How many stats do you consider necessary to make a good, solid, believable 'paper man'?

I've always thought gurps had too few stats, but they have gradually added in sub stats and modifiers that are effectively psuedo stats that might as well be stats, but apparently SOMEONE at sjg is utterly married to the 4 stat idea and won't change it.

As for me, I think 9 stats is good. for example, I like having dexterity and agility as separate stats because it's very easy to find people that can sit down at a desk or bench and preform great feats of manual dexterity, but at the same times are so clumsy that they risk their lives crossing a street. Also you can find people with incredibly agility when it comes to running, jumping, etc, but who can't thread a needle to save their souls

So dex and agi should be seperate stats. Likewise Intelligence and Wits should be different as there are lost of people who are academic wizards, but can't come up with a quick witty line for love or money, whereas a lot of these so called "witty' people who always have a good crack at hand would probably have a hard time figuring out what the square root of 4 is.

Wisdom is another issue that might deserve it's own stat as intelligent and witty people can often be fools or act foolishly, whereas some dimwits can be wise.

So Int and Wits should be sperate stats as one is about intellectual ability while the other is more speed than anything else. Wisdom is it's own area separate from both.

For me, if I were doing as game I think I'd have the following stats:

Int, Wits, Wisdom, Dex, Agi, Str, End, Health.

Senses would be their own catagory with each one having it's own score.

So basically I'd go with 8 stats, and senses as it's own catagory. That's how I feel, how many stats do you like in a game? BTW, what game has the MOST stats and which one has the LEAST stats?

In the new game I'm designing (with a good number of others, of course) the abilities run as follows:

Reflex
Coordination
Strength
Toughness
Luck

Luck might or might not get scrapped. "Spirit" has also been put forward. We haven't done mental stats thus far. Just haven't needed them.

I'd say it depends on what kind of game I'm trying to play.

If I'm going for a rules-light, fast, probably cinematic game I'd go with anywhere from 0 (FATE) to 6 (True20).

For something more detailed, I'd say 5+

I think anything in the double digits is ridiculous, unless they're derived stats.

-O

Quote from: beejazzIn the new game I'm designing (with a good number of others, of course) the abilities run as follows:

Reflex
Coordination
Strength
Toughness
Luck

Luck might or might not get scrapped. "Spirit" has also been put forward. We haven't done mental stats thus far. Just haven't needed them.

I hate Luck statistics, unless it's a vital part of the game.  I mean by that, that the gameworld is constructed with "divine favor," "fortune," or whatever being doled out unequally among the populace.  Even then, it would often be better handled by something that's not a characteristic - in D&D terms, a feat or class ability.  I can't see someone improving a luck attribute down the road.

In most cases, I think luck is adequately handled by gameplay.  The lucky characters are the ones whose players have the better die rolls.

-O

Quote from: obrynI hate Luck statistics, unless it's a vital part of the game.  I mean by that, that the gameworld is constructed with "divine favor," "fortune," or whatever being doled out unequally among the populace.  Even then, it would often be better handled by something that's not a characteristic - in D&D terms, a feat or class ability.  I can't see someone improving a luck attribute down the road.

In most cases, I think luck is adequately handled by gameplay.  The lucky characters are the ones whose players have the better die rolls.

-O

Well said.  I don't know if there's a right number of attributes, but any game that has a "Luck" attribute has one too many.

Well, the Mekton zeta system used luck, and it was an Ok system, nothing great but it didn't suck either.

I think that Sean Punch and Dave Pulver got it right when they made luck something you buy with character points in gurps.

Trollbabe has one stat, called the Number.

HeroQuest has no  universal set of defining stats at all. Everything on the character sheet is an Ability and can, in principle, be used like every other Ability, and every character will have a different set of Abilities.

For me, 7-9.

My baseline "ideal setup" that I used in my Sci-Fi homebrew had 8 (incidentally, A|State has an almost identical setup.)

Agility
Dexterity
Endurance
Strength
Charm
Perception
Reason
Willpower

I see that increasingly stength is becoming less and less useful in modern games as tracking encumbrance is (rightly) becoming regarded as a PITA. As such I think in many modern games, one could afford to roll stength and endurance into "physique".

I split out Agility and Dexterity, as it seems to me that one stat that represents both invariably becomes a super stat (unless you make it pricier, which is a solution that doesn't sit well with me.)

Depending on the cosmology and feel of the game, I may add a "luck" of "psyche" statistic.

Another setup I am fond of it the "telescoping statistics" setup. Basically, you start with 4 base statistics (which I consider the BARE minimum -- TriStat drives me nuts. Think tri-stat, but instead of a single body statistic, there is a physique and a deftness statistic), but each can be split into 3 sub-statistics for more fine-tuned definition. This is the setup I usually use when defining characters for FUDGE.

My preferred system has, technically speaking, 27 stats. However, said stats are, if you would, tiered.

