boost HP basically means a "low STR character" can't really exist without it being extremely fragile. I don't like that because it's an interesting kind of character to play as it stands, but mechanically this makes armor proficiency really strong because getting your AC from armor (and thus STR) means you're also getting more HP than if you get your AC from DEX (and you still need STR for HP). This is going to make archetypes that grant armor proficiency even better than they already are.
So not scaling HP off STR leaves it and DEX pretty competitive IMO.
This looks like DC20 playtest stats.
I didn't know that, but when trying to solve the same problems folks will often come to the same solution. :)
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You are basically arguing to add Constitution into Strength, and to split Wisdom between Intelligence and Charisma. For sure it can work.
I don't think it is an important part of the game to simplify. It is very well known amongst gamers and while its not perfect I can't see that it makes enough difference to want to change.
I prefer to keep attributes as they help me describe my character and set my expectations about how they will play.
I've suggested in the past to "simplify" down to three ability/attribute scores: Body (merge Strength and Constitution), Energy (merge Dexterity and Charisma), and Mind (merge Intelligence and Wisdom). This would 1) align each of the new scores with a saving throw (Body to Fortitude, Energy to Reflex, and Mind to Will) so as to severely reduce the motivation for a "dump stat," 2) allow differentiation between the strong/tough (Body) and nimble/trickster (Energy) tropes, and 3) possibly allow casters to more easily separated by prepared (Mind)/spontaneous (Energy) instead of being all over the place.
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I'd use the name "Wisdom" instead of "Intelligence". Purely personal preference, but I find "Intelligence" is a loaded term in some circles and people take it to mean a lot of different things. Mechanically it's as you describe and moving Will to Charisma makes this an interesting split.
Oh, I'm using the current names for ease of reference. I would probably use something like "Insight" to describe both Intelligence and Wisdom.
2. HP doesn't scale off an ability score at all. In addition to everything else STR is doing here, having it also boost HP basically means a "low STR character" can't really exist without it being extremely fragile. I don't like that because it's an interesting kind of character to play as it stands, but mechanically this makes armor proficiency really strong because getting your AC from armor (and thus STR) means you're also getting more HP than if you get your AC from DEX (and you still need STR for HP). This is going to make archetypes that grant armor proficiency even better than they already are.
Funnily enough, I thought I wrote this but its seems I didn't lol. Yeah, it would be for the better if Strength didn't contribute to your HP in such a system.
I've suggested in the past to "simplify" down to three ability/attribute scores: Body (merge Strength and Constitution), Energy (merge Dexterity and Charisma), and Mind (merge Intelligence and Wisdom). This would 1) align each of the new scores with a saving throw (Body to Fortitude, Energy to Reflex, and Mind to Will) so as to severely reduce the motivation for a "dump stat," 2) allow differentiation between the strong/tough (Body) and nimble/trickster (Energy) tropes, and 3) possibly allow casters to more easily separated by prepared (Mind)/spontaneous (Energy) instead of being all over the place.
Well, that's pretty much my 4 stat proposal except for the names. While writting this post I thought about a 3 attribute variant too, but when I thought were to put Perception I wasn't sure how to do it. I was thinking about a Fortitude / Reflex / Will split kinda similar to your Body / Mind / Energy or Spirit idea, to which Perception likely would be baked into Will. This would mean Will would grant more skill increases, a bonus to Will saves, a bonus to all mental skills, spell DCs and spell attack rolls, and Perception. In your proposal, Mind wouldn't be as strong as in mine but it would still be a bit too much IMO.
IMO if intelligence bonus were be able to increase the number of skills that you increase with Skill Increases this would make intelligence way more interesting keeping these high intelligence characters so skillful like they were during level 1 and 2 without break the game. What will happen is that high intelligence characters would be skill monkeys like rogues and investigators but these two still more skillful due same reason and due access to more skill feats.
I feel this is a though thing to balance. I don't know you but while playing a rogue or investigator I often struggle to choose which skill to take increases in after the first few, and the possibility of having a rogue with two times or three times the amount of skill increases kinda dreads me (not to mention that you are likely going to run out of skills to increase really fast too). I feel an extra skill feat per modifier would be much more appropiate and more balanced.
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I really don't like going in the direction of less core attributes.
I would rather see slight tweaks to better balance the existing 6.
Just to add. There are a lot of classes and there will be more. I like the idea that there can be space to make them feel different through the attributes they utilize like with kineticist utilizing constitution for example.
Having no attributes is a different beast as all together from just moving to less attributes.
A system with no core attributes can feel as though it has no polish leaving the mechanical parts more bare and meaningless.
If I were doing attributes, how would I change them? So many different games have played around with this. I'd have to think about what a stat should affect.
Strength: Melee damage. Grappling. Carrying capacity. Some kind of physical damage resistance as muscle provides protection to physical attack.
