We still need to work out our actual abilities and their modifiers. In the last post in this series, Skill and Ability modifiers, I worked out a system of modifiers and how it affects task resolutions. I concluded that I have a +0 ..+8 range for positive modifiers, which includes both skill and ability modifiers. My gut feeling is that this should be split roughly into +2 for abilities and +6 for skills. By the definitions of the Skill and Ability modifiers post, +2 from abilities gives a talented person an advantage of 1-2 years of training, which does not sound unreasonable if you view a person’s entire career. Of course, in an abstract simulation such as an RPG this means high ability scores “front-load” skill use – that is, you gain a large boost to many skills before you ever receive any job training – but that’s okay; especially since I firmly believe that skills that realistically require training should also require so in a game; we can compensate with an “untrained skill use” penalty.

Anyway. Abilities. Since this is a genre-less game system, we will only define a few basic abilities. Specific genres could add abilities, such as a fantasy genre adding a magic skill. Also, I am a fan of having physical and mental abilities that roughly mirror each other.

• Strength
• Endurance
• Agility
• Intelligence
• Willpower
• Charisma

Let’s use 2d6 as our random generator for attributes. This gives us a range of 2-12, average 7, with a bias towards the middle of the spectrum. We have a few options on how to proceed, all based on what ranges we define for what modifier. I like symmetry, so I came up with the following:

Using random ability generation and this modifier system almost half of the characters will have a +0 in any given ability. Close to 20% will have either +1 or -1, and 8% will have a +2 or -2. Almost 28% in total will have a low ability modifier, another 28% a high ability modifier.

I think this should work fairly well, especially if you consider that player characters will likely improve ability scores that are vital to their “roles” – be that strength for a sword fighter, agility for an Imperial marines sniper, or intelligence for a wizard. Player characters tend to be trained professionals, who would hone their abilities and skills as best they can. John Doe, his only hobby being slouching in front of his TV every night, rarely ends up packed with muscles.

Point Buy: Not everybody likes to generate characters by random. Since the average roll would be 7 per ability, six ability scores mean 42 points on average. Let’s give our Point Buy characters those points to spread among their abilities. This actually results in slightly above-average characters, since 6 is still a +0 modifier, and such a character could buy two 9′s and four 6′s. Two other optimized sets would be:

1. 1x 12, 5×6
2. 2x 11, 2×6, 2×4

These all work out to an overall of +2 in ability modifiers. You can easily assign your character low scores in abilities you do not expect to use much, but this still doesn’t seem to be excessively powerful.

Larger Than Life: In a very “heroic” campaign, the Game Master may simply let players buy abilities for a higher point value (see Point Buy system), or let them roll 1d6+6 instead of 2d6. That eliminates negative ability modifiers altogether. Besides improving chances for high end abilities considerably, it also has the side effect of eliminating negative numbers from the character sheet, simplifying matters ever so slightly.

A few months ago I began to theorize on task resolution and dice mechanics for a hypothetical game system. In those two posts, I concluded that using 3d6 seems to be a good dice mechanic, and for task resolution I decided on the following difficulties/target numbers:

However, these decisions require that the bonuses given by skills, attributes, and so on stay within certain boundaries. Or, in other words, the capabilities we grant the characters need to be balanced against those difficulties.

So what happens when we modify dice rolls? We just shift the probability of achieving a certain result around. The following table shows the percentage of success for our difficulties for a range of dice modifiers of -6 .. +6:

Judging by these numbers, +4 to +5 is the range that a trained, experienced professional will have. +5 turns Routine tasks into (almost) automatic successes, and lowers the chance of failure for difficult tasks to just under 10%. If our hypothetical trained professional can take things slowly, prepare, or otherwise gain a situational bonus, Difficult checks quickly become automatic successes for him.

At the same time, our +5 professional will still fail Impossible tasks 75% of the time. They are truly challenging, and will require good preparation or a lot of experience to complete successfully.

Freshly-created characters should probably have most of their skills no higher than +1 to +2, and their core skills – their specialization – should be +3 for a few skills, maybe +4 for one skill if they are really pushing it.

That’s not a very big budget for handing out numbers. It has to cover skills and, presumably, attributes. And we have to keep in mind that it has to allow for improvement during actual game play; if a character starts out “at the top of his field”, the players will quickly get bored with that.

It also means that attribute modifiers either need to be kept very low – if, say, an exceptional intelligence were to give +3 to all knowledge, science and similar skills it is easy to see that attributes would quickly dominate the game’s balance. That kind of bonus should be limited to exceptionally “gifted” individuals.

Perhaps there is another solution, though. For certain things, I will not argue that natural ability will give a person a head start. To continue our intelligence example: A really smart person has an easy time picking up mathematics. But math is not something you just invent for yourself (unless your are a Newton or a Leibniz, and even then you basically spend years teaching yourself). A less intelligent person who spends time studying math will outperform the smart person who has no training very quickly.

So instead of applying ability bonuses to skills, perhaps we should see the two independently from each other. A high ability score could make acquisition of associated skills easier, or it could perhaps allow for higher overall skill levels for this particular character. In the later case, though, we will have to allow a player fairly fine control over his ability scores, and the possibility to raise them in-game – doesn’t have to be easy, but it has to be possible.

However, this is getting to the point at which we have to formulate an actual character generation system and to actually play-test it to see if all this theory works out after all. And that’s for the next post in this series.