Stats/Attributes/Traits

[Justin]

I have mostly decided on the following attributes for characters:

Strength

Determines things like a character’s skill at using physical weapons and how hard they hit with physical attacks.

Fitness

Determines stamina level and how well a character can withstand physical wounds.

Wisdom

Determines how well a character can use magical skills and perhaps some other things.

Willpower

Determines fortitude level and resistance to magical/psychic attacks.

Grace

Determines a character’s accuracy with physical attacks, ability for stealthy stuff, and also their skill at crafting.

Agility

Determines dodging/avoidance/parring/blocking ability.


Additionally, each character will have the following:

Health

Health/hit points reflect your physical state, naturally. If you run out, you are dead.

Fortitude

Fortitude is used in actions that are magical in natural, as well as crafting and such. Essentially mana.

Stamina

Stamina is used for any kind of physical action.


Fortitude and stamina will be used quickly but also regained quickly. In this way, they are sort of like "movement" or "action" points, I suppose.

[Saffire]

I've never been a fan of having a lot of stats. I would combine strength with fitness, wisdom with willpower, and grace with agility to simplify things. Health, fortitude, and stamina are fine as they are, though I would suggest considering having crafts use stamina instead of fortitude and then renaming fortitude mana. It's cliche, sure, but it's what players are used too, and you don't want to be changing around too many standard things like that, or you'll confuse people.

[Justin]

Yeah, I suppose that makes sense. It just seems like only having three stats doesn't leave a lot of room for diversity. With only three things to play around with, you have a total of 6 possible combinations of high/low. With 6 stats you have 720. But I agree six sounds like too many...perhaps combine wisdom/willpower and grace/agility, but keep fitness. Which I guess would be like constitution typically is. That way "magic" users could have high stamina without needing high strength? I'm not sure, this kind of thing isn't really my strong suit. I agree it should be simple, but not so simple that everyone ends up with the same stats. (Or maybe we could just not have stats at all and have it be based on in-game training and practice instead.)

I really like using 'fortitude', though. Since the magic in the game is likely to be less "magical" than usual, I think I'll keep it unless it becomes a real problem.

As for crafting requiring stamina or fortitude...maybe it will depend on what you are doing.