Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 11:04:30 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 24, 2023, 10:08:44 AM
All the problems with classless games tend to be either stuff not related to the classless component or trying to reinvent the Attribute+Skill wheel (which doesn't necessarily lead to broken games, but is more likely to).

I have no dog in this fight at all. There are class-based games I love, and skill-based games I love. I don't think one is inherently better than the other. But the skill-based games I love do NOT do the attribute+skill thing. And the one that does, I merely tolerate that it does this. It strikes me as fundamentally stupid, really. Take on more math for, what, the benefit of redundancy? Interplay during character creation I'm fine with. But I feel once the game begins, it's better for skills to be independent of attributes.

TBH, I can't relate cuz I don't think that adding Attribute and Skill values together is such a hurdle, particularly when that's already supposed to be done in your character sheet, so you don't have to do it in the middle of play. You're not normally supposed to be adding up Attributes and Skills every time you make a roll, unless Attribute-Skill relations are variable and contextual in that system (and even then there might be a default pairing you could keep noted in your sheet).

I also don't like attributes separate from Skills cuz IMO most attributes (specially mental ones) generally don't serve any real or necessary function in an RPG other than to supplement skills or to serve as a stand in for them in games that don't have them. Other than that they just modify certain game rule stats like HP, damage or carry capacity, which can exist as stand alone characteristics even if attributes don't exist in the game, or for certain resistance or "strength" related rolls, which can also be handled as skills instead. So if you think that attributes+skills is such a hurdle you might as well get rid of attributes entirely and handle everything through skills alone (adding skills for "strength" and different types of resistances, like Will, Health, etc.), then use advantages ("feats") to cover bonuses to game rules stats.

But anyways that's besides the point I was making in that post, which is that classless design is not more difficult that class-based design. And if anything keeping skills separate from attributes (or better yet, getting rid of attributes entirely) would probably make it even more simple to build.

On the topic of Class-based vs Classless superiority, my main claim is that Classless is superior for customization specifically. But I don't think that classes are truly obsolete. And which approach you should use is primarily a matter of preference and what you're trying to get out of the system or accomplish.

I think which is "better" is highly genre dependent. The tighter the focus (ex. Mecha pilots, post-apocalypse survivors, cowboys, superspies, Federation starship crew) the more classless systems can cover most bases without needing so broad a menu of options as to overwhelm players with options.

The broader the focus (ex. Star War free for all, Kitchen sink Fantasy) the more classes as archetypes become helpful for players as something to focus on in creating a character... particularly if things like magic and super-science or both offer significant differences between characters who have them and those that don't.

Heck, what are starting packages and templates for a "classless" system, but classes with very open advancement options? If you need templates just to keep players from checking out then you're not really playing a truly classless system are you?

So again, it's not one or the other that is universally good for all things... it's more a matter of figuring out what's best for a given genre and the focus of the system within it.

Similarly, not all Fantasy requires classes; something like Conan where magic all the purview of NPC villains and the PCs are all warriors would probably be better with a classless system. Similarly, a modern warfare game (say everyone is part of a SEAL team) while normally a very focused genre might benefit from classes based on specific MOS's if you want more mechanical distinction between party members (or quicker PC generation if it's built as an "anyone can die" meat grinder).

In class and level systems they can say levels 4-8 but in RuneQuest (my go to example of a skill game) they say 4 skills of x% or higher. Is that  useful when it comes to a GM buying an off the shelf adventure?

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 11:04:30 AMBut the skill-based games I love do NOT do the attribute+skill thing. And the one that does, I merely tolerate that it does this. It strikes me as fundamentally stupid, really. Take on more math for, what, the benefit of redundancy? Interplay during character creation I'm fine with. But I feel once the game begins, it's better for skills to be independent of attributes.

Near as I can see, there's only reason for doing attribute + skill as a dynamic thing during play:  That the system is explicitly designed to take advantage of that by having attributes and skills that combine in multiple, interesting ways.  I don't mean once in a blue moon either, like the D&D 5E suggestion to occasionally use a non-standard attribute for an oddball case.

Explicit design is required to get there because having such frequent, overlapping combinations necessarily says something about what attributes and skills are in the game to begin with. Also, the scope of each skill needs to be carefully considered.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 03:04:55 PM
TBH, I can't relate cuz I don't think that adding Attribute and Skill values together is such a hurdle, particularly when that's already supposed to be done in your character sheet, so you don't have to do it in the middle of play. You're not normally supposed to be adding up Attributes and Skills every time you make a roll, unless Attribute-Skill relations are variable and contextual in that system (and even then there might be a default pairing you could keep noted in your sheet).

