Thoughts on attributes and limitations

[Monolith]

Hey!

There's something that always annoyed me a bit. From what I've experienced so far the usual attribute system doesn't have any limitations besides class limitations which is crap. For instance, a character in Fallout can have maxed out strength and agility - which in my opinion is far from reality. 10 points in strength represent the maximum a human being can achieve. Now imagine such a person. Schwarznegger^10. How on earth can such a guy reach the maximum a human being can achieve in agility as well!? That's impossible. He'd be clumsy and slow. Certainly not agile. But the system allows it - a drawback in my opinion.

I think attributes should logically limit each other. I'm not talking about shitty limitations like high strength limiting the character's intelligence, cause we all know that all strong guys are stupid . But strength limiting agility and vice versa, constitution limiting dexterity and vice versa?

The idea applied to Fallout's attribute system:
Strength 10 => max Aglity 6
Strength 9 => max Agility 7
Strength 8 => max Agility 8
Aglity 9 => max Strength 7
Agility 10 => max Strength 6

Same with constitution and dexterity, though these are all attributes I can apply this idea to.

Any thoughts, comments, criticism, additional ideas?
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"Waiter, there are facts and integrity in my preview!" - Serch

[sheek]

So what, you can be strong and intelligent but not strong and agile?

No I think the solution is to get rid of the retarded levelling up concept RPGs have been stuck with since D&D 1. 'Rewards' for quests should not be in just personal bad guy massacring awesomeness but in greater knowledge and relations with NPCs/factions (guy owes you a favor you can call in later), etc... game designers prefer to give XP because it's easier not to think.
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[Monolith]

[Vault Dweller]

RPGs deal in (often abstract) concepts, not reality. Your character rarely need to sleep, eat, or drink. He/she is the fastest learner the world has ever seen, and can master pretty much anything in a matter of weeks, from electronics to spellcasting. It is often expected from your character to kill armies and save worlds, all by his/her lonely self, succeeding where everyone else had failed. Like a tirtle, you can carry a small warehouse on your back, travelling miles every day. You can be almost dead (1HP left) and still fight as good as a well rested, very healthy man. Your recovery rate is a medical miracle. Etc.

Comparing to all that, the issue of you being both super strong and super fast at the same time is very minor. I do see your point though, but I prefer natural limits instead of artificial ones. In AoD, for example, you have the same 6 attributes and only 40 points to distribute. Nothing stops you from bumping up Str and Dex to 10, but that means that you have only 20 points left for 4 remaining attributes. It's my job as a designer to make sure that your choice will come with ass-biting consequences. So, this issue only becomes a problem when the other stats are meaningless, like in BG/IWD games where you'd be literally wasting points on Charisma.
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Spazmo: Odds are, something you like very much sucks. Why? Because this is RPG Codex.

[sheek]

[bozia2012]

You're right with the strength thingie. Bodybuilders are heavier and more "swollen" than norm which slows their movement and lowers agility. Now why do you want to have a bodybuilder character? I see only one reason - to wear heavy armor and heavy weapons. Yes and in some cases it can help you intimidate your opponents (vide Torment). I'm sick tired of the rpg scheme where warrior = STR MAX. Why plate armor is always better than light/no armor?
Also what does it mean when you have maxed charisma? You always get what you want? Charisma comes from the way you talk, look, what you wear and many more... Now you can't satisfy everyone. We have different taste of what is beautiful; we have race prejudices; we have the "war" between the rich and the poor etc.. Now Arcanum did a good thing separating Beauty from Charisma but it was not enough.

@Sheek: The thing with XP points as for reward is IMHO stupid. Why do you get the most XP just for collecting you reward (quest-ending dialogue)? Shouldn't you get it from what you just did? Why not favors, information? Gold and magic/valuable items are IMHO also a good reward but this idea is broken because in every single game you can find better stuff in rats and barrels.

[sheek]

Also I don't think all attributes should be upgradable the same way. In general I think you should need to do something in addition to having the 'points' before you can benefit. Maybe a training scheme like for skills in Arcanum (although that's also instantaneous). Or depending on the kind of RPG if you have a break or 'interlude' in the story (you discover and report the rising Orcish menace to the King - you spend the next few weeks with the Royal Librarian researching the mythical lost sword of Orcsbane) when you don't play your attributes go up then.

And some attributes shouldn't go up at all. Intelligence maybe, unless you get a genetic implant or divine gift or something. Willpower is another thing which is pretty fixed in most people once in adulthood.
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[WouldBeCreator]

[galsiah]

[sheek]

[EEVIAC]

[St. Toxic]

[Vault Dweller]

[galsiah]

[Vault Dweller]

[Claw]

[Spazmo]

So I'm reading sheek et al's posts where they decry the notion of XP and level advancement and suggest that instead, the character should get all rewards in terms of things that exist in the gameworld (money, information, equipment, etc.). It's an interesting notion. But what would it mean for gameplay? Your character would stay on a pretty much static level of competence of skills and abilities (except for some specific things where a given quest might have him find out that a particular modification to your blaster lets you shoot through the Presidential Guard's force fields). So then would the challenges the character faces stay the same, too?

One of the neat things about levels is that it's a great way to have a character start out by doing small stuff and eventually do really cool shit by the end of the game. Then again, all sorts of games manage to get harder and cooler without levels. Usually, though, these will demand an increase in player skill, which usually boils down to reaction time and clicking fast, which maybe isn't how we want to make RPGs difficult. They'll also tend to give the character better equipment (trade in your pistol for a plasma rifle, Space Marine!), but if we implement this in an RPG, what's the difference between levelling up your gear to get a 5% better chance of a successful hit and levelling up your character to get the same?

I do think it would be cool to have an RPG start off with the PC being reasonably good at what he does, because the rat killing paradigm gets old. I do think there's potential to the idea, but the idea needs to be elaborated:

Does it mean no character advancement at all?
How do you scale up the difficulty of the tasks the player undertakes?
How do you stop progression of gear from just replacing progression of character?
What does the character system look like when there's no progression coming? Could there still be contextual perks not gained due to some arbitrary gain of a level but because you actually learned something in game?

As for capping one ability's value based on another's, that I don't like. It seems like the only reason it's been proposed is realism, and realism shouldn't be what a designer worries about. And besides, like VD says: in most systems, the tradeoff is already there. Maybe your high strength and agility costs you low scores in different stats, or fewer skills, or whatever. Besides, trying to quantify things like these will just get you into the same kind of trouble we had with the discussion on modifiers for female characters.
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How appropriate. You fight like a cow.

[Gambler]

The problem with attributes is that they try to digitize something that should not be digital. "He is a brilliant physics professor" means something. "He has intelligence of 9" does not. There are physics professors who do amateur sports, althout I never heard of professional athlete who teached physics in spare time.

In other words, the actual relationships and meanings of things represented by attributes are very complex in real life. It would be interesting to see a game that accounts for that complexity.

[Monolith]

[Monolith]

[Monolith]

[denizsi]

[Norfleet]

[bozia2012]

[EEVIAC]