Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;691369I like stuff
I don't find differentiating characters on just stat scores to be that interesting; I like feats and skills and whatever. Not interested in systems where fighter A and fighter B are clones, except that B has a wisdom 2 higher and is roleplayed as having a moustache.

I think it would depend on how good they were at roleplaying that mustache

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;691369I like stuff
I don't find differentiating characters on just stat scores to be that interesting; I like feats and skills and whatever. Not interested in systems where fighter A and fighter B are clones, except that B has a wisdom 2 higher and is roleplayed as having a moustache.

The rest of the system plays a large role in this. If the system doesn't use skills then a few attribute points here and there are more mechanically important because there are more attribute checks and the score (not just the bonus) matters quite a bit.

Two B/X fighters can be very different from each other without a comparison of facial hair.

Fighter A might be a heavy slow bruiser in plate with a shield. He is tough but slow as molasses. Fighter B could be a quick skirmisher in leather armor. He may have poorer defenses but when things go bad and its time to run, he might actually get away.

I have never bought in to the idea that special rules widgits are required in order for there to be differences between two similar types or classes of character.

In general I see an investment in the base as being better than an investment in something specific.  A lot of 'challenges' in an RPG are really just situations where you face something you don't have on your sheet,  so to speak.  Building the base hedges against that.

The one exception is when I am specializing. Once the decision to focus has been made, I would try to maximize that choice.

In general, you're best of splitting them out.

Imagine, for a moment, that you have the option to take 20 feats or 20 stat bumps over your character's career.  If the player chooses to take all as a single option (say bonus to Strength each of the 20 times) is that allowed, and does it break the game?  

If the attribute increases are actually meaningful, it is unlikely that a character won't break the game by choosing the stat increase over and over again every time they're able to do so.  

Besides breaking the game, you're encouraging a 'boring' style of character development.  If the character can either 'get stronger' or 'do interesting things' both might be appealing.  If you don't want a character to choose only one or the other, the simple solution is to make both options available to them.

The other benefit is that by decoupling the stat increase and 'feat' option, you don't have to make them roughly equivalent.  It's hard enough to balance feats against themselves without having to compare them to a totally different metric.  

Since you appear to be working on your own system, parallels to 3.x might not make sense, but imagine, for a moment the feat Toughness (+3 hit points) versus a +1 bonus to your Con modifier.  Even compare Improved Toughness (+1 hit point per level) versus +1 to your Con modifier.  The +1 to Con modifier is objectively better; it gets you as many (or more) hit points from 3rd level on, but it also impacts your Fortitude saves and the Concentration skill.  

It's good to let PCs 'get better' via stat increases - but it shouldn't come at the expense of being able to do more things, which is ideally what a feat gives you.  

Further, the stat increase versus feat option can really highlight the differences between starting with a 'lesser' character based on stats.  If you have two fighters with identical stats except one started with a 15 and one started with a 16, if the first fighter 'bumps' Strength, you're going to clearly see that they're not as effective as the Fighter with a 16 strength - because while they have the same attributes, they don't have a 'special ability' that the other Fighter has...  If you have any interest in trying to reduce players whoring themselves for the highest possible starting attributes, you want to avoid something like this...  You'd think it would make starting attributes less important, but if you do have a 'maximum', players will want to start as close to it as possible so they can get all the 'other stuff'.  IE, if a character starts with 18 in every stat, and you can't raise a stat above 18, they can take Feats all the time - giving them a lot more options than players that increase stats because they started lower...  This is even more important when some classes depend on a single stat while others are multiple attribute dependent (MAD).

Quote from: Sacrosanct;691377anyone who says stat bumps are objectively better than feats in 5e is either an idiot or hasn't actually read the rules. Both can be better depending on what you're wanting to do

Stat boosts to your main stat are the same as 4E expertise, which were the best feats in the game. The feats in the playtest packet aren't so good that they are better than expertise.

The greater importance of attributes in say B/X makes sense.
There may be an interesting discussion in there somewhere about how point-buy has been working against that sort of differentiation (because given the choice the playing a swashbuckler and a brute, the fighter player picks both by dumping their Charisma to ick ). Even 4d6-drop-lowest-in-order cuts down the range of variation substantially.

I don't think widgets are 'required' necessarily, but for me its desireable to have rules support for some weapon, armour or style choices - e.g. for 'city swashbuckler fighter' and 'horse nomad fighter' to have rules-differences between them deeper than what's currently equipped, and that don't have to be ad-hoc built by the GM to too great an extent. I can imagine that doing away with all the widgets is simpler, but I don't mind the added complexity myself.
So I would prefer say BECMI with its General Skills, specialty priests and whatnot to B/X

(I love all the incredibly dodgy general skills in Shadow Elves particularly)

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;691529The greater importance of attributes in say B/X makes sense.
There may be an interesting discussion in there somewhere about how point-buy has been working against that sort of differentiation (because given the choice the playing a swashbuckler and a brute, the fighter player picks both by dumping their Charisma to ick ). Even 4d6-drop-lowest-in-order cuts down the range of variation substantially.

Remember that reaction rolls and retainer loyalty are CHA based. B/X is even more lethal without hired help. Dumping CHA is a less wise decision than in 3E.

