Episode 1: The Phantom Attributes

Hello and welcome to Nate's fancy custom RPG blog. I decided to create this after seeing a disappointing lack of material out there on the interwebs about custom role playing game systems. A lot of it boils down to stuff the major companies have already done, or, to put it bluntly, stuff I thought didn't have quite enough work put into it. But mostly, I was getting frustrated because I couldn't find what I was imagining online, which I guess means I came with something at least a little bit original, so I thought I'd share it here. Feel free to comment on anything you see here, share stuff you might have found on your own, or just drop your own ideas.

Firstly, what I don't necessarily like about the major league stuff out there. D&D and Pathfinder are incredibly fun, but there are a few abstractions I don't feel they cover well. Some of these are marketing decisions- stuff that keeps you playing to get bigger and bigger rewards down the line, some of these are just abstractions that have been incorporated for so long that nobody wants to get rid of them even if they're outdated, some of these are added to the games to make them feel more 'video gamey', and some of these are combinations of all of the above.

Pictured: Level 20

For instance, hit points. What do they represent? When you level up in real life, do you just get more blood? Some argue that hit points are more like a player's luck. As a player gets better at combat, they learn how to avoid getting hit, and every time they get into a close call they get a little less lucky, and next time might just be the blow that kills them. I kind of like this reasoning, but there is already a statistic for avoiding hits called Armor Class, but at the very least, hit points should be renamed to 'Luck' or something if this is the canon explanation. In my opinion, scaling hit points are just an artificial incentive to keep you playing the game, so you have enough health to fight the high level monsters with equally inflated hit points, and of course, buy more merchandise.

I guess what I've been looking for is a game that keeps one foot on reality. A game where the player is more fragile, so it forces you to make tactical decisions. A game that makes you think very carefully before entering combat. A game where even a lowly goblin can kill a seasoned veteran knight if he lets his guard down. That would be pretty cool.

So let's try to build one, eh? How would we do that? Well there's more than one way to kill an adventurer, but here's what I've been devising: the player's hit points are their Constitution score. That's it. That's my master plan. No wounds and vigor variants, no way to scale it up. That's all I want, for now at least. Of course, there will be ways to avoid getting hit. You could wear armor, for one. And there should definitely be ways to increase your abilities, including constitution, but not so much that a dagger between your ribs turns into a mosquito bite on your calf. Getting stabbed should still feel like getting stabbed, no matter how good you are at sword fighting. And so, since Constitution now more accurately represents how dead you're not, I'll rename it something fitting like Vitality. A constitution is something Nicholas Cage steals, but Vitality? That sounds important.

"We have to steal the Vitality. All the Vitality,"

Next up on the table is movement. It has always been clunky, from a design perspective. Everybody gets to move 30 feet except for the small characters. Why does your Half-Orc barbarian with a 900 pound warhammer move 100 extra feet per hour faster than my Halfling Rogue? One's supposed to be speedy and nimble and the other is supposed to be weighed down by gear, but that's not the way the rules portray it. Sure, armor weighs you down, or your gear can over-encumber you if you read deep enough in the appendices, but I think better, simpler rules need to be implemented. 5th edition is taking a step in the right direction by having certain actions cost 5 feet of movement, but they are all skirting around a really simple solution: make an ability for movement. It shall be henceforth known as Agility. Every character moves 20 feet (four spaces) plus an extra 5 feet (1 space) for each Agility modifier they possess. That sounds cool, right? My little guy can now run circles around your big guy, and our Elf Wizard has to puff his inhaler to catch up. And now armor, equipment, terrain, and more can inflict easy-to-understand penalties on Agility instead of arcane and mumbled algebra to reduce speed.

In fact, I redesigned a lot of the abilities, right down to the fact that I refer to them as attributes (they're attributes now, by the way).

Starting at the top, so it's right up next to the name and other important details is Vitality, your health bar, which we've discussed.

Strength, which surprisingly hasn't changed much (yet).

Dexterity, which now focuses exclusively on hand-eye coordination.

Agility, controlling your entire body, but mostly your legs.

Intelligence has also not been changed. Nerd on, wizards.

Wisdom has been split into two attributes: Perception, which is your five senses, and

Faith, which represents how much you lovems some Jesus. Or Iomedae, or Satan, or what have you.

Charisma now strictly deals with your social abilities.

And Spirit is how much magic is inherent in your physical being. This takes over all the magical things that Charisma controlled, because it didn't make sense to me that Sorcerers previously had to be successful used car salesmen to function properly.

Of course, one of the things I strive for is versatility. There's no reason to make an attribute that is useless to everyone except a specific class, so each attribute must have multiple broad uses that would be desirable to more than one character, so that you really feel the reward for having it, and really miss it when you don't.

For instance, Faith can add to your damage bonus with holy weapons, and your Faith modifier determines how many prayers (mini miracles that grant subtle 24 hour bonuses) you can have active in a day. Having a low faith makes you vulnerable to alignment based attacks.

Spirit, on the other hand, can contribute to damage from certain magical weapons, determines how many magic items you can equip before you start seeing negative side affects, and directly represents your mana pool.

Perception gets added to survival checks, sense motive checks, and determines your ability to pick up cues from the world around you using touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Perception can also determine how far you see in the dark, and many other factors. It can even be added to your defensive bonus if you are forced to fight while blinded.

And of course, casters would desire the 'mundane' stats. Wizards need Dexterity to aim wands, Sorcerers need Strength the fling their energy balls farther, and who couldn't use more hit points with Vitality, right?

One thing in particular that I like about 5th edition is the saving throws for every ability. This one just made sense to me. Why have a stat that helps you jump out of the way of a falling boulder, but not one that helps you stop it? And they've also brought the DC's for these saves back down to earth so there's no scaling necessary for most of them, re-simplifying them so that even a beginner might figure out how to use them properly. So we just apply this method to our nine attributes and we get:

• A Vitality save that helps us fight disease, bleeding, and poison. 
• A Strength save that helps us perform continued strenuous activities. 
• A Dexterity check that helps us quickly snatch things. 
• An Agility save that helps us jump out of danger. 
• A Perception check that helps us notice things we might miss (Note that previous incarnations of the 'perception' skill are now a save. Search is still in as a skill, the key difference being that one is passive and one is active). 
• An intelligence save that helps us concentrate while being distracted. 
• A Charisma save to help us resist compulsions.
• A Faith save to help us overcome alignment based attacks.
• And a Spirit save that helps us resist arcane damage.

It's over 9,000. I checked the scouter.

That all sounds groovy to me. You may have your own way of doing things. Do you want an attribute specifically for beardedness? Implement one! Your Beardedness could have bonuses for your beer-guzzling skill, rolls made to grapple with bears, and ability make a mean steakadilla. Whatever. Let's hear how you get creative with attributes, or RPG systems in general. I'm just sticking with the basic d20 skeleton, here. There is so much more variation out there to play with.

Together, we can make the ultimate system, guys and gals.