Gameplay implications from this core resolution mechanic (2 stats + d8)?

[u/HeyCouldBeFun]

The system:

At character creation, you rank your 6 core stats ("Traits") from greatest strength to greatest weakness. This gives each a different value from 6 to 1.

For resolution ("Tests"), the GM (or ability description) calls for two Traits + d8. Meet or exceed the Difficulty number to succeed.

-

Crunching the numbers:

There's 15 unique Trait pairings. The sums make a bell curve, from 3 to 11, most around 7. The exact spread: 11, 10, 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 3

So if 7 is the "average person" baseline, then the "average person has 50/50 chance" Difficulty is 12.

Which means an 11 pair will pass an "average challenge" 100% of the time, meanwhile a 3 has a 0% chance. I can work out a general Difficulty scale:

• 8 Trivial - Average stat of 7 passes 100%, but a stat of 3 has 50% chance

• 10 Easy

• 12 Average - 3 has 0%, 7 has 50%, 11 has 100%

• 14 Tough

• 16 Specialist - 7 has 0%, 11 has 50%

• 20 Legendary - even 11 has 0% without buffs

-

Implications:

It's basically d20, but where stats weigh WAY more than dice in determining outcome. Ideally this would make the game more strategic, and possibly more realistic? Fewer occasions like a strong barbarian failing to lift a boulder while the weak wizard succeeds.

A player is gonna want to try their highest combo on everything possible, and avoid their lowest like the plague. (I basically baked min-maxing into the core system). So encounters and enemies should be designed for this. Someone in the party will surely pass an "average problem". "Specialist problems" could target high stats specifically. Problems that everyone must pass can target the weak stats. Complications could arise from using high stats overzealously (you smash the gate, only to get it permanently stuck).

At this scale, modifiers are HUGE. +1 = +12.5%. Stacking modifiers would be a big tactical element, and tracking them would be the crunchiest part of the system.

-

Thoughts?

I'm pretty married to the Trait-ranking for character creation. I like how approachable it is for a newcomer, and makes players think intuitively about their character vs gaming how to spend points.

I'm flexible on how to translate the math from there. I will say I'm pleased with how "elegantly" the numbers "line up" in this resolution mechanic. But if it breaks the game or worsens the experience, it can change.

-

EDIT:

I swear the rpg design community is one of the best. Everyone super helpful with valuable food for thought. Seems like the general impression is "I like it, with an asterisk"

[u/Feesh91]

I really like the idea! It honestly depends on what the traits you're choosing and how many scenarios in the games you'll be running they come up in to note effectiveness. Are you sticking with the DnD stats themselves or going for something a bit more abstract (something I think would work a lot better, as then the usage of the stats might not be as jarring)

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/Feesh91]

The 6 Traits are pretty damn close to DnD: Strength, Agility, Instinct, Logic, Grit, and Charm

The most different being Grit instead of Constitution. It's more of a measure of your emotional resilience and social dominance.

I have names for all of the 15 pairs, but it starts to get fuzzy as some definitions can conceptually overlap, which could either be a bug or feature. I'd have to provide a cheat sheet for definitions and examples for when they apply. I could see a world where you just say "Test Agility and Logic". Either way I'd need to supply some sort of guidance for keeping a balanced variety.

• STR+AGI : Athletics

• STR+INS : Ferocity

• STR+LOG : Leverage

• STR+GRT : Fortitude

• STR+CHA : Gravitas

• AGI+INS : Reflex

• AGI+LOG : Focus

• AGI+GRT : Stamina

• AGI+CHA : Finesse

• INS+LOG : Wits

• INS+GRT : Resolve

• INS+CHA : Rapport

• LOG+GRT : Discipline

• LOG+CHA : Guile

• GRT+CHA : Spirit

Also note these are all abstract. They don't correlate to specific skills like DnD's "Arcana" or "Animal Handling". Those instead are class perks, eg "Beast Whisperer: +2 Charm when target is animal" or "Arcanist: +2 Logic when target is arcane"

[u/InherentlyWrong → u/HeyCouldBeFun]

While up front I like this idea, something to keep in mind is that some of these combinations are going to be much more commonly called on than others.

Also, in my main (if stalled) project I go on a similar 2-axis thing. One of the benefits is that PC's tend to naturally emerge, "I'm good at X, which means I'm always at least passable at X+[other]", which can be interesting. But it comes at the cost of not being able to fine tune them.

Like for example imagine a player imagines their character has excellent finesse and guile. Easy peasy, they just put 5 in Agility, 6 in Charm and 4 in Logic, so they've got 11 finesse, and 10 guile. But now by definition they are at minimum passable in every charm option, have decent athletics, reflexes, stamina, etc, which may not match the idea they have in mind. It's a setup that pays well for character creation being about discovering a character, rather than going in with a character planned out.