Dexterity: Ranged damage as I think where you place the hit is far more important than how hard you hit for ranged.
Melee and ranged attack rolls. I've never understood why strength is used for hit rolls when in no fighting I've ever seen does strength have much to do with strength. It has a lot to do with how much damage you do if it you hit, but not actually landing the hit.
AC for dodging.
Reflex saves
Constitution: Hit points. Endurance. Fort saves.
Intelligence: Skill points. Additional skill proficiency increases. Can replace Dex for Reflex saves as reacting mentally to an AOE attack calculating movement. Arcane spell damage.
Wisdom: Will saves. Perception. Divine spell damage.
Charisma: Spell damage for charisma casters. Social skills. Can replace will saves as your ego and force of personality help you resist mental attack.
That's some of the direction I would take stats. I like more meaningful caster stats for damage. I'd like to move away from strength for to hit.
Ever since I started lifting weights a long time and becoming very strong, I learned strength does very little to make you a more accurate striker. It does a great deal for grappling where once you've got a hold of someone, you can control them. The physical size muscle adds is protective. It's much, much harder to hurt someone that is heavily muscled, but muscle does little for cardiovascular endurance for movement. In fact, heavier muscle is more taxing on energy systems including the cardiovascular system to move around.
That's why I'd like to see strength for the heavy armor as PF2 did, but also providing protective resistance against physical damage to balance it against dexterity for attack avoidance.
That's some of the direction I would move the game for stats.
If I were doing attributes, how would I change them? So many different games have played around with this. I'd have to think about what a stat should affect.
Strength: Melee damage. Grappling. Carrying capacity. Some kind of physical damage resistance as muscle provides protection to physical attack.
Dexterity: Ranged damage as I think where you place the hit is far more important than how hard you hit for ranged.
Melee and ranged attack rolls. I've never understood why strength is used for hit rolls when in no fighting I've ever seen does strength have much to do with strength. It has a lot to do with how much damage you do if it you hit, but not actually landing the hit.
AC for dodging.
Reflex saves
Constitution: Hit points. Endurance. Fort saves.
Intelligence: Skill points. Additional skill proficiency increases. Can replace Dex for Reflex saves as reacting mentally to an AOE attack calculating movement. Arcane spell damage.
Wisdom: Will saves. Perception. Divine spell damage.
Charisma: Spell damage for charisma casters. Social skills. Can replace will saves as your ego and force of personality help you resist mental attack.
That's some of the direction I would take stats. I like more meaningful caster stats for damage. I'd like to move away from strength for to hit.
Ever since I started lifting weights a long time and becoming very strong, I learned strength does very little to make you a more accurate striker. It does a great deal for grappling where once you've got a hold of someone, you can control them. The physical size muscle adds is protective. It's much, much harder to hurt someone that is heavily muscled, but muscle does little for cardiovascular endurance for movement. In fact, heavier muscle is more taxing on energy systems including the cardiovascular system to move around.
That's why I'd like to see strength for the heavy armor as PF2 did, but also providing protective resistance against physical damage to balance it against dexterity for attack...
By that line of thought you might need to have strength and constitution to really use heavy armor and shields. Shields are exhausting to use as they are meant to be used and would require cardio and strength.
By that line of thought you might need to have strength and constitution to really use heavy armor and shields. Shields are exhausting to use as they are meant to be used and would require cardio and strength.
and bows of any significant poundage to actually deal damage, particularly to armored targets, would requires a whole hell of a lot of strength... Lol
Bows are not realistic in this game anyway. It is far harder to fire a real English longbow with accuracy. The shortbow is far easier to fire, but it doesn't have a hard pull. Any bow with a sufficiently difficult pull would be heard to use with any quickness.
That's why for fantasy, it should be about where you place the shot. Huge muscle guys in fantasy books and movies are not the best archers.
This is a fantasy simulation. That's why I kept the rules real loose.
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By that line of thought you might need to have strength and constitution to really use heavy armor and shields. Shields are exhausting to use as they are meant to be used and would require cardio and strength.and bows of any significant poundage to actually deal damage, particularly to armored targets, would requires a whole hell of a lot of strength... Lol
That's the entire idea behind the Propulsive trait... Instead of gating it behind needing to spend extra money for a specific value the way 3.x/PF1 did.
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Maybe, attributes could be tied to four magic traditions. Like, Mind (Intelligence), Soul (Wisdom + Charisma), Matter (Strength + Constitution) and Life (Dexterity???).
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Oo, I like this discussion!
My take on this is: my ideal system would involve no attributes at all, but that is likely to only happen in 3e. I don't want attributes because nearly everything they do is either covered by proficiencies already or taken for granted (e.g. HP from Constitution), and taking those out would simplify character-building while taking out a lot of restrictions. I also think it could actually help simplify monster stat blocks by quite a bit, and if we're keeping the big 3 saves those could be used as a direct indicator of whether a monster's brawny, agile, or smart. However, I don't think it's really possible to take attributes out of 2e's current math without creating more disruption than would be worth it, so that's something to wait until the next edition.
