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## A Demon Haunted World

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Thaluikhain
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Post by Thaluikhain » Sat Mar 24, 2018 4:04 pm

Dragon Warriors just used Strength for poison resistance and so on, rather than having a separate Constitution score, which makes sense to me. I guess you could possibly have a character with high strength and low constitution or vice versa, but that seems a bit counter-intuitive.
Also had "Psychic Talent" as one of the attributes, though as well as Intelligence.
Last edited by Thaluikhain on Sat Mar 24, 2018 4:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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DrPraetor
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Post by DrPraetor » Sat Mar 24, 2018 5:06 pm

This is a bit of a distinct question from the bestiary, but I favor:
Strength
Dexterity
Charisma
Intuition
as attribute names. Strength is the power/resist attribute for physical challenges, Dexterity is the respond/avoid attribute for physical challenges; Charisma and Intuition serve the same roles for mental/social/spiritual challenges.
Charisma and Intuition were historically thought to be mystical attributes, but people have more of a sense of how they might act in play than newly invented stuff like Arcana or... seriously... Bloodtinge?
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Sat Mar 24, 2018 5:37 pm

> Omegonthesane wrote: As I recall though Sages aren't actually supported by a paradigm in which Intelligence is a stat that materially adds to your Obscure And Suddenly Plot Relevant Trivia rolls.

Sages aren't supported by a Trivia stat. Or at least, they aren't supported by a trivia stat alone. As a counterpoint, there are systems like 4th edition Shadowrun where you have a "good at technical knowledge" stat, and then you also have technical knowledge skills, and the game mechanic is that you add those together, and importantly this does result in there being a small number of people who are important scientists in various fields that you would like to consult on various topics based on their ability to have higher overall numbers than other people in the setting do. So an Intelligence stat is compatible with a paradigm where there are sages that you would rationally want to talk to. If "highest lore ability" and "highest intelligence stat" are things that combine in some way that is materially different and superior to other things characters might have, then keeping smart Lore experts around or going on mini-quests to seek their advice is something that makes sense in-game as well as in-setting.

> angelfromanotherpin wrote:I think Intelligence is a bad stat to have, because a character's actual intelligence is supplied by the player, and the Int stat seems to represent memory more than anything else, and even then a specific kind of memory. Also, a lot of your mythic wizards aren't particularly smart, just educated. Wisdom is of course worse.

I pretty much completely disagree with this assessment. People interact with game world stuff all the time in cooperative storytelling games. The player can't tell if the slime on the ground is Delver spit or Toad Fiend slime or Aboleth mucous. The player isn't even fucking there. Figuring that shit out is a function of character puzzle solving, and the player has very little impact on that, save perhaps the original choice to have their character check the area around the back door in the first place.
Aside from that, players in general want various forms of power fantasy for their character. And just as you could imagine wanting to play the strongest guy in the room or the sexiest guy in the room, I take it as given that many players would like to play the smartest guy in the room. Indeed, being generally clever is absolutely one of the defining characteristics of fictional characters running from Greek Mythology like Theseus or Odysseus up to modern heroes like Batman and Dexter. If you can't figure out a way to convey that a character is smart in actual game mechanics, I would submit that you have failed utterly at game design.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Sat Mar 24, 2018 5:39 pm

You need BODY SMASH. You need BODY MOVE. You need ME SMARTS. You need ME SOULFUL.
Strength, dexterity, intelligence, charisma.
Might, agility, intellect, spirit.
I like using non-D&D terms just to break the legacy and people's expectations.
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Foxwarrior
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Post by Foxwarrior » Sat Mar 24, 2018 7:08 pm

Ability scores are overrated. All they do is nudge your character towards certain skills (which Class Skills does just fine, if you care about that), make certain multiclass choices untenable (but I don't think that effect has ever been tuned to make things more balanced), boost saving throws (but there's save bonuses for that), and let you make ability checks with your unmodified modifier that pretty much never matter if you can arrange to use a skill instead.
Being able to be muscular and lift boulders and stuff is good, but that doesn't mean you have to drag along a whole scheme of stats that's hard to learn but easy to master.
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Harshax
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Post by Harshax » Sat Mar 24, 2018 7:58 pm

> DSMatticus wrote:You need BODY SMASH. You need BODY MOVE. You need ME SMARTS. You need ME SOULFUL.
> Strength, dexterity, intelligence, charisma.
> Might, agility, intellect, spirit.
> I like using non-D&D terms just to break the legacy and people's expectations.

