'Bastards 0.2 - Attribute/Skill Change Discussion - Feedback Wanted.

[thirtythr33]

I think Thirty33 has a point about unskilled rolls using attributes with highest TNs. It might not be a biggie but something to take into consideration when other things get settled.

The only way around it I can think of is to have skills start at 3 dice when you buy the first rank. That means the new system would effectively range from 3-10. Then you can choose how to handle unskilled attempts. Either they operate off your attribute at a big penalty or you just get a flat 1 or 2 dice on any check.

Or else, you do something like attribute/2 or attribute -2 to make a base for skills, which skills then build on top of. But then you are locked into having fixed attributes for each skill since calculating anything more complicated than attribute + skill is too cumbersome to do on the fly.

At character creation, the cost for buying skills is:
up to the value of the corresponding Attribute - 1 point for 1 dot
above this value - 2 points for 1 dot.

Unfortunately that would defeat the point of the exercise. One of the problems right now is that attributes are better for skills than skills are. This would only make the problem worse.

d6s changes surprisingly little, on the mechanical side of things.. save that dis/advantage becomes more powerful/useful, TNs don't shift every wound level, and that slow actions are 2d6 instead of a d10 -- which is actually for the best given that the complaint before was that d10s are often the better option tactically.

If you are changing to a d6 system, how do blunt damage lower TNs work? It looks like it has to use the same TN steps and piercing and cutting, or else it goes really weird. Since your armor properties system is build around "downgrading" to blunt this could need some serious consideration or wound chart rebalancing.

I am imagining wound charts to look something like this:
Cutting
Impact 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 10
NA / NA / TN5 / TN5 / TN6

Piercing
Impact 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5
NA / NA / TN5 / TN5 / TN6

Blunt
Impact 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 10
NA / NA / NA / TN5 / TN5

But Level 3 wound with no TN shift and no max TN at level 5 looks wrong for blunt. Having identical level 4 wound is odd too.

[Korbel]

Unfortunately that would defeat the point of the exercise. One of the problems right now is that attributes are better for skills than skills are. This would only make the problem worse.

Well, now you can take tier 5 in Attributes, set the most important ones (probably Agility, Social, or something) to 4 or even 5, than invest lightly in skills and you rock (rolling 6, 7, 8 dice on most of your skill checks).
I can see that my proposition might have the same drawback, but I'd argue if this is worse. OK, Attributes will give a nice "base", but you must build your skills from zero, anyway. You can't pick a low Tier for skills, because they'll suck really hard regardless of your Attributes.

[EinBein]

Until now, I haven't posted in this thread because I was uncertain what to think. But the discussion increasingly steers in a direction that makes me fear for this ingenious ruleset. Many (not all) of the "solutions" proposed seem so artificial and unwieldy, that the original idea of simplification gets buried more and more below a heap of scrap (no offense guys, but some of the ideas really lose the footing in terms of playability...). Even the original idea of decoupled attributes and skills seems now worse than on page 1. First, I will focus on the original post:

I like BoB because of the simple, straightforward rules with few exceptions. At least for someone who was familiar with TRoS and Blade. In hindsight, I especially like "X+Y" and "no dead levels", both for their narrative qualities:

• The biggest advantage of X+Y (at least in my opinion) is, that it helps the players narrating their actions. When playing Shadwrun with my group, where X+Y is fixed for every attribute-skill-combination, no one ever takes the time to describe actions in more detail than necessary. When playing BoB though, the same lazy players describe the actions of their characters in order to force a certain attribute to be rolled. That's just glorious and would be dead with fixed attributes or no attributes for skills. I can see the advantages and intentions of Agamemnons original proposal, but can not see how they would outweigh the drawbacks... Especially in a game focussing so much on lively narration and drama like BoB.
• In BoB, where every rating in an attribute is linked to a qualitative description that can be presented by GM and players alike, dead levels have the potential to harm narration again. As Agamemnon pointed out, players should be able to deduct NPC abilities by how they behave, look like and move, and the same should be true and consistent for PCs. This symmetry is in danger, if halved attributes become a thing. As of now, I see no good reasons why players shouldn't care for optimum point allocation with divided attributes. And if they do, the choices that were before in favor of a coherent character concept may in future be in favor of "one point more in a certain (derived) attribute" or even "one point more in every skill associated with a certain attribute". Again, imho, it's against the narrative core.