As for 2e, and for similar reasons, I don't know how much can change with current attributes without inducing significant amounts of disruption. Merging Constitution into Strength turns Strength into a mega-stat that everyone will want to pick and end up with meaty melee attacks in the process, and although the 4-attribute version presented in the OP would look really clean, it also means either everyone would be able to boost every attribute if we keep the same number of attribute boosts as now, or a great deal many characters would end up having no real knowledge skills and poor Perception when building towards their defenses. For all its imperfections, the current system of attributes means every character can boost their defenses and still have room for a subset of skills and other benefits, which in my opinion lets characters feel complete.
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I'm not a fan of no attributes. Call of Cthulhu does something weird where you have your main attributes that generate some stats, but don't impact your skills. You could play an athlete with amazing DEX, but your Jump skill would be just as good as anyone else's. That feels weird to me.
While it's very easy to make Strength govern both damage and HP, like others have pointed out, I feel that would make other stats obsolete for martials. If it governs both their damage output and their HP, they don't need anything else. And conversely, any d6 caster investing in HP would suddenly be really good at punching as well.
Ideally, I think I'd go more MMO-like with armour, with not just giving penalties for not having the minimum STR investment, but having a STR requirement. I think it wouldn't work as you'd need a more granular division, and maybe more armour types (or more "tiers" within the same type). But this would give Strength more importance than just the "attack stat," especially over time. You'd need to invest in Strength, otherwise your AC will fall behind.
Right now, all types of armour/DEX combinations give the same AC equivalent, with heavy armour being 1 ahead. With ideal stat distributions, a Rogue in light armour and a Fighter in medium armour have the same AC. With a STR requirement, you'd get that "MMO effect" where people in medium armour get less damage than those in light armour. This obviously won't work with the current crit rules, but I'd like to see more of a difference in AC in the game. It just feels so.. homogenous.
I'm tinkering around with a homebrew where INT is your default magic attack stat and WIS is your default magic defense stat. It does a few interesting things, where magic users aren't by default at least decent at Will saves. I've removed Expert proficiency in Will saves from spellcasters by default, so now you can have a magic user who has a crap Will save. And now you have a "physical tank" and a "magical tank" who can take hits in different situations, depending on the enemies. One targets AC and Fort saves, the other targets Will saves.
Heck, the way I've set this up it's interesting how you don't have the "class familiarity" anymore: before, you could guess that a Rogue-type character would have great Reflex, but poor Will saves. That wouldn't necessarily be the case in my homebrew, where a speedy character can also have a decent Fort or Will save.
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I think this is a case of "if it isn't broke, don't fix it."
I strongly feel that less attributes would only serve to make characters more homogeneous and less interesting.
I also think that the current terminology is quite clear in describing a character's various qualities. Many of the alternative names proposed above would require more explanation to come with them as they don't strike me as being as intuitively appropriate.
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IMO if intelligence bonus were be able to increase the number of skills that you increase with Skill Increases this would make intelligence way more interesting keeping these high intelligence characters so skillful like they were during level 1 and 2 without break the game. What will happen is that high intelligence characters would be skill monkeys like rogues and investigators but these two still more skillful due same reason and due access to more skill feats.
This was about to be my suggestion. If having +1 int gave you an additional skill that would increase...up to master only maybe and maybe a few additional skill feats increasing int could be attractive to classes outside those that require INT for their abilities to function. And by limiting the proficiency increases from INT to master instead of legendary and by controlling the number of additional skill feats we can make it interesting and useful, without eradicating the niche of the rogue as "good at skills". But also I'm not sure how much that niche needs protecting since rogues are good at combat in this edition and are good at skills, they could probably stand to not be the undisputed skill king while still being good at skills.
Edit: A little more thought:
Maybe a +1 int allows you to select 1 skill that will automatically increase to expert proficiency at 3rd level, increase to master at 7th level.
And maybe a +2/+3 int gets you a second skill that does the same.
And a +4/5 int gets 3rd skill, a +6 int gets you a 4th.
And maybe an extra skill feat every time you get the bonus proficiency increase as well.
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This was about to be my suggestion. If having +1 int gave you an additional skill that would increase...up to master only maybe and maybe a few additional skill feats increasing int could be attractive to classes outside those that require INT for their abilities to function. And by limiting the proficiency increases from INT to master instead of legendary and by controlling the number of additional skill feats we can make it interesting and useful, without eradicating the niche of the rogue as "good at skills". But also I'm not sure how much that niche needs protecting since rogues are good at combat in this edition and are good at skills, they could probably stand to not be the undisputed skill king while still being good at skills.