Hurdle is your word, not mine. I would describe it as more of an extra step rather than a hurdle. And I don't mind taking extra steps. I do it all the time. I just expect a return on it. And not only am I not getting anything in return for it, I'm getting a redundancy that I consider to be a negative. If you're not addressing the absence of a tradeoff, you're missing the point.

QuoteI also don't like attributes separate from Skills cuz IMO most attributes (specially mental ones) generally don't serve any real or necessary function in an RPG other than to supplement skills or to serve as a stand in for them in games that don't have them. Other than that they just modify certain game rule stats like HP, damage or carry capacity, which can exist as stand alone characteristics even if attributes don't exist in the game, or for certain resistance or "strength" related rolls, which can also be handled as skills instead.

Opinion of not liking attributes separate from skills, fine. Prefacing a fact statement with IMO as a justification for that opinion seems a little weird. But I'm guessing that means you have doubts as to the veracity of the fact statement. And you have good reason to doubt it as I don't think it's that hard to point to RPGs where the attributes are actually used for their own sake.

QuoteSo if you think that attributes+skills is such a hurdle you might as well get rid of attributes entirely and handle everything through skills alone (adding skills for "strength" and different types of resistances, like Will, Health, etc.), then use advantages ("feats") to cover bonuses to game rules stats.

But why would I want to do that? Real people are capable of doing a lot of things for which they have no formal training or skill development. I don't think it's a smart idea to have that covered by skills in the game system. And one reason is what some of the people here are saying. That apparently the default is players are too stupid to pick skills. And if a player overlooks taking a skill to fill the gap of a basic life function, I guess the whole world implodes or something. This seems like the exact sort of thing attributes are for. But I guess then you wouldn't be able to say most attributes don't serve any necessary function in an RPG outside of supplementing skills.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 25, 2023, 05:46:16 PM
Near as I can see, there's only reason for doing attribute + skill as a dynamic thing during play:  That the system is explicitly designed to take advantage of that by having attributes and skills that combine in multiple, interesting ways.  I don't mean once in a blue moon either, like the D&D 5E suggestion to occasionally use a non-standard attribute for an oddball case.

Explicit design is required to get there because having such frequent, overlapping combinations necessarily says something about what attributes and skills are in the game to begin with. Also, the scope of each skill needs to be carefully considered.

*shrugs* Personally, making it dynamic seems like the more obvious way to go to me. I'm not sure what sort of explicit design work would be required. It would reduce the redundancy I don't like. Like Castles & Crusades prime system is just ridiculously redundant to me. And what makes it so painful is it would have been the easiest thing in the world to "prime" broad skill areas rather than an attribute.

I house rule in the secondary skill list from the 1E DMG as a starting place. A primed Forester would be able to do all kinds of forestry stuff. Climb trees, swim, build rudimentary shelters, hunt, taste random feces found on the ground to instantly know everything about whatever left it there. And then you apply whichever attribute would make the most sense, since that's what C&C calls for anyway. It's just if it's Forester stuff, a Forester gets the lower TN. There's not even any math involved!

This one little tweak turns C&C from being the worst offender to what I'm talking about to being a super simple, super effective skill system. And so it makes me wonder why so many game designers are mired in regurgitating the same old bullshit over and over again. If the way it's usually done were so satisfying, we wouldn't need new games.

Quote from: Vestragor on May 25, 2023, 08:54:19 AM

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
So yes, I now believe that someone is intentionally attempting to sabotage RPG design and development. In retrospect, I think it's likely a similar problem is why The Forge shut down so hastily and sloppily. If it's the same people that would mean this has been going on for about 15 years, occasionally finding an online community they dislike and stirring the pot.

The Forge shut down because it was essentially a circlejerk of people with massively inflated egos that were convinced to be prime rate Authors (capital 'A', of course) while instead having a generally bad understanding of RPG prior art, common practices, goals and basic design principles.

Apocalypse World and derivates, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard and all the rest that came out of the Forge quite simply didn't have the impact on the gaming community that the forgies thought should have had.... and all the while things like Traveller, D&D and BRP kept having an overwhelming presence in the hobby that was simply impossible to explain using the forgies worldview.

