A discussion of stats.

[Clearsighted]

Stats don't increase under the new system, from what I've noticed.

I had a PC start as young, and live for 20ish years to just a single year shy of mature, and the only stat which changed was agility, which went down.

If they do increase, it is only to a certain cap and never above it. But I don't think that's the case, cause I had a really low wisdom, which I would've expected to have ticked up at the same rate agility ticked down.

Stats change, whether they increase or decrease, they are now moving with age.  I've seen it.

Yep, moving down

Three stats of mine went up.

Weird. Perhaps it is entirely random, or handled differently for non-humans. It's nice to hear that someone saw an improvement, though.

[Lizzie]

There are also degrees of the stats Clearsighted. I don't know how the numbers work in Arm, but they are numerical, in the code behind the text. So for example

Extremely Poor = 1-5
Poor = 6-10
Below Average = 11-15
Average = 16-20
Above Average = 21-25
Good = 26-30
Extremely Good = 31-35
Absolutely Incredible = 36-40

So if you get a bump up on Agility, and your agility -was- at the 26 end of Good...then it might still be at Good, but now be at the 30 ends of it. So it -will- improve, even if you aren't noticing a change in the wording.

[Medena]

Three stats of mine went up.

Weird. Perhaps it is entirely random, or handled differently for non-humans. It's nice to hear that someone saw an improvement, though.

I had three stats go up. On a non-human.

[flurry]

Whether stats might go up or down is not a mystery.  It's spelled out in help aging.

As citizens of Zalanthas gain years of existence, their bodies begin to change to conform to their age. Generally, a person will grow stronger and tougher from adolescence until they hit their prime, gradually increasing their stamina and endurance. After this peak, they will begin to lose that strength and health slowly. Wisdom nearly peaks early in life and increases slowly until death, and agility peaks in adolescence and slowly decreases into old age.

[Lizzie]

Yes Flurry, that part is clear. There's a new system that shifts stats. However Clearsighted stated he didn't notice any change, or that the stats seemed to -only- go down, and -never go up- when his character aged and was concerned that the new system wasn't working, or not working properly.

[musashi]

Though I'm not sure where I recall reading this (in one of the previous posts here in the Code Discussion board) Morgenes said that in the previous system, there was a "chance" age would affect a stat. So if for example your character turned from child to adult, there was chance that strength, endurance, and wisdom might increase, and a chance agility would go down. But nothing was for sure so you very well could end up with just agility going down as a result of aging, or nothing at all.

And now in the new system there is a 100 percent chance that every stat will change with age.

I believe that's the difference between now and before. And a nice difference it is ... since having it work the way it worked before (provided I'm not way off base) meant there was absolutely no point in playing a young character and living them into adulthood unless you planned on petitioning the staff for manual stat increases to reflect the fact that their strenth was below average when they were 15, but they've grown up a bit since then.

On a side note, I think it's a little extreme just how crappy strength and endurance are for a 15 year old, as I've known guys in highschool who were quite physically fit by adult standards at that age. It seems like the code thinks they're a 6 year old or something. Heh, I think a better development scale would be something like, let strength and endurance peek around 15 or 16, then slowly go up till the mid 30's, then slowly go down. Let agility peak around 13 or 14, stay that way till the mid 30's, then start to decrease, and have wisdom start out a little low but generally peak around 10 ... shoot down to less than half of that from age 13-19, and then go back up, then start increasing slowly with time 

But ... that's another topic. Sorry.

[Haze]

On a side note, I think it's a little extreme just how crappy strength and endurance are for a 15 year old, as I've known guys in highschool who were quite physically fit by adult standards at that age. It seems like the code thinks they're a 6 year old or something. Heh, I think a better development scale would be something like, let strength and endurance peek around 15 or 16, then slowly go up till the mid 30's, then slowly go down. Let agility peak around 13 or 14, stay that way till the mid 30's, then start to decrease, and have wisdom start out a little low but generally peak around 10 ... shoot down to less than half of that from age 13-19, and then go back up, then start increasing slowly with time 

QFT.

My 15 year old PC is a weak retard with the constitution of a piece of rice paper.  But he's got crazy monkey agility.

[musashi]

I know what you mean. Hopefully the new stat development code means that by the time he reaches 24-ish he should have grown into normal statistics though (but with the advantage that you've had that long to work his skills up in the meantime).

[RogueGunslinger]

Has anyone suggested making stats go up(or possibly down) depending on skills that have a similar function? After six year in the Byn, my petite lass is going to end up being a bulky broad.

Say your combat skill reaches 50% of it's potential, this would increase your Strength stat by a small amount to show that yes, over years of training, you actually do gain muscle.

Sneak, hide, and sleight of hand skill capped out? There is no reason why you shouldn't have at least extremely good or above agility.


There must be a problem with a system like this that I'm not seeing though... I could see this making a good stat roll even more OP, but change the roll system to keep most beginning stats closer to average than what they are and I could see it working.

[FantasyWriter]

Has anyone suggested making stats go up(or possibly down) depending on skills that have a similar function? After six year in the Byn, my petite lass is going to end up being a bulky broad.

