Quote from: ForgottenF on November 10, 2022, 08:40:15 AM

Quote from: Effete on November 09, 2022, 10:32:22 PM

Quote from: Ruprecht on November 09, 2022, 09:57:11 PM

Quote from: Effete on November 09, 2022, 09:37:53 PM
The culprit is always Wisdom, which feels like an messy blend of both Intelligence and Charisma. It's often described as a characters ability to intuit their surroundings as well as their self-determination, as if those things are at all related.

The game needs a perception attribute as well as a Willpower attribute. Neither really fits Wisdom but it using Wisdom works better than creating new attributes that would be inconsistent with the rest of the D&D extended universe.

Perception is not just the ability to see or hear something, but also the ability to distinguish them from other things (particularly to determine whether or not it should be cause for alarm). This falls under a general umbrella of mental acuity that can also be shared with intelligence (as the game currently defines it).

Willpower, confidence, and a strong sense of "self" share a lot with what the game considers Charisma, which is pretty much just charm and force of personality. There are plenty of realworld examples where girls flock to the douchebag asshole simply because he exudes confidence and self worth.

The thing I struggle with is why D&D (and its clones) decided that these nuances warranted separation, but things like reaction speed and manual dexterity got lumped together. I just think the system doesn't need to make any of these minor distinctions to function.

I sometimes suspect that the reason why wisdom and charisma have hung on in their current forms for so long is just to prevent Intelligence from becoming a super-stat, which in the real world it kind of is.

We think on similar lines, here. My own system uses Intellect, Insight and Will as its mental stats. Insight governs perception, much like it does in D&D, but it also includes the ability to read people and social situations. Will, just like you said, includes force of personality, as well as discipline and spell resistance. Intellect is for analytical thinking and memory, again much like D&D, but it's also reasoning ability, so all three of the stats have social skills associated with them.

In the same vein, I've always found the separation between strength and constitution to be a bit weird. In the real world, you do occasionally meet someone who is very strong but has terrible cardio, but it isn't common. You could easily put them together into a single stat and call it "fitness". Hell, you could probably toss dexterity in as well and call it "athleticism". Of course, if you're going that route, you could probably just boil it down to two stats and call them "mind" and "body", though I get that there are good game design reasons for not doing so.

EDIT: I would rather have called "Insight" as "Intuition", but I didn't want it to have the same first three letters as "Intellect".

Stats should always be what the game is about, and if you change the stats the rest of the system should change to match it, and vice versa.

The original six had relatively little mechanical effect compared to the rest of the system.  They are mainly in there to help the GM adjudicate and give the players some idea of how the GM might adjudicate.  They don't improve over time, absent magic.  You'll note that as constituted, they represent things that don't generally improve. 

Raw intelligence for example, can be developed or not, but some people just don't have it.  Or more specifically, in a medieval fantasy world, most people don't have access to the means to develop/improve those kind of things.  You can't just go to the gym and build strength.  It's been gradually changed over the years to represent something else, so people's thoughts about what the stats represent have moved too.  In the early game's view, fate made you stronger, or tougher, or brighter, or whatever, and it is up to you to use that in whatever way you  can come up with (and the GM will buy).

For D&D, I'm fine with that.  For my own game, I wanted the stats a bit more anchored into the mechanics of the system.  I also wanted to have some minor gating effects, but allow the stats to improve according to what the character pursued in the rest of the system.  (You chase fighting ability, good chance some physical aspect related to that is going to improve sooner or later.)  I ended up with Might, Lore, Will, Dexterity, Agility, and Perception.  (I wasn't set on having six stats either.  It just worked out that way.  Putting the first 4 in the same order as the D&D originals is not, however, an accident.)  I also wanted multiple stats to be useful regardless of character choices, but not the extent that a character had to chase them. 

I didn't want a core stat to escalate hit point tremendously, because I wanted the escalation that is there to be mostly a function of level.  Might tacks on a modest, one-time boost or penalty, which tends to be important at first but disappear into the averages later.  It does have a minor but useful function in natural healing that is good throughout.  That could have been some kind of separate advantage outside of the stats, being that minor, but it worked well enough to roll it into Might, so there it went, along with it's more potent effects on larger melee weapons, the only major damage boost for early characters, the key stat for toughing out poison, disease, and other ill effects, and the encumbrance adjustment (which matters for anyone wearing heavier armor). 