We played a BoB beta test during our last RPG weekend and even though I'm still not ready with writing down what we experienced, it took us all by surprise. We hadn't cared too much for SA's in our TRoS and Blade games, because they didn't appeal to my players. But in our BoB beta, I prepared a set of characters with closely tied SA's and nothing else. And what happened from then was just great, top notch drama. A weak man breaking free from his dominant brother by letting him die by poison, a desperate thief mousetrapped by his hopes to restore his former position, and many more scenes we will remember for the rest of our gaming careers... All-in-all, the ruleset perfectly supported lively descriptions and a natural flow of scenes. If anything was wrong with the rules, it was the fact that in some situations (mainly combat) they were still requiring too much attention.

As a bottom line: The flow (low complexity of rules) and the narrative (supportive rules in general and coherent character design in particular) are my main concern, and I know both work perfectly with the current state of the rules.

Now let's switch to constructive mode and focus on the problems that have inspired Agamemnons original proposal.

[...]core issues [...]
1) SAs overpowering skills.
2) Skills being maxed out at character creation, making those characters relatively shallow for advancement compared to combat-based (or eventually magic-based) characters
3) Ability scores are generally a better investment for skill characters than skills are, which is the opposite of how it should be.

Proposal for solution of 1) and 3) Increase the qualitative value of the skill rating
[quote="Added to "untrained" paragraph on p.34 (one could even replace the paragraph in question with this rule)"]If the Ob of the task is higher than the skill rating in use, the best achievable result is a mitigated success, regardless of the MoS.[/quote]
You could say this adds an additional step to skill checks ("check rating of skill against Ob"), but as the player needs to read his skill rating anyhow, this is fairly easy imho. Additionally, I believe it is coherent with in-game logic (maybe more simple than reality, but okay from a narrative point of view).
Characters with a huge amount of dice from attributes and SAs can still succeed, but they will always do so at a cost, that will drive the drama as a side effect. Only trained characters will be able to really benefit from the use of skills, which sets them apart from other specialized builds.

Proposal for solution of 2) Increase the range to 1 to 6 while keeping the current priority table

I still struggle with the current "double maximum" of attributes and skills. Rating 5 is described as "pinnacle of human achievement" (attributes) or "upper echelons of human achievement" (skills). Rating 6 is just even more. I would just flatten the curve a bit and integrate rating 6 to be the new natural maximum. Otherwise, I see a lot of "pinnacles" with "super human" elements in an average gaming group, as you don't even need to minmax to reach these values. Together with my first proposed amendment, I think there will be enough motivation to grow the skill set after character creation.

---

You can see, that I'm more of the side of "minor changes". Flow and narrative are great now. Even if the new rules proposed by others would not harm flow or narrative, I fail to see how they would help. Most are focused on solving balance issues or increasing "realism" in some places. But I think both are not so important. Balance is dead as soon as someone gets severely injured or loses his wealth or equipment. Realism may damage narrative experience in many cases.

Actually, I have more opinions, but no time to write them down... Need to get back to work now. Hope no one feels offended by my opening words.

[Korbel]

If the Ob of the task is higher than the skill rating in use, the best achievable result is a mitigated success, regardless of the MoS.

I love how it makes every rank important and meaningful. But it doesn't solve the problem of a novice beating the master only thanks to SAs. Yes, it's gonna be a compromise for him, but it doesn't change the fact he won.
(but as I use SAs as a source of Advantage, I don't have to worry about the issue of novice beating a master, so hereby I'm stealing your idea for all of my games, because it's great)

[EinBein]

If the Ob of the task is higher than the skill rating in use, the best achievable result is a mitigated success, regardless of the MoS.

[...] But it doesn't solve the problem of a novice beating the master only thanks to SAs. Yes, it's gonna be a compromise for him, but it doesn't change the fact he won. [...]

Yeah, but maybe he doesn't want to win anymore when he becomes aware of the price he has to pay in order to do so. And we're back at the core of what BoB is about: making hard choices!

Anyways, I'm not so sure how to handle my proposal in opposed rolls. Most intuitive would be to take the successes of the opponent as Ob (which they technically are), but this can lead to very high "Ob"s quickly, that can't be equalled even by the most skillful. But then again, choices have to be made...

[nemedeus]

EinBein, if I was a moderator, I'd give you a Title for these Ideas. You have my full support on this!

Regarding opposed checks, I'm wondering where the less skilled more gifted character beating the more skilled less gifted character starts becoming a problem. Say for example I've got a skill of 3 and attribute 4, and my opponent has a skill of 4 and attribute 3. Should my opponent still have a disproportionate chance if winning this one?

