I'm thinking about implimenting a conflict between agility and strength in my RPG. Or rather, conflicts between any two certain attributes. The idea would be pretty simple. Training in strength makes training in agility harder. For example, increasing agility could cost the same amount of experience as half of your strength. As well, increasing strength would cost 4 points if agility was at level 8. However, increasing agility from level 200 to 201 might still cost only 1 experience point if strength is at 2. It could cost a third or even a fourth, but that's the rough idea. The reason would be to promote specialization. For example, performing ninja feats could use agility as a base factor. Some feats may also have agility requirements. This means the most elite ninja will be pretty weak in strength. Likewise, extremely strong characters will not be nearly as fast. In effect, keeping your character balanced would yield less dramatic results. The idea that a huge muscular freak would have to work much harder to be light on his feet doesn't sound too far fetched. But I'm not so sure that training to be lighter on your feet makes increasing your muscle load a harder task. I can't have one without the other, or it becomes a pointless task of getting your agility up first. The only 'realistic' alternative that hits me is to reduce agility as you gain strength. But I really don't like that idea. I'm looking for ideas and opinions :)

It wouldn't work too badly to have agility lessen strength, the only other option I can see is to have a web of attributes, where intelligence lessens strength, and I can't think of something that lessens intelligence, but let's pretend I can...

Realistically, an agile character is likely not to be very strong, because it is (as you rightly said) a burdun to carry extra muscle. You could simply have it that a characters strength reduces when (s)he trains agility because it is beneficial to lose the extra bulk.

On a physical basis this doesn't make sense. When you build muscle it doesn't restrict your movement due to its weight. Your body adapts to carry the extra muscle and then you can use that muscle to move more quickly or with more agility. Only in extreme cases does the muscle limit you.

Your synergies could work both ways though?

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Original post by Anonymous Poster 99% of ninja's will be high agility and low strength. 1% of ninja's will be high agility and will have wasted a large portion of points trying to raise strength.

Well, a player who leaves any attribute low would be sacrificing a lot. All attributes will be important to all characters. This is why I want to reward specializing. And like I said before, the amount of confliction is entirely adjustable. I could reduce it to a point where strength would need to be raised by 10 points to have any effect on training agility.

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Really, you might as well have set gains according to class and then focus on making skill selection more interesting.

Wouldn't that have the same effect, except you've reduced options? I'm not sure I follow what you mean by skill selection? I haven't really brought that up.

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Original post by Metorical On a physical basis this doesn't make sense. When you build muscle it doesn't restrict your movement due to its weight.

Bulky muscle does indeed make it more difficult to be agile. Do you know how to increase agility in muscle? You burn them down, Bruce Lee style. You lift a small amount of weight a huge number of times. The more muscle you have, the longer it takes to burn.

I'm not saying my method is realistic, it's pretty far from it. I would actually like to hear other ideas about how to add bonus to specialization, if anyone has any.

Thanks for the input