Systems where attributes are separate from skills and super hard to raise are fucking dumb

[Gangrelrumbler]

Realism argument is kinda retarded here. Do you have hit points in real life? Can you survive being hit in the head with an axe? Don't think so. Stats are abstractions, so as long as they make at least some sense withing the setting and work mechanically, there's nothing else to be desired. If the character system works in such a way, that a 1-point difference in your stats is a big deal, then, from a purely mechanical perspective, they should be hard or even impossible to raise.

It would make sense if rising other stats in a way that makes a big deal was equally hard. It's not which is why the system feels very arbitrary. It always felt restrictive for the sake of being restrictive and I can't really find any advantages of such system compared to other systems where stats are constantly raised through the game. Also, I don't think it's stupid to care about a bit of realism in character development. It adds to the game's atmosphere, and also makes you feel more like your character is a real person and not just a set of number throwing numbers at other numbers. If nobody cared about character development being somewhat grounded in reality there would be no reason to use the attribute system in the first place.

Also, what you train in lifting is arguably not strengh per se, but your skill in lifting weights. It will, through skill sinergy, give you some edge in combat, but someone who was boxing while you were lifting will still have you at a huge disadvantage.

That's because boxers also become stronger during their training. In fact despite all it's flaws I think the TES games did that one thing right. Raising strength-related skills also rained your stats, which made character progress more natural. The big flaw of the system was that it was too easy to reach stat caps.

 

[Neanderthal]

Way I see it as an adventurer you're already at your max physically an mentally when you begin profession, you've took part in years o training, learned your trade an now need some experience an hardenin. You're a grown man, at your fucking peak, might gain a bit o strength, intelligence or whatever, but it'll not be a real drastic thing as your body an mind are near their limit already.

 

[Beastro]

Does it matter as long as it works game wise???