No conspiracy at all, they were simply overwhelmed by facts: Forge game theory (being Pure Shit to begin with) doesn't work as well as they thought.

Do we say the RPG site is a failure because the RPG hobby is still polluted with wokeness? This isn't a fair way of assessing value. I don't have any beef with or against the Forge because it's entire run happened while I was stepping away from RPGs. I have subsequently looted the corpse.


I think that there were some interesting ideas in The Forge, but GNS Theory and The Big Model were always flawed and became sacred cows attached to the community's identity. It also doesn't help that the Forge was always kinda clueless about marketing. When you're going up against a bulldog company like WotC, the small fry have to run circles around the big company's marketing department. But the real problem they had was that the community leaders claimed to have solved life, the universe, and everything, wanted to move onto other things, and the instant the Forge officially closed... God introduced smartphones and streaming campaigns.

Oops.

So yeah, the Forge is never going to have a legacy except as a footnote and likely a forerunner to something better. Wokeness is blocking that something better from emerging. 

I do think that there were some salvageable ideas, and I do like the idea of a community which actively pushes game design boundaries, even if you know the outcome will usually be an interesting failure. I also think that game design is useful in places most people don't see; a lot of the problems our legal system has is that our politicians are clueless when it comes to game design and incentive structures.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 06:44:49 PM

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 03:04:55 PM
TBH, I can't relate cuz I don't think that adding Attribute and Skill values together is such a hurdle, particularly when that's already supposed to be done in your character sheet, so you don't have to do it in the middle of play. You're not normally supposed to be adding up Attributes and Skills every time you make a roll, unless Attribute-Skill relations are variable and contextual in that system (and even then there might be a default pairing you could keep noted in your sheet).

Hurdle is your word, not mine. I would describe it as more of an extra step rather than a hurdle. And I don't mind taking extra steps. I do it all the time. I just expect a return on it. And not only am I not getting anything in return for it, I'm getting a redundancy that I consider to be a negative. If you're not addressing the absence of a tradeoff, you're missing the point.

QuoteI also don't like attributes separate from Skills cuz IMO most attributes (specially mental ones) generally don't serve any real or necessary function in an RPG other than to supplement skills or to serve as a stand in for them in games that don't have them. Other than that they just modify certain game rule stats like HP, damage or carry capacity, which can exist as stand alone characteristics even if attributes don't exist in the game, or for certain resistance or "strength" related rolls, which can also be handled as skills instead.

Opinion of not liking attributes separate from skills, fine. Prefacing a fact statement with IMO as a justification for that opinion seems a little weird. But I'm guessing that means you have doubts as to the veracity of the fact statement. And you have good reason to doubt it as I don't think it's that hard to point to RPGs where the attributes are actually used for their own sake.

QuoteSo if you think that attributes+skills is such a hurdle you might as well get rid of attributes entirely and handle everything through skills alone (adding skills for "strength" and different types of resistances, like Will, Health, etc.), then use advantages ("feats") to cover bonuses to game rules stats.

But why would I want to do that? Real people are capable of doing a lot of things for which they have no formal training or skill development. I don't think it's a smart idea to have that covered by skills in the game system. And one reason is what some of the people here are saying. That apparently the default is players are too stupid to pick skills. And if a player overlooks taking a skill to fill the gap of a basic life function, I guess the whole world implodes or something. This seems like the exact sort of thing attributes are for. But I guess then you wouldn't be able to say most attributes don't serve any necessary function in an RPG outside of supplementing skills.

You're basically nitpicking the wording of my post and making a lot of loaded statements while paradoxically saying very little of substance to refute my points or advance your position at the same time. You nitpick my usage of the word "hurdle" then ignore where I mentioned that you don't really need to take this extra step you're claiming that exists (at least not during actual play), because you're supposed to have that value pre-calculated in your character sheet regardless. So it's not a "hurdle" (my word, not yours), but you wanna complain about it regardless, despite it being a nonissue that's supposed to be pre-calculated in your character sheet, which implies that it IS a "hurdle", or at the very least some other word that you prefer that basically means something similar. Otherwise it wouldn't be an issue for you.