Investigator needs "being good at skills" niche protection more than Rogue does, IMO. But it's an interesting idea for sure. Even if extra INT only gave you an expert skill it would still be a nice boost since the difference between expert and trained isn't nothing (and it enables a lot of skill feat options).
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Investigator needs "being good at skills" niche protection more than Rogue does, IMO. But it's an interesting idea for sure. Even if extra INT only gave you an expert skill it would still be a nice boost since the difference between expert and trained isn't nothing (and it enables a lot of skill feat options).
This was about to be my suggestion. If having +1 int gave you an additional skill that would increase...up to master only maybe and maybe a few additional skill feats increasing int could be attractive to classes outside those that require INT for their abilities to function. And by limiting the proficiency increases from INT to master instead of legendary and by controlling the number of additional skill feats we can make it interesting and useful, without eradicating the niche of the rogue as "good at skills". But also I'm not sure how much that niche needs protecting since rogues are good at combat in this edition and are good at skills, they could probably stand to not be the undisputed skill king while still being good at skills.
I agree you're right that Investigator needs something.
Since Invesigator is intelligence based, it would get the full benefit of whatever we propose though. What Investigator actually needs is a better class chassis to utilize its INT. The core mechanic of devise a stratagem probably just needs to be revised.
Possibly letting the player choose to replace the roll instead of requiring it. Possibly letting the character always use INT instead of dex or strength (with the appropriate weapon types) regardless of whether they've used devise a stratagem. And possibly letting devise a stratagem uses per turn scale. Maybe let it scale up to 3 rolls they can bank per turn. And modify the Skill Stratagem to not restrict melee attacks, allowing you to reach a point where you could have 3 roll substitutions, choosing between attack or skill checks as desired. It could allow you to do things like attack twice and then intimidate, and kind of have a fortune effect thing going on allowing you to choose your rolls. Maybe it is a fortune effect, and Devise A Stratagem allows you to roll twice and take the better up to 3 times per round. And could be used as a reaction against someone already targeted by devise a stratagem that round. And the action cost of devise a stratagem would need to be changed to 1 action if not someone you're aware of that could answer questions to your investigation, free if they are, or free if they've been targeted this round or last by Devise A Stratagem.
Anyways, the Investigator's problem is that its core mechanic is really hard to use.
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I think this is a case of “if it isn't broke, don't fix it.”
I strongly feel that less attributes would only serve to make characters more homogeneous and less interesting.
I also think that the current terminology is quite clear in describing a character's various qualities. Many of the alternative names proposed above would require more explanation to come with them as they don't strike me as being as intuitively appropriate.
The problem is that it was always broken since the first version of D&D. PF2e made it less broken, but it keeps the essence of the issue.
Constitution, still a too passive attribute that really matters due HP increase.
Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma are conceptually confusing. Intelligence represents logical reasoning, memory and learn capacity. Wisdom represents intuition, force of will and good/common sense. Charisma represents general beauty, magnetic personality, and ego/personality power. But logical reasoning (int) and good/common sense (wiz) are too closer, because most good/common sense comes from experience and learning and at some point reasonable. While force of will and ego/personality power are confusing in their definitions.
This creates some issues sometimes for GM to decide what to use in some edge cases or creates questions like we had during psychic and thaumaturge playtests like “why psychics can't use wisdom representing their will power but can use intelligence or charisma?” or “why thaumaturges are charisma based instead or intelligence or wisdom based once that use of the logic or will power makes more sense for many of its abilities?”.
So this isn't a case of a thing that isn't broke. But a broke thing that designers choose to ignore or over-abstract to keep the things going and familiar with the legacy attributes. Just remember that many int skills were changed to wis even with this doesn't really make sense only to balance the attributes.
Maybe, depending on how successful DC20 would be compression the 6 attributes in 4 we could see a PF3 using this same idea.
Also, I completely disagree that fewer attributes makes characters more homogeneous and less interesting or that more attributes makes them more different or interesting. This depended on only of how the attributes will be used and could be invested by other mechanics of the game.
Also, I completely disagree that fewer attributes makes characters more homogeneous and less interesting or that more attributes makes them more different or interesting. This depended on only of how the attributes will be used and could be invested by other mechanics of the game.
Good point. One of the things that happens right now is because some ability scores are just totally irrelevant to a bunch of classes, characters ignore/dump those ones with basically zero consequence. INT is the most popular one, but if you're not the one in the party talking, dumping CHA costs you almost nothing and if you don't have armor proficiency or use melee weapons, STR only really impacts carrying capacity (which if you're not wearing armor or using weapons isn't that big a deal).
Compressing it down to 4 and having all of them run something important means doing that "I'm really bad at something" character (which is a fun thing to do) has no easy answer. You're giving up something that actually matters. There are no dump stats in that system.
