Saturday Morning Adventure Dev Diaries #9: Attribute Bonuses
Hey all. In today's SMA dev diary, I wanted to go over the actual mechanical bonuses a character will get from their attributes.
I did debate for a little while whether to use only modifiers in SMA or to use a modifier/score system like D&D, but I settled on using a modifier system pretty quickly. The arguments for and against using both don't really seem all that interesting, so I won't waste time going over them in detail here. Also the last dev diary was one of those sorta comparison-y posts, didn't wanna do the same thing twice in a row. To give a quick summary, I just don't think having attrbute scores adds enough to justify their existence, and a lot of the stuff they are used for could easily be handled by just a modifier when the system is built around that.
My current plans for player characters are to have modifiers that range -4 to +4 at character creation, before counting any boosts a character might have from their species. Players will be able to choose any attribute spread as long as their total score over all attributes is 0 - I want a really simple point-buy system to be the standard option. Alternatively, you could roll 4d3 - 8 for each attribute (or if you have Fudge dice handy, you could of course just roll 4dF). If you're rolling random stats for a less remarkable NPC, you could roll 2d4 - 5 instead, which will only range between -3 and +3.
PC's will get an extra attribute score every few levels, I'm thinking maybe every 4 or 5 levels? They could put this wherever they want, as long as it doesn't boost an attribute past +5.
As for monsters, their stats will probably range anywhere from -10 to +10. I did consider trying to scale everything nicely so a certain attribute score would concretely translate to a certain concrete example of something with a score like that, but I quickly gave up on this. Opting for simplicity over having a sort of narrative justification for each score. -4 to +4 is the limits of the normal human scale, +5 is legendarily good for a human, anything outside of that is whatever you think it should be.
Earlier I mentioned the possibility of bonuses to a characters attribute based on their species. I'm not not sure what, if anything, I'm gonna do about a characters species impacting their traits yet. I do want characters to be able to represent any fantasy species you can dream of within the game. I just don't yet know if I'm going to go the Open Legend route of having no explicit species bonuses and encouraging players to build around their imagined character, or if I'm going to include specific packaged bonuses like in D&D.
I'm planning for the next dev diary to be on the various means of character progression in SMA, I hope to see you then!
I did debate for a little while whether to use only modifiers in SMA or to use a modifier/score system like D&D, but I settled on using a modifier system pretty quickly. The arguments for and against using both don't really seem all that interesting, so I won't waste time going over them in detail here. Also the last dev diary was one of those sorta comparison-y posts, didn't wanna do the same thing twice in a row. To give a quick summary, I just don't think having attrbute scores adds enough to justify their existence, and a lot of the stuff they are used for could easily be handled by just a modifier when the system is built around that.
My current plans for player characters are to have modifiers that range -4 to +4 at character creation, before counting any boosts a character might have from their species. Players will be able to choose any attribute spread as long as their total score over all attributes is 0 - I want a really simple point-buy system to be the standard option. Alternatively, you could roll 4d3 - 8 for each attribute (or if you have Fudge dice handy, you could of course just roll 4dF). If you're rolling random stats for a less remarkable NPC, you could roll 2d4 - 5 instead, which will only range between -3 and +3.
PC's will get an extra attribute score every few levels, I'm thinking maybe every 4 or 5 levels? They could put this wherever they want, as long as it doesn't boost an attribute past +5.
As for monsters, their stats will probably range anywhere from -10 to +10. I did consider trying to scale everything nicely so a certain attribute score would concretely translate to a certain concrete example of something with a score like that, but I quickly gave up on this. Opting for simplicity over having a sort of narrative justification for each score. -4 to +4 is the limits of the normal human scale, +5 is legendarily good for a human, anything outside of that is whatever you think it should be.
In Closing
Well that's all I really had to say on this topic. I know this dev diary is a bit shorter and probably less interesting than usual, but I just wanted to get the mechanics around attribute bonuses set codified before moving on to designing any more systems that rely on it.
I'm planning for the next dev diary to be on the various means of character progression in SMA, I hope to see you then!
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