I've been kicking around the idea that the hobby got Dex wrong from the beginning.  If you look at martial arts and weapons, strength is part of initiative/speed, in the form of "explosiveness" or the speed of a blow.  Strength is a large part of finesse, at least in the form of being able to put a heavy weapon just where you want it, quickly, but still stop in control of the center line.

Strength is even a large part of using missile weapons, from medieval archers who show the muscle development on their skeletons to the ability to handle recoil and the weight of firearms themselves today.  (As an aside, High Dex but weak archers and rapier wielders are one of my pet peeves in modern D&D.  Yes, dragons and fireballs, but whole races of 8 Strength warriors aren't even plausible for a fantasy world, its just an artifact of people playing the rules and not the world.)

Broadly speaking better strength should amount to better dexterity, with exceptions maybe better handled by disads than by being independent stats.

All of which is a very roundabout way of saying, yes, by all means redistribute the stats for game balance, there's nothing special about the Str/Dex divide to begin with.  How you do that exactly depends on how granular your system is, but I like a couple of the suggestions up thread already.

Quote from: Kiero;803836Indeed, it doesn't make a lot of sense to combine hand-eye co-ordination (Dexterity) with full-body responsiveness and mobility or kinaesthetic awareness (Agility). The two things are quite different and can be focused on in isolation to each other.

Which is what I have done since 2002's StarCluster Ie - Coordination is a separate stat from Agility. Also, all perception type rolls are based on Endurance - the more tired you are, the worse your perception.

-clash

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;803779Having perused a number of modern/sci-fi games and people's discussions of them, I've started to wonder if the inclusion of a broadly defined agility or dexterity type stat is a questionable design choice. Such a stat often covers gun accuracy, speed, initiative, moving through difficult terrain and a host of useful skills, which makes other stat choices look bad. Of course this is just my impression at the moment.

What have your experiences with agi/dex stats in such games been like? Are they the no-brainer option for player characters? How have they been mitigated or rationalized? What have been the most interesting alternatives?

I ran into that problem myself recently, when working with my own rpg-project.
Even though I only started out noticing that both movement and initiative would be affected by Dexterity, it was enough for me to early on to replace Dexterity with Agility.
Recently, I also revised it further, by adding Speed as a separate basic value, instead of letting it be derived from Perception, which I had also considered.

I'm currently wrestling with this myself, as I'm working on a MEKTON campaign.

In MEKTON, Reflexes is very much the uber-stat, as it encompasses initiative, martial arts, gun combat, dodging, mecha piloting, and mecha gunnery! Meanwhile, another stat, Movement Allowance, is a dump stat. Body and Tech are useful but not as important as Reflexes.

I had initially planned to eliminate Movement Allowance and split Reflexes into "Dexterity" and "Agility". Unfortunately it doesn't help much in MEKTON because mecha piloting and mecha gunnery both seem like they would fall into Dexterity.

I'm now considering 2 different possibilities:
1) "Coordination" and "Speed" where the former controls skills and the latter controls initiative, movement rate, and number of actions;
2) "Accuracy" and "Agility" where the former controls all marksmanship (in or out of mecha) while the other controls everything else.

Anyone have any insight into the underlying human aptitudes that differentiate a marksman and a pilot? Ugh!

Quote from: amacris;803862In MEKTON, Reflexes is very much the uber-stat, as it encompasses initiative, martial arts, gun combat, dodging, mecha piloting, and mecha gunnery! Meanwhile, another stat, Movement Allowance, is a dump stat. Body and Tech are useful but not as important as Reflexes.

If you are rolling randomly for Reflexes than everybody gets the same chance to have good or bad reflexes. So there is no game balance issue that some stats are more important to most characters than other stats.

It sounds like characters being good at all the skills covered by Reflexes would fit the genre - is that correct? If so, a third option is to do what Hero does and just charge more in point build for Reflexes (or improvements to Reflexes) than for Body or Tech.

Quote from: amacris;803862I had initially planned to eliminate Movement Allowance and split Reflexes into "Dexterity" and "Agility". Unfortunately it doesn't help much in MEKTON because mecha piloting and mecha gunnery both seem like they would fall into Dexterity.

...

Anyone have any insight into the underlying human aptitudes that differentiate a marksman and a pilot? Ugh!

This one depends heavily on how you interpret firing really large guns in your giant robots. If you're playing it as a heavily point and click kind of thing then yeah dex makes sense. If you're considering it as taking all the variables from the firing system and triggering the weapon at the correct juncture based on that information you could file it under intelligence or tech easily. Which one? No clue, but it's a line of logic to play with.