Yet another way to fix that problem is, the skill portion of the roll becoming autosuccesses for both sides, but that would be an ugly exception.

My best other guess would be "higher skilled character gets difference as a bonus", but that's an additional step and might be unwieldy.

Third option, the opponents skill rating is what you compare to, problem here is, essentially the lower skilled character NEVER really beats the higher skilled character. Maybe use opponents skill rating minus two? Maybe use Half opponent's skill rating (rounded up)?
Yes I see the irony in me suggesting divisions now. Then again this is more of a npc thing isn't it?


Lots of bla bla, bottom line is, when SHOULD the lower skilled character start to have a decent chance at beating a higher skilled character? I don't think we've answered this question yet.

[Agamemnon]

Before I get into my quoting marathon, I've chewed on and modified the original proposal for changes. If it changes at all, this is where I'd be leaning:

• Attributes and skills work on a 1-8 scale, with 9-10 being T5 territory like the 6th dot is now.
• The core attributes: Agility, Brawn, Cunning, Will, and Perception.
• Three derived attributes: Trauma (the average of brawn and will), Reflex (the average of agility and cunning), and Body (1/3 Brawn)
• Skills and attributes are rolled independently.
• Skills are tied to an attribute, but only to determine their starting value when first purchased (1/3 of the governing attribute, rounding down).
• Untrained skills can use whichever attribute is appropriate at the time at its full die pool, but all dice rolled work at max TN.

The scale, again, using Brawn as an illustration:
1. Small animals.
2. Children, the disabled.
3. Sedentary office workers
4. Average, active people. Farmers, laborers
5-6. Professional athletes.
7-8 Professional Strongman types. The height of what normal people can actually achieve.
9-10. Genetic freaks. Tier 5 material. Andrey the Giant. Hafthor Bjornson.

Social was killed when I realized that it didn't seem to mean anything. Its only purpose is to power skills, all of which could easily be linked to cunning or will. On the other hand, this makes edges that might have a social component (whether due to physical beauty or reputation) slightly stronger/more interesting by comparison as you can't simply buy "charisma" now.

The above keeps attributes from outright replacing skills at any point. Pairing the skill benefit from attributes to a 1/3 scale instead of a 1/2 scale means that the average person will get 1 point out of it, but exceptionally high or low scores still affect your skills. Skill-based characters will thus be better off investing in Skills, rather than attributes.

I'm not sure I'm worried about "dead levels" in this proposal simply because it's an expensive proposition to invest enough points in an attribute to get up to that next level of a skill. Conversely, because the attribute list has been pared down as much as it has, none of the attributes have so little effect that it's easy to decide to leave it at 3 just because it's not adding a benefit to some skill.

or the X+Y paradigm, to solve the problem of skill characters vs. generalists, i'd suggest the following:

Picking up the mastery level idea, instead of the higher ranks granting bonus dice or auto successes, let's set it up like this:
--Normal Skill Range: 1 - 5, where every rank adds a die as before
--Mastery Range: 6 - 8, where every rank decreases TN by 1.


I guess, it would work just as well for d6 if we limit it to one mastery level (that is, 6 for TN3 and TN2 with advantage). Essentially like the Shades in Burning Wheel.

So yeah, i'm definitely advocate for this system, if X+Y stays (I guess i'll write that down in my campaign doc).

Amusingly, that's in essence the TROS Companion skill system in reverse.

I've always had the opinion that attributes should make skills easier to learn/improve, but not add to them directly. Just because your character has a high intelligence score doesn't mean they automatically know something about everything, but they'll find it much easier to learn or improve intelligence-based skills. The same can be said for other attributes. I can't think of a game that has attributes implemented in this fashion though.

That's an interesting thought, though, in essence, that's what the original proposal does. Having a high agility doesn't inherently make your character automatically good at agility-based skills, it just means when you buy them they start at a higher level.

I think Thirty33 has a point about unskilled rolls using attributes with highest TNs. It might not be a biggie but something to take into consideration when other things get settled.

The only way around it I can think of is to have skills start at 3 dice when you buy the first rank. That means the new system would effectively range from 3-10. Then you can choose how to handle unskilled attempts. Either they operate off your attribute at a big penalty or you just get a flat 1 or 2 dice on any check.

Or else, you do something like attribute/2 or attribute -2 to make a base for skills, which skills then build on top of. But then you are locked into having fixed attributes for each skill since calculating anything more complicated than attribute + skill is too cumbersome to do on the fly.

