So, I hear a lot about Savage Worlds.  I think it's the third most popular game behind D&D, and Pathfinder (which is a version of D&D). 

What I find the hardest to understand is the difference between your stats, which are dice, and skills, which are also dice.  However, a high stat doesn't make a related skill easier. They're not rolled together, or added up.   

It does make it easier to increase a skill when the stat is high.   But, that only matters when it's time to "level up" a skill from a small dice to the next size dice.

I think I heard once that stats are used as savings throws, while skills are used when you're acting on your turn against somebody. 

I think you get it.

The thing about stats not contributing directly to skills is odd, but yeah that's how it works. If memory serves, you use them for your rolls to recover from wounds, and sometimes for things where no skill applies. It put me off the system at first, too, but since advances are relatively easy to come by, it's not a big deal.

For my dollar, Savage Worlds occupies a similar position to things like D6 and the Omni System. It's a solid universal classless system that's a bit less crunchy than BRP or GURPS.

I've only played one game of it.  It seemed interesting for a generic system. 

This is why I fell in love with the system from Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool Edition. 

In DDDPE your 5 stats are dice, your 20 skills are dice, and most of your racial and class abilities are a dice. 

Roll them all, pick the best two, and that is your roll.  Beat a target number. 

Example: A Dwarf can have a bonus with Axes.  A Barbarian can have a bonus with 2-handlers.  If you're a Dwarf Barbarian like a Warhammer Troll Slayer, then roll your strength of 1D8, Melee skill of 1D6, racial axe bonus of 1D4, and class 2-handed bonus of 1D4. 

Result: 5, 1, 3, 1.  Pick the 5+3, and you rolled an 8 because of your high strength and racial proclivity for axes. 

Savage Worlds seems like your stats don't matter that much.

Do any Savage World vets want to chime in?  Do you roll your stats very much, or are they sort of a mute point because of the way the game is played?

Strength is rolled for melee attack damage, Spirit is rolled to throw off Shaken (this is a very common roll; IIRC, some settings have a skill for this), Vigor gets rolled for healing, Agility gets rolled to avoid area effects, there are other places where attributes are directly rolled.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on September 19, 2024, 10:25:03 PMSo, I hear a lot about Savage Worlds.  I think it's the third most popular game behind D&D, and Pathfinder (which is a version of D&D). 

What I find the hardest to understand is the difference between your stats, which are dice, and skills, which are also dice.  However, a high stat doesn't make a related skill easier. They're not rolled together, or added up.   

It does make it easier to increase a skill when the stat is high.   But, that only matters when it's time to "level up" a skill from a small dice to the next size dice.

I think I heard once that stats are used as savings throws, while skills are used when you're acting on your turn against somebody.

You understand it better than you present in this post. The difficulty you're having is what you understand is weird compared to other RPGs and so you're second-guessing yourself.

What I suspect you're really trying to ask is, "What is the point of attributes if they don't modify skill rolls?"

Online discussion around Savage Worlds does a poor job of answering this question, largely because you learn by doing. Typically this question is being asked by someone who's never actually played Savage Worlds, and so we use the language of D&D, which pretty much everyone understands. D&D is an imperfect tool to use to describe Savage Worlds. The reality is attributes get rolled more often than, "Attributes are saving throws," implies, but this is not true in all games, and it's least true in games with inexperienced players.

Strength is used for melee damage rolls (and some ranged damage rolls) as well as determining whether you're strong enough to use a particular piece of equipment.

Vigor is used for a variety of not-dying related things, both static values and rolls.

It is not clear to a lot of newer players what the other three attributes are for, apart from serving as a soft cap on skills (skills rated above the linked attribute are more expensive).

Spirit is used to recover from having the wind knocked out of you. This is a thing that happens in combat which isn't prevalent in other games. The actual term is "shaken" and it's broader than simply having the wind knocked out of you, but it's a precursor condition to being wounded.

Agility is used to get out of the way of dragonbreath, dive into a bathtub before a stick of dynamite explodes, or a variety of other, "Duck and cover!" situations.

What about smarts?

Smarts has the most skills linked to it, and so it does relatively little by itself.

Savage Worlds has a mechanic called "test" which a catch-all term for various shenanigans one might engage in to throw an opponent off-balance - throwing sand in the eyes, "Is that a rabbit over there?", "I see your Schwartz is as big as mine! But can you use it?", the halfling running between the ogre's legs to confuse it, and so forth. Tests are performed to set up your allies. When you do this, you roll a skill. "Is that a rabbit over there?" might be persuasion. The halfling running underneath the ogre might be athletics. The defender then rolls the attribute linked to the skill you used. "Is that a rabbit over there?" would be persuasion versus spirit, while the halfling maneuver would be athletics versus agility.

If you're not using the test mechanic, then attributes will be rolled less frequently in game. Newer groups tend to use fewer tests overall.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on September 19, 2024, 10:25:03 PMI think I heard once that stats are used as savings throws, while skills are used when you're acting on your turn against somebody.

I'd say that's accurate.

I like the effect of it, though. In skill-based systems, I prefer the design choice to require serious investment in skill in order to be good at that skill.

--

In some generic systems, having a high attribute gets you skill for free or very cheap. Say you have a high-Intelligence bookish wizard. Under some systems, the bookish wizard can easily become great at Survival and Tracking, if those are Intelligence-based. Effectively, this means that the only character niches are based around attributes - i.e. there are only two classes "Intelligence class" and "Dexterity class".

