Having 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?
My suggestion is to move the wealth to other attributes. Want to do damage mod for guns. Let perception attribute (or any stat that covers perception) do that instead. Initiative could be use by wisdom instead of dexterity. Point is spread that wealth.
Agree with Snowman here. An argument could be made for using Intelligence/ Tech stats for beam weapons (they are fussy and have to be constantly tweaked, even in combat) and using Strength for slug throwers (recoil) and so on. It all depends on how much stats influence skill use, I suppose. Using Basic Roleplaying (Chaosium) you'll get a minor boost for high stats, but your skill matters much more.
The simple answer is yes.
In games where physical prowess and resiliency are superceded by technology dex becomes an uber stat.
But rather that leverage the "classic" stat pool you are better off defining an entirely different stat pool. So coordination, agility and relexes might be great replacements for dnd "dexterity".
You should really select a stat pool that reflects the game/setting. So a scifi game might use thes three an prowess as a combined strength/stamina stat, then maybe charisma, int and willpower to round off the pc.
You don't have to end up with 25 stats either you can condense down to a tristat model with specialisms or even dump stats and have exceptional points as feats (lightning reflexes, inhuman endurance, etc). Then run everything else based on skill ranks.
In the game system I am doing I have four attributes. Combat, physical, mental, and social. Social isn't important in this so I leave it out.
Point is combat attribute does all the combat rolls to see if you hit, or you manage to dodge the attack.
Physical provides physical hp and provides bonus damage through weapons that requires you to be fit to use. I am talking about bows, swords, throwing spears, axes, blow pipes, maces, and so on.
Mental provides mental/spiritual hp and provides bonus damage through weapons that require knowledge, mental prowess, or just being accurate. This involves crossbows, wands, psychic energy swords, firearms, and so on.
Star Wars D6 spreads the utility around.
- Dexterity - hand gun accuracy small vehicle weapons, melee weapons, and running
- Knowledge - survival, intimidation, willpower
- Perception - initative, stealth, command, persuasion
- Mechanical - all vehicle piloting, ship weapons, shields, sensors, etc.
- Strength - brawling, climbing, jumping, swimming
- Technical - fixing things, computer hacking, security including electronic lock breaking
Quote from: Snowman0147;803795Physical provides physical hp and provides bonus damage through weapons that requires you to be fit to use. I am talking about bows, swords, throwing spears, axes, blow pipes, maces, and so on.
Of the four attributes mentioned it seems like Physical might end up a dump stat in a Sci-Fi setting.
Not really as it provides health that keeps you alive. Not to mention we could add in mono and power weapons. A assassin that gets in close to the kill could easily go physical route. Not to mention you still got all those none combat physical rolls.
I'm a big fan of breaking up Dexerity, Agility, and Reflexes. It makes it cost three times as much as Strength.
Quote from: David Johansen;803803I'm a big fan of breaking up Dexerity, Agility, and Reflexes. It makes it cost three times as much as Strength.
Ah that is true but what if your on a percentile strength
Hard Nova ][ takes a different approach. The abilities are Fitness, Awareness, Creativity, Reasoning, & Influence. There's only the one physical ability in a set of 5.
Quote from: David Johansen;803803I'm a big fan of breaking up Dexerity, Agility, and Reflexes. It makes it cost three times as much as Strength.
Indeed, 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.
Personally, I prefer games that are skill-based, not characteristic/stat-based.
So, rather than have Agility to cover everything, you have agility-based skills that cover different things. Sure, they start off higher, but not by an unbalanced amount.
Otherwise, you get someone who is automatically good at a lot of things. Now, that might be advantageous, in some respects, but would not be something that I would like as a GM or as a player.
Short answer: No. AGI/DEX as combat modifier work best if you have emphasis on space opera setting where heroes are supposed to be ubermench.
Long answer: Yes. I have came into conclusion that more realistic scifi settings the skill sets and more balanced attribute based distribution should be emphasized.
My current personal game design pet theorem is making mental characteristics (especially Willpower) most important factor in combat rather than physical characteristics...
I'm currently playing the CRPG "Dead State", which is interestingly reflective of this question.
Four stats, roughly Strength / Dexterity / Vigor / Perception.
Yeah, Dexterity helps you dodge, gives you more "action points" to move farther or take more swings or attempt more complicated actions. But (since it's post-zombie-apocalypse) you need Strength for using better melee weapons, for increasing melee damage, and for *hauling loot*, which is your entire reason for being out in the world taking risks. More importantly, Perception both limits your effective range with missile weapons and controls your initiative. Vigor is the only stat I don't seriously consider boosting: a point of vigor is +10% hit points and +5% or so passive armor, but a character can be knocked out with 2-3 solid hits, so +10% doesn't give you more survivability in hard fights, and it takes a dozen or more flesh wounds to take down even the scrawniest combatant, which is enough time for some in-combat healing.
