Three Attributes

[charis]

So there are a lot of gives and takes on what falls under Warfare and what falls under Strength, and I was just curious if people have experimented with using three attributes instead of four.

I've run a Star Wars diceless system based off the Amber Diceless one, but took Warfare and left it by itself to cover all things battle related. With strength, I turned it into a two part ability, almost like a power, with a fixed cost. This leaves strength as a factor, but not a trump all against peoples warfare if it does end up in hand to hand combat, as the battle stat still factors in.

If you've tried or thought about trying three attributes instead of four, how did you handle it?

[finarvyn]

Well ... I know that the Tri-Stat system is based somewhat on BESM, and I'm pretty sure that Mark C. MacKinnon (the guy who wrote BESM) wrote in his 1E BESM introduction that he really had wanted to do Amber but didn't have a license for it, so Tri-Stat is somehow linked to what Amber "might have been" in some ways.

Characters in Tri-Stat have three main Stats:
Body: a measure of the character's physical prowess and health.
Mind: a measure of the character's mental capacity and intelligence.
Soul: a measure of the character's spirit and willpower.

I believe there are also some "derived" stats used to supplement the three above. (Things like attack and defense values, I believe.)

I can see where a person could run a campaign using this structure as a base, with the notion that all of the cool stuff becomes a skill or a power. For example, one might have a "tactics" skill or a "martial arts" skill or whatever.

[RPGPundit]

I've never found a problem with the four attributes; certainly not with Warfare.

RPGPundit

[finarvyn]

Nor have I, but I was attempting to answer the original question.

To go back to the OP, when I ran a Star Wars diceless game I simply substituted "Force Potential" for Psyche and the rest of the ADRP mechanic played itself out quite well. Rather than buying Pattern or Logrus I allowed for characters to buy Force or Sith power, with the FP attribute giving strength. I suppose if one wanted to add details one could steal a page from the WEG Star Wars RPG from the 1980's and have 3 parts to Force Potential, which I believe were Sense, Control, and Alter.