Lore is in the D&D Int spot, but it isn't Int.  It's a mix of Int and very broad, practical training.  In short, a high Lore means a bright character spent a lot of time in childhood learning many different things.  It's applicable to more skills than any other stat in the game, including a lot of things that would get lumped elsewhere in other games to artificially spread them out over the skills. Though it's not automatic in my system, either.  Most healing/medicine skills use Lore as an adjustment, but something like pulling an arrow out of a someone after a critical hit is Dex/Healing/Medicine, for example. 

I don't buy the argument that Perception can be notably trained.  There are a handful of discrete skills related to perception that can be trained, but not the general awareness part.  Plus, I wanted it siloed.  Being very perceptive can be a huge benefit in a game, and certainly is the way I tend to run them.  So you prioritize improving  that at the cost of the other 5 stats.  Call it a kind of niche protection, if you like.

The stats are a great starting point for the player to understand what they can generally get away with, outside of any special buttons to push.  Or should be.  In early D&D, they are.  In my game, they are.  In later D&D, they aren't, but are instead a specialized jargon that has a lot of cruft built up around it over the years.

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 10, 2022, 08:55:39 AM

Quote from: FingerRod on November 10, 2022, 08:28:55 AM

Or ask someone to explain to you the difference between book smarts and street smarts. These are pretty easy concepts.

How often does anyone actually make a "street smarts" check in D&D though? Common sense, good judgment, cunning, etc. are are pretty much always left to the player, instead of being decided by roll, and for good reason. All the things wisdom is supposed to govern (outside or perception) are also the things that come under the heading of "player skill". Intelligence and Charisma do have the same problem, but to a much lesser extent, because the character's in universe knowledge and force of personality are more separate from the player's.

Exactly. There aren't really any rolls about "could" vs "should", and Wis has always been used for Perception/Willpower regardless. This isn't a philosophical question or about semantics, but a game design decision. And game design decisions should be made on the basis of what's actually necessary or serves a function for the game, not based around what you think certain words mean or minor semantic distinctions between them.

Nearsightedness and absent mindedness are also not inherent functions of Intelligence, just a common literary trope that's not even that common or universal that I'm aware of IRL.

Plus a lot of these distinctions are pointless once Skills are introduced to the system, because they're really just specialized functions of mental acuity or "Intelligence" anyways. All you really need are four attributes: Physical Power (Str/Con), Physical Speed (Dex), Mental Power (Cha/Wis "Willpower") and Mental Speed (Int/Wis "Perception"). The rest are just specialties of those attributes, better handled as Skills or Feat-like bonuses, or using Flaws/Anti-Feats (for stuff like nearsightedness or absent mindedness).

This has probably already been posted, but even though I've never played OneD&D, I hate the idea that DMs can't crit. I feel like it pisses off my simulationist sensibilities with regards to players not being special snowflakes any moreso than their innate capabilities would imply, and introduces "narrativist" bias in terms of player "heroics" that actually only serves to make rolls less meaningful, risk less notable, and players less likely to have to deal with the consequences of the actions of others within the world. IDK, kinda a weird thing to hate. But the moment I heard they were considering it, that became my least favorite rule within the franchise.

Quote from: KindaMeh on November 10, 2022, 03:59:14 PM
This has probably already been posted, but even though I've never played OneD&D, I hate the idea that DMs can't crit. I feel like it pisses off my simulationist sensibilities with regards to players not being special snowflakes any moreso than their innate capabilities would imply, and introduces "narrativist" bias in terms of player "heroics" that actually only serves to make rolls less meaningful, risk less notable, and players less likely to have to deal with the consequences of the actions of others within the world. IDK, kinda a weird thing to hate. But the moment I heard they were considering it, that became my least favorite rule within the franchise.

I don't hate it but I don't feel like it's necessary at all. GMs have always had the power to handle NPC crits as they wanted. The attempt to blanket ban them removes an interesting tool that GMs have, and I doubt most GMs will abide by this stance.