I've always felt that Charisma should only be a thing if it does something meaningful in the game and I mean beguiler stuff. If it can actually compel creatures to do things they don't want to do, grant some sort of motivational bonus, or demoralize enemies, then there should be a system where a creature's posture toward a situation and their morale to indicate their resolve to maintain that posture can be interacted with.
Posture might be something as simple as a scale between Hostile and Helpful. Morale might just be a Will Save, but most Social Action rules fall apart, when a player is expected to lose some agency when the NPC do charisma stuff on them. I've seen my player's eyes glisten at opportunities to haggle prices, intimidate enemies and bluff past guards, but if you suggest they've been hoodwinked or that the dice affect the character's behavior in any way that is at cross-purpose to the player's wishes, they rage quit.
If this is the case at your table, Charisma isn't even worth listing on the character sheet. If you want to dice roll character interactions, just add their level. Nothing says I get a +10 to convince a guard I belong here than the swagger inherent in a PC having 10 HD.
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erik
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Post by erik » Sat Mar 24, 2018 9:37 pm

I like how Arkham Horror did stats, and shamelessly riffed off of it for Nexus.
You start with:
Health
Sanity
Speed
Sneak
Fight
Will
Lore
Luck
And you change it up as necessary for your game. It doesn't have to be exactly 6 or 8. Just pick the things that characters will actually care about doing that are roughly equivalent in importance so that it isn't stupid when they compete for the same character building currency.
Generally have stats be very something important and relevant for most major challenges, and get away from having them describe the character's intrinsic physicality.
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MGuy
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Post by MGuy » Sat Mar 24, 2018 9:38 pm

I think Intelligence is a fine stat as long as you define it as a character's wealth of knowledge instead of it being how clever a character is in practice.
Wisdom seems to more revolve around a character's senses and should probably just be renamed to something like Awareness, Perception, or something if you're going to keep it as an attribute.
The divide between strength and toughness makes sense to me but Frank and others are right that Constitution just doesn't work in game considering the other attributes and should probably just be folded into one. I haven't yet decided if I'll be personally keeping it or not but there is every reason to fold it over into a single stat.
Charisma works better as 'Will' instead of a measure of sexiness. It should represent someone's ability to compel others and resist being compelled. Spirit, Will, Wits, or something else might work better though I wouldn't be opposed to keeping Charisma itself as the name of such an attribute.
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DenizenKane
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Post by DenizenKane » Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:34 am

How would Thri-Kreen be handled as a non-monstrous race?
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erik
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Post by erik » Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:01 am

Like an ECL 0 Thri-Kreen?
Give them extra arms mostly. I'll make modifications off the chassis I found from https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Thri-Kree ... 5e_Race%29
Racial Traits
Attributes: No modifiers
Type: Humanoid
Size: Medium
Speed: Base land speed for a Thri-Kreen is 30 feet (6 squares)
Darkvision: Thri-Kreen have darkvision out to 60 feet.
Natural Armor: Thri-Kreen have a natural armor bonus to AC of +1.
Multiple Limbs: Thri-kreen have four arms and thus can take the multiweapon fighting feat instead of the two-weapon fighting feat. Thri-kreen can also take the multiattack feat. (These are not bonus feats.)
Natural Attacks: Thri-Kreen have two claw attacks which deal 1d4 points of damage.
Leap: Thri-Kreen have a +8 racial bonus to Jump checks.
Latent Psionics (Ex): Thri-Kreen naturally have high level of affinity with psionics. Any Thri-Kreen who takes a psionic class gains an additional amount of power points equal to his HD, each level. They also gain an extra power any time they gain access to a new level of power.
Automatic Languages: Common, Thri-Kreen Bonus Languages: Elven, Giant, Gnoll, Goblin, Halfling.
Favored Class: Psychic Warrior, Ranger
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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:33 am