Say your combat skill reaches 50% of it's potential, this would increase your Strength stat by a small amount to show that yes, over years of training, you actually do gain muscle.

Sneak, hide, and sleight of hand skill capped out? There is no reason why you shouldn't have at least extremely good or above agility.


There must be a problem with a system like this that I'm not seeing though... I could see this making a good stat roll even more OP, but change the roll system to keep most beginning stats closer to average than what they are and I could see it working.

Sounds like a very logical and appopriate suggestion. 

[Dalmeth]

Sneak, hide, and sleight of hand skill capped out? There is no reason why you shouldn't have at least extremely good or above agility.

This here is the primary problem with your proposal.  Actual skill is measure of the training and certain stats combined.  You wouldn't have varying skill levels anymore, just people working to max out their skill and their stats.

I could definitely see some utility in regard to the degeneration of stats through aging.  Should a warrior who has trained all her life really drop to poor strength or agility due to the aging code?  I don't think so.  It would be nice if skills softened the decline of stats so that a very skilled person might not grow quite so infirm (i.e. very poor stats) in their old age.

[Krath]

The stat system does not need to be revamped. Read the help files.

[Reiloth]

Has anyone suggested making stats go up(or possibly down) depending on skills that have a similar function? After six year in the Byn, my petite lass is going to end up being a bulky broad.

Say your combat skill reaches 50% of it's potential, this would increase your Strength stat by a small amount to show that yes, over years of training, you actually do gain muscle.

Sneak, hide, and sleight of hand skill capped out? There is no reason why you shouldn't have at least extremely good or above agility.


There must be a problem with a system like this that I'm not seeing though... I could see this making a good stat roll even more OP, but change the roll system to keep most beginning stats closer to average than what they are and I could see it working.

Because everyone will have pretty much the same stats after a certain amount of days played?

[Delstro]

I think it would be a great idea if it limited how much your stats went up.

If you maxed, you should be atleast average in my opinion.

[mansa]

I think it would be a great idea if it limited how much your stats went up.

If you maxed, you should be atleast average in my opinion.

I have faith in Morgenes, and all his limits that he may implement in the gaming system.  I know that he has played over 9000 variations of tabletop games and has memorized all of the variety of rules.  I'm sure he's implemented enough factors into the stat system.

[Bushranger]

To solve all these problems I propose that we change the descriptors of stats to:

Kick-Ass, Awesome, Like Chuck Norris, Better than The Fonze, Hella-Good, Damn-Straight, Colt-45 and Bitchin'!

Then, to keep things interesting, these are dynamically assigned to the current Poor, Below Average, Average, Above Average, etc that we have now. So for one character Like Chuck Norris would actually be Average, but for the next character it would represent Very Good! Keep stat ordering in character generation. Now you can be better in somethings than in others based on your background, but when you type SCORE all your stats have cool descriptions!

Problem Solved!

[Reiloth]

To solve all these problems I propose that we change the descriptors of stats to:

Kick-Ass, Awesome, Like Chuck Norris, Better than The Fonze, Hella-Good, Damn-Straight, Colt-45 and Bitchin'!

Then, to keep things interesting, these are dynamically assigned to the current Poor, Below Average, Average, Above Average, etc that we have now. So for one character Like Chuck Norris would actually be Average, but for the next character it would represent Very Good! Keep stat ordering in character generation. Now you can be better in somethings than in others based on your background, but when you type SCORE all your stats have cool descriptions!

Problem Solved!

This is actually a good idea.

I know that there is some variance in how 'good' 'good' actually is. AKA, two humans with good strength don't neccesarily have the same strength.

What if there were less categories, and more breathing room?

You could have something like:

Average - You are joe shmoe. You can lift a heavy sword, but you can't pick up a boulder. You can outsmart a child, but there are definitely smarter people than you. You can run for a few miles, but then you run out of breath. It can contain Poor, Below Average, and Average.
Above Average - You are better than joe shmoe, but not by much. This could contain good, very good, and extremely good. It could even dip down into Average, or up into Exceptional.
Exceptional - This could contain exceptional and AI, and maybe even a stat HIGHER than AI. GODLIKE. YES. It could even dip down into extremely good, and very good.

I think it would provide less character suicides if the stats were, well, better rounded and more vague. You then will have to pragmatically test your strength, endurance, intelligence, whatever, ICly.

"Oh, I can pick up a 200 stone pack. Wow."

"Oh, I can't pick up a 200 stone pack. Alright."

"Oh, I have this much health."

"Oh, I can cast this many spells before my mana runs out."

"I learn at a modest pace."

"Wow, I learn really fast!"

Dunno. Just a thought.

[Bilanthri]

Don't forget the perks to being older and more skillful. So that newbie warrior can get ferocious hits on foes...does he do it all the time? Hardly. When your experienced warrior can dance around the same foe hitting half a dozen times, there should be a serious amount of RP respect offered by said beefcake newbie. Was Mr. Miyagi a heavy-hitter.....seems unlikely. But a suped up 'roid monkey would be a fool not to defer to his greater skill. (Just a silly example)

[Riev]

I just wanted to add that, with my new PC, I actually got frustrated that, even after a reroll, my strength and wisdom were a lot less than I was hoping, in comparison to my agility and endurance. Then I realized something;

Thats almost exactly how his background and mdesc would describe him. Not very smart, or strong, but quick, and able to prolong a fight.

