You could always look at it in the other direction, in that a game could benefit from more stats. Instead of simplifying and relying on broad abstractions, you could get more specific and clearly define what each stat is for.

Look at Rolemaster (and its sci-fi cousin Spacemaster). It has ten stats (eleven if you count Appearance), five physical and five mental, and they're rated from 1-100+. In all but one case, the actual stat number is irrelevant beyond deriving the bonus. (A halfling/Hobbit with a 100 Strength is still going to be far weaker than a dwarf with a 100 Strength. Racial modifiers apply to the bonus, not the stat.)

The stat bonuses and penalties get used in the game's skills -- and each skill rides on two or (usually) three different stats. Those skills determine 90% of the game mechanics, and most of what's left simply relies on stats directly. For instance, hit points. The amount of damage you can take and stay conscious is the total of your Body Development skill (because you can train to toughen up). Once you're unconscious, the amount of damage it takes to kill you is equal to your Constitution stat (not the bonus).

(There's one figure, your movement speed, that is partly affected by your height. And how much you can carry depends on your weight. But those are the only mechanical bits I can think of that are independent of stats.)

As an avid long-distance hiker who can't run worth his salt or lift weights, but is fully capable of walking sixteen miles on rough back-country terrain while carrying day more than anyone really should on his back, I'd like to add to the pile of circumstantial evidence that there are significant differences between different people and their relative strengths and endurance.

Of course, you're free to houserule your games any way you want, mickster. If players find it workable and enjoyable, that's great. But there's no need to pretend it's anything more than your personal preference.

Many people do away with stats/characteristics/abilities altogether. Players just describe their character to some extent and everyone has at it. That's freeform.

Another might actually divide each of the DnD Six into sub-abilities. Physical might comprise Strength, Endurance, Agility, Dexterity, Resistance, and more.

As others have said, none of these paths is inherently "more realistic" or "makes more sense." All just game designer/game master preference.

Have a great day and good games.

Had a good think about this some years back. As has been highlighted by a few other nicely put posts here, considering purely just the physical stats you come into a pyramid type structure based on initial morphology and size for a model, then training based specifics such as Max strength, power to body weight (both on a cyclic and acyclic ratio, i.e. Flat take off speed over 50-100ms, and carrying a pack for 16 miles of walking), cardiovascular thresholds, blood lactic thresholds and that's just for exertion of force. Also by overdeveloping some aspects you often compromise others...   Agility or Dex or whatever often appears as a single stat on a sheet but fine manipulation is an extremely different to balance and spatial awareness.

Then you have the technical neural training in relative areas, that will be effected by, and affect those physical attributes. Really high levels of training in something can overcome vast levels of physiological difference. My partner is not athlete yet she would kill me in any form of swimming contest (unless it was splashing around and making a mess).

I'm not sure a game mechanic can be made to accurately reflect what the human body does to manage homeostasis on a constant basis, and if their was one it may be sooooo complicated as to be unplayably dull. And this is just for physiology, my knowledge is not as deep on intellectual or social applications. I guess I thinks it's a case of finding a balance between desired realism and a tool to resolve stuff that contributes to gaming fun. :)

What I would like to see in a system would be a way of introducing varying levels of fatigue into games, short term extreme fatigue from high intensity activity, and long term 'tiredness' from sustained activity or sleep dep. Something deeper than -10% to test till heal/stim/8hrs sleep/etc.

Hmm... I recall seeing in the crunchy cruft of most games of the "old skool" period brief definitions of the various attributes/characteristics/vital statistics which actually make a coarse attempt to relate them to "real world" units of measure.

For example, in Traveller, Book 1, Characters and Combat, on page 8, Strength is defined as:

"Strength is both a general evaluation of the character's physical ability, and a specific measure of force which may be applied."

Then you don't see anything more about how Strength as a Characteristic works until you hit page 34, in the topic THE EFFECTS OF CHARACTERISTICS, where it states:

"Strength:  The efficiency of various blows and swings (but not shots) is dependent on personal strength.  The weapons table indicates both a required strength level and an advantageous strength level for all blade and brawling weapons.  ..."

It goes on to define modifiers based on these levels of strength and to give examples of how these modifiers are used.

Then a bit further, on page 36, there is a section on WEIGHT.  In that section we see:

"Normal Load:  Any character may carry a load equal to his or her strength characteristics, in kilograms.  A person with strength 12 could carry 12 kilograms."