Quote from: Ruprecht on November 10, 2022, 08:27:15 AM
Brilliant people often wear glasses, wise old men might be hard of hearing, absent minded-professor types  might not notice things because their mind is elsewhere. I don't t think Intelligence is a good fit for perception. Your example sounds like a perception skill which could be based on either attribute depending upon the situation which might work.

You are absolutely correct, which is why it is something I struggle with. I can totally see both side of the argument, and waffle between which one I want to agree with more. As to your last point, I think a nebulous linked-attribute isn't a bad compromise. Stars/Worlds Without Number works that way, and it uses the "classic six."

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 10, 2022, 08:40:15 AM
I sometimes suspect that the reason why wisdom and charisma have hung on in their current forms for so long is just to prevent Intelligence from becoming a super-stat, which in the real world it kind of is.

Are INT checks used very often in your games? I've found that actual lore or knowledge checks tend to be rare as players just make their own inferences about the game world. It might verge on metagaming, but it's usually not worth the time to stop the flow unless the player is deliberately trying to cheat.

The thing is, I wouldn't just dump all current Wisdom-based applications/skills onto INT... I'd split them between INT and CHA.

QuoteIn the same vein, I've always found the separation between strength and constitution to be a bit weird. In the real world, you do occasionally meet someone who is very strong but has terrible cardio, but it isn't common. You could easily put them together into a single stat and call it "fitness". Hell, you could probably toss dexterity in as well and call it "athleticism".

And many systems do this: Cypher, WarriorRogueMage, etc. The issue there is the same type of argumentation that justifies a split between INT and WIS. Strength is literally just muscle mass, whereas Constitution represents the body's immuno-response, metabolism, blood coagulation, bone density, and other things that you can't really "train" at a gym.

That being said, Constitution is a pretty useless stat in the game. In earlier versions, it didn't even modify Saving Throws. It pretty much just serves as a Hit Point adjustment (and HP bloat is issue anyway, so this isn't exactly a pro) and as a secondary "health track" when taking attribute damage (i.e. - dropping to 0 CON = death). So, yeah...

Quote from: KindaMeh on November 10, 2022, 03:59:14 PM
This has probably already been posted, but even though I've never played OneD&D, I hate the idea that DMs can't crit.

Didn't they reverse this decision?
I thought it was a lowkey announcement put out when the Expert Feats doc dropped. Maybe I'm wrong (OneDND isn't exactly on my radar).

Quote from: Effete on November 10, 2022, 06:10:01 PM

Quote from: Ruprecht on November 10, 2022, 08:27:15 AM
Brilliant people often wear glasses, wise old men might be hard of hearing, absent minded-professor types  might not notice things because their mind is elsewhere. I don't t think Intelligence is a good fit for perception. Your example sounds like a perception skill which could be based on either attribute depending upon the situation which might work.

You are absolutely correct, which is why it is something I struggle with. I can totally see both side of the argument, and waffle between which one I want to agree with more. As to your last point, I think a nebulous linked-attribute isn't a bad compromise. Stars/Worlds Without Number works that way, and it uses the "classic six."

Like I mentioned in my last post, nearsightedness and absent mindedness are not inherent traits of Intelligence. That sort of stuff is just better handled as type of "Flaw/Disadvantage". Spies and people who have to do a lot of INTELLIGENCE work (see what I did there?) or investigation also have to be pretty smart to do those jobs. Not every smart person is the stereotype or TV trope of the absent minded professor with glasses. In fact I doubt most of them are.

The main difference between book smart genius and a cunning covert agent is their skills (and maybe that the agent also needs to invest in Dex or equivalent attributes), not that one needs Int and the other one doesn't.

Quote

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 10, 2022, 08:40:15 AM
I sometimes suspect that the reason why wisdom and charisma have hung on in their current forms for so long is just to prevent Intelligence from becoming a super-stat, which in the real world it kind of is.

Are INT checks used very often in your games? I've found that actual lore or knowledge checks tend to be rare as players just make their own inferences about the game world. It might verge on metagaming, but it's usually not worth the time to stop the flow unless the player is deliberately trying to cheat.

Yeah, unless we're talking older editions, when Int gave extra proficiency slots or skill points, there's no real danger of Int becoming a "super-stat". It's only used for lore checks now, which are extremely situational.