Quote from: MrHurst;803869This one depends heavily on how you interpret firing really large guns in your giant robots. If you're playing it as a heavily point and click kind of thing then yeah dex makes sense. If you're considering it as taking all the variables from the firing system and triggering the weapon at the correct juncture based on that information you could file it under intelligence or tech easily. Which one? No clue, but it's a line of logic to play with.

Also, if you split Reflexes up, a giant robot game would be a natural for piloting by whole body movement, AKA Agility. You move your leg and the robot sensors see that, and move the giant robot leg correspondingly.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;803893Also, if you split Reflexes up, a giant robot game would be a natural for piloting by whole body movement, AKA Agility. You move your leg and the robot sensors see that, and move the giant robot leg correspondingly.

-clash

That would align nicely with whole-body movement being used for physical dodges as well. So Dexterity would be for gunnery and Agility for piloting.

I'd say the relative strength of different stats depends on what type of campaign you run. Agility/Dexterity is extremely important if you're running a combat-heavy game. OTOH, if you're running a SF campaign with a lot of technical challenges, and/or a lot of social interaction, Intelligence and Charisma become nearly as important, if not more so.

Is fusing strength and toughness a solution?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;803779Having perused a number of modern/sci-fi games and people's discussions of them, I've started to wonder if the inclusion of a broadly defined agility or dexterity type stat is a questionable design choice. Such a stat often covers gun accuracy, speed, initiative, moving through difficult terrain and a host of useful skills, which makes other stat choices look bad. Of course this is just my impression at the moment.

What have your experiences with agi/dex stats in such games been like? Are they the no-brainer option for player characters? How have they been mitigated or rationalized? What have been the most interesting alternatives?

This makes some *huge* assumptions about the kinds of games one ought to be running. Namely - run'n'gun=sci-fi.

The only sci-fi game I play with any regularity is Cyberpunk - which ironically feeds directly into your question since mechanically all gun-combat uses this very mechanic. So if you're going for some semblance of "realism" then sure - Dex/Agi is going to reign supreme. But it *should* since those actions are covered by that stat.

The *real* question I would ask is - why are you running those kinds of games? In my Cyberpunks games where I'm playing, certainly there are other players who are gun-toting badasses. But we have lots of other aspects of the game that dictate when/how those guns get drawn in the first place. Fast agile characters doesn't mean they are technical, social, or generally smart. Which are also hallmarks of sci-fi games/characters/books etc. CP2020 happens to be a fucking lethal game once the smokewagons get skinned, so the conceits of the gameplay is, imo, to enforce the repercussions of heavy-action in the game. That is - heavy action all the time usually means dead PC's.

Your mileage may vary. The short answer: no I don't think it's a problem with the design. It's a problem with the game being run by a GM that doesn't think outside of that narrow scope - unless that's the sole intent of the game.

I prefer to keep things as simple as possible.

Quote from: tenbones;804120This makes some *huge* assumptions about the kinds of games one ought to be running. Namely - run'n'gun=sci-fi.

Zigackly.

Run a campaign where you only do X, and the abilities that help you do X will be all that matters. If you feel that only those things helping X mattering is a flaw, this is not necessarily a flaw in the game system.

You could, you know, have the PCs need to talk to people (charisma, perception), and figure things out (knowledge, education) or lift things up or burrow through or wrestle people (strength), and so on.

It may be foolish to consider physical toughness or strength a viable dump stat in sci-fi games. Think of the environmental hazards that come with going from world to world. One with a higher gravity would require that an adequate strength be needed to lift that 2 kilogram blaster in that 2.0 G gravity field because it now weighs 4 kilograms and will have a stronger recoil (gravity affecting the entire body of the shooter). One world with a high flux of radiation like during a solar flare or one of those nuclear combats that always seem to happen would require characters with enough endurance to survive long enough to get to adequate shelter. While technology can be used to mitigate these examples, it will not eliminate them, especially since technology can always break down.

Quote from: MrHurst;803869This one depends heavily on how you interpret firing really large guns in your giant robots. If you're playing it as a heavily point and click kind of thing then yeah dex makes sense. If you're considering it as taking all the variables from the firing system and triggering the weapon at the correct juncture based on that information you could file it under intelligence or tech easily. Which one? No clue, but it's a line of logic to play with.

I think it's more the former, at least in Robotech-y type games...