Well, it's also important to remember that there's not really an "I'm bad at this or dumping" in PF2. You can voluntarily lower stats, but you get nothing in return. So you get characters that are "average" at something and stay that way, you never have penalties on your ability scores.
Not that it changes your analysis in any way, just wanted to point out that "dump" stats used to mean "because I'll dump my lowest rolled score" or "I'll dump int so I can use those points to buy a better score (in point buy)".
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Ideally, I think I'd go more MMO-like with armour, with not just giving penalties for not having the minimum STR investment, but having a STR requirement.
I would love for PF3e to ditch the different proficiencies for each type of weapon or armor in favor of something closer to stat prerequisites for each of them. The difference between each of the armor types is already kind of meaningless in PF2e since someone with a high Dex isn't going to take medium or heavy and someone with a high Str isn't going to take light armor, and since with the exception of heavy armor they end up giving the same AC numbers, I would rather see this handled by stat prerequisites than different proficiencies for each of them. For example, most of the current light armors could have a Str requirement of +1, the medium armors a requirement of +2 or +3, and the heavy armors a requirement of +4 or higher. If a caster is willing to put enough attribute boosts into Strength to use whatever piece of armor, I think its perfectly fine. After all, a caster can already take Armor Training for effectively the same benefit.
In regards to weapons, the design of simple / martial / advanced is vestigial now that there aren't "half-martials" in PF2e like the rogue used to be in 3.X / PF1e and now even bards can have access to martial weapons too. I would really love for a similar approach to what I described with armor would be applied to weapons too, with some weapons like advanced weapons probably having both Str and Dex requirements if necessary. Again, in PF2e casters don't really have a reason to gish other than personal preference, so if a caster takes attribute boosts to become proficient in a few weapons it wouldn't break anything. And this is talking about how these changes would make a difference in PF2e. Assuming PF3e is designed with this in mind from the get go, then less unforeseen cases would appear in such a system.
Well, it's also important to remember that there's not really an "I'm bad at this or dumping" in PF2. You can voluntarily lower stats, but you get nothing in return. So you get characters that are "average" at something and stay that way, you never have penalties on your ability scores.
Not that it changes your analysis in any way, just wanted to point out that "dump" stats used to mean "because I'll dump my lowest rolled score" or "I'll dump int so I can use those points to buy a better score (in point buy)".
For the average Str fighter, its very likely that all your attribute boosts are going into Str, Dex, Con, and Wis. Str governs your attack an damage, Dex governs Reflex, Con governs HP and Fortitude, and Wis governs Will and Perception. For such a character, Int and Cha at +0 are dump stats because you didn't bothered with them at all.
And this is one example. All character builds have at least one or two stats they aren't going to be bothered with. Those are dumps stats.
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Well, it's also important to remember that there's not really an "I'm bad at this or dumping" in PF2. You can voluntarily lower stats, but you get nothing in return. So you get characters that are "average" at something and stay that way, you never have penalties on your ability scores.
Not that it changes your analysis in any way, just wanted to point out that "dump" stats used to mean "because I'll dump my lowest rolled score" or "I'll dump int so I can use those points to buy a better score (in point buy)".
For the average Str fighter, its very likely that all your attribute boosts are going into Str, Dex, Con, and Wis. Str governs your attack an damage, Dex governs Reflex, Con governs HP and Fortitude, and Wis governs Will and Perception. For such a character, Int and Cha at +0 are dump stats because you didn't bothered with them at all.
And this is one example. All character builds have at least one or two stats they aren't going to be bothered with. Those are dumps stats.
I guess you missed my point, I know what dump stats are, and historically why they were called that.
My point was, they're not really dump stats in PF2. Nothing is a "dump" stat anymore. But you do have stats you don't bother increasing.
It's analogous, and arrives at a very similar result but to me there is a distinction.
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For me, the biggest annoyance with attributes is when I want to archetype into something and it hinges on attributes I can't really afford to boost: as a Wizard, for instance, I can't easily archetype into a Sorcerer even though that sort of thematic combination would easily make sense. It's not really a balance thing either, because the Sorcerer archetype doesn't provide any greater benefits than, say, a Psychic or Witch multiclass, nor is it a niche protection thing given that all of these are spellcasters and two of them let you choose your spellcasting tradition. On a more subtle level, there are also build options that hinge on specific skills that will remain somewhat mediocre even if you commit skill increases to them, so even if you do build your character to be good at something, they still don't have that much incentive to commit more to that thing. In all cases, the end result is less build diversity overall without any real gain, all to accommodate what I find to be a legacy mechanic from Pathfinder's D&D roots. Break down this barrier, and characters would have a lot more build freedom while still maintaining niche protection.
