Attributes

[kylesgames]

So I'm working on a new game (when am I not?), and I want to get peoples' opinions on stuff:

One of the things I like about the 40k roleplaying games is that combat attributes are separate from core stats. When you have a Ballistic Skill and Weapon Skill that compete with your other attributes, it makes it harder to make a combat monster, because you take a good roll away from Agility (which feeds initiative) or Toughness (which feeds damage reduction) or Strength (which feeds damage for melee fighters), or other attributes.

Anyway, I'm thinking of having just a single Combat attribute, for much of the same purpose. It just represents a character's overall aptitude with fighting, and does not feed any derived attributes or stuff like that.

One of my main inspirations for this is Twilight 2000, which did actually have attribute-based combat rolls, but had initiative be a separate skill based on a character's military training (e.g. a Ranger would have a high ranking, a private would have a mediocre one, and a civilian would have an awful one).

However, the game I'm working on has a number of experimental features, including engagement-based, not turn-based, combat.

I've heard some pros and cons, so I want to hear your thoughts:

PROS (1 combat attribute)

• Functions as a draw-away from the non-combat attributes, making it so combat monsters aren't just the highest in Agility/Strength
• I feel it fleshes out a character's combat-readiness. If you're an athlete you don't necessarily double as a warrior.
• May be easier for players to actually understand combat if they aren't switching between attributes
• Encourages a synergy between multiple attributes in combat.

CONS (want no combat attribute)

• Reduces simplicity of game system
• PROJECT HAMMER has combat skills (unlike 40k RPGs, which are sometimes stingy with combat improvements), so a separate combat attribute may be redundant.
• Could make it easier/more tempting for a character to make a combat monster, since they can allocate a super high roll to combat and then everything looks like a nail.

My rebuttals to no combat attribute:

• As above, one attribute for combat is a simplification for novices who are new to tabletop games.
• Combat in Project Hammer is meant to be a fifteen minute affair, not a thirty-minute affair.
• Adding a separate combat attribute balances out the strength/dexterity attributes which otherwise are valuable to combat characters.

CONS (want 2 combat attributes)

• Shooting is very different from stabbing
• As above, the single attribute system makes it very easy to make an overall combat monster.
• If you want to reduce the value of any one attribute, having two distinct buffers prevents one buffer from being overly valuable.

My rebuttals:

• Combat-readiness is a sort of schema unto itself. D&D handled this as BAB and now as a flat level-based bonus to pretty much everything. Being able to mime knife motions effectively doesn't replace being able to psychologically prepare for battle and predict enemy actions.
• Combat is going to be a fifteen-minute affair, not a three-hour affair, and ideally end in disengagement rather than complete annihilation.
• Combat happens in three modes: marksmanship, firefights, or melee. With skill and equipment based differentiation, characters are typically not going to really come out equally in all three modes.
• It's okay for not everyone to be good at combat. It's something a lot of games avoid in their design schema, but I don't see it as some sacred object.

[Onix]

I would be interested in this if the game did something other than combat in addition to putting fighting into it's own corner. For example, is there a robust and interesting way to handle man vs nature or man vs himself?

A lot of players want to sit down and roll dice. Anything that gets them a mechanical result in game will be the button the press. With one or two combat attributes those are going to be shiny buttons that the players are going to want to press. What other buttons are you going to provide?

[Evil Scientist]

[kylesgames]

[Onix]

[Rob Lang]

Combat attribute is definitely the way to go. Keep it vaguely to do with all combat things and accept the simplification that getting better in hand to hand combat gets you better at ranged. Add complexity elsewhere to give your system flavour.

[kylesgames]

[madunkieg]

I'll agree with Rob here. Go with a single combat attribute. Yes, you could separate out ballistic skill, but combat skills are about more than knowing how to make an attack,as explained in this video by Lindybeige: .

What he implies is that familiarity with the weapon not only helps fighting with the weapon, but defending against it as well. Actually implementing this would make for a very complex set of rules, so a single combat attribute will replace the rather complex sets of knowledge that would be ignored if you just based it on a single stat like agility.

[kylesgames]

[Rob Lang]

I've had the Battle attribute in Icar since 1996 and I've never looked back. Yes, it's not very simulationist, it's not very good modeling and it's not very D&D but then if your combat can be happening from a fist fight up to a laser war with a space ship. There are other abstractions that we just accept (dexterity being equally vague).