You start with the 3 Traits: Mental, Physical, and Spiritual.

Each trait has two sub-traits, or Categories:

*Mental: Mnemonic and Reasoning.
*Physical: Muscular and Neural.
*Spiritual: Metaphysical and Psychic.

Each Category has 3 Attributes: Capacity, Power, and Speed. For example, under Mental-Reasoning Capacity would indicate how good the character could be if he applied himself, Power is how good he is at reasoning, while Speed measures how fast he can figure things out.

Each Attribute has it's own rating. The three Attributes under a Category add up to the Category's rating, and the two Categories in a Trait add together to give the Trait's rating. A Trait's rating can be as high as 120 depending on initial dice rolls.

Traits, Categories, and Attributes come into play depending on what's happening. For instance, the Physical Trait determines walking speed. The Mental Trait for a Dweomercrafting character determines if Full Practitioner status (Mage) is even possible, while Mental-Mnemonic-Power gives the character's chance of even being a Mage.

So saying that Dangerous Journeys has 27 stats does not begin to give one the full picture.

I think around six, maybe one dealing with physical might and brawn, one with how healthy you are, one with how agile and nimble you are, one maybe about how smart you are, one about how experienced and sagacious you are and one dealing with how charming you are.

I kid, I don't have a fixed view, enough for the game.  More than eight tops and my eyes start to glaze over, less than three and I expect a good reason.

None is also good, I have a soft spot for systems that don't have stats at all like Heroquest or Over the Edge.

I like 10 or 12.

Yeesh.  I played Mythus for a year or so back in high school (I had a higher tolerance for crazy amounts of detail back then), but even then 27 stats seemed like a gigantic pain.  Many of them didn't seem to have any game use whatsoever.

-O

I don't really care about the stats so long as everyone remembers:

CHARISMA HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PHYSICAL BEAUTY

It irks me no end when someone mistakes "personability," "likeablity" and "force of personality" with physical beauty. :rolleyes:

Personally, I prefer fewer attributes and more skills.  5-6 attributes with a couple of derived stats that are necessary to the function of the mechanic suits me just fine.

In fact, I rather like the combining of "endurance" and "strength" because they are so closely related and raising/lowering one without raising/lowering the other makes very little sense in my mind.

I don't mind the idea that Dexterity and Agility are combined into a single attribute, in fact, I'd lump Speed in there, too.  If you want to specifically state that the character is better at one thing than another, then that's where you use an Edge or a Flaw to determine that.  And none of them (Dex, Agl or Spd) should be associated with missile weapons (bows, arrows, firearms, etc.)

What really irks me, however, is the combination of Perceptiveness and Intelligence.  How good I am at looking around the room and noticing the finite movements of someone about to draw their weapon has NOTHING to do with how fast I can calculate a square root, recall the exact chemical formula for mustard gas nor how much of Shakespeare's Macbeth I can recall on the fly.  

I can see lumping hand-eye coordination into Perceptiveness.  That makes a lot of sense.  Thus, I would see this attribute controlling actions that require hitting a target at distance: Pistols, Throwing, Archery, etc.  (Although I've heard a strong argument for using Strength/Endurance for the firing of a bow, but then we get into the arguement of direct vs indirect fire for using Archery and I prefer to keep it as simple as possible.)

I've come to the conclusion that complexity in mechanic is directly associated with bogged down combats that take hours to resolve while the story (and most of the players) end up waiting and waiting and waiting...

Keep it simple, yet detailed enough to make sense (thus 1-3 attributes doesn't make much sense to me).

GURPS is okay with four, because they have a lot of derived attributes, and let's face it, Health versus Hits can really be called another attribute.

Shadowrun was pretty good, though it combined Intelligence and Perception, which was BAD.  I rather liked that the derived attributed Reflexes was based upon how perceptive and quick the character was instead of just a raw, physical attribute.

And, finally, I like systems that are not designed with one type of character in mind, with a plethora of "dump stats."  

In my ideal system, you would have:

Physical Prowess (Strength and Endurance)
Reflexes (Dex, Agility and Speed)
Perceptiveness
Intelligence
Personability
Willpower

Essentially, two stats for each of the major playing arenas: Physical, Mental and Social.

(Additional stats may exist for such things as magic, psionics, super powers, etc. which should not be based upon the common attributes that everyone shares.)

My Iridium System has 11.

Physical
   Strength
   Dexterity
   Agility
   Constitution
   Appearance

Mental
   Intelligence
   Wisdom
   Will

Spiritual
   Piety
   Charisma
   Luck

Bill

Quote from: HinterWeltMy Iridium System has 11.

Physical
   Strength
   Dexterity
   Agility
   Constitution
   Appearance

Mental
   Intelligence
   Wisdom
   Will

Spiritual
   Piety
   Charisma
   Luck

Bill

How exactly is the "Bill" stat used?  I've never seen that one before.