Requiring more investment for skills leads to more character types, because the bookish wizard can't easily compete with the ranger's outdoor skills.

Quote from: Corolinth on September 20, 2024, 11:41:28 AMWhat about smarts?

Smarts has the most skills linked to it, and so it does relatively little by itself.

I'd note that Smarts is used to resist Taunt and other attempts to fool the character.

I like how Taunt is a well-supported skill in Savage Worlds, and it can be very useful in combat.

Quote from: jhkim on September 20, 2024, 12:11:46 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on September 20, 2024, 11:41:28 AMWhat about smarts?

Smarts has the most skills linked to it, and so it does relatively little by itself.

I'd note that Smarts is used to resist Taunt and other attempts to fool the character.

I like how Taunt is a well-supported skill in Savage Worlds, and it can be very useful in combat.

That gets into the tests mechanic. Because Smarts has the most skills linked to it (including the easiest to use for a test), in theory it's the most useful for making those defensive rolls.

i.e. Smarts doesn't need any additional "help" to convince people why they should have it.

Yep you get it. What I think is missing is having a GM take the system and really *run* with it. Even the core book reads pretty simple and is plain-jane by design.

But if you're coming into Savage Worlds with a burning hard-on for *anything* in any genre, or any other RPG line and you want to "Savage It" and see how it runs, you'll see it in its full glory.

Yes, high-stats are only relative to the game because your skills are tied to it. Ever meet a strong guy that couldn't actually fight? It's quite common. Or Academically versed people that Dunning-Krugered their way into fail because they thought their Academics translated to other Smarts based skills? Yeah happens daily.

The abstraction of Skills gobbles up most of the task-resolution of the system. It keeps things nice and clean and you really do feel it. You can emulate anything you think about in your standard Fantasy/Sci-Fi games by their tropes. 90% of the time that trope exists in Savage Worlds as a Hindrance or Edge. Your character, is built of those tropes.

Ironically this reinforces *every* aspect of the game you want to play or run. You want to make that Gish Magic-Wielding Warrior? You can do that. And it will play exactly the way you envision it within the core assumptions of the rules *regardless* of whether you are a Wizard or a Warrior. D&D has always been complete shit at this because its classes and subsystems are not cohesive in design.

This is one of those rare cases where the generic system is made to be tweaked to your tastes as a GM. You can dial it up, or down.

Again - I'll point to this simple unassailable fact: It runs Pathfinder better than Pathfinder. Pathfinder <> D&D. But it also runs Palladium Rifts, Super Heroes, and other insane high-power stuff. ALL of that stuff can be overlayed your Pathfinder game to scale it in power to levels beyond what any regular D&D players would ever achieve natively. What's more: it can do it with EASE and you can play at that level with very little extra overhead. The stakes would be much higher - as they should be.

You need to take for a spin with with a serious attempt at a campaign. And just DIVE.

We don't combine Attribute plus Skill in SW but PCs do roll a Attribute OR Skill plus a D6 so you're still rolling two dice.

Why it's that way, I don't know.

I'd rather play Cortex Classic instead.

Quote from: RebelSky on September 23, 2024, 07:03:48 PMWe don't combine Attribute plus Skill in SW but PCs do roll a Attribute OR Skill plus a D6 so you're still rolling two dice.

Why it's that way, I don't know.

I'd rather play Cortex Classic instead.

I thought I was one of the only people that still loves Cortex Classic.  I like it better than Cortex Plus/Cortex Prime for most genres.

Quote from: Batjon on September 24, 2024, 09:04:04 AM

Quote from: RebelSky on September 23, 2024, 07:03:48 PMWe don't combine Attribute plus Skill in SW but PCs do roll a Attribute OR Skill plus a D6 so you're still rolling two dice.

Why it's that way, I don't know.

I'd rather play Cortex Classic instead.

I thought I was one of the only people that still loves Cortex Classic.  I like it better than Cortex Plus/Cortex Prime for most genres.

I like Cortex Classic too. I never got into the later versions (looked at the Marvel one a bit and walked away from it).

Quote from: RebelSky on September 23, 2024, 07:03:48 PMWe don't combine Attribute plus Skill in SW but PCs do roll a Attribute OR Skill plus a D6 so you're still rolling two dice.

Why it's that way, I don't know.

I'd rather play Cortex Classic instead.

Shane once said that the Wild Die was chosen specifically to balance fighting versus fighting. No, I don't understand what this means, either.

I think it's more likely that D6s are common and if you make the wild die an echo of the attribute die, players now need two whole die sets and need to spend a moment fishing for one more oddly shaped die. Savage Worlds consistently defaults to the fastest possible option even if it isn't the best option, and I think this is an example of that. I have run Savage Worlds using the Wild Die as an echo of an attribute and it works fine.

In fact the math of the system is so wild and inconsistent I scarcely notice a difference for the half-session I did it for.

Yeah, regarding wild math, one important thing with Savage Worlds is it actually breaks down without liberal granting of Bennies and edges that grant Bennies and free rerolls.

The odds of getting a 4+ with two d6s is about 75%, but as with most things dice related, that only holds true over the course of hundreds of rolls using platonically ideal dice. In the scale of only a few dozen rolls like you'll see in a normal session you can end up with significant hot and cold streaks and you need Bennies to help smooth out those troughs.

Because Bennies also power soaks/damage mitigation it means players in general prove very hesitant to spend their starting 3-ish Bennies unless they feel confident they can earn more reliably in play because "avoid death" is too valuable to surrender for other tasks if 3 is all you get in a session because the GM never hands out more.