I feel that the ability scores, whatever they happen to be, should all start with a different letter (so no STrength and STamina, no Charisma and Constitution). And ideally, they should be able to spell out FIGHT or DICK* or something. Not to the point that you're calling Intelligence "Headbones" or adding a Punctuality stat just to make it happen, but you know, it's something to try to keep in mind.
*The importance is having a simple word to remember there - like the SAME system. I can't remember what the M and E are, but I remember the word exists and just knowing the first two gives me an idea what the other two are. Making it relevant to the game or a swear word is just a plus.

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OgreBattle
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Post by OgreBattle » Mon Mar 26, 2018 5:38 am

Moxy and Elan.

> Koumei wrote:I feel that the ability scores, whatever they happen to be, should all start with a different letter (so no STrength and STamina, no Charisma and Constitution). And ideally, they should be able to spell out FIGHT or DICK* or something.

Agility
Body
Cunning
Dexterity
Engineering
Fight
Geography
Healing
Instinct
Jury Rigging
Knowledge
Logistics
Mechanics
Operations
Psychic
Quackery
Research
Strength
Teaching
Utility
Vetrinary
Weapons
Yoga
Zeal
Dexterity
Instinct
Cunning
Knowledge
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Pariah Dog
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Post by Pariah Dog » Mon Mar 26, 2018 5:44 am

Or like Kingdom of Loathing (Yes I know the game is just a giant rabbit hole of cultural references) where all the stats start with the same letter. Muscle, Mysticality, and Moxie.
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Thaluikhain
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Post by Thaluikhain » Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:54 pm

> Koumei wrote:I feel that the ability scores, whatever they happen to be, should all start with a different letter (so no STrength and STamina, no Charisma and Constitution). And ideally, they should be able to spell out FIGHT or DICK* or something. Not to the point that you're calling Intelligence "Headbones" or adding a Punctuality stat just to make it happen, but you know, it's something to try to keep in mind.
> *The importance is having a simple word to remember there - like the SAME system. I can't remember what the M and E are, but I remember the word exists and just knowing the first two gives me an idea what the other two are. Making it relevant to the game or a swear word is just a plus.

Huh, that could work. I remember reading about some system on 1d4chan, have forgotten almost everything about it, but still remember that the attributes where Strength, Legs, Uhhhh and Tits. I'd recommend not actually using those particular four, but the general idea seems to have worked.
Last edited by Thaluikhain on Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Judging__Eagle
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Post by Judging__Eagle » Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:31 pm

For making attribute nomeclature more universal in clarity:
-Strength... is largely meaningless b/c while everyone can agree that "lifting capacity" is a measure of strength, they also seem to believe that "long distance running" is a measure of "Stamina" not "Slow twitch Muscles". I'd replace it with just Health if not Body
-Dexterity actually means "Right handedness"; and doesn't convey universal physical adroitness the way that a term like Precision[/i] or Nerve might.
-Constitution, should be part-and-parcel with Strength. Largely due to the fact that physical health has a huge impact on physical strength (but not so much on physical precision or the nervous system). I could see a case for keeping six attributes and replacing Constitution with Will(power)
-Intelligence; almost never gets used as intended in rpgs. Usually used as a measure of retained knowledge, not cognitive ability; however there are some correlations between cognitive ability and retention of knowledge. In any case I feel that either Education or Logic[/i] are clearer terms than "Intelligence" alone might be.
-Wisdom; now I don't think anyone has liked the way this has worked since around 3e when it got used as a sensory & mental endurance attribute. Personally, I've become fond of describing it as Sense (potentially....Awareness or Perception). The fact that wisdom is also commonly associated with the concept of "common sense"; makes it easier to use the term due to its increased clarity over the original term
-Charisma; to date, the best definition of the word I've seen has been from the D&D books; not any dictionary definition. Specifically, the D&D definition of Charisma is ones ability to determine the difference between themselves and an other individual.
The profound truth of this definition can be seen in content such as Dale Carnegies "How to Win Friends & Influence People", and Sonshi's "Art of War" chapter sub-sections dealing with the five types of ethical motives for soldiering, potential personality flaws in enemy commanders, recruiting captured enemies; as well as the actual chapters dedicated to espionage, and pre-conflict actions versus political enemies.
Which inclines me towards a term that's the opposite of Willpower that I used to erase/replace Constitution: Charm
Leaving with the potential terms:
Health/Body
Precision/Nerve
Logic/Education
Sense/Awareness/Perception
Charm
Willpower
Cut down to form an acronym:
Health
Education
Willpower
Charm
Awareness
Precision
for Hew Cap? I didn't pick enough terms that started with vowels; so there's less options for intelligible acronyms
Last edited by Judging__Eagle on Mon Mar 26, 2018 1:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by RobbyPants » Mon Mar 26, 2018 2:24 pm