I think the dominant stats are Per (take down your dangerous enemies quickly from long range with a firearm) and Str (take down zombies quietly with a single blow, without wasting bullets / making loud noises to draw attention), with Dex close behind - there are some magic breakpoints, a player with Dex 6-8 has a lot more flexibility in melee than a player with Dex 4.
Quote from: Nikita;803842My current personal game design pet theorem is making mental characteristics (especially Willpower) most important factor in combat rather than physical characteristics...
I think the willingness to hurt others and to be hurt is probably at least as important as any physical attribute in combat effectiveness in the real world.
One of the things I really liked about the original Boot Hill game from TSR was it treated speed, accuracy, and bravery as three separate attributes. All three mattered in a gun fight. IIR, it also counted the number of gunfights you'd been in and there was some bonus for having been in (and lived) through one or more gunfights.
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...
Quote from: jeff37923;804617It may be foolish to consider physical toughness or strength a viable dump stat in sci-fi games. (....) While technology can be used to mitigate these examples, it will not eliminate them, especially since technology can always break down.
I don't think the idea is that strength is
never useful in sci-fi, but that strength is
less useful in a typical sci-fi game (like Star Wars or Star Trek) than in a typical fantasy game (like Conan or Tolkien).
Then again, in any game, some stats and/or skills are going to be less useful than others. Personally, I think should be fine to have a game where strength is less useful and charisma is critically useful, or a game where strength is critically useful. I shouldn't have to tailor the action of the game to reflect the system. Instead, if strength is going to be less useful, then it should simply be adjusted cost less, in my opinion.
Bob Munden can draw a colt saa fast as lightning. That's speed and dexterity right there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGl8ocDWggM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGl8ocDWggM)
However, while his hands are fast, I don't see him leaping across ship chasms, dual wielding laser swords, ect. Mosey down a loading platform, sure.
Quote from: Shipyard Locked;803951Is fusing strength and toughness a solution?
I do find it odd that people can't accept agility and whole-body coordination as the same stat but are willing to blend stamina and muscle power. ;)
JG
In my current project, I fused Agility and Endurance into the general term Fitness. It works out and is good enough for the vast majority of uses-- mainly because any task that requires good Agility (that is, the ability to rapidly accelerate and decelerate your body) also requires good Endurance (or you start making mistakes and there goes your Agility.)
This lets Dexterity take the reigns as fine motor control and reaction speed, and Intelligence take over for the ability to predict objects in motion (and thus give the damage bonus to ranged attacks). I'm a few weeks out from playtesting, so we'll see if it works out.
Quote from: RunningLaser;804657Bob Munden can draw a colt saa fast as lightning. That's speed and dexterity right there. [...]
However, while his hands are fast, I don't see him leaping across ship chasms, dual wielding laser swords, ect. Mosey down a loading platform, sure.
A practiced skill is not the same as an innate talent. This is why we get systems where it's Attribute + Skill + dice roll. The range of the possible attribute numbers vs the range of the possible skill numbers will decide whether attributes or skills are more important in the game.
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?
It comes down to how players narrate what their characters are doing. If they talk in concrete terms, then brute strength or dexterity will be focused on more.
Manual and athletic coordination seem to me rather less important in a more technologically advanced context than in a more primitive one! Machinery's precision increasingly takes over, common tools eventually surpassing the native adroitness of any human.
A parallel development is weapons that rely not on precision but on relatively indiscriminate destruction (machineguns, explosive shells, etc.).
Intelligence and social acumen are more likely to be the key aptitudes for characters of the sort usual in adventure games.
Quote from: jhkim;804656I don't think the idea is that strength is never useful in sci-fi, but that strength is less useful in a typical sci-fi game (like Star Wars or Star Trek) than in a typical fantasy game (like Conan or Tolkien).
Traveller the New Era may be atypical, but as I recall Strength in it is a prime attribute for infantrymen: both the attribute applicable to firearm skills and the one governing ability to handle recoil.
I think it also applies to a number of athletic skills, and combines with Endurance in determining wound severity.
Attributes do weigh very significantly in that system - but training, equipment and tactics ultimately count for more.
QuoteThen again, in any game, some stats and/or skills are going to be less useful than others. Personally, I think should be fine to have a game where strength is less useful and charisma is critically useful, or a game where strength is critically useful. I shouldn't have to tailor the action of the game to reflect the system. Instead, if strength is going to be less useful, then it should simply be adjusted cost less, in my opinion.
I am most familiar with new WoD. In that game you use your dexterity (combined with wits) for defense and for gunbased attacks in combination with the firearms skill. If you take the weapon finesse merit you can also use dexterity in combination with the weaponry skill. So yes, in that game dex is overpowered as well.