It goes on to define Double Load, Triple Load, and to give a general equation for computing the effects of different gravity fields.  The point is, strength in Traveller is a well-defined and quantified characteristic, even if you have to hunt around for all the parts of the definition.

The old Tyr Games Space Quest differentiated Agility and Dexterity as relating to gross and fine motor skills, respectively.

There's lots of ways this space can be carved up - it all depends on what the GM wants to do in a game, where he or she wishes to place the focus for the characters.

In a more recent game of my own devising (as yet unpublished), characters have four attributes:  Magickal Potential, Attack, Defense, and Flight.  These are fleshed out further by aspects and abilities that help refine definitions of other qualities the character may or may not have acquired, dependent of the way the character was designed, and how these aspects and abilities were chosen.

Look at TWERPS:  one characteristic:  Strength.  Seems a little simplistic, no?  But TWERPS is a playable and enjoyable game for some.

There are likely a million ways to skin this particular cat, but no way in Perdition to make the cat like it.

Speaking of house ruling, I hate how your ability to deal with people is lumped with how good you look in dnd. Bravo world of darkness. But why is your ability to deal with people tied in with how powerful of a caster you are for many classes? Why is a clerics power tied to how mentally collected they are?

If I were to house rule a system like d&d I would add a couple of new stats to make the attribute system make more sense, not shrink them.

I'm honestly not sure what you mean. If you're talking about Charisma, that (at least in some editions) is not just how good the character looks.


No one interpretation will work for everyone (and for some people no interpretation will work), but there are reasonable ways to interpret or rethink those oddities, if you're interested.

In reply to engine (msg # 16):

First impressions are often tied to how you look. Most people will have a bad reaction if someone comes up to them that is Bloody ugly. And I never said that is all Charisma does. I was complaining that looks and ability to deal with people are tied into one stat.

I get simplification no worries, I just prefer a little more break down of stats, even if it adds a little complexity to the system.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was inflammatory, at 20:33, Mon 21 Aug 2017.

This message was deleted by a moderator, as it was moot, at 20:37, Mon 21 Aug 2017.

Charisma is called out in third edition as 'presence'. Which is why charisma effects your spells if you're a bard or sorceror. It actually specifies it's not looks, and that low charisma is not ugly, but not really leaving any impression - positive or negative. Thus why intimidate, which really has nothing to do with looks at all, is linked to charisma.

Older editions toyed with a 'comeliness' stat, but it didn't really work.

Not tremendously bad, in my experience. Anyone with a reasonable amount of maturity tends to be polite and not make a big deal out of it, giving the person's personality time to make a difference.

In fiction, sure, ugliness might be a key defining feature, because it's a useful shorthand, or character drawback, and because it's common for characters to be on the more attractive side. But then we also have Star Wars in which a being's freakishness is not necessarily a factor.


Please accept my apology for assuming that you did say that.


That's what confused me. I don't tie looks to it at all. All of my characters are simply not-bad-looking, regardless of their Charisma score. And I rarely see others handle it differently, despite whatever the rules might say.

Yes, that's one common way of looking at it. But someone has to be bought into that, and not set on finding flaws in it, because otherwise they will.

You have to be bought into virtually any game system; DnD trickier than most in some ways. There are lots of flaws to find. When I start a new game system, unless it's premise doesn't really jibe well with the system rules, I'll always just ignore the flaws, because they will all give me headaches. DnD, unless you're willing to buy into it's statements, has vast problems.

"Why does gaining a level mean you can survive more hits?"
"Difference between intelligence and wisdom?"

Ones I can think of off the top of my head, as well as the charisma question.

In reply to willvr (msg # 21):

I'm with you. That's why I was asking Merevel if they were interested in explanations. If a person isn't, then nothing is going to work for them.

I take people's point that there is a vast number of skills a person can have, and that the three "ability scores" I referred to (Physical, Intellectual, and Social) are really just categories and too general to describe the real world accurately without the assistance of more detail. But I still think those three broad categories cover pretty much all human skills, and would work well as modiifiers to specific skill scores, which would themselves be modifiers on a die roll (and are in many systems). If the term "ability scores" is inaccurate for what I meant, my apologies.