Quote
The thing is, I wouldn't just dump all current Wisdom-based applications/skills onto INT... I'd split them between INT and CHA.

Same, but TBH most Wis skills would go to Int. Only thing I'd give Cha is willpower stuff (like Saves) and maybe Animal Handling, to make it the universal interaction stat.

Quote

QuoteIn the same vein, I've always found the separation between strength and constitution to be a bit weird. In the real world, you do occasionally meet someone who is very strong but has terrible cardio, but it isn't common. You could easily put them together into a single stat and call it "fitness". Hell, you could probably toss dexterity in as well and call it "athleticism".

And many systems do this: Cypher, WarriorRogueMage, etc. The issue there is the same type of argumentation that justifies a split between INT and WIS. Strength is literally just muscle mass, whereas Constitution represents the body's immuno-response, metabolism, blood coagulation, bone density, and other things that you can't really "train" at a gym.

That being said, Constitution is a pretty useless stat in the game. In earlier versions, it didn't even modify Saving Throws. It pretty much just serves as a Hit Point adjustment (and HP bloat is issue anyway, so this isn't exactly a pro) and as a secondary "health track" when taking attribute damage (i.e. - dropping to 0 CON = death). So, yeah...

Hence, one of the reasons I'd merge Str & Con into a single stat.

Quote from: Effete on November 10, 2022, 06:15:43 PM

Quote from: KindaMeh on November 10, 2022, 03:59:14 PM
This has probably already been posted, but even though I've never played OneD&D, I hate the idea that DMs can't crit.

Didn't they reverse this decision?
I thought it was a lowkey announcement put out when the Expert Feats doc dropped. Maybe I'm wrong (OneDND isn't exactly on my radar).

  They appear to be experimenting with several variations from playtest packet to packet, and the 'no NPC crits' was in the first but not the second. Who knows what happens going forward--and with the latest news, who cares?

Quote from: VisionStorm on November 10, 2022, 06:35:31 PM
Like I mentioned in my last post, nearsightedness and absent mindedness are not inherent traits of Intelligence. That sort of stuff is just better handled as type of "Flaw/Disadvantage". Spies and people who have to do a lot of INTELLIGENCE work (see what I did there?) or investigation also have to be pretty smart to do those jobs. Not every smart person is the stereotype or TV trope of the absent minded professor with glasses. In fact I doubt most of them are.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but the point I think Ruprecht was making is that nearsightedness and absentmindedness stem from a low Wisdom, and therefore to have a brilliant-but-forgetful wizard, you'd need the option for high INT and low WIS. What I agreed with is having the mechanical infrastructure to support such a build. DnD doesn't have "flaws" or "anti-feats" so that isn't really a viable option here, even though I agree that flaws would be the perfect way to represent such things as bad eyes or a wandering mind.

As much as I'd love to get lost in weeds over this discussion, the topic IS about OSR/DND. 

QuoteThe main difference between book smart genius and a cunning covert agent is their skills (and maybe that the agent also needs to invest in Dex or equivalent attributes), not that one needs Int and the other one doesn't.

Right. I'm not entirely convinced by the "book smarts v. street smarts" distinction for Int v Wis. That's simply just a difference of learning-by-reading versus learning-through-experience. Either way, knowledge is gained. You can learn about gang culture by living the life, or by studying dosiers and conducting interviews with felons. I'm not convinced that the method by which knowledge is obtained needs to be differentiated in the game; a single stat representing mental acuity can cover that, with the player filling in the details of what it means for their character.

I actually really like your idea of just four stats: physical strength, physical speed, mental strength, mental speed. I think that encapsulates everything perfectly. It might not even be that difficult to plug them into old school DnD. Hit points would just be determined by class (no need for an adjustment modifier), and WIS gets split between M.Strength and M.Speed (or whatever names they're given).

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on November 10, 2022, 06:47:14 PM
  They appear to be experimenting with several variations from playtest packet to packet, and the 'no NPC crits' was in the first but not the second. Who knows what happens going forward--and with the latest news, who cares?

Thank You!

My sentiments exactly. 

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 10, 2022, 08:55:39 AM

Quote from: FingerRod on November 10, 2022, 08:28:55 AM

Or ask someone to explain to you the difference between book smarts and street smarts. These are pretty easy concepts.