I'm pretty old school in this one. I hate pooled or total points character generation systems. They inevitably lead to mid-level characters that the player has worked over on an excel spreadsheet to min/max to the greatest advantage. Give me random rolls to generate the base stats every day, and then I'll chose my skills, feats, abilities, talents, whatever, based on whether I'm Conan or the Grey Mouser or Svengali. You are NEVER going to get one of these characters on a total points system. And if you turn out to be Rat-Face the pigeon-chested weasel, play it up. Be a winge. Moan and groan, make other people carry your pack. Cough with a death rattle when the temperature drops. Play what the dice give you.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;691521The other benefit is that by decoupling the stat increase and 'feat' option, you don't have to make them roughly equivalent.  It's hard enough to balance feats against themselves without having to compare them to a totally different metric.  

This would be my primary concern with this method.

The rest sort of depends on whether feats do things (like powers, spells, etc.) or act as static and passive bonuses.

I think that within the feat system you could sort of do both, allowing characters with more or fewer buttons to mash (a good enough reason to have both, I think). But by allowing the static bonuses to go feat by feat instead of stat by stat, you might reduce the workload on yourself a bit. It might also allow a little more variation than your four stats would.

Quote from: beejazz;696025This would be my primary concern with this method.

The rest sort of depends on whether feats do things (like powers, spells, etc.) or act as static and passive bonuses.

I think that within the feat system you could sort of do both, allowing characters with more or fewer buttons to mash (a good enough reason to have both, I think). But by allowing the static bonuses to go feat by feat instead of stat by stat, you might reduce the workload on yourself a bit. It might also allow a little more variation than your four stats would.

Well an update...
Basically with the 4-stat model, I was having a problem with all characters being too "samey", so thought it would introduce more variation to let points also be bought/spend on other things (so advantages aka feats).
The major reason for moving to 4 stats was actually an attempt to roll together STR/CON as a single stat and make the other stats larger slices of the pie to compensate; I've rethought how game-breaking that would be and did some more tweaking and went back to about 8 stats.
The whole system is shelved however since I'm having core game mechanic issues. Currently it's d20 +stat+skill with a stat modifier of +1 per 5 points above/below 10 - with average 10, maximum 25, but, seems like a -2 penalty for a really crap stat isn't enough to represent true incompetence. I considered a disadvantage system whereby a low stat also makes the character pick a defined debility as well, but, its ugly and kludgy. Back to the drawing board.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;696031Well an update...
Basically with the 4-stat model, I was having a problem with all characters being too "samey", so thought it would introduce more variation to let points also be bought/spend on other things (so advantages aka feats).
The major reason for moving to 4 stats was actually an attempt to roll together STR/CON as a single stat and make the other stats larger slices of the pie to compensate; I've rethought how game-breaking that would be and did some more tweaking and went back to about 8 stats.
The whole system is shelved however since I'm having core game mechanic issues. Currently it's d20 +stat+skill with a stat modifier of +1 per 5 points above/below 10 - with average 10, maximum 25, but, seems like a -2 penalty for a really crap stat isn't enough to represent true incompetence. I considered a disadvantage system whereby a low stat also makes the character pick a defined debility as well, but, its ugly and kludgy. Back to the drawing board.

It might be best to start with what actual difference you want in the odds of success between characters X and Y, and then just work backwards from there. I really only wanted about a 50% (ten points on a D20) difference between characters of the same level in my game, so I wrote stats (+0 to +5, all rolled up) and skills (+0 untrained, +5 trained) to reflect that.

There is, of course, a little more to it than that. Like deciding what scales and what doesn't, or deciding whether you want to let the gaps in competence widen between your minimum and maximum levels, and what to do about that.

Also, how "really crap" do you need to be? In my case, I found that +0 from stat and skill at the same time (vs a max of 10, or an average of 5) is probably plenty.

Makes sense.
For really crap I suppose a -5 or -6 (a la 3E) is OK for the most part, though a 1 or 0 still by that formula gives a pretty good chance of passing some checks without extra kludging. Seems tricky to get appropriate success chances with d20 for me-vs.-my-cat grapples or gelatinous cube Tumble rolls.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;696044Makes sense.
For really crap I suppose a -5 or -6 (a la 3E) is OK for the most part, though a 1 or 0 still by that formula gives a pretty good chance of passing some checks without extra kludging. Seems tricky to get appropriate success chances with d20 for me-vs.-my-cat grapples or gelatinous cube Tumble rolls.

I prefer to ban or omit actions a monster plain shouldn't take rather than give them super bad stats. A cat flatly can't grapple you, or maybe it can only grab you and be dragged around. An ooze plain doesn't tumble. It probably ignores terrain, moves through you instead of past you, and would just kind of slough off a narrow thing like a balance beam. This stuff just doesn't seem like stat territory to me.

That said, barring playable monsters you can always just put their stats outside the PC range.

Quote from: beejazz;696136I prefer to ban or omit actions a monster plain shouldn't take rather than give them super bad stats. A cat flatly can't grapple you, or maybe it can only grab you and be dragged around. An ooze plain doesn't tumble. It probably ignores terrain, moves through you instead of past you, and would just kind of slough off a narrow thing like a balance beam. This stuff just doesn't seem like stat territory to me.

That said, barring playable monsters you can always just put their stats outside the PC range.

An ooze moving through you? That is rather nasty. Is the ooze ethereal?

A normal ooze may be close to liquid but it still has mass and occupies space.

Despite being semi-solid, I don't believe an ooze ever needs to tumble.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;696287An ooze moving through you? That is rather nasty. Is the ooze ethereal?

A normal ooze may be close to liquid but it still has mass and occupies space.

Through your space, I guess? I imagine an ooze looking to move to a point on the other side of you wouldn't bother going around, but would either engulf you (if it's the sticky gooey kind) or just roll over and crush you (if it's the bag of goop kind).

I like stats and skills and feats and button mashing, but when I run games I still omit rules applications that don't make much sense.