What I'd originally proposed was simply to tie the starting value of the skill to the attribute and being done with it.

In hindsight, it's kinda weird that we're more accepting of the idea of "skills have no ties to attributes whatsoever" than "skills are tied to a specific attribute when you first learn them."

At character creation, the cost for buying skills is:
up to the value of the corresponding Attribute - 1 point for 1 dot
above this value - 2 points for 1 dot.

Unfortunately that would defeat the point of the exercise. One of the problems right now is that attributes are better for skills than skills are. This would only make the problem worse.

Bingo.

I am imagining wound charts to look something like this:
Cutting
Impact 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 10
NA / NA / TN5 / TN5 / TN6

Piercing
Impact 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5
NA / NA / TN5 / TN5 / TN6

Blunt
Impact 2 / 4 / 6 / 8 / 10
NA / NA / NA / TN5 / TN5

I was working on the notion of a level 5 blunt wound having TN6, but I don't view this as being weirder than the TNs for blunt wounds being one level behind across the board now. A level 3 wound still has Impact 6, so even without the TN-shift, it's going to have a huge impact on the fight.

That said, having the cap at TN6 makes the death spiral in the game slightly less brutal. TN8 gives you a 30% chance per die. TN 9 gives you a 20% chance. TN10 gives you a 10% chance. TN5 on a d6 gives you a 33% chance. TN6 gives you a 16% chance.

Until now, I haven't posted in this thread because I was uncertain what to think. But the discussion increasingly steers in a direction that makes me fear for this ingenious ruleset. Many (not all) of the "solutions" proposed seem so artificial and unwieldy, that the original idea of simplification gets buried more and more below a heap of scrap (no offense guys, but some of the ideas really lose the footing in terms of playability...).

Agreed. So far none of the proposals quite pass the benchmark for me. They either fail to accomplish the aims of the change as well as the originally proposed change, or they are patches that make things messier than I'm comfortable with.

The biggest advantage of X+Y (at least in my opinion) is, that it helps the players narrating their actions. When playing Shadwrun with my group, where X+Y is fixed for every attribute-skill-combination, no one ever takes the time to describe actions in more detail than necessary. When playing BoB though, the same lazy players describe the actions of their characters in order to force a certain attribute to be rolled. That's just glorious and would be dead with fixed attributes or no attributes for skills. I can see the advantages and intentions of Agamemnons original proposal, but can not see how they would outweigh the drawbacks... Especially in a game focussing so much on lively narration and drama like BoB.

I can see this argument, though in my experience the X has been pretty obvious in most cases, rather than a result of the players trying to angle to use Speed+Y instead of Agility+Y. Then again, my group is fond of embellishing. The problem is that skills are the severely at the moment undervalued and hit their cap too quickly.

In BoB, where every rating in an attribute is linked to a qualitative description that can be presented by GM and players alike, dead levels have the potential to harm narration again. As Agamemnon pointed out, players should be able to deduct NPC abilities by how they behave, look like and move, and the same should be true and consistent for PCs. This symmetry is in danger, if halved attributes become a thing. As of now, I see no good reasons why players shouldn't care for optimum point allocation with divided attributes. And if they do, the choices that were before in favor of a coherent character concept may in future be in favor of "one point more in a certain (derived) attribute" or even "one point more in every skill associated with a certain attribute". Again, imho, it's against the narrative core.

One could argue that there is no good reason for a mechanically-minded player not to max out their attributes in hope of the best benefit spread now. Though I think switching to a 1/3 setup does wonders to alleviate the issue.

The scale above is still tight enough that you can, at a glance, work out what an NPCs stats should be. It's broken into the same steps as the one we have now, save that there is slightly more room in the highest reaches where human NPCs should rarely be in the first place.

We played a BoB beta test during our last RPG weekend and even though I'm still not ready with writing down what we experienced, it took us all by surprise. We hadn't cared too much for SA's in our TRoS and Blade games, because they didn't appeal to my players. But in our BoB beta, I prepared a set of characters with closely tied SA's and nothing else. And what happened from then was just great, top notch drama.

One day I'll write up what happened when I tried to run the demo adventure for the first time with my home group. My notes started with "They leave the village with Heinar in custody." We got four sessions worth of material out of it, probably twelve hours of play. They never actually left the village with Heinar in custody. I learned an important lesson in 'Bastard prep that day. You need to write that up and share it with the group.