It triggers my autism.

~~~

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Nah, those are the best systems, Fallout in particular.
It's not really hard to understand why they're static.
They're a measure of your natural ability, only the physical skills are likely to be able to be increased in their real life equivalency. And even then, not significantly, plenty of people lift: Actors, youtubers, game devs(MCA), doesn't mean they'll become big strong supehumans, most people will probably never even be noticed as people who lift, because your average schlub with mediocre T, weak genetics and no roids will never get on par with the strongmen and bodybuilders (And athletes in general) of the world. They're limited by their natural ability, and if the attributes are comparative, then the top points are reserved for the genetics freaks in your strongman competition.
Something like intense training in NV isn't terrible, but would fit better with the perk rate of Fallout 1/2, it should be hard to change your natural attributes, since in reality we're all just working with the cards we're dealt with.

 

[adrix89]

At the start of the adventure you are supposed to be a young shmuck, in D&D quite literally as level 1's are babies.
After swinging heavy swords millions of times and running for your life, that kind of intense life should make you stronger then what you started.
The character is not you, its potential will always be wide, there is some elements of nature in that you initially start with some set of attributes but the character potential will always be abstract for gameplay reasons.

How the attributes grow compared to skills depends on how the system works and is balanced in the game. 5 points of strength between two games can be on an entirely different scale and have an entirely different effectiveness in game. Attributes and skills have their own individual scale. Traditionally skills are on a higher scale then attributes and why there is a disparity in their cost to improve.

The only thing I don't like about attributes is mental skills as even an character with a dumpstat intelligence to 1 will behave fairly intelligently in combat because the real intelligence is the player. I do not like the overlap between character skills and player skills. But that is another story.

 

[Naveen]

Yes, in real life strength is a skill, but trying to represent that in some games would be a mess. Note that the games that according to OP don't do it correctly are pnp games or based on pnp systems, while those that do it right are video games. It's easier to simulate incremental stuff that requires constant effort in a game like Morrowind than in pnp, more abstract, system, and you all know what would happen: "OK, my character will spend the next two months between adventures jumping and hitting the gym 8 hours every day. Now, where's my +1 STR?" I'm sure that Gygax and others thought about this, but they decided it was just, well, easier and simpler to separate stats from skills.

 

[Black_Willow]

DnD tought me that you can never increase your strenght or endurance, so people like strongman or marathon runners have to be born like that.
On the other hand, you can become a master fencer just by whacking orcs for a few months, you just ought to have a proper class.

 

[Avellion]

My WoW Mage with 2000 intelligence got duped by the most obvious con ever in one of the quest lines or failed to pick up obvious queues. Despite having an int score 100 times higher than he started with, he seemed to be getting dumber with every new expansion.

And this signifies my problem with games with stat inflation. They often, if not always end up making attributes be nothing more than a fancy name for a modifier. There can be some stat gain within reason, of course. But too much and making attributes more meaningful than a modifier and still be balanced seems too difficult from what I have seen.

 

[V_K]

Abstractions are only abstractions if they are based on something "real", though, as otherwise you're just left with a bunch of nonsense. If a game's systems go against your basic logic, they're terrible abstractions, plain and simple.

Chess must be a truly terrible game.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Yes, in real life strength is a skill, but trying to represent that in some games would be a mess. Note that the games that according to OP don't do it correctly are pnp games or based on pnp systems, while those that do it right are video games.

Actually I've mentioned at least a few PnP systems that do it correctly in this very thread. In case you've missed in I mentioned Bloodlines (which is based on Vampire: Masquarade), WFRP second edition and Savage Words. I'm pretty sure there are other systems where strength can be raised, which I've never heard of.

 

[adrix89]

And this signifies my problem with games with stat inflation. They often, if not always end up making attributes be nothing more than a fancy name for a modifier.

That is because attributes are literally just modifiers.
Your mini-maxed orc with a intelligence of 1 is just as unrealistic as gnome with the intelligence of 2000. The player is the real intelligence.
At best intelligence is just a skill-check somewhere.

 

[Azrael the cat]

Abstractions are only abstractions if they are based on something "real", though, as otherwise you're just left with a bunch of nonsense. If a game's systems go against your basic logic, they're terrible abstractions, plain and simple.

Chess must be a truly terrible game.

My broad agreement, despite what I'm saying here, is indicated by the brofist I gave your post.

Chess has the advantage of being abstracted to the point where there is no clash between intuition and logic. The symbolism of the pieces is meaningless, except perhaps for the king - there's no mental temptation to think about what the 'sensible' range is for a bishop killing a rook by praying at it, and so there's no distraction from the role that each piece plays in terms of map control.

Crpgs have a harder time of it, because - blobbers aside (and I think this is why games like the Wizardry series can absorb you with tactical combat alone in a way that isometric games usually can't), it often feels more intuitive to not treat the mechancis as an abstraction, or at least as less of an abstraction. We know that hitpoints are not a measure of how many cuts you have on your body, and that each loss of hitpoints doesn't represent an actual wound but rather an abstraction of the combination of luck, fatigue, skill etc whereby reaching 0hp is the point where you do get run through with the sword (and it might be the only wound the character sustains in the whole fight, despite getting 'hit' a dozen times) - but there's still a massive mental temptation to process it as health, as though there's no abstraction and humans in that world can somehow survive 10 clean cuts/stabs with a sword without being permanently maimed, before dying on the 11th, identical, stab-wound.

It's a bit of a cop-out to simply say 'it's an abstraction' when developers know full well that the abstraction is at odds with intuition. Not saying that abstractions are bad - again, I broadly agree with your comment. But unlike chess, it does matter to a crpg that an abstraction clashes badly with the way in which the mechanic is presented.

 

[V_K]

In case you've missed in I mentioned Bloodlines (which is based on Vampire: Masquarade)

If I'm not misremembering, in VtM system
a) attributes and skills have equal weight (i.e. each check requires an attribute+skill combination), so it makes mechanical sense that they are increased in identical way;
b) you're playing a baby vampire, so an increase in attributes reflects your gradual transition from a mortal to a supernatural creature.

but there's still a massive mental temptation to process it as health, as though there's no abstraction and humans in that world can somehow survive 10 clean cuts/stabs with a sword without being permanently maimed, before dying on the 11th, identical, stab-wound.

