I''m convinced now that having roughly 5 general skills in an RPG is ideal. That is why I''d like to narrow down all of the skills possible into just that. For example magic regeneration, magic resistance, magic detection, magical power, etc. all have one obvious theme: Magic. That would be one of the 5 for me. But now what about Strength, Endurance, Stamina, Dexterity, Weapon Use, Defense, Parry, Dodge, Intelligence, Knowledge, Wisdom, Communication, Charm, Charisma, Constitution, Tracking, Agility, Throwing, Shooting, etc. etc. You get the point. Can you reduce it all into about 5 skills/categories?

Strength, Intelligence, Agility are probably sure bets. The other two "slots" should be filled by ideas central to your game design (relating to your combat system, magic system, npc interaction, etc)

Maybe not the direction that you were heading in, but I''ll take a stab at it.

Ok, assuming a magic based world:

Magic - regeneration, spell power, resistance, whatever
Combat - weapons, ranged, dodge, parry, shield use
Social - haggling, diplomacy (maybe performance instead?), intimidation, detect subterfuge, fast talk
Outdoorsman - tracking, stealth, survival, herbalism, navigation
Urban - Lock picking, pocket picking/legerdemain, street smarts, literacy,

Definitely would need some work, but by ranking the different categories, you end up with different sorts of character archetypes.

a burglar type thief would be urban+outdoorsman
a con-man type thief or bard would be urban+social
a gypsy type outdoorsman+social
a ranger type would be combat+outdoorsman
a paladin or warrior/mage type could be combat+magic
a gentleman/fencer type could be combat+social
a druid magic+outdoorsman
a scholarly wizard magic+urban

etc - take the rankings then fine tune them even more by dividing points among the subcategories.

I remember fondly a tabletop RPG which had only five basic stats. Namely ''Marvel Superheroes - Saga system''.

''Strength'' (which includes skill at arms and endurance based athletics like swimming)
''Agility'' (which includes acrobatics, dexterity and firearms/bow skill)
''Intelligence'' (which includes perception skills, knowledge, technical aptitude and is a good choice for arcane magic knowhow)
''Will'' (which includes most ''social'' skills like intimidation/charisma/leadership/human perception/acting ability plus is a good choice for divine magic knowhow)

The last stat was called ''Edge'', but just think of it as a wildcard, as experience. If you have a grizzled veteran who''s seen it all, been to hell and back... He''s not going to lose easy to a newbie hotshot even if the kid is faster - the pro just knows how a fast kid will act, even a smarter kid. The pro has -faced- smarter an'' faster folks and lived!

How''s that for five stats? >

id say something like this

(Strength, Endurance, Stamina, Dexterity, Weapon Use, Defense, Parry/Dodge, agilty)=====>Physical

(Intelligence, Knowledge, Wisdom)=====>Mental

(Communication, Charm, Charisma,)======>Ability

(Throwing, Shooting,)=======>Actions

-physical are taits of a character that depend on physical properties
-mental is stuff to do with brain power
-Ability is stuff the char is good at doing that require mental properties
-Actions is stuff the char is good at that require Physical properties

just my shot at this


"We call em ''natural disasters'' but ''he'' (or she?) calls them memory leaks!!"
Al
**MY HQ**

How about:

Physical (Strength, Endurance, Agility, Dexterity, etc.)
Combat (parry, dodge, shooting, weapon skills, etc.)
Social (Communication, Charm, Charisma, etc.)
Intellect (Intelligence, Wisdom, etc.)
Magic

I like how Deus-ex let you choose your skills and Augmentations.

so you can have:

Mental: inteligence, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, etc.
Fisical: strength, reflexes, agility, healing-factor, vision, ear, etc.
Social: comunication, charisma, charm, (love?), etc.
Combat: body-body, white weapons, throwing, fire weapons, etc.
Magic: spells, reading magic, magic weapons, etc (dont know much)

And you can choose wich skills to upgrade, maybe inteligence could be linked with reading magic, and reflexes with combat. Just an idea.



[edited by - xaxa on September 3, 2002 8:12:11 PM]

Physical(swinging swords, punching, doing backflips)
Psionic(telekinesis, telepathy)
Supernatural(prayers, astral projection; tend to be innate abilities)
Mechanical(mecha piloting, or cyborg implants; abilities can be "bought" to a limited extent)
Magical(Fireballs, lightning; learned abilities)

This question is impossible to answer with out any context of the world in which it will take place.

You could have as easily said that you were creating a game and wanted to know whether the player should be rich or famous.

I think that there must be several basical skills (e.g. Strength, Vitality, Magic, Agility, Intellect) and other more complex skills are derived from these. So, Fighting=Strength+Agility, Endurance=Strength+Vitality, Wisdom=Magic+Intellect, and so forth. ARX Fatalis has a similar system of skills