> Foxwarrior wrote:Ability scores are overrated. All they do is ... make certain multiclass choices untenable (but I don't think that effect has ever been tuned to make things more balanced), boost saving throws...

It doesn't have to be a problem. If you had a system where you added your scores to your defenses but not your attacks, you could mix and match your abilities and classes as you wanted. If you figure your level is what determines how hard a berserker swings his axe or how potent a mage's spells are, you're free to pick ability scores however you want.
So you could describe a high Might and Spirit character as being physically and mentally very tough, while not being overly acrobatic or perceptive. This might make a lot of sense for a paladin or cleric, but it wouldn't have to be. It could be viable for a pyromancer or rogue, and also frees you up to make pyromancer clerics and rogue paladins, or whatever.
Sure, you could eschew ability scores all together, but under this paradigm, they'd be useful for picking your base defenses.
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Mord
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Post by Mord » Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:42 pm

> RobbyPants wrote:It doesn't have to be a problem. If you had a system where you added your scores to your defenses but not your attacks, you could mix and match your abilities and classes as you wanted. If you figure your level is what determines how hard a berserker swings his axe or how potent a mage's spells are, you're free to pick ability scores however you want.

Indeed. Caster stats are just hot garbage to begin with and should not exist. I want to play a Sorcerer who is a miserable curmudgeon who no one likes, and I want to play a Wizard who attends Midvale School for the Gifted. Slinging fireballs should not be in any way affected by my SAT scores or my number of YouTube channel subscribers. Your class should describe how you fight, not who you are off the battlefield. Why can't I be a guy who pays rent by doing Three Card Monte in the marketplace and uses Color Spray to escape the town guards when he gets caught?

> FrankTrollman wrote:Aside from that, players in general want various forms of power fantasy for their character. And just as you could imagine wanting to play the strongest guy in the room or the sexiest guy in the room, I take it as given that many players would like to play the smartest guy in the room. Indeed, being generally clever is absolutely one of the defining characteristics of fictional characters running from Greek Mythology like Theseus or Odysseus up to modern heroes like Batman and Dexter. If you can't figure out a way to convey that a character is smart in actual game mechanics, I would submit that you have failed utterly at game design.