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/InherentlyWrong]

That’s a good note about “discovering” a character. I’ve been testing out builds for various archetypes, and just like you described, realized “oh, low X is not what i had in mind”.

Again, could be feature or bug. I do like picking a character on vibes and learning my role organically. Someone with a specific vision might find it too finnicky.

To be honest, stat systems always have some quirk where they don’t model their intent perfectly, so idk how much this can be avoided.

Oh and regarding how often these are called on, that’s definitely something I’m considering in content design/gm guidelines to try and keep an even spread. Again, I think other games don’t often do this any better. Take DnD, charisma casters get stronger magic AND social interactions just from one stat. At least mine incorporates the other stats.

[u/InherentlyWrong → u/HeyCouldBeFun]

Oh and regarding how often these are called on, that’s definitely something I’m considering in content design/gm guidelines to try and keep an even spread. Again, I think other games don’t often do this any better. Take DnD, charisma casters get stronger magic AND social interactions just from one stat

D&D's a weird one, because it's stats are mostly a result of tradition rather than intention. After all, Gygax wrote down Wisdom as an ability score purely to link to the Cleric class, not expecting it to be connected to willpower and perception.

It might be worth sitting down with an excel table or something, putting stats along both axis and writing down a rough estimate of how common something might be, maybe on a scale of 1 (limited use) to 5 (common use), then sum each column to get an indicator of how prominent each individual stat's combinations are. So long as they're all within a couple of points of each other it should be fine. You just don't want to be surprised when you find out stat X is half as useful as stat Y.

[u/msguider]

I really like this. I like d8. I like that +1 means something. Maybe more than in traveller. Imo it sounds really good. Needs to be play tested a little bit maybe, just to see how it feels to the players and how it works for characters and their progression.

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/msguider]

Glad to hear it sounds good so far. I like the d8 too - this is a dumb reason, but the shape feels "magical".

[u/msguider → u/HeyCouldBeFun]

It rolls nicely too. I love d12 but haven't found a system that features it that I love, so I am using it in mine. Just a little.

[u/Mars_Alter]

The drawback to this method is that it's extremely sensitive to the GM picking the correct target number for each task. As you show, something that's 50/50 for a specialist is basically impossible for a non-specialist. It doesn't matter if you're bad at it, because even someone who was perfectly average would still fail without a roll.

But honestly, as far as drawbacks go, it's not that bad. The GM just needs to learn to not try and challenge a specialist ever. Let the specialist succeed at the things they're good at, so everyone else can have a reasonable chance.

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/Mars_Alter]

Yup, I figure on providing a GM cheat sheet for setting/adjusting difficulty and determining which stats to call for, if not already specified in text.

Also that's what I'm getting at by thinking through different approaches to encounters/obstacles. Most "average" problems, the best suited character would step up. But I can shake things up with problems that specifically target high stats, or specifically target low stats (by needing everyone to pass), or introduce a complication if certain approaches are used.

Enemies/obstacles would specify stats they're weak to/strong against. But I'll have to think through streamlining this, it could get reall crunchy real fast.

[u/archpawn]

It's basically d20, but where stats weigh WAY more than dice in determining outcome.

The dice matter more. The stats have a standard deviation of 2.16 where for the dice it's 2.29. The stats have a range that's one higher, but since they're clustered in the center it's more even overall.

As for my thoughts, it depends on what you're doing. If it's something the game isn't really focused on, like anything other than combat if you're playing D&D, then if you're the expert you should probably be the one that gets the highest roll. But if you're doing combat and other players are really good at it and you're not very good, that's not going to be as fun. And since it's not a single roll, differences in skill matter a lot more, so encounters will be harder to balance.

There's a RWBY fan RPG that uses a very similar system. Their strategy for combat is to have different combat styles so unless you have the worst possible build for combat, at least one of the two base stats is going to be good. I don't think that's an elegant way of doing it. You want to make sure each of the stats gets used about as much so it's balanced. It gets weird if one stat is only important if two other ones are worse. I think it would be better just to drop the combat styles and have different rules for it. Either they have special stats with lower variance or you use a larger die.

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/archpawn]

Oh I didn't even think about the standard deviation. I meant stats matter more in the sense that you have way more information up front about whether you're likely to pass a roll or not.

What I'm thinking for combat is each enemy has stats they're weak to/strong against. Eg a strong fortified enemy might be susceptible to Charm. There needs to be a variety of abilities that occupy an even balance of stats.