How often does anyone actually make a "street smarts" check in D&D though? Common sense, good judgment, cunning, etc. are are pretty much always left to the player, instead of being decided by roll, and for good reason. All the things wisdom is supposed to govern (outside or perception) are also the things that come under the heading of "player skill". Intelligence and Charisma do have the same problem, but to a much lesser extent, because the character's in universe knowledge and force of personality are more separate from the player's.

I don't think you are saying this, but for the benefit of others reading...me citing street and book smarts was to illustrate the difference between the terms intelligence and wisdom. I think that was pretty clear, but if not, I'll own that and point it out now.

To directly answer your question—Wisdom checks vary by edition, from never in OD&D to being overused by many in 5e. I can expand on this if you want, but I believe you were likely asking a rhetorical question.

To what I believe is your main point... Yes, to an overwhelmingly large extent I agree with what you are saying about player skill. I happen to also believe there is player skill in roleplaying to a character's Wisdom score.

Quote from: Effete on November 10, 2022, 06:10:01 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 10, 2022, 08:40:15 AM
I sometimes suspect that the reason why wisdom and charisma have hung on in their current forms for so long is just to prevent Intelligence from becoming a super-stat, which in the real world it kind of is.

Are INT checks used very often in your games? I've found that actual lore or knowledge checks tend to be rare as players just make their own inferences about the game world. It might verge on metagaming, but it's usually not worth the time to stop the flow unless the player is deliberately trying to cheat.

The thing is, I wouldn't just dump all current Wisdom-based applications/skills onto INT... I'd split them between INT and CHA.

That seems to be a DM-ing style question, since I've found that Int is one of the most frequently checked attributes. In one of the games I'm playing in, the DM requires a successful Int check before he will remind a player of something that happened in a previous session, so it gets rolled all the time. That is admittedly an extremely quirky DM-ing style, but in my own game I use it to check if a player would know something based on their class or background. I find in general that a lot of DMs fall back on it as the check made before they give any kind of hints or advice to players, and it also gets used a lot in old school games for background skills/professions (Medicine, architecture, crafting, etc.)

That's kind of beside the point though. I wasn't really arguing that Int as-is is in any danger of being an OP stat. In 5th edition it's arguably severely underpowered. I was more saying that if you allow Int checks to affect all the things that intelligence helps with in real life, then it would be OP, and that Wisdom and Charisma exist largely to split up what could all be intelligence, so as to balance the game out.

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 10, 2022, 08:40:15 AM

QuoteIn the same vein, I've always found the separation between strength and constitution to be a bit weird. In the real world, you do occasionally meet someone who is very strong but has terrible cardio, but it isn't common. You could easily put them together into a single stat and call it "fitness". Hell, you could probably toss dexterity in as well and call it "athleticism".

And many systems do this: Cypher, WarriorRogueMage, etc. The issue there is the same type of argumentation that justifies a split between INT and WIS. Strength is literally just muscle mass, whereas Constitution represents the body's immuno-response, metabolism, blood coagulation, bone density, and other things that you can't really "train" at a gym.

That being said, Constitution is a pretty useless stat in the game. In earlier versions, it didn't even modify Saving Throws. It pretty much just serves as a Hit Point adjustment (and HP bloat is issue anyway, so this isn't exactly a pro) and as a secondary "health track" when taking attribute damage (i.e. - dropping to 0 CON = death). So, yeah...

Bone density at least can be improved in the gym. I'm not sure about the others, but I suspect most of them could be improved via either nutrition or exercise. More importantly, these days constitution is also often used to represent things like lung capacity, physical endurance and pain tolerance, all of which definitely can be improved.

Honestly one of my frustrations with old-school D&D is that attributes don't improve with level. The adventuring lifestyle includes a lot of fresh air and exercise. If it wasn't for all the deadly traps, tropical diseases and people trying to kill you, it'd be an extremely healthy occupation. Spending years of your life marching around,  climbing mountains, and getting beaten up, should raise your Strength and Constitution. Dexterity should improve from all the time spent navigating difficult terrain and performing complex manual tasks. Wisdom should improve because how does a person acquire wisdom, except through experience? Even Charisma should improve, because an experienced adventurer would be more confident and self-assured than a rookie (Not to mention that as you get more competent and physically fit, people are generally more favorably inclined towards you).