You claim that you're not getting anything for the dubious extra effort of tracking Attributes+Skills, but you're not really telling me what you mean by that other than calling it a "redundancy" that you consider negative, then expect me to address that when you haven't even made the case why it's negative, only declared it to be so. Then by the end of your replies to me you reject my suggestion of getting rid of attributes if you don't like to combine them with skills on the basis that real people are capable doing things without training. But somehow miss that addressing that eventuality is precisely part of the reason that Attributes+Skills exists and what you're "getting in return" (despite your claims to the contrary at the start of your post) for tracking a core ability (Attribute) plus a specialty (Skill) that covers specialized tasks. Attributes are there so that people without specific training have something to fall back on when attempting basic tasks without having to pick levels (or whatever) in every single skill in the game.

But even then, I would still say that attributes aren't strictly necessary because skills basically cover everything you can do in the game. As long as the skill list is not too extensive (so as not to make picking all or most of them too prohibitive) you can pretty much cover every task related thing in the game with skills alone without relying on attributes to fall back on. And outside of covering your ability to handle tasks (including resistances and the like) attributes are practically useless. All they basically do other than that is modify game rule data like HP, carry capacity, etc. like I already mentioned. And if you can think of another function that they serve feel free to mention it or bring up those examples of games that do other stuff with them, rather than tease me with the notion that they exist, like claiming that without bringing them up or making the case for them that defeats my argument somehow.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 24, 2023, 10:52:42 PM
[...] one of the key problems I have with RPGs in general (classless or class-based) is that they don't let you adapt your character to the niche the party needs you to fill. I don't know about anyone else, but my experience with many RPGs is that the first 2 sessions are terrible, then when the players finally get an advancement, they have a frustrated metagame huddle, "you pick up a grapple, you pick up a range, you need some bloody skills." And THEN the campaign works.

I'll be fair, that sounds like a fantastic team building exercise for players: a negotiation of who gets what role, so no one is stuck having to play "healer bitch" (even though clerics are not technically obligated to drop everything and save a dying character in a game like D&D). However...

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 06:44:49 PM
I house rule in the secondary skill list from the 1E DMG as a starting place. A primed Forester would be able to do all kinds of forestry stuff. Climb trees, swim, build rudimentary shelters, hunt, taste random feces found on the ground to instantly know everything about whatever left it there. And then you apply whichever attribute would make the most sense, since that's what C&C calls for anyway. It's just if it's Forester stuff, a Forester gets the lower TN. There's not even any math involved!

The above really simplifies that process if you can negotiate a preferred niche through play, without risk to a fight over who gets to be "the OP class" (whatever the case may be). What's advocated in Lunamancer's post is something we could call the "public education package"; OTOH, the more appropraite word that spans many genres is "culture." So at least the whole issue of "ancestry" can be previously accounted for against that pet project of the woke D&D players, since it's obvious why a dwarf might not now how to swim. Of course the woke's favourite phrase is "not all" which ironically is how you get all Drow charcters becoming Drizzt clones in those circles.


From here, I've got a hunch about how classless systems got to be seperate design (bear with me here on the lead up).

In the meat-grinder context of the original game, in the course of the sandbox adventuring career you are bound to encounter a variety of situations, which makes trying other classes appealing. But at some point, you find a player who really really really wants to play an elf for his next character, but the dice keep saying no under the random attributes mechanic. Since everyone is, to some extent, a min-maxer, albeit not necessarily one mandating the powergamer "personality" if I can make that distinction, you decide that don't want to just kick the guy out.* The only way to keep that player from leaving your table is to offer a compromise through the attribute point buy mechanic, and that's where the problems likely begin. Because this guy will want his next elf wizard to be the best wizard it can be (and now that he can point buy he is at his leisure to only craft elf wizards for the rest of his gamer life), he will habitually buy attributes in a consistent manner to optimize his favourite race/class combo... worse is the standard array under these circumstances because they both offer the illusionary problem of creating "formulaic characters" with class-based systems. "Antoher dwarf fighter? That's cliche, since I'm just going to dump Int/Cha again, and honestly why wouldn't you do that also?"

Once you're stuck in the attitude that point-buy or standard array aren't the cause of class-based systems being boring or broken, because its YOU that's choosing your optimizations and agency is alpha-omega (and why would your own choices ever be broken?), classless design looks really interesting: with GURPS etc you're free to point buy absolutely everything, as long as you take the time to build the charcter on a free afternoon well efore play begins, and to be fair these min-maxers never necessarily have to become the powergamers that gives any min-maxing its own bad name. I would give credit where it's due to GURPS for creating a system that allows players to potentially create very balanced races, classes, or career paths for honest players who like lots of this customization, as you also get a better feel for what works and what doesn't when examing other system features more critically, even if just for confirmation bias.

