System My own stat system

[Sailor Marin]

I created a tabletop style stat system for a forum PBP roleplaying game I'm running! I approached it from the perspective of "D&D stats are nice, but things don't always fit neatly into them and I think that could be fixed with slightly more specificity." And what I got was this!

Strength
Reflexes
Fortitude
Finesse
Tenacity
Cunning
Acuity
Knowledge

You'll notice that the top 4 stats are essentially physical and the bottom 4 are essentially mental. They have a rock paper scissors relationship with each other. The top half can be described as splitting dexterity into reflexes and finesse. Strength and Fortitude are exactly what you'd expect them to be, strength and constitution by another name. Reflexes is used for defensive reactions and finesse is sort of your physical expertise stat, used for things like throwing, projectiles, dancing, moving silently, singing, etcetera. Every stat has skills associated with it and the higher the stat is, the more you can invest in given skills you want to specialize in.

Tenacity is force of personality and the go to for resisting mental fatigue. It is sort of the mental equivalent of strength, a mental brute force stat. So it's sort of partial charisma. Cunning is quite close to charisma's social skills, but also includes things like hiding and surprise attacks. Acuity is the closest to wisdom, governing most perception skills and also being your mental defense stat. And knowledge is your mental expertise, basically your education, with skills being as specific as degrees or specialized courses.

I've been told it's a lot to swallow, but I like to think it's a decent set of stats for a system is very front loaded mechanically (Choosing your stats and skills is 70% of building your character)

 

[Senkusha]

So far, this looks pretty good, and through! The biggest problem I've encountered with running PbP style games is the task resolution system itself. For my own system that I've been tinkering with, I've been working on kind of an Oracle system that helps guides participants so that they don't need to wait on a Game Master to give approval/denial for actions. The system needs to be as out of the way as possible. Have you given any thought to how you're going to resolve tasks? Which style of dice randomness? (This is something that initially overwhelmed me because I didn't understand how probabilities worked in practice, and I had to take some time off to do research. I had to answer the question: What do I want the random mechanic to achieve? Do I want something totally swingy and random, or something more predictable and realistic? Answering this question helped me determine to use an Oracle type system and which dice mechanic I wanted to use.

There's a lot of hidden stuff buried in System Design that nobody really thinks about-- at least I didn't. I just wanted a quick and easy system to get out of my way! And that's probably why I have over 200 games in my library now...

 

[Sailor Marin]

I actually did! It uses a d100 system. Every standard roll is a d100 plus a modifier. I chose a D100 instead of a d20 because it solved a balancing problem with d20 systems wherein modifiers can easily get so big that a task which is moderately challenging for someone with a +10 becomes virutally impossible for someone with a +1. if the DC is say 22. Having a d100 means there's a lot more room to grow numbers before you hit that problem, and that means more room to grow and invest your character in ways that affect dice rolls.

Normally your most appropriate stat modifier is attached to the d100 roll, and then your skill modifier if you have one that applies and it's a skill check. The system is based around contested rolls. Actions either have a set DC you have to beat to succeed, specified in the ability, or if they effect another character, that character simply makes an appropriate defense roll to avoid being effected. A character or player who is willing may choose not to make a roll, and be effected for the sake of the narrative. Likewise, one is not asked to roll for anything in which the failure chance is unreasonable. No rolls to walk down the street or climb a set of stairs. While it's definitely possible to mess these things up, that goes beyond what the dice roll is meant to represent. If someone wants to have difficult walking down the street, they must simply choose to write that for narrative reasons. The dice rolls as they exist apply mostly to combat, exploration and its capacity to harm them, social interactions, investigations and perceptions, and of course skilled labour / the ability to recall uncommon knowledge about given subjects.

Threads with DMs in them can have the DMs specify DCs for a given action outside of someone's character sheet, like hitting an NPC, or completing a skill check. But I think that's more of a boon than anything, as it gives them more control to write their own stories if they need it.