(I actually have the germ of a very simple system bubbling away in the back of my head and in some Wordpad documents, but I don't pretend for a second that I'm competent to develop a game system for others to use. It's just a toy for me to play with personally.)

You might want to take a look at Tri-Stat dX, a system which, at its core, uses just three ability scores (Mind, Body, and Soul), plus several values which are derived from those three, as well as skills.

The "dX" part of the name derives from the fact that the system uses only one type of dice. and the GM decides which type is most appropriate for the power level of his game.

The system is very flexible, and is designed to be usable with any genre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-Stat_dX
This message was last edited by the user at 21:52, Mon 21 Aug 2017.

I'll agree that Physical/Mental/Social or Body/Mind/Soul is an extremely intuitive and satisfying (and narratively resonant) division that covers most of the human experience. I use it myself in some of my homebrew systems.

However, if you wanted something based on '21st century science', there would only be one domain: physical. Mental phenomena are a product of the physical brain. Social phenomena are mental phenomena mediated through physical spaces and interactions, etc.


I'm not sure they would. As people have pointed out above, different sorts of, e.g., physical feats (lifting heavy things, sprinting, endurance running, tolerating pain, resisting disease, manual dexterity, flexibility) all require different qualities that are often only loosely related or actually counter-productive to one another.

Likewise, mental feats such as abstraction, deduction, induction, spatial awareness, memory, etc., are not so connected that you can base them all off the same stat and say you're modelling reality.

As a game mechanic, sure, these three domains are good enough for play, but you can't really claim they're 'scientific' or 'realistic'. But they feel right to most people, I'd wager, which is more than enough.

Take me as a point. I have some pretty good stamina at work, especially back when I was a buggy pusher. Just do not ask me to lift weights or run a mile.

And even science acknowledges that muscles and brains are different. ;-)

In reply to Merevel (msg # 26):

This entire thread, and nobody's mentioned the tomato theory of ability scores?

Strength is how many tomatoes you can lift.
Dexterity is the ability to throw a tomato, or dodge a thrown one.
Constitution is the number of thrown tomatoes you can withstand.
Intelligence is knowing that tomatoes are fruit.
Wisdom is knowing tomatoes don't go in fruit salad.
Charisma is being able to sell a tomato-based fruit salad.

I thought about it, but due to the nature of the thread I avoided it.

I think we might do well only ever to have scores for things that players can't perform at the table. Players can strategize, solve puzzles, make choices, pose arguments and other such things, but they can't necessarily swing a sword, pick a lock, hit a target, cast a spell or the like. I mean, sort of, and who doesn't like to get up and bound around the room in demonstration, but mostly all they can do is describe it.

Characters would have skills and could cast spells and whatnot, but such capabilities or the lack of them would not have bearing on how smart or wise the character would have to be roleplayed as.

So, no "mental" or "social" scores. This would have the benefit of ending the practice of telling people that their character must or mustn't act a certain way, due to numbers on a piece of paper. Anyone who would like some guidance on how to play a particular kind of mental or social acuity could be advised in the rules how to do so, but it would be optional.

In reply to engine (msg # 29):

This would exclude inexperienced and challenged players and create the kind of toxic "leet" that has destroyed the souls of MMOs and MOBAs. I am completely opposed to your suggestion. There should be no requirement for a player to be intimidating in order for their character to be intimidating, or to be persuasive for their character to be persuasive, or to be clever and resourceful in order for their character to be clever or resourceful or--I enjoy playing Bards in D&D--to be musically gifted in order for their character to be a Bard. In addition, I don't want to exclude intellectually or socially challenged players from my hobby, because they can be very good players of highly intelligent and socially adept characters if the rules permit it.

Yeah, might as well roll yourself as a character and go larp then. :-)

In reply to mickey65 (msg # 30):

The character of a quiet player can still be intimidating if they have a skill for it, just as a character of a C student can state facts about particle physics if they have a skill for that. There's just no number telling them that their character would (or, far more commonly, wouldn't) act a certain way, when it came to solving problems, or making a plan, or taking part in a conversation. There's also no number justifying disruptively foolish, annoying or boorish behavior.

You mean that's not what RL is?

My system that is now nearly finished uses this general spread: Body, Mind, and Spirit (which covers social stuff). Skills and Talents (and sometimes flaws) can modify each for various purposes, like if you're slow and clumsy, it lowers your Body for the purposes of agility-related things.