Sometimes random stats are amazing and work out just so well.

[audrey]

I'm wondering if the stats are rigged. All my characters have backgrounds and descriptions that suit the stats perfectly. I made an excellent character this time (whom I didn't expect to last long), and everything fits her description. She's a quick one, able to dodge trouble, and manipulate others, but a skinny one.

I did get bad stats for one character, but a reroll made everything nice. Also, I find stats don't really matter at all in the late game, I've seen an old man beat a fully-armed half-giant with a training club. They're more of a crutch to support which direction your character is going early on. If I can't use big swords, I learn to small daggers. If my character's wise, I get her to act smart, and so on. If he's big, dumb, then I'd plan the character's development that way.

Only exception are the criminal skills, since you can't really practice those

Oh, BTW, one of my characters started off 19 y.o., stats are exceptional, very good, good, below average. Who says young people were weak? Didn't matter anyway, she died a horribly stupid death.

[RogueGunslinger]

Oh, BTW, one of my characters started off 19 y.o., stats are exceptional, very good, good, below average. Who says young people were weak? Didn't matter anyway, she died a horribly stupid death.

Play a couple more characters.

[Versu]

I just want to say, that as an avid skateboarder at the age of 28, my agility is still only going up up up!

The brain can only become more developed, controlled and precise... it's like saying mastery of a skill isn't directly linked with mastery of the body. My muscles are the same size as I was when I was 18 and I'm the same weight, but I continue to develop greater control as the smaller more refined muscles become toned and strong enough to accomplish what I demand. I seriously can't lift weights and get stronger or gain weight becase of my conditioning.

I'm totaly against the age+skill system and think it should be more dependant on how much and what kind of food your character eats, what they do to get the food and somehow let nature sort it out with how much karma you have and choice of starting location. Make it all sekret!

[Bilanthri]

I just want to say, that as an avid skateboarder at the age of 28, my agility is still only going up up up!

The brain can only become more developed, controlled and precise... it's like saying mastery of a skill isn't directly linked with mastery of the body. My muscles are the same size as I was when I was 18 and I'm the same weight, but I continue to develop greater control as the smaller more refined muscles become toned and strong enough to accomplish what I demand.

Once you stop growing, the body is in a constant state of decay. You can keep yourself limber and healthy, and you can improve your physical mastery by learning more about your capabilities. But to suggest that your physical dexterity is improving despite being over the bio-hill is silly. Your ability to predict your muscle responses and then employ their strength in just the right manner is vastly mental, with the muscles only keeping up with the demands you place on them. As age increases past maturity, so does general decrepitude, and it's not really even something that can be argued...the few rare folks who maintain very good health into their old age do so by learning, not by the continued growth of their physique.

[Blackisback]

I don't think the problem is the way stats are assigned as much as it is the way stats function. In one MUD I play, stats work completely differently from Arm, and in a way, they're superior in function because they keep characters balanced and interesting.

For instance, high strength doesn't automatically give you great damage rolls. All damage rolls are kept at a standard, with the actual damage dependent on the weapon and your skill level. Strength determines your skill cap for particular weapons and skills, so you won't be dishing out high damage right from the get-go.

I think something like this could certainly work in Arm. High strength characters will have the ability to excel at strength-based weapons, but from the beginning they're not going to hit that well.

TLDR; have damage dependent on skill, and have skill levels dependent on stats.

However, since we ARE discussing how stats are assigned, I think a point buy system similar to some roleplaying games would work well. Increasing stats becomes exponentially more expensive points-wise, and you can have the option of decreasing certain stats for a small point bonus. Add in racial modifiers after the fact and you're all set. This way character stats can reflect what the player wants them to be, and if you follow my previous example, you won't have to worry about 30 beefcake warriors with max height and weight because, while they're stronger than Hercules, they can't swing that greataxe worth a damn.

[jstorrie]

It seems a bit counterintuitive that high strength PCs wouldn't hit harder fresh out of the box. I wouldn't mind a system that takes some of what you suggest into account, though, especially in regards to 'high strength' weapons–I think that weapons should be flaggable as being more or less dependent on strength or agility (such that high-strength or high-agility characters would see more of a bonus for using a weapon meant for the strong or agile, and likewise low-strength or low-agility characters would see more of a penalty for using an inappropriate weapon.)

If having wicked agility meant you kicked more ass with, say, whips and lightsabers and three-part-staves, or whatever, this might help a bit with the 'strength is too important for combat PCs' problem. This would have to be carefully balanced, though, as agility's other-than-damage bonuses (attack speed, defense bonus, etc.) might turn out outweighing strength's (ability to wear heavy armor).

I still don't see there being much of a huge problem in 1.Arm, though. The weapons are primitive; there isn't much room for 'finesse fighters' when the stock weapons are stone hammers and mek-bone battleaxes. Don't get me started on the obsidian razors...