As a bottom line: The flow (low complexity of rules) and the narrative (supportive rules in general and coherent character design in particular) are my main concern, and I know both work perfectly with the current state of the rules.

Agreed. I don't think the flow is in any way disrupted by the current proposal, however. If anything, it's objectively simpler in play (one step fewer calculations). The narrative is a debatable issue, but I'm not sure that the above really damages the narrative. This is a subjective issue to be thought on further.

Proposal for solution of 1) and 3) Increase the qualitative value of the skill rating
[quote="Added to "untrained" paragraph on p.34 (one could even replace the paragraph in question with this rule)"]If the Ob of the task is higher than the skill rating in use, the best achievable result is a mitigated success, regardless of the MoS.

You could say this adds an additional step to skill checks ("check rating of skill against Ob"), but as the player needs to read his skill rating anyhow, this is fairly easy imho. Additionally, I believe it is coherent with in-game logic (maybe more simple than reality, but okay from a narrative point of view).
Characters with a huge amount of dice from attributes and SAs can still succeed, but they will always do so at a cost, that will drive the drama as a side effect. Only trained characters will be able to really benefit from the use of skills, which sets them apart from other specialized builds.[/quote]

Hrm. That's a possibility. My only immediate concerns are:
1. We flatten the potential curve of outcomes significantly. I feel like that would result in most rolls being mitigated results. Skills are 1/3 of the total die pool you can get for a skill check (Which, in my opinion, is the core of the problem here). Most PCs will have skills of 3s and 4s (if they invested anything in skills at all).. which will mean any test that they make will either be:
A) Low enough ob that it was relatively easy without SAs firing.
B) A mitigated success.

The majority of A is often not worth rolling. I've seen a lot of ob4s and 5s at my table, occasionally 6+ as well when they were trying to do something exceptionally heroic -- which is what SAs are for, really. The only time this won't be true is if your skills are high enough and your attributes low enough that the skill makes up 50% or higher of the total pool.

2. We substantially increase the frequency of which I as a GM have to improvise a way to complicate things which is sometimes a good deal of work on the spot -- to the point where I'm thinking about fiddling with the complications rules to make it easier to GM.

3. The primary issue I had was not player vs. ob, but player vs. player. As Korbel points out the initial issue was when a someone with one dot can beat someone with 5 because their SAs are firing. SAs should help the underdog.. but when the minimum possible rank can beat the maximum possible rank, we need more room between the two.

Proposal for solution of 2) Increase the range to 1 to 6 while keeping the current priority table

I still struggle with the current "double maximum" of attributes and skills. Rating 5 is described as "pinnacle of human achievement" (attributes) or "upper echelons of human achievement" (skills). Rating 6 is just even more. I would just flatten the curve a bit and integrate rating 6 to be the new natural maximum. Otherwise, I see a lot of "pinnacles" with "super human" elements in an average gaming group, as you don't even need to minmax to reach these values. Together with my first proposed amendment, I think there will be enough motivation to grow the skill set after character creation.

To be fair, the player-characters are, by definition, exceptional individuals. That said, this cap is also why I'm in favor of the scale rewrite I suggested. On the other hand, I can only fit so many dice in my hand. I prefer not to get to the point where we require dice cups to make rolls -- which we could get to if the new maximums are 7+7 for a roll.

[dysjunct]

I don't recall seeing a discussion of comparative skill levels and how they apply to design or player expectations. So as background:

Assume you have three guild craftsmen. Let's say in the pottery guild. One is an apprentice, one is a journeyman, one is a master. You set them against each other and give them all the materials they want, and eight hours to produce the best pot they can make.

1. What percentage of the time should the apprentice make a better pot than the journeyman?
2. Than the master?
3. How well does that compare to the percentages produced by the dice pools of the existing system?
4. How much should SAs change these percentages?

My feeling is that the current system, even without SAs, produces results that are swingier than intuition should dictate. With SAs it is probably ridiculous.

Now, I know that:
- BoB is not a pottery or guild simulator.
- In fiction, protagonists succeed far more often than they "should."
- BoB is PC-centric and it doesn't matter much if NPC master craftsmen are regularly humiliated.

However, it seems that the designers (and the playtesters) should be able to at least roughly agree on expectations, even given the above caveats. Debating system changes without establishing clearer expectations (given the design goals) seems like an exercise in frustration.