Another subtle problem I've noticed is just how much certain classes have to bend over backwards to accommodate certain attributes: the Investigator for instance makes an entire meal out of using your Intelligence for your attack roll, and as a result the class feels a bit math-y and lacking in other standout features in my opinion. The Inventor needs a Barbarian-style damage steroid to kludge Intelligence into their combat ability, and Starfinder's Soldier similarly needs to include a whole lot of stat converters to make Constitution work as their key attribute. If classes didn't have to make their key attribute work every time, they'd have a lot more room to do things that are actually interesting. Even when it comes to armor, simply making armor types a sliding scale between raw defense and mobility would help differentiate characters a lot more than now, where your lightly-armored types would be able to move around a lot better while being more vulnerable to hits.
And while I do maintain that removing attributes in PF2e is almost certainly more trouble than it's worth, one way to potentially go about it could be to also take out "mandatory" item bonuses and instead have several extra proficiency ranks that would capture the 0-10 gap in modifier that comes from the sum of attribute and item bonuses. A great deal many benefits would have to be reallocated into classes themselves, and they'd probably need more skill increases with rank requirements for certain feats adjusted accordingly, but it could be one way of taking out attributes while respecting the game's overall core math, albeit in somewhat more prescriptive form.
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Tying extra skill increases to intelligence would BE easier to balance if they lowered the proficiency bonuses to +1 as they originally planned in the PF2e play test, and have mentioned trying again for PF3.
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I still feel like a +1 skill increase is too little to feel like an actual increase. Unless there's more ranks of proficiency so you could still climb that ladder faster. But at that point, you're back to 1e's skill points.
I do miss skill points, though. Felt much more rewarding than 2e's "which singular skill will I get better at?" every two levels.
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In my homebrew I've tied Charisma to hit points. Your force of personality is your vitality as well. Obviously traditional Charisma-casters wouldn't work, but flavourfully it makes a lot of sense, and fixes both problems of CON being a single-interest stat and CHA being a dump stat. Everyone will naturally want at least some Charisma, and face-characters get a boost out of it as well.
As said though, that would mean you'd have to move Sorcerers and such over to a different casting stat. Not sure if it would break things if they'd get more HP than Wizards, but it feels like an arbitrary buff to give.
I still feel like a +1 skill increase is too little to feel like an actual increase. Unless there's more ranks of proficiency so you could still climb that ladder faster.
With the caveats of course that there's still caps at certain levels. It's just that it's such a difficult line to walk between the tight math of 2e and the absolute bonkers way you could boost skills in 1e. Like, now I believe the bandwith of a skill check is 2 (so if the standard DC for level 1 is 15, an average check could be between 14-16). If that band increases to 4 (with the expectation that focused PCs will be around average), you could give players more bonuses without that absolute numbers madness 1e had.
Alternatively, some kind of diminishing returns, like partial boosts past your first investment. At level 1 you could be Trained for a +2, at level 2 you could be Trained+ for a +3 (one partial boost per proficiency level). And same for Expert, Master, and so on. a character maxing Diplomacy at every opportunity would in the end be +4 better than in the current system, but that'd still feel like a proper investment, as well as a decent sacrifice. That +4 came at the expense of 4 boosts in other skills. Would be hell to track, though.
The problem is that it was always broken since the first version of D&D. PF2e made it less broken, but it keeps the essence of the issue.I think this is a case of “if it isn't broke, don't fix it.”
I strongly feel that less attributes would only serve to make characters more homogeneous and less interesting.
I also think that the current terminology is quite clear in describing a character's various qualities. Many of the alternative names proposed above would require more explanation to come with them as they don't strike me as being as intuitively appropriate.
Broken is too strong a term.
Constitution, still a too passive attribute that really matters due HP increase.
Not so. Fortitude is an important defence verses grapples and many spell effects. It could easily matter for a few more things if the designers allowed it to.
Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma are conceptually confusing.
No. Just Intelligence vs Wisdom is. If they just renamed Wisdom to Perception most of the confusion would go away.
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I mainly have a problem with Constitution for the same reasons YuriP mentions.
Its an attribute that only contributes to defenses and that doesn't have any skills to its name, but at the same time its one that you can't dump because it contributes to the most important defense in the game (HP) and arguably the most important save as well (Fortitude). Dexterity and Wisdom are similar in this regard but not to the same extent, mostly because there's ways around a low Reflex modifier with stuff like the bulwark trait and most of the effects that target Reflex usually only deal damage, and in the case of Wisdom, Perception is usually a check that all party members make at the same time, so even if you roll low there's still at least other 2 or 3 party members that are making the check as well. Will saves are certainly nasty too, but most of the effects that are "if you succed at this check, you crit succeed" that a ton of ancestries have usually involve Will saves, while those kind of effects but for Fortitude are usually for poison and diseases.
