Quote from: LouGoncey;900444HERO SYSTEM 6th Edition has 17 core stats. Why do I play this game I do not know...

That one just made me laugh.

Quote from: robiswrong;897096As many as necessary to differentiate characters.

As few as possible.

A marvelously vague and yet critically accurate statement.

My favorite stat breakdown remains the 8 stats from Dragonlance: Fifth Age--Strength and Endurance, Agility and Dexterity, Reason and Perception, Spirit and Presence. NPCs can generally collapse the pairs down into 4 attributes--Physique, Coordination, Intellect, Essence.

It's nicely symmetrical (Physical/Mental, Power/Technique, Active/Reactive) and is close to the D&D 6 I grew up with while diminishing Dexterity's "uberstat" tendencies and Wisdom's kludging-together of awareness and willpower.

YMMV, but we pretty much ignore half the abilities in D&D. I feel a little guilty for ignoring a chunk of the system, but ability checks just feel lame. All social interactions are roleplayed or skipped over, so Charisma reduces to attractiveness. Intelligence and Wisdom never seem to come up except as they mechanically relate to the spellcasters. We could probably get along without all of the physical stats either; the divide between the three has always felt clunky.

So "as few as possible" for me would be two or so: Strength and Magic. Maybe a Size attribute to model an Ajax/Hector kind of fight.

Quote from: Dumpire;900773YMMV, but we pretty much ignore half the abilities in D&D. I feel a little guilty for ignoring a chunk of the system, but ability checks just feel lame. All social interactions are roleplayed or skipped over, so Charisma reduces to attractiveness. Intelligence and Wisdom never seem to come up except as they mechanically relate to the spellcasters. We could probably get along without all of the physical stats either; the divide between the three has always felt clunky.

So "as few as possible" for me would be two or so: Strength and Magic. Maybe a Size attribute to model an Ajax/Hector kind of fight.

You might like the Prince Valiant system.

I tend to favor fewer core stats. There are always cases you can find for splitting stats, because it is always possible to subdivide. Specialized talent - like being particularly good at manual dexterity, or having aim, or skill in languages - can be handled by something like advantages. For core stats, the question is whether that distinction is useful for all characters.

I think there are a few common splits or combines.

1) Strength vs. Constitution :  In terms of fiction and reality, figures who are really strong are usually also tough, and vice-versa. Thus, I favor a general "Body" stat for how big and fit you are. In D&D, there are a number of characters with low Str but high Con, but I see this more as a game mechanical artifact that comes from system choices. (i.e. hit points are always useful, but for many characters strength is largely irrelevant)

2) Intelligence vs. Wisdom : This is a rather peculiar D&D-ism. I find it strange and arbitrary to say that Perception and Medicine is based on Wisdom, but Nature and Religion are based on Intelligence. In practice, all the recent versions have that animals have low Int but reasonable Wis - so that Gorillas would make good doctors, but bad theologists - which makes no sense. I think the other common split is better where the split is instead Intelligence vs. Perception. An eagle or bloodhound will have high Perception but low Intelligence, while a thick glasses-wearing scholar might have low Perception but high Intelligence. That's an easily understandable split.

So, I'd tend to prefer Body and Dexterity for physical; and Mind and Perception for mental.

For social, having a single Charisma stat is fine for me. The split of Presence and Manipulation that White Wolf uses is also OK by me - it seems workable, and fitting for many archetypes.  A general or other authority figure has high Presence, but a sneaky scheming con man has high Manipulation. Splitting it into three stats seems too much, though, like with physical and mental.

Whatever the system needs to run properly, and as long as it runs well.

Quote from: TristramEvans;900831You might like the Prince Valiant system.

I'll look into it ... I vaguely remember the cartoon from when I was about five years old.

Ok I'm looking it up in the Artesia rules, since I remember this has a lot of stats (characteristics) that still worked rather well:

Physical (total is Body score or hit points)
Appearance
Strength
Stamina
Dexterity
Technique

Mental (add up for Mind score, similar to sanity):
Perception
Willpower
Memory
Imagination
Reason

Spiritual (sum up for Spirit points, similar to magic points):
Presence
Conviction
Courage
Empathy
Wisdom

Quote from: Tetsubo;900737A marvelously vague and yet critically accurate statement.

Deliberately vague.

The actual number would depend entirely on the setting and genre and goals of the specific game you're making.  The actual number will depend on any number of factors, so the best answer I can give is how to find that number for a given situation, not the number itself.

Quote from: LouGoncey;900444HERO SYSTEM 6th Edition has 17 core stats. Why do I play this game I do not know...

mind if i ask what they are never played hero system

Quote from: Necrozius;900449The game that I'm working on uses 5 (so far):

Eye (perception, understanding and intuition)
Face (personality, social skill and reputation)
Heart (resilience, persistence and vitality)
Guts (athletics, combat skills and strength)
Soul (connection with nature and spirits)

I might change Heart because it makes me think of Captain Planet.

There are also 5 "classes" that sync up to these.

captain planet he's a hero gonna take pollution down to zero.......

I used to do ad libbed systems and the players get to vote on the stats and how we generate them and the system.

The fewest I ever used was 3  = Prowess, Lore , Guile  (I use these three in a couple of card / baord games I developed and so this is why they transfered across)
Usually people default to 6 but add in Perception and drop Wisdom.

The most unusual was in a Star Wars game using the Amber engine and we had I think Force, Warfare, Mechanic , Pilot, Strength

Generally I think Vampire oWoD was very clever with its Tri-stat with 3 splits So I personally favour
Mental = Perception, Knowledge, Reasoning
Physical = Strength, Endurance, Agility
Social = Appearance, Charm, Leadership (I know Appearance is really a physical trait but meh what can you do)

Quote from: kosmos1214;900982mind if i ask what they are never played hero system

I'm not sure about 6th edition, but previously there were eight core stats and six derived stats.

Strength - how much force you can apply to lift/hit
Dexterity - how quick and accurate you are
Constitution - how tough you are (mattered mostly for derived stats)
Body - how hard you are to kill
Intelligence - how perceptive and sharp you are
Ego - how strong-willed you are
Presence - how impressive and charismatic you are
Comeliness - how good-looking you are

Derived stats:
Physical Defense (PD) - defense vs. physical attacks
Energy Defense (ED) - defense vs. energy attacks
Speed (SPD) - how many actions per turn you get
Recovery (REC) - how quickly you recover Endurance and Stun
Endurance (END) - how long you can keep acting
Stun (STUN) - how hard you are to knock out

And yes, I also think it's excessive. Mostly they will scale with each other, like PD and ED being usually the same.
If you really want a character who is hard to knock out but easy to kill, you could take a limitation or disadvantage for that,
rather than making different stats for everyone.

The changes HERO 6th made were:
1. Making the previously figured Characteristics independent,
2. Dropping Comeliness in favor of a "Striking Appearance" Talent,
3. Treating OCV, DCV, OMCV and DMCV (formerly ECV) ad Characteristics.

From jhkim's description I'd say that Body and Constitution seem too similar, but otherwise I don't think this is too much at all.