[Agamemnon]

I don't recall seeing a discussion of comparative skill levels and how they apply to design or player expectations. So as background:

Assume you have three guild craftsmen. Let's say in the pottery guild. One is an apprentice, one is a journeyman, one is a master. You set them against each other and give them all the materials they want, and eight hours to produce the best pot they can make.

1. What percentage of the time should the apprentice make a better pot than the journeyman?
2. Than the master?
3. How well does that compare to the percentages produced by the dice pools of the existing system?
4. How much should SAs change these percentages?

My feeling is that the current system, even without SAs, produces results that are swingier than intuition should dictate. With SAs it is probably ridiculous.

Now, I know that:
- BoB is not a pottery or guild simulator.
- In fiction, protagonists succeed far more often than they "should."
- BoB is PC-centric and it doesn't matter much if NPC master craftsmen are regularly humiliated.

However, it seems that the designers (and the playtesters) should be able to at least roughly agree on expectations, even given the above caveats. Debating system changes without establishing clearer expectations (given the design goals) seems like an exercise I need frustration.

One could argue that all things being equal, the master should always beat the journeyman. On any given, run of the mill day, he will. On the other hand, by definition of how the game works if dice are being called into it there is something at stake. The narrative is about to change in some way, good or ill. On any given day the master will beat the journeyman, but on any given day we don't need to roll that. We are rolling it today, so something is different.

This is one of the reasons that no matter how much simulation we work into the system, we're still a narrative story-game at heart.

That said, I absolutely agree with you. Even without the SAs, the lack of granularity in the system makes the results very swingy. Even if we assume both had 3s in all attributes, the difference between having 3 dots in a skill and 4 dots in a skill is 0.5 successes. Just by virtue of the die rolls, the journeyman will win much of the time. The only solution I can think of is to increase the amount of steps between the two (which is why my proposed scale keeps the low-end fairly similar to what it is now, but gives a lot more room at the top end).

[thirtythr33]

Added to "untrained" paragraph on p.34 (one could even replace the paragraph in question with this rule) wrote:
If the Ob of the task is higher than the skill rating in use, the best achievable result is a mitigated success, regardless of the MoS.

I love how it makes every rank important and meaningful. But it doesn't solve the problem of a novice beating the master only thanks to SAs. Yes, it's gonna be a compromise for him, but it doesn't change the fact he won.

Anyways, I'm not so sure how to handle my proposal in opposed rolls.

I like the ideas here. I would prefer something like:
“You can apply only as many SAs as the Ob of the task”
“You can apply only as many SAs as your Skill rank”
Or “You can no more than double a dice pool with SAs”

The core attributes: Agility, Brawn, Cunning, Will, and Perception.

How do you get around needing an intelligence attribute? I can’t see Cunning subbing in for lore or knowledge related stuff. Or is the plan to use Education skill for anything not covered by another skill? Just like you drop Social and make the build available through Edges and Skills, the same could be done for Int (make Fast Learner, Know it All edges etc). It’s hard to think of attributes that couldn’t be dropped and replaced this way…

I guess the problem is that you don’t get enough incidental Edges and Skill points to be able to spend them on Beautiful, Fast Learner, Education and the smattering of social Skills because you need to spend them on things like Claim or Renown. I guess you could bump some of the skill-related edges down to minor (fearless, natural leader), and give out an extra minor edge for each tier to compensate for not being able to spend points on Social or Acumen attributes anymore.

Skills are tied to an attribute, but only to determine their starting value when first purchased (1/3 of the governing attribute, rounding down).
Untrained skills can use whichever attribute is appropriate at the time at its full die pool, but all dice rolled work at max TN.

Why not streamline this further and just say that at character creation all skills start with a number of free ranks equal to the attribute/3 and remove untrained skill entirely? The neat mix and match aspect of X+Y isn’t going to come up enough in untrained skills for it be a feature. At that point, just throw it out.

I'm not sure I'm worried about "dead levels" in this proposal simply because it's an expensive proposition to invest enough points in an attribute to get up to that next level of a skill.

That’s EXACTLY the reason you would take an attribute to 6 and stop. Because it’s such a large gap to get to the next modifier at 9. Why would you ever take Brawn 7 or 8 when it doesn’t give you a damage or AV mod and doesn’t give you any extra skill points? 8 is literally identical to 6 except that it costs more. Unless there is a big break point on your encumbrance system specifically at Brawn 7 or 8 these would be the definition of dead levels.