I also personally don't like attributes not contributing to your defenses. Strength gets a pass because it contributes to damage, but Intelligence and Charisma are so easy to dump for certain classes that it kinda feels bad not do so. That's kinda why I think less attributes would be for the better in a future edition, because right now there's attributes that are objectively worse than others and forces Paizo to fix those problems for the classes that use those stats (like the thaumaturge for example).
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Certain attributes being taken as a given I think is one of the reasons why I'd like to see them go in a future edition -- as mentioned above, Constitution doesn't make you better at any skills, it's literally just the stat you boost to not die. Similarly, Dex is also the stat you pick to not die unless your class lets you wear heavy armor competently, and Wisdom is the stat you boost if you want to still be able to control your character properly at higher levels (and also not go last in most combat encounters). Even with secondary stats, are you really going to dump Strength if you're a melee weapons user, given the chance? That these attributes are often tied to interesting skills is secondary to the fact that boosting them is so mathematically beneficial to your character that it genuinely does lead to a divide between optimized and suboptimal characters, in a game that otherwise try very hard to prevent character optimization from limiting valid choices.
And that's why I feel the interesting parts of attributes aren't really specific to attributes even in 2e, because the real choice around them tends to happen around skills, and that choice mostly comes from skill increases. If your Fort save proficiency goes up to expert, you can generally expect to end up hitting a base modifier of 12 + your level when factoring in item bonuses, regardless of your character, but your base Arcana modifier could wind up anywhere between 18 + your level and 0. Although there's perhaps some level of difference in your defenses at early levels if you decide to put more of your starting boosts into one attribute over another, in my experience I've seen those defenses largely converge towards the same numbers over time, even as skills remained fairly variable. If we want to have more choice over which defenses we'd want to make stronger over others, we'd need an alternative to the attributes we have now.
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Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma are conceptually confusing.No. Just Intelligence vs Wisdom is. If they just renamed Wisdom to Perception most of the confusion would go away.
I think this is false just because one of the most common complaints the thaumaturge had at release (and even today from time to time both here and in the subreddit) is that people diddn't understand why the class was Charisma-based when Intelligence or Wisdom would make more sense to them, even though the idea of "innate" power or "forcing your will into something" was always a Charisma thing in D&D, which was inherited into Pathfinder in earlier editions.
Intelligence usually refers to academic knowledge or learned knowledge, while Wisdom usually refers to common sense or something that you learn through experience. On a vaccuum this is something I think most people would agree, though there's edge cases that go against this. As I said earlier, "innate" is usually a characteristic that is attributed to Charisma due to innate spells and the sorcerer being Charisma-based, but if Wisdom is the attribute that represents common sense and intuition wouldn't it make more sense for those to be Wis-based instead? Then there's skills like Nature and Religion that represent knowledge about, well, nature and religion, and Performance that represents your technique at dancing, singing, or other performative arts. Based on what we said earlier, Nature and Religion should be Int-based, and Performance could be either Dex, Int, or Wis-based depending on how you learnt to perform. And before you mention it, I know that Nature and Religion are Wis-based because clerics and druids are Wis-based too, the same with Performance and bards, but this IMO shows the actual difference between each of the attributes doesn't really matter because ultimately what makes X work with Y attribute is a mix of both D&D tradition and balancing.
The thing is, since the Remaster, D&D tradition isn't a thing that Paizo is really bothered to follow anymore. For the remainder of PF2e's life cycle this is likely only going to matter for stuff like lore and such, but for PF3e I wouldn't be surprised (and I honestly expect) for Paizo to distance themselves from D&D even further. This doesn't mean attributes are going to be changed necessarily, but the current Strength / Dexterity / Constitution / Intelligence / Wisdom / Charisma have been a part of D&D since the beggining and when other systems use those exact names for their attributes they are usually considered "D&D clones" by the community.
They could keep the attributes but change their names, but I feel a Paizo that isn't restrained by "D&D-isms" anymore wouldn't have the need to keep something that carries its own problems with it when they could make something new that doesn't have those problems.
"forcing your will into something" was always a Charisma thing in D&D, which was inherited into Pathfinder in earlier editions.
That is just a poor definition of Charisma. Stop using it.
This is the definition from D&D 3.5. I quickly checked 2nd edition and 5th edition and it is largely the same.
Charisma measures a character’s force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness.
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I mean, its cleary not a poor old definition since its applies to classes in this very edition like the thaumaturge and sorcerer.
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I still feel like a +1 skill increase is too little to feel like an actual increase. Unless there's more ranks of proficiency so you could still climb that ladder faster. But at that point, you're back to 1e's skill points.
I do miss skill points, though. Felt much more rewarding than 2e's "which singular skill will I get better at?" every two levels.
I'm in a PF1 campaign and I don't agree with this at all. Basically all of my skill points are tied up every level because the same skills always need investment. The only time that isn't true is if all I want to use a skill for are for things with flat DCs where once I can hit them I'm done, but anything else is a constant treadmill that points keep going into.