What does "smart" mean, though? If you think of a smart person as someone who knows a lot of stuff, then you can absolutely portray someone who is more knowledgeable than you the player; all the MC has to do is feed you info that they don't give other people. If you set up a riddle challenge as a Smartness check with a high DC, then a smart character will be able to pass it more easily.
However, if "smart" means something like "creativity" or "good judgment," then you can never convincingly portray a character who is actually smarter than you. It's exactly this kind of ambiguity that makes me think that "Intelligence" is a bad term to describe characters, because what is meant by "intelligence" in common conversation can mean various things depending on context, not all of which can be simulated by adding bigger numbers to things and fewer of which can be narratively handled in a satisfying manner.
It's all well and good to say "my 40 STR guy picks up a Buick and hurls it," because everyone at the table can imagine what that looks like and gauge the difficulty of that maneuver against their own physical experience. It's a lot emptier-feeling to say "my 40 INT guy effortlessly solves the riddle of the Sphinx" because then everyone at the table just looks at each other blankly. The MC asked a riddle, then you rolled a die, and then the MC told you the answer. There's something deeply dissatisfying about that kind of thing.
It's also pretty shitty when you have a guy in the party with 40 INT and he does something incredibly stupid, like climb into a Sphere of Annihilation or stick his dick into a vat of acid.
If "Intelligence" is really meant to be understood as "Knowledge," then for the reasons above I'd prefer it to be handled with a set of knowledge skills/proficiencies rather than an ability score. Frank's example of a character differentiating Delver spit from Toad Fiend slime from Aboleth mucous from Roper semen doesn't really wow me as a function of something that must necessarily be described as "Intelligence" - it could just as easily be some combination of Perception and Knowledge:Nature.
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Post by Username17 » Mon Mar 26, 2018 9:55 pm

> Mord wrote:However, if "smart" means something like "creativity" or "good judgment," then you can never convincingly portray a character who is actually smarter than you.

This is very importantly not true.
The player has information that the character does not have and the character has information that the player does not have. The player gets much less complete information about the world than the character does, because the character is actually there getting a thousand words worth of pictures every time they open their eyes, while the player is just getting a narration from the MC. However, the player gets much more time to ponder important questions and decide upon courses of action in situations of immediate peril because combat turns are measured in seconds while player turns are measured in minutes. But then again the character has much more time to ponder plans and strategies and shit because the character is actually living through montages at 1:1 time and the player's entire game evening is like 4 hours.
There is simply lots of room to ratchet those asymmetries one way or the other. The player of course gets to declare courses of action, but the specifics of those action choices are performed by the character using information the character has that the player does not. Very frequently the player is in essence acting as a manager while the character is acting as the employee. And I don't think there's anyone here who doesn't believe it possible to be smarter than your boss.
The player says "The character will now do science at the problem." and then the character does science, and the problem is solved or it is not solved. But it is solved or not solved due to the intelligence of the character, not the player.
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maglag
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Post by maglag » Tue Mar 27, 2018 2:39 am

Fallout has the classic SPECIAL (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck).
I could see Luck being like Action/Stunt points that give you limited free-rerolls with a bonus per session or something.
Last edited by maglag on Tue Mar 27, 2018 2:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by merxa » Tue Mar 27, 2018 5:16 am

I was always a fan of breaking it down to mind, body, spirit.
If you move away from the classic 6 for a fantasy heart-breaker it would be better to have less stats instead of more.
Stats need to be conceived in parallel to class, as the less stats do the more class needs to pick up, but gating off too many things into class doesn't seem fun to me.
My preference for RPGs tends toward simulationism, and depending on the preference that needs to impact stat design. What do you want to track, and how much should stats play into that component as opposed to race, class, level, skills, 'feats', 'magic', etc; look at pathfinders bonus types that's probably most of the reason the game is so fiddly. Listing all the things you want stats to impact will probably tell you what stats you want to have.
If stats aren't a backbone of the system then just move past them straight into class, open up meaningful character choices starting there, otherwise nearly everything should feed back into the stats system so when someone says they have 20 strength that readily means something instead of needing to know if they're also getting a luck a moral bonus to damage.
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Mord
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Post by Mord » Tue Mar 27, 2018 3:52 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:The player says "The character will now do science at the problem." and then the character does science, and the problem is solved or it is not solved. But it is solved or not solved due to the intelligence of the character, not the player.

