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Best system IMHO was in VtM: Bloodlines (and Deus Ex before that). Every point mattered, which is something Larian want to do as well IIRC. In Bloodlines you could focus on hacking and sneaking, or looks and a charming attitude, or just be a melee brawler with swords, or a sniper, and so on, and so on.

You got experience (read: points for distribution) only for completing certain parts of the story, not for killing enemies, which allowed the designers to make good assumptions about the character's strength in any given circumstance.

They released stats on the kickstarter update.

Character Stats

People have been asking about character customization. We will post information about equipment and skills later on. This update will focus on character stats only. Before you read on, please realize that these things tend to change a lot during the process of building the game. We tweak the formulas and the balancing constantly, and the way we programmed and organized this, allows us to make big changes. (Data driven and relative values are the keywords here.) So what follows is the current implementation.

But so yeah, stats. That’s actually a long story. Just so you know, we don’t come up with "a stat system" overnight. At first, we started out with something very, very similar to Divine Divinity. Without implementing it, we realized it wouldn’t work well in a turn-based combat game. We considered the Beyond Divinity stat system, because Beyond Divinity started out as a turn-based game (the publisher decided against that back in the day). Breaking that down, we again had to let go of that idea because it had been changed too much to reflect the real-time combat system Beyond Divinity ended up with.

So this quickly became the tale of how a programmer, a designer, a producer and a CEO set out to each make their own stat proposal. Hearing them one by one, you could feel where each of them was coming from: the mathematical background, the creative approach, the realistic/empirical method...

One of us actually wrote a four-page study about how "realistic fighting" actually works. Part of it looked like this:

When I try to hit someone:

the more skilful I am with my weapon, the more chance I have to hit
the more skilful I am with my weapon, the more damage I will do
strength can determine the damage of some weapons (e.g. a crossbow does not benefit from strength, but a having a bigger draw weight has an effect on a normal bow)
strength can determine the range of some weapons (e.g. the stronger you are, the higher the draw weight of your bow can be, which means that your arrow can go a greater distance)
strength can determine the chance of a normal bow hitting the target because the bowman can draw longer and hold steady longer for better aim
the better my motor skills, the more chance I have to hit and the more damage I can inflict (e.g. having a good aim is having efficient motor skills)
if I am wearing a shield, I am often less free to do with my weapon what I want (even a simple one handed sword benefits from the freedom of not carrying a shield and having a second free hand)
...
And it went on like that, and we started to wonder what this guy does during the weekend... But it became clear that being too realistic would make it a very complex system. Not only to balance it, but also towards the player. And this proposal also only took into account that you were going to fight, and that’s a very limited stat system for a game where a lot more is going on than just fighting.

On the other hand, this breakdown wasn’t that bad of a read because we all agreed that a stat and combat system have to make sense, and be logical.

Sitting together and talking about all of our ideas, we learned where everyone was coming from. So, still on paper, the first stat system we came up with was called SPAM, which was an acronym for Strength, Presence, Accuracy and Mind. After trying it out (still not in game, we were actually building characters on paper, and rolling dice when fighting monsters, persuading characters, picking locks...), we noticed everyone was putting a lot of points in the Presence stat, because that stat was really carrying too much weight. And back to the drawing board we went. A couple of times.

Through trial and error, and discussion, we ended up with the following character stats, and we implemented them in such a way that it is easy to change the values, the rules and the formulas. We have already changed it often, and even added stats, simply by reading our forum (and other forums) and by playing the game.

We know there are nuts here (on Kickstarter, on internet, and at Larian Studios) that love stat discussions, so don’t hold back! (The names of these stats are programmer names, and may still change. Well, anything is open for discussion and balancing, really.)

Also take into account that skills play a big role as well. We’ll tell you more about those later. And hopefully we'll also make the 650K stretch goal, because then we'll be able to add talents and personal traits to the system, which will make it pretty cool.

The NPCs have the same stats and formulas as the player. One level makes a big difference: they have more hitpoints, do more damage, and are generally harder to hit. But it’s still doable if you know what you’re doing.

