[freeroleplay] Attribute Advancement (was [Fringe] New

[Samuel Penn]

On Wed, June 28, 2006 10:40, Ricardo Gladwell wrote:
>
> On Tue, 2006-06-27 at 14:13 -0700, Troy Truchon wrote:
>> On 6/27/06, Samuel Penn <sam at glendale.org.uk> wrote:
>> > Will Fringe characters begin as heroes already at the peek of their
>> > career, or as inexperienced newbies straight out of apprenticeship?
>>
>> Yeah that problem bothers me too. I was 460 or so pounds with dingy
>> dark hair and no social skils a year ago, then I lost a couple hundred
>> pounds and became much more social when I spent a year in SF. If I can
>> do that imagine how a hero might change in those years.
>
> Those changes are still possible but rather than modelling them by
> increasing basic attributes, they are modelled with "core" skill
> increases. So, to use your personal example above (if you don't mind :),
> you increased your Athletics and Charm skills, but your basic physical
> and social attributes remain the same. See my reply to Sam for more
> details.

There is a problem with this.

Character A starts with a Strength of 5 and Athletics skill of 3.
Character B starts with a Strength of 2 and Athletics of zero.

During the game, character B does a lot of intensive training. He
can get his skill all the way up to 5, but he's never going to be
as good as Character A since his dice pool for any Strength related
activity is always going to be less than half that of A.

Where the attribute and skill perform different functions, simply
improving the skill isn't going to be enough. In an attribute + skill
system, it isn't too much of a problem since a high skill totally
makes up for a lack in attribute.

What does Strength represent (I'm sticking to Strength since that's
the easy one to think about)? If it's body mass and strength, then
this should go up after lots of training. Simply putting up the
Athletics skill isn't going to be enough.





-- 
Be seeing you,            Web: www.glendale.org.uk
Sam.                       IM: samuel.penn at gmail.com