What?
Rules for how to price and purchase the attributes once they’ve
been divorced from any relation to skills.
Why?
Because we like you. Wait, no. Because I removed the skills
from the attributes and now need new prices for what’s left of the attributes.
The Rules
ST: Unchanged (If
only they could all be this easy.)
HT: Unchanged
(Covers a few skills that don’t matter—I suspect this is already underpriced as
it is, even without the skills.)
Per: Its own
thing. Costs 5/level as normal.
Will: Its own
thing. Costs 5/level as normal.
IQ
Okay, so the obvious question here is: without skills, Per,
or Will, what’s even left of IQ?
Here’s what I could find.
Rolls to remember things. This is the part of IQ that’s
modified by Perfect Memory.
Rolls against surprise and mental stun. This is the part
that’s modified by Combat Reflexes.
And general rolls for what I think of as reason. I don’t
know how other GMs run things, but in my games, a player will often ask a
question like, “Can I make a roll to help figure out what the original pattern
in these scattered floor tiles was?” The response I give is, “Make an IQ roll.”
It’s obvious at this point that IQ is really nothing more
than a Super Talent. It’s basically skills, Per, Will, and very little else. My
inclination is to split what we have left into individual subattributes called
Memory (used for remembering things; starts at 10 and costs 1/level) and Wittedness
(what you roll against surprise and mental stun with ; starts at 10 and costs
1/level). Maybe have a third trait called Reason that is also 1/level and
functions similarly to the Common Sense advantage, but that everyone would
have. You could also use a separate trait for learning, since that’s something
else you can rolI for, but most games don’t even use learning rolls. If you don’t
want to separate IQ into those component parts, I recommend keeping it as a
package that handles those few separate things and costs 2/level or 3/level. It’s
really kind of useless, though, and not something anyone is going out of their
way to buy.
DX
Like IQ, this is basically a Super Attribute mixed in with some
sub attributes.
Very similar to IQ. We have the bonus to Basic Speed (which
really should be its own separate trait in the first place in the way that Per
and Will should be) and… not much else. There are rolls to balance. And there
are rolls to fetch items from your bags or whatever when you have a chance of
failure at what you’re doing, but you aren’t using a skill. You might be on the
fifth floor of a burning building that’s collapsing around you while you’re
fighting a werewolf. When you go to pull that speedloader with your silver
bullets from your bag, you’ll need to make some roll to get it out of your
shaking bag. That’s one of the few things that DX does that isn’t a skill.
Like with IQ, I suggest splitting these things up into their
own attributes. One attribute for Balance and one for these other odds and
ends. I would call this attribute Motor Control.
So this could be as simple as removing all the skills and
dropping DX to 7 points per level (which would be 5 points worth of Basic
Speed, and then 1 point for Balance and 1 point for the odds and ends).
Once we’ve reached this point, maybe we should go another
step and remove the Basic Speed portion of DX and make that its own separate
thing.
The easiest way to do
this
That would give you the following attributes:
ST – 10/level
DX – 2/level
IQ – 2/level
HT – 10/level
Per – 5/level
Will – 5/level
Basic Speed – 20/level
And then you just go on as usual. This is fairly
noninvasive. You aren’t changing around a ton of rules.
In my full house rules, I go even further, breaking down all
of the attributes into their component parts. I’ll save that for another post.
No comments:
Post a Comment