For those who think that GURPS goes too far, you've got Travller which extends the random roll for nearly every character feature for every career path, but the tack on it is obiviosly different. The skills themselves become specialized, since you can now write skills for a wide variety of weapons (eg phaser, radiation, laser, plasma, et al instead of just "energy weapon" because the laws of physics are so different between types, you couldn't possibly know how to work one if you know the other, and this leads to additional career path posibilities). Moving on though...

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:11:11 AM
In the case of point-buy or similar elements typically used in freeform/classless systems this isn't an issue because more powerful races or profession templates simply cost more points. Then I can emulate setting when building those and if a player wants the more powerful race or profession they simply pay more for it. If they don't have more points during character creation they either can't start as a full blown member of that profession or they could start with a point debt and pay for it once they earn more points through play. That makes the autist in me happy that the scales have been balanced out.

"Point debt" is going to be very unpopular for very obvious reasons. It's one thing when AD&D classes have differnt experience point thresholds to level up, but that's due to the nature of how certain classes get more powerful over levelling up. In fact, the different rates of exprience point thresholds for different classes can really help with the problem of a sorceror being "better" than a rogue, but I don't see how that could be if the sorceror has to sleep for eight hours after casting all five "hide in shadows" spells he memorized earlier... that may depend on edition of course.

---

* I'm using min-maxer loosely here to allow the possibility of party optimization, to be charitble.

Quote from: Fheredin on May 25, 2023, 07:23:54 PM
Do we say the RPG site is a failure because the RPG hobby is still polluted with wokeness?

Of course not, since the purpose of this site is not "fight wokeness" but "talk of RPGs more or less without filters", it would have been a failure if the purpose was "make OSR the dominant style of play in the RPG community".
I'll leave the rest of rant alone since, well, it looks like your tinfoil hat has some holes in it.

Quote from: Lunamancer on May 25, 2023, 11:04:30 AM
But the skill-based games I love do NOT do the attribute+skill thing. And the one that does, I merely tolerate that it does this. It strikes me as fundamentally stupid, really. Take on more math for, what, the benefit of redundancy? Interplay during character creation I'm fine with. But I feel once the game begins, it's better for skills to be independent of attributes.

I don't think it's reasonable to use this specifically as a criticism for classless games.  Classed games do exactly the same things.  Frex, a strength bonus to attack in D&D is exactly the same as adding an attribute to a sword skill in a classless game.

In classless games, it actually serves a purpose that it doesn't in classed games:  it creates a bit of niche protection.  Players will generally select skills for the character that match their best attributes, as it gives them the greatest chance of using skills successfully.  So they guy with high strength will usually have a different set of skills than the guy with high intelligence.

And for once I find myself in agreement with Vision.  If you write the total on your character sheet there's no additional math burden.

Oh, and I prefer classless to classed because 1) classes games tend to have silly restrictions like "your wizard can't use a sword because he's a wizard" and 2) it makes for silly worldbuilding - every swordsman in the world is going to be very, very similar.  There are classed games that try to deal with these issues, but they do so by moving in some degree towards a classless paradigm, with multiclassing, subclasses, a multiplicity of options, or a multiplicity of classes.  I would rather just do classless from the get-go.

Good vid and it makes sense... I think most good games have followed in D&Ds footsteps and in some cases improved on it. I think that's why some games have stood the test of time like FASERIP, D100 or D6. All very playable games.

Vampire was a classic game and was very playable WHEN the GM fixed the wonky mechanics. Depending on how you define what a story game is I always thought Vamp was a true RPG.

It's kind of odd because all the hot story games like Forged in the Dark or PbtA are super class focused (playbooks)

Quote from: PencilBoy99 on May 26, 2023, 09:28:22 AM
It's kind of odd because all the hot story games like Forged in the Dark or PbtA are super class focused (playbooks)

Storygames are not RPGs, it doesn't matter what they do or don't do.
If you're talking about cars comparing them to boats is useless and irrelevant.

Quote from: VisionStorm on May 25, 2023, 09:35:39 PM
You're basically nitpicking the wording of my post and making a lot of loaded statements while paradoxically saying very little of substance to refute my points

Why would I provide a substantial refutation to an opinion statement? My exact criticism of your wording was that you prefaced a fact statement with "IMO." So if you intended it to be a fact statement up for debate and I wasn't clear on that due to your wording, then that isn't a mere nitpick. Your wording is unclear. I said as much. You could have replied with a clarification. Instead you're choosing to cry about it like you're being unfairly treated. You're not.