Also, it seems like you are going to have to do some similar cunning/2 and agility/2 for combat pools, unless you want combat pools going up into the 30s. With Agility, Brawn and Cunning all dividing by 2 or 3, you might be better off just staying at a low range and dropping the division. A 1-10 range and divide everything 2 is basically the same as the current 1-5. The only ones you aren’t dividing are Will and Perception, which don’t need to be more granular. You only get more granularity out of Agi/Brawn/Cun if you up the range to 1-10 and don’t divide all the relevant benefits by 2 again.

Alternately, you can reduce dead levels by having the combat modifiers come from DERIVED attributes. Ie, instead of Brawn/3 = DR and AV, you can make Brawn/2 + Will/2 = Resolve. Resolve/3 = AV. Agility/2+Brawn/2 = Physique. Physique/3 = DR. Agility/2 + Cunning/2 = Prowess (combat pool). That way, only the sum of the attribute pairs has dead levels, instead of each attribute individually. Obviously, these names don’t all match up all that well, they were just for examples.

Or just bite the bullet and use sweet formula like AV = (2xBrawn+Will)/9

[Agamemnon]

How do you get around needing an intelligence attribute? I can’t see Cunning subbing in for lore or knowledge related stuff. Or is the plan to use Education skill for anything not covered by another skill?

My immediate response to this is "what do we need an intelligence attribute for?" At least in my (admittedly sleep deprived) reading, it seems like you're looking for some kind of intelligence roll as a knowledge check. The closest attribute check we have for the thing now is Memory, but that's not about knowing something -- that's about recalling something that already happened.

"Knowledge" is the province of skills.. and so far the skill list is remaining the same (with the possible exceptions of Steel and Athletics, which need some thinking). The problem with Acumen is that in the old system it really just existed to fuel skill checks. If we aren't using X+Y, then there's no real purpose to Acumen as an attribute.

The definition of Acumen under our previous rules was "intelligence, reasoning and the ability to learn." Compare to Cunning "a character's quick thinking and mental resourcefulness." The two are closely enough related that, given the lack of mechanical use for acumen as an attribute on its own, I'm content to combine them.

Education (and other skills) will continue to do exactly what they were doing before, in this regard. Though, as kind of an amusing side-effect, cunning would then become the default for when you needed to roll a knowledge task when you lacked a skill which has the interesting implication that when you don't know something by skill, you're using cunning to figure it out.

Just like you drop Social and make the build available through Edges and Skills, the same could be done for Int (make Fast Learner, Know it All edges etc). It’s hard to think of attributes that couldn’t be dropped and replaced this way…

My primary criteria here was to look what the actual attribute did in play. As in, "under what circumstance would you actually roll this on its own?" Outside of skills, why do you care about this? Agility plugs into a number of things. Brawn does as well. Will and Cunning both plug into things and can also be used as resisting rolls. Acumen? As it turns out, Acumen only really exists to fuel skills. When we stopped and thought about Social, we realized the same issue existed. Anything you might roll social for was just a skill check. When you further start examining the skills its connected to, you could as easily claim that they were applications of Will (Command) or Cunning (Manipulation, Oration) for the purposes of untrained skill checks and starting values.

The only reason "dead levels" is an issue is if we assume that the primary reason you'd want an attribute is for some other reason than the actual use of that attribute. So the litmus test becomes: how important is that attribute to the character's functioning? Soc and Acumen were ultimately just floating skill mods. Their functions could be absorbed by other parts of the system, so they were cut out of the proposal.

The remaining attributes all have very strong uses and reasons you need them - reasons that you would want a 5 rather than a 4.. or a 7 rather than 6.

Why not streamline this further and just say that at character creation all skills start with a number of free ranks equal to the attribute/3 and remove untrained skill entirely? The neat mix and match aspect of X+Y isn’t going to come up enough in untrained skills for it be a feature. At that point, just throw it out.

I suppose you could, though:
1. Untrained skill rolls being Attribute at TN6 further rewards people on so-called "dead levels."
2. It would technically make anyone with an attribute of 2 unable to roll an untrained skill check, as the attribute/3 rounds down. If we assume it's to a minimum of 1, then you wind up changing the math or skewing the odds.
3. Would you want to.. write down every skill in the game and start it at a /3 value? or? That seems cumbersome.

I guess the problem is that you don’t get enough incidental Edges and Skill points to be able to spend them on Beautiful, Fast Learner, Education and the smattering of social Skills because you need to spend them on things like Claim or Renown. I guess you could bump some of the skill-related edges down to minor (fearless, natural leader), and give out an extra minor edge for each tier to compensate for not being able to spend points on Social or Acumen attributes anymore.