That's what my second point in an earlier post was about - mechanics making sense within the setting. Not in real life (which seems to be the main argument thrown in this thread), but in the world presented in the game. If Fallout takes place in a post-nuclear world, where everything is polluted to high heavens, food is shit, water is shit, air is shit - is it any wonder that no amount of training can help you build significant muscle mass?

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I think it's actually cool that there are games for both approaches. I had fun with both and I'd be very sorry to be stuck with the one, whichever it is.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

If I'm not misremembering, in VtM system
a) attributes and skills have equal weight (i.e. each check requires an attribute+skill combination), so it makes mechanical sense that they are increased in identical way;
b) you're playing a baby vampire, so an increase in attributes reflects your gradual transition from a mortal to a supernatural creature.

a)Yeah, that's what I'm arguing for. Making certain attributes more similar to skills, which results in a more natural and logical character progression. Unlike other systems where one things are super important and hard to change while others are not for no good reason.
b)But in New World of Darkness you also could raise attributes and you started as a human.

 

[Carrion]

Chess must be a truly terrible game.

The argument isn't about whether something works as a game mechanic, it's whether something qualifies as an abstraction or not. Chess is an abstract game, to a point where calling it an abstraction is a bit misleading — the names of the pieces are purely symbolic, they're not meant to represent the behavior of actual units on a battlefield. Abstractions are, by definition, based on something real or concrete (the definition of "real" being a pretty flexible one), taking a concept and reducing it down to its most essential qualities. You can't just make things up and then answer to all criticism with "it's just an abstraction!" like it isn't even supposed to make sense. I get what you're saying, but it gets dangerously close to the utterly retarded "it's has things like x and y, why do you care about whether z is realistic or not?" argument.*

Anyway, Azrael the cat already said the important things.

* A typical example being "it's a setting with completely unrealistic stuff like wizards and magic, so what does it matter if swords are classified as blunt weapons?"

 

[V_K]

You can't just make things up and then answer to all criticism with "it's just an abstraction!" like it isn't even supposed to make sense.

I don't know how many times I have to repeat that, but my point wasn't "It's just an abstraction therefore you can do what you want with it". I'll try breaking it down in the simplest way possible:
1. The OP claimed that all games should have increasable stats because in real life you can go to the gym and train your strength.
2. However, in real life you don't have a strength stat, just as you don't have hit points etc. They're all abstractions, and as such their meaning is contextual.
3. Therefore whether or not stats should be increasable depends on what they represent within the rules and setting, not real life.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

You can't just make things up and then answer to all criticism with "it's just an abstraction!" like it isn't even supposed to make sense.

I don't know how many times I have to repeat that, but my point wasn't "It's just an abstraction therefore you can do what you want with it". I'll try breaking it down in the simplest way possible:
1. The OP claimed that all games should have increasable stats because in real life you can go to the gym and train your strength.
2. However, in real life you don't have a strength stat, just as you don't have hit points etc. They're all abstractions, and as such their meaning is contextual.
3. Therefore whether or not stats should be increasable depends on what they represent within the rules and setting, not real life.

But it's pretty clear what strength represent in most RPGs: your ability to lift/use heavy things and punch stuff hard. Baldurs Gate outright states that strength is your muscles, endurance and stamina (and not your genetic potential to be a great body builder), and Fallout just says that it's "raw physical strength".

 

[V_K]

On the subject of Fallout, see my previous post.
On the subject of (A)DnD - well, non-increasable stats are the least of its problems.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

In New Vegas the strength implant is a hypertrophy accelerator, so it really is your genetic potential to be a great body builder.

 

[typical user]

Jagged Alliance 2 had atributes and skills integrated into one and even then raising your intelligence was hard unless you were arming bombs 24/7.

But JA2 has really good rpg elements for a tactical turn-based combat strategy. Why Fireaxis won't try to copy those elements I wish to know.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Realism or whatever doesn't even matter to begin with. The entire point of having attributes be discrete from skills like this is to make for more interesting gameplay. If your stats were as easily changed as skills, then the solution to optimizing your character becomes far far more simple. You can easily calculate the value of a stat by comparing it to the number of skills it will improve, and conclude that a point of say, dex, is worth 5 times as much as a point of move silently because you have 2 other useful dex based skills and some combat benefits.

This shit doesn't apply when the stats can't be changed after creation, because the value of +1 to your dex skills can't be directly compared to the value of extra hitpoints or skillpoints per level and so forth.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Realism or whatever doesn't even matter to begin with. The entire point of having attributes be discrete from skills like this is to make for more interesting gameplay. If your stats were as easily changed as skills, then the solution to optimizing your character becomes far far more simple. You can easily calculate the value of a stat by comparing it to the number of skills it will improve, and conclude that a point of say, dex, is worth 5 times as much as a point of move silently because you have 2 other useful dex based skills and some combat benefits.

This shit doesn't apply when the stats can't be changed after creation, because the value of +1 to your dex skills can't be directly compared to the value of extra hitpoints or skillpoints per level and so forth.

That's why in many of these system attributes while raised in a similar way to skills, also cost more to raise in order to compensate for that. And if they costed around the same then raising dexterity wouldn't be nearly as helpful as sneaking as raising sneaking

 

[V_K]

I terms of realism there is one more thing to consider: new-made characters aren't babies (even though DnD presents them as such). The gym argument works when you take someone with no muscle mass and send them lifting - then yeah, there would be some significant progress in a couple of months. However if you take a bodybuilder and send him lifting, the progress would be much, much slower - most, if not all, of the training would go towards maintaining the mass he already has. It varies from system to system, but if your characters start with high-ish values in their stats, it makes sense to assume that they are already nearing their peak, and it would take a fuckton of time and training to raise them.
For example TDE clearly presents newly made characters as having had substantial previous training. If I'm not misremembering in Drakensang archetypes can start with their main attributes in the 14-15 range, with maximum being 18 or so. So it's only natural that the cost for increasing an attribute is a few dozen times higher than for increasing a skill.

 

[vonAchdorf]

In the good old luck based no-point-buy system of TDE 3rd edition, you had three tries to roll over your current attribute value with a D20 if you wanted to raise it on level-up. In TDE 4.1e (Drakensang) you had only increasing costs.