The only one of the six attributes which is arguably baked into a person at birth is Intelligence, but if Intelligence is also supposed to represent education and knowledge, then yeah, that should absolutely be able to be improved as well. 

Quote from: FingerRod on November 10, 2022, 08:02:43 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 10, 2022, 08:55:39 AM

Quote from: FingerRod on November 10, 2022, 08:28:55 AM

Or ask someone to explain to you the difference between book smarts and street smarts. These are pretty easy concepts.

How often does anyone actually make a "street smarts" check in D&D though? Common sense, good judgment, cunning, etc. are are pretty much always left to the player, instead of being decided by roll, and for good reason. All the things wisdom is supposed to govern (outside or perception) are also the things that come under the heading of "player skill". Intelligence and Charisma do have the same problem, but to a much lesser extent, because the character's in universe knowledge and force of personality are more separate from the player's.

I don't think you are saying this, but for the benefit of others reading...me citing street and book smarts was to illustrate the difference between the terms intelligence and wisdom. I think that was pretty clear, but if not, I'll own that and point it out now.

To directly answer your question—Wisdom checks vary by edition, from never in OD&D to being overused by many in 5e. I can expand on this if you want, but I believe you were likely asking a rhetorical question.

To what I believe is your main point... Yes, to an overwhelmingly large extent I agree with what you are saying about player skill. I happen to also believe there is player skill in roleplaying to a character's Wisdom score.

Yeah, all I was really saying is that Wisdom as written doesn't match well with the way people usually play the game.

As to the idea of roleplaying a low wisdom score, I get that. Personally I don't see much appeal in playing a dumb character, and since decision making is such a huge part of the fun of D&D (at least for me), I don't see much point in having a character stat that requires people to make bad decisions or else not be playing their character correctly. I'm aware that other people feel differently about it, though, and I'll happily concede that as a matter of personal preference.

I feel the same way about dedicated "beauty" attributes, albeit to a lesser degree. In my experience, very few people want to play an ugly character, but the attribute is often next to useless in game, so a lot of people just dump it and then pretend their character is hot anyway. That's cheating of course, but I would argue that if there's a mechanic in a game which a large percentage of players end up just ignoring, then there's an issue with the mechanic. D&D, to it's credit, offers an easy compromise on that one, you can dump charisma and still say that your character isn't ugly, they're just socially awkward.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on November 10, 2022, 11:39:42 AM

Stats should always be what the game is about, and if you change the stats the rest of the system should change to match it, and vice versa.

....

I don't buy the argument that Perception can be notably trained.  There are a handful of discrete skills related to perception that can be trained, but not the general awareness part.  Plus, I wanted it siloed.  Being very perceptive can be a huge benefit in a game, and certainly is the way I tend to run them.  So you prioritize improving  that at the cost of the other 5 stats.  Call it a kind of niche protection, if you like.

Mostly agree. I gave my rant earlier about how the act of adventuring should improve attributes, but I'll happily concede that it needs a system designed to accommodate that, and D&D really isn't it. If that's your bugbear, as it is mine, better to go with another system. If I was writing my own version of D&D, I'd probably include some attribute improvements, but they'd be pretty minor.

Perception is a bit of a tough one. You could argue that the human eye picks up a lot of information, and that the brain can be trained to intake and process more of it, but that's really getting more out of your existing perception ability, not growing more. Based on what reading I've done on the subject, the chief ways you train a person's perception are by training their memory, so they retain more of what they see (arguably a function of intelligence), and training them to pick up on more environmental cues for things like social situations or traps (which the way D&D is structured, might even come under charisma). That's kind of why I'd put it under something like "intuition". Your eyesight might not improve, but your "sixth sense" for unconsciously spotting danger could.

D&D can easily accommodate improving attributes (it is in every post-2000 edition, and I give about 3-5 ability improvements from level 1-14 in my B/X games - see "Old School Feats").

As for perception it is probably too useful to be a single skill/stat, but same goes for dexterity, and the word "intelligence" is also incredibly broad. I've toyed with the idea of separating perception in nature, in social settings, in the underground, etc., as being different skills.