Yea; that's the exact thing I called out as having high potential to be dissatisfying to people at the table. There are certain checks where you can just say "oh, my character smarts at it until it's fixed." Solving the Lament Configuration is something that you could resolve with INT. Reading books in the library until you find the passage with the magic spell to open the portal is an INT check. Rotating the Skyrim combination lock doors is an INT check. Filling a chalkboard with math so you can aim the missile at the asteroid; building a +1 mousetrap; all these things are fine. Hell, even the riddle of the Sphinx being soluble with an INT check doesn't really offend me, though the player who actually figures out the riddle IRL might be kind of annoyed when they don't roll high enough to think in-character of the solution they came up with OOC.
What is less fine is when you try to use an INT check to simulate applications of "intelligence" that involve cleverness, creativity, or good judgment. When Coraline tricks the Beldam into unlocking the little door, I would describe that as cleverness. When Odysseus tells the Cyclops that he is "no one," I would describe that as cleverness. Paul Atreides using atomics to blow away the mountains; Ender and "the enemy's gate is down;" Light and L trying to think ten steps ahead of each other. All of these things are applications of intelligence by characters you would describe as intelligent and none of these things could be well-represented by an ability check.
You choose your terminology to maximize your players' ability to picture what is going on in the game world, which is why damage types are Piercing and Fire rather than Alpha and Beta. If what you want is an extra stat to use in checks and no one at the table needs to grok what it actually means to use that stat, Bloodborne's Arcana and Bloodtinge are strictly superior to Intelligence. "Bloodtinge" doesn't mean anything to anyone, so when you call for a Bloodtinge check you have an opportunity to tell people at the table just what is unique and important in your setting and dress it up all fancy.
I have less idea what it might mean to "do Bloodtinge at the problem" than to "do Intelligence at the problem" but that's a positive - no one at the table is bringing in any preconceived notions of what it might mean to "do Bloodtinge," so MC can describe my use of Bloodtinge in a flashy way and no one is going to question whether or not it's actually possible to Bloodtinge your way out of that specific kind of problem or why the guy who nominally has so much Bloodtinge is chronically acting in a low-Bloodtinge-ey manner. I see it as real problem for nominally genius characters to act like morons (cf. dick in acid) because it disassociates your mechanics. If a character with INT 40 actually has very poor judgment and can't think his way out of a paper bag (because the player is dumb), but the character can read really fast and is a dab hand with a Rubik's Cube, I would not call that INT.
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Post by Mask_De_H » Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:14 pm

But wait, the character with high learned intelligence (I do SCIENCE at it) and the character with high intuitive intelligence (don't stick your dick in acid) tend to be separate things. It's the basic book smarts/street smarts divide. It's also why AS and SR split into Logic/Intuition/Charisma.
I've been around enough smart nerds to know that brilliant people can do profoundly stupid things. There's also being on the spectrum to explain poor judgment but high mental dexterity. You can argue Intelligence is too broad a term, but I would argue a word like Bloodtinge has the problem of no intrinsic meaning. The term has to be explained to the players and understood in a way that facilitates play, the fact it is jargon creates an extra hurdle in understanding the game, and the narrowness of the term creates issues when there's a check that requires some sort of mental acuity that is not Arcana or Bloodtinge, which I imagine are a lot because what the fuck does Bloodtinge even mean

> FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.

> K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.

> Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.

> Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.

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Post by Username17 » Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:21 pm

> Mord wrote:Light and L trying to think ten steps ahead of each other

That's a perfect example of something that can and should be handled by a die roll. Light and L are factually written by the same person. Who gets one over on who and how they do it is in fact something that is written after the fact. In world, Light and L are spending many hours wracking their brains about the others' next move, but in the act of telling the story we are treated to a few minutes worth of descriptive montage. And the actual way the sausage is made is that the final choices of both actors are chosen together.
So having the battle of wits be decided with an Intelligence check with the winner getting to see whether the loser was going to pick Rock, Paper, or Scissors is not only acceptable, it's strictly superior to the alternatives. Remember that ultimately Mr. Cavern hears the players planning and their final declaration before they announce what the results are - so you're having at least one person declaring whether they had picked Rock or Paper after the hands have been revealed no matter what.
There really isn't a reason to have multi-hour or multi-week planning sessions. Sometimes those are cool, but mostly they are frustrating because shit doesn't get done. The way to represent deep planning is absolutely to get the fuck on with things and have players break in and retroactively declare that their character totally had a plan the whole time. And once you realize that this is obviously the way things should work, putting numeric values on the character's ability to contingency plan is neither onerous nor weird. It's simply obviously the way things should work.