Edges are getting enough of a revamp that this may not be an issue anyway.

That’s EXACTLY the reason you would take an attribute to 6 and stop. Because it’s such a large gap to get to the next modifier at 9. Why would you ever take Brawn 7 or 8 when it doesn’t give you a damage or AV mod and doesn’t give you any extra skill points? 8 is literally identical to 6 except that it costs more. Unless there is a big break point on your encumbrance system specifically at Brawn 7 or 8 these would be the definition of dead levels.

Save that it's literally not identical. Brawn is handy for the Body mod, but it also plugs into:

• Actual strength rolls, for physical tasks
• Untrained skill rolls for brawn-based skills
• Trauma, as part of the health of your character, your ability to withstand disease and illness, recover
• An encumbrance system (which will actually make brawn have a decent effect on how much your character can deal with wearing armor and such)

Any and all of which are a good argument to want one more point in the thing if you can afford it.

Given that Agility, Cunning, and the Proficiency itself trade way more favorably into the ability to deal and avoid damage. Body is probably the least important issue connected to Brawn.

That said, rather than assume that everyone is going to have a bunch of 6s, I suspect that we're going to weigh the attribute scale slightly to the lower end. It's been pointed out before that the current scale (both in numerical limitations and from points allotted) made it too easy for PCs to start with more than one "pinnacle of normal human achievement" score. Pushing for that 6 should mean that your character is giving up something somewhere.. and because there are now no attributes that you can comfortably ignore (see below) that becomes a hard choice.

Also, it seems like you are going to have to do some similar cunning/2 and agility/2 for combat pools, unless you want combat pools going up into the 30s. With Agility, Brawn and Cunning all dividing by 2 or 3, you might be better off just staying at a low range and dropping the division. A 1-10 range and divide everything 2 is basically the same as the current 1-5. The only ones you aren’t dividing are Will and Perception, which don’t need to be more granular. You only get more granularity out of Agi/Brawn/Cun if you up the range to 1-10 and don’t divide all the relevant benefits by 2 again.

Alternately, you can reduce dead levels by having the combat modifiers come from DERIVED attributes. Ie, instead of Brawn/3 = DR and AV, you can make Brawn/2 + Will/2 = Resolve. Resolve/3 = AV. Agility/2+Brawn/2 = Physique. Physique/3 = DR. Agility/2 + Cunning/2 = Prowess (combat pool). That way, only the sum of the attribute pairs has dead levels, instead of each attribute individually. Obviously, these names don’t all match up all that well, they were just for examples.

Or just bite the bullet and use sweet formula like AV = (2xBrawn+Will)/9

.... It's 4am, and I've probably been drinking since.. uh.. well. Some point. But I've read that three times and I can't entirely parse it. I am pretty sure that the failure in communication is on the part of the hour and the whiskey, rather than anything you've written. I'll come back to it tomorrow. What I can do is tell you what we're looking at currently:

Melee combat is (Agility+Cunning)/2 as its base plus any proficiency ranks.
Ranged combat is (Agility+Perception)/2 as its base plus any proficiency ranks.

Between the above two, Reflex, and Trauma, every attribute is used at least once.

Agility - Melee, Ranged, and Reflex.
Brawn - Body, and Trauma
Cunning - Melee, Reflex
Perception - Ranged
Will - Trauma

Further, Cunning, Perception, and Will will become the defacto "Resist skill check" attributes in many cases, and Brawn is the basis for the encumbrance system we're going to use that will plug into CP penalties.

[taelor]

Can I say that I'm actually really happy with the direction that these revamps are going.

[Agamemnon]

Can I say that I'm actually really happy with the direction that these revamps are going.

That's the spirit!

(and now I must sleep, lest the sun should rise and burst me to flame)

[dysjunct]

Re: Intelligence attribute. Pendragon hasn't had an intelligence stat for 30-some years and does just fine.

[thirtythr33]

Skills are tied to an attribute, but only to determine their starting value when first purchased (1/3 of the governing attribute, rounding down).

My immediate response to this is "what do we need an intelligence attribute for?"

These appear to be in contradiction. When I go to put points into Culture, Education, Engineering, Language, Lore, Medicine, Trade or Warfare, what attribute do I divide by 3 to find my starting rank?
I just don't see how all those skills could reasonably key off Cunning, Will or Perception.