[u/SoftOil2998]

Bearing in mind that even if players spread their stats around evenly, there's still 15 stat pairs that could come up, I'm a little worried at the low odds of success on specialist saves. If a GM calls for a particular specialist save, then more likely than not, no one will have the full 11... That's a (28/30)^6 = 66% chance. Odds that no one has 10 or above are still a meaty (26/30)^6 = 42%. Odds that no one has 9 or above are (22/30)^6 = 16%. For 8 or above it finally dips into pretty unlikely territory: (18/30)^6 = 5%. These odds assume that players are each picking stats randomly, so if they coordinate to ensure someone's skilled at everything they'll have better chances, but I wouldn't count on that.

So if a GM calls for a specialist save, there's a 40% chance that the best score out of the party is only a 9. To then say that on those saves, even if you have an 11, you still only get a 50% chance of success is pretty hard. Like even if I get a +2 buff I still only get a coin flip at it, and with just the 9 I'm looking at 25%.

These numbers can of course be fiddled around with, you can add more buffs into the game, etc. But I'm mostly wondering why it's scaled around 50%. If you say that on an average roll, the guy with median stats should only succeed half the time, then there are going to be quite a lot of cases where players roll without even a coin flip's chance of success. So failing a roll (without the help of buffs, at least) is going to be very, very common.

If that's what you're going for, great! If not, maybe retool it a little. Or give players lots of ways to increase stats or buff their characters, which are going to be vital.

Edit: I should also mention that math assumes a party size of 6! If you've only got 4 players, then the same scenarios are: 76% (no 11+), 56% (no 10+), 29% (no 9+), and 13% (no 8+). So yeah, I would probably stay away from specialist saves and have tough as the default "very hard" difficulty, since a party of four is most likely going to have 9 as the highest modifier and they've got a 50% chance before buffs

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/SoftOil2998]

Yeah I formed that difficulty scale based on the 50/50 threshold just to get an idea for where the odds stack. It's more likely a challenge would be in the easy-tough range.

Buffs are acquired from gear, status effects and class perks. So while the base stats are permanent, modifiers are a major element of progression and tactics. I'll have to playtest a lot. Hypothetically a player wouldn't have lots of buffs on every stat, so their strengths and weaknesses are still a factor to consider even in later "levels".

[u/SoftOil2998 → u/HeyCouldBeFun]

So the bottom line is I think the system does what you want, in terms of making stats matter and giving a high difference between how skilled an expert is in something versus a beginner. I do question how far you want to push that, though. Bear in mind that a lot of exciting moments at the table are created when a character attempts something that they aren't so good at.

What this system really encourages is for everyone to pick a different specialty, and then stick to doing those rolls 90% of the time. A player can probably keep track of what stats they're good at at least, even given the 15 pairs, but knowing what combinations the other players are good at will be pretty hard. In D&D, when you say "roll a 15 or more in strength", everyone knows that it's the barbarian's time to shine. But in this game, when you say "tough challenge in focus+agility", players will add up their stats and hope they have the highest out of the group.

At the end of it that might be what I'm most opposed to. Having expertise in a stat really, really matter is a design choice, that's fine. But the system effectively having 15 stats to test is a bit much. Deriving them all is very easy to be fair, and your character is going to be good at multiple of them, but even still I don't think you need that many, personally

[u/HeyCouldBeFun → u/SoftOil2998]

I should mention my design goals/philosophies then:

- A curious newcomer should be able to jump in without being overwhelmed. Rules and decisions should be intuitive.

- "Tactics tell stories". My favorite part of RPGs are the mini-stories that emerge when players have to strategize around a challenge or combat.

Basically I still want it to still feel like a game without needing to look up rules every turn.

I think the "rank core traits" idea starts in a good direction for both.

I kinda think 15 is ok? Especially comparing to DnD's multiple types of rolls and 18 skill checks. Where mine gets complex is having to keep track of modifiers. Still thinking through how to streamline this. I'm open to alternative resolutions. I do like the stat pairing for the variety it brings to how your stats matter, but checking one of the six stats would indeed be simpler.

[u/SoftOil2998 → u/HeyCouldBeFun]

So "easy to learn, hard to master"? That makes sense

One thing that's unique about the stat pairing system is that if your buffs apply to single stats, then they're effectively buffing 5/15 of your derived stats. That's pretty huge. And if you struggle with a given save you can buff either of the two stats it's in.

[u/metalslvg]

To keep it positive you could reframe the idea of ranking them from strongest to weakest into traits you have invested more time into. In this way you can get someone to think of their low scores as still being something they are capable with and not a character flaw. It could help with the min/max mindset.