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Strength (Str) - stays the same. Save throws against some constraining spells. Constitution (Con) - stays mostly the same. We can make it more important by introducing more stingy HP system.
Agility (Agi) - Old Dex. Looses initiative rolls. Looses some manual skills. Awareness(Awa) - Initiative, manual skills, save throws against illusions and confusion.
Intelligence (Int) - Stays mostly the same. Will (Wil) - Most important save throw stat. Instinctual magic stat. Stat for special abilities, like paladin powers or barbarian rage.
Problems:
Archery - Agility orAwareness? Well, I have a radical solution. Throwing and short range archery uses Agility. Long distance archery - you have to throw TWICE! Once with Agility and once withAwareness. It's a major and somewhat unelegant nerf but it makes sense. Long distance archery is a really difficult thing.
Charisma - fuck charisma. It's all skills now. You want a charismatic but dim character? Just make a character with lower Intelligence and invest skills and feats into appropriate skills.
I think it covers most fantasy archetypes pretty well. If you want something more unusual it will be solved by unique character traits.
I waste years trying to create the best variation of DnD (or WHM FRP). All my efforts seems to be better than original, in my opinion - but who knows? no one ever play it.
Good rpg to play (not a pretty book on your shelf), need to have simple rules. But people dont want to buy simple rules. Nerds think that the thicker the book they buy, and the more hour they need to spend studying it, the better the game.
"But you cannot achieve balance with simple rules. Something would be better than other"
group the items in one category (warhammer - hand weapons). Do you really need swiming, holding breath and diving as separate skill? Apply penalty in current session because of environment - 2h sword is dealing the best damage? You cannot use it at all when you crawl in goblin tunnels. You cannot conceal it in the city, it immediately attracts guards attention. Unarmed combat skill is useless? Now all enemies swarm and grapple the warrior. All that "balance"can be solved in game, but its much harder when the rules are complex - thats why warhammer 1ed was so popular, it was fast.
MASSIVE problem with pnp rpg is that the actual game is not smooth. There is endless amount of downtimes, when some player doing nothing for hours because their character is severely wounded and is healing in bed, or he is in another room, where he cannot participate in some negotiation with NPC. The pinnacle of this is combat. And don't bring that "turn base is better in cprg than real time" that's not the issue. Problem is that to follow all the procedures and resolve all the dice rolls for each character involved in the game, it needs 2 or 3 hours. For a scene that suppose to last dozen of seconds, and feel like total chaos, absolute hectic, unpredictable, random fight for your life.
Any operation that involve multiple humans - like social activity, need to change the active member fast. It is true even for the small talk conversation, if you only stay there and listen what the other dude have to say, you lose interest - you want to quit. I read somewhere that current attention span of average human is lower than the goldfish, it's a few seconds.
Secundo: Game Masters are usually not the most extravert persons.
The guys who know all the rules, and read all the setting lore is not good for the GM role. From my observation, the GM buy some book, read it in home, check all the maps, pictures, read all the descriptions, have beautiful picture of great adventure in his head - but he is not able to sell it.
He cannot share this experience, he cannot transmit that spectrum of emptions to the players. He typically sits motionless, "ok so i read the intro description, what are you doing?". And then players are trying to figure out what they suppose to do by asking endless question, "so who is in the tavern with us?" "what this NPC is doing? how he looks like? how he behave". It feels like an audition of some rock-star, who is tired of answering question.
most people learn by vision, but no worries GM get you cover, by hand drawn map on A4 papers - they are as pretty as in official supplements. "hey just use your imagination - this square is a treasure room full of gold, and this circle with square inside is a catacomb. I keep the pretty maps in my books to myself, to not spoil your fun of discovery".
and I'm of the opinion it should be completely opposite.
GM should be talkative, bard like person, who push the game. Dont wait for players. Dont create moments of silence. Dont allow one player to steal all the attention, instead point on this or that player asking "How do you react to the collapsing ceiling?". Dont give players time to work out the best tactic for combat, or plan a budget for the expedition. Its not a strategy game. And GM should have full folder of pictures, handout, box of miniatures, terrains, and pretty printed in colour maps with lots of details.
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Did you come here only to complain, or do you have something constructive to say?
I recommend to check Dungon Craft youtube. I was searching for some good pnp Rpg guru, and only this guys seems to understand the topic. He speaks about variety of things (with some I disagree, but this is only a good valour that he is following his path)...
.... check this one f.ex.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlwCqNjCT94&t=268s
or this video is very good, but XDM is rubbish, it's just a bunch of thought, illustrated with comic gags, with some forced elitism ("you are part of our secret club now" style). Honestly, this video of reviewing XDM is better than the book itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvQzOqgsZCk
Simple games are the best balanced and by definition more complex games are harder to balance. Simple, symmetrical, games like Rock-Paper-Scissors are near perfectly balanced and the relatively minor imbalances are only apparent when the game is over analyzed by people who take it too seriously.