As the hero, you start the game with 5 points in every stat, and you get 5 statpoints for customizing your character. Per level-up, you currently get 1 statpoint. But 1 statpoint makes a difference.

Items that have an impact on stats, have their positive and negative effects, so there are trade-offs that help building a character. There are items that support different types of character builds. We'll talk about items in a future update.

Stats are also used for saving throws against different effects. For instance, a high dexterity lowers your chance of falling down when walking over ice, and strength gives you a saving throw against being caught in a wall of ice (you can break through).

Level

is a multiplier for your hitpoint bonus from constitution
is a multiplier for your mana bonus from intelligence
Primary stats

Strength

gives damage bonuses to attacks with melee weapons
defines how much weight you can carry
defines what items you can lift
defines how far you can throw items, depending on their weight
gives you a bonus to intimidation
Dexterity

gives damage bonuses to attacks with ranged weapons
gives you a higher chance of successfully picking locks and picking pockets
affects the "ideal range" of ranged weapons
lower chance of triggering traps, higher chance of disarming traps
better at repairing
Intelligence

determines your amount of mana
gives bonuses to magic (depending on the spell: damage, range, width of a cone, duration, how easy or hard the saving throw is...)
gives you a bonus to reasoning
helps you figure out NPC stats and resistances
helps you to identify unknown items
gives bonuses to mind resistance
Constitution

determines your amount of hitpoints
gives you higher resistance against poison
gives you a bonus to charming
Speed

determines the distance you can walk with one action point
defines how good you are at dodging or evading attacks (defense rating)
gives bonuses to initiative
spend less action points when changing equipment or using items in combat
Perception

determines how much chance you have of successfully hitting an enemy (offense rating)
defines your sight and hearing which helps your enemy awareness (e.g. on the mini map)
helps with discovering traps and finding treasures and secrets

This fire demon is a formidable foe. He has a very high resistance to fire. So high even, that fire damage actually heals him. He can create lava surfaces from a distance. Even though his speed stat is pretty low, he is known to sometimes fly over the battlefield. When he runs out of mana, he has to come close to drive his claws through his enemies, dealing piercing damage, or uses his tail to sweep multiple enemies in one attack, dealing crushing damage with a chance of knockdown.

Secondary stats

Offense and defense
These are determined by your primary stat perception and speed. They can be boosted by magical equipment. When you attack someone, your offense rating is compared to your enemy’s defense rating. This determines how much chance you have of actually hitting him.

Damage
This stat is determined by your weapon or your spell, and gets a bonus from one of your primary stats. This can be boosted by well-made or magical equipment.

Critical chance and critical damage
These stats are determined by your weapon. They can be boosted by well-made or magical equipment.

Armor
When a hit is successful, armor absorbs part of the damage that was dealt. For instance, if you’re hit with 8 damage and you have armor 3, you only take 5 damage. If your armor rating is very high, it is possible to completely absorb all the damage that is dealt by a weak enemy. This stat is determined by your equipment and can be boosted with well-made or magical items.

Blocking chance

This is determined by the shield you are wearing, if you are wearing a shield. When a hit is successful, the shield gives you a chance of actually fully blocking the attack. Different shields obviously have different blocking chances.

Hitpoints
This stat is determined by your constitution stat, and can be boosted with magical items. Hitpoints do not regenerate automatically, and can only be regained by healing, eating or resting.

Mana
This stat is determined by your intelligence stat, and can be boosted with magical items. Magic spells cost mana. Mana does not automatically regenerate and can only be regained by drinking potions, eating certain types of food, or resting.

Sight and hearing
These secondary stats are determined by your perception stat. They can be boosted by special or magical equipment. They define how far you can see (we have a shroud, and fog of war system), and how well your hearing is (so you can hear and even identify an NPC without being able to see him).

Initiative
This stat is determined by your speed stat, and can be boosted with special or magical items. It gives you bonuses when combat starts and initiative is rolled.

Persuasion
This is determined by equipment bonuses only. Persuasion gives you bonuses when trying to intimidate, charm or reason with your party members or NPCs.

Walk speed
This stat is determined by your