QuoteYou nitpick my usage of the word "hurdle" then ignore where I mentioned that you don't really need to take this extra step you're claiming that exists (at least not during actual play), because you're supposed to have that value pre-calculated in your character sheet regardless.

I ignored it because it was irrelevant. A step is a step. Whether you're doing it in real time or before hand. It's only as good a point as you think it is when you insist on the term "hurdle." Which, again, makes my criticism of your use of that word not a nitpick. Your own reply proves the substantial confusion generated by your word choice.

QuoteYou claim that you're not getting anything for the dubious extra effort of tracking Attributes+Skills, but you're not really telling me what you mean by that other than calling it a "redundancy" that you consider negative, then expect me to address that when you haven't even made the case why it's negative, only declared it to be so.

The issue is I'm getting nothing in the tradeoff. The fact that I also perceive a negative attached to it as well is just extra shit frosting on the cake. But itself doesn't make or break the cake, so there's no reason for me to say anything more about it at this time. The real issue is I'm getting nothing positive. And I'm not sure what you could possibly expect me to explain further about nothing. Nothing means nothing. Nothing to describe or elaborate on further. You don't need me to explain nothing if you want to refute it. You just need to make the case that I actually am getting something, just make sure it's something I actually want. And if you can manage that, then and only then will I need to get into redundancy as an additional negative that your proposed benefit must also overcome.

QuoteThen by the end of your replies to me you reject my suggestion of getting rid of attributes if you don't like to combine them with skills on the basis that real people are capable doing things without training. But somehow miss that addressing that eventuality is precisely part of the reason that Attributes+Skills exists and what you're "getting in return" (despite your claims to the contrary at the start of your post) for tracking a core ability (Attribute) plus a specialty (Skill) that covers specialized tasks. Attributes are there so that people without specific training have something to fall back on when attempting basic tasks without having to pick levels (or whatever) in every single skill in the game.

But even then, I would still say that attributes aren't strictly necessary because skills basically cover everything you can do in the game. As long as the skill list is not too extensive (so as not to make picking all or most of them too prohibitive) you can pretty much cover every task related thing in the game with skills alone without relying on attributes to fall back on. And outside of covering your ability to handle tasks (including resistances and the like) attributes are practically useless. All they basically do other than that is modify game rule data like HP, carry capacity, etc. like I already mentioned. And if you can think of another function that they serve feel free to mention it or bring up those examples of games that do other stuff with them, rather than tease me with the notion that they exist, like claiming that without bringing them up or making the case for them that defeats my argument somehow.

I'll go with a nice, easy example. The Lejendary Adventure RPG. It's a skill-based game. With three "attributes,"  Health, Precision, and Speed (and an optional fourth one, Intellect).

Speed acts as the character's base movement rate. No. It doesn't modify it or any of this weird round-about business. It is the movement rate. It does a bunch of other reaction/reflex type of things, like whether or not you can act out of turn to parry on a losing initiative. But it's literally point for point tells how fast your character can walk. Could you have a walking skill in the game? Sure. You could. It's make believe. But I wouldn't ever want to do that. Because moving around on two legs is a pretty basic capacity. Some do it faster than others. So there's reason to allow it to vary. But it's not a skill.

Health is the thing that works like hit points. It does a few other things as well. But I would emphasize that it doesn't modify hit points. It is hit points. What am I going to do if I remove this attribute? Make up hit points and say, yeah, your character has these hit points. It's not an attribute, though. Just so I can have my Nigel Tufnel moment,  "But this game doesn't have attributes."

Precision calls for a bit more nuance. It's the base stat for grappling, among other things (in the broader game, where monsters use the same stats, it's for natural attacks in general). But again, it represents natural ability. Someone specially trained in Unarmed Combat would use that score rather than precision, as they would be using techniques they are trained to use and not necessarily the same techniques that come instinctively. So there's no reason for the abilities would stack. You can, however, switch back and forth to each, bringing an optionality advantage rather than an arithmetic one.

These three Base Ratings, as they're called, are used to stat all the monsters in the game as well. For most monsters, these are the only stats they have. Which drives home the point that you could technically play this game with these three game stats alone, without any skills at all. You want the skills because they're cool. But it's the attributes that are indispensable.