I'm hardly ever making any actual decisions with skill points. And then there's the absolute mess that is 2 skill point classes which are bad at almost everything and can have just an awful time in skill challenge focused scenarios.
P2E defines Cha like this
Charisma measures your character’s personal magnetism
and strength of personality. A high Charisma modifier helps
you build relationships and influence the thoughts and
moods of others with social skills.
And like I said earlier, put too much thought into how magic works and how stats relate to casting and it will all fall apart. There is no true sense to adhere to make believe. We can make up the rules and then see if those made up rules are followed but at some point you have to make them up.
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The thing is, unlike the physical attributes which can more or less be defined by observable feats, the mental attributes can't really be explained in those same tangible terms because of their nature. Even current science has problems to define things like "intelligence" or "instinct" because those aren't really things you can measure with precision, unlike strength or flexibility which are things that can be precisely gauged and with relative ease.
The problem here is that in TTRPGs we need to measure both strength and intelligence in tangible terms because here those relate to game mechanics which need to be balanced against each other to avoid making one of them be or feel better than the other, but since the people making the game are humans it will lead to logical problems like this when making the game, because mental attributes are going to inevitably be filled with unintentional misconceptions.
Ultimately, what I'm trying to say here and in earlier comments is that with enough justification you can make any class or thing use any of the six attributes because the differences between most of them and the reasons why X class uses Y attribute is often arbritary. This is also why I kinda dig Teridax's no attributes proposal because attributes don't really play a meaningful role that you couldn't replace with something else like they did in earlier editions in PF2e anymore. Most of the reason why people like attributes (myself included) its because they are an easy way to depict someone's capabilities without having to read the entire statblock of a creature or NPC, but I'm pretty sure skills (which in PF2e are positioned directly above attributes in monster stat blocks) could fulfill a similar purpose too.
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I'll add to the above that mental attributes sit in an awkward spot when it comes to roleplaying: many players assume that mental stats are somewhat prescriptive for roleplaying, such that a high-Wisdom character should always makes good decisions or a high-Intelligence character should be roleplayed as a genius, and some will even balk at roleplaying a high-Charisma character because they think they have to roleplay with equal charisma IRL. In reality, your 0-Int Barbarian can be just as much of a puzzle-solver as the party Wizard, and the player will be expected to participate just as much too, which creates dissonance. In the worst of cases, you can end up with people roleplaying low-Int characters like they have a learning disability for laughs, which injects a touch of ableism in a medium that has otherwise made great steps towards inclusivity.
Fundamentally, the problem is that while physical attributes inform what your character does in the in-game world, which can be defined purely in mechanical terms (and usually in the form of skills), mental attributes are at the very least flavored to inform how your character behaves, which can't be fully mechanically defined without telling players how they're allowed to roleplay their character, something you wouldn't want to do in the first place. Mental attributes therefore tend to be at best ignored in roleplay, and at worst they constrain roleplay in ways that don't necessarily make for better characters. It doesn't help either that mental stats are extremely ambiguous, with Wisdom and Charisma being equally valid attributes for Will saves, Wisdom and Intelligence being equally valid attributes for expressing knowledge about certain topics, Intelligence and Charisma being equally valid attributes for making a persuasive argument or a convincing lie, and so on and so forth.
I mean, its cleary not a poor old definition since its applies to classes in this very edition like the thaumaturge and sorcerer.
The definition is poor because the definition is at odds with the actual definition and is misleading. It is not a simple interpretation of the word. It is spin.
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My personal bugbear is that a high Charisma score is described as having high willpower, while the actual Will save goes off Wisdom.
(I'm not advocating for changing Will to be Charisma-based, just stating my own dissonance.)
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In reality, your 0-Int Barbarian can be just as much of a puzzle-solver as the party Wizard, and the player will be expected to participate just as much too, which creates dissonance.
When I was beggining to play TTRPGs I remember I was once in a table with a barbarian that dumped Int (I think it probably was in a D&D 3.5 game, but it could have been 4e). If he ever came up with something to solve a problem the GM wouldn't allow him to actually say it out loud because "his character isn't smart enough to think about that", so he was pretty much restricted from interacting with the game outside of combat.
Needles to say, he didn't come back after a few sessions because he wasn't liking it.
There is an element of disbelieving illusions but will saves are also very much about resisting mental influences through force of will.
Actually this is the description under saving throws in PC core page 11
Will (to
resist effects that target the mind and personality).
Its all about not losing yourself to outside influences.
Lets say you have a system with 3 core attributes.
One for physical power one for speed and reflexes and one for mental stuff.
With that set up all caster types are going to draw off the same mental stat, there will be no differentiation based on core attributes for all the different kinds of casters you want in your game, that is unless you have derived stats that provide that differentiation at which point why not just start with more mental stats that lend the descriptive quality to them.