> merxa wrote:Stats need to be conceived in parallel to class, as the less stats do the more class needs to pick up, but gating off too many things into class doesn't seem fun to me.

Meh. Honestly, I don't find that to be much of an argument.
Stats don't have to be balanced because players do not play abstract collections of stats. They play Assassins, Bards, Necromancers, Paladins, Monks, and Rangers. These classes have presumed attribute focuses, but it's completely OK if those attribute selections would be more or less useful on a Commoner, because they aren't on a Commoner. The Assassin's Agility and Perception don't have to be balanced with the Paladin's Strength and Charisma. The Assassin's entire character has to be balanced with the Paladin's entire character.
And further, they don't even have to be balanced in a head to head fight - it's totally OK if the Assassin just murderstabs the Paladin or the Paladin's shield of faith prevents the murderstabbing and the assassin is smacked down every time by Sir Shiny Pants. Characters are defined by their ability to contribute against level appropriate challenges, not their ability to fight each other. If the Bard mostly contributes by giving bonuses to the rest of the team and is basically pretty shit in an arena match that's fine. The actual scenario where balance is important is that the team goes up against a Rusalka, a Great Eagle, a Manticore, a Wood Golem, and a Large Water Elemental and the Bard and the Monk have to pull their weight alongside the rest of a 5th level party. It's fine for the Bard to be at a disadvantage against the Wood Golem and the Water Elemental, but then he's gotta bring the pain against the Rusalka, Eagle, and Manticore (like maybe there's a countersong ability to shut down the Rusalka and an animal fascination ability to shut down the Eagle and the Manticore.
But you're setting the power level of the Bard and the Paladin against the expected opposition with their expected stat array. It's simply genuinely unimportant how good a combination Strength and Charisma would be if you didn't have Paladin abilities that triggered off of them. It's simply not a thing that matters at all. The Paladin factually has the Paladin abilities in addition to the base stats. It's simply not a meaningfully separable concept.
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin » Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:26 pm

> Mask_De_H wrote:The term has to be explained to the players and understood in a way that facilitates play, the fact it is jargon creates an extra hurdle in understanding the game, and the narrowness of the term creates issues when there's a check that requires some sort of mental acuity that is not Arcana or Bloodtinge, which I imagine are a lot because what the fuck does Bloodtinge even mean

It means that your blood does more damage when exposed to alchemical mercury. It's highly setting-specific, but it's not actually complicated.
Obviously, in a game with Arcane and Bloodtinge and neither Intelligence nor Wisdom you need to rethink the skill system, but let's be honest, you needed to do that anyway.
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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin » Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:41 pm

> FrankTrollman wrote:There really isn't a reason to have multi-hour or multi-week planning sessions. Sometimes those are cool, but mostly they are frustrating because shit doesn't get done. The way to represent deep planning is absolutely to get the fuck on with things and have players break in and retroactively declare that their character totally had a plan the whole time. And once you realize that this is obviously the way things should work, putting numeric values on the character's ability to contingency plan is neither onerous nor weird. It's simply obviously the way things should work.

I've made this sort of thing work in fairly abstract games where the setting had a lot of undefined space you could retcon things into. e.g. I ran an R3K-inspired game where one of the PCs was a Zhuge Liang-type strategic genius (which the player obviously was not), and instead of having her roll strategy to have me tell her what the best strategy was (shades of @World), I let her tell me her goals and what orders she gave, and then the whole table brainstormed up the previously-unknown factors and ripple effects that made her plan brilliant to justify the success of it. That was a lot of fun.
I just don't see how very much of that kind of thing could work in something as granular and predefined as a common D&D-type dungeon crawl. The space isn't there.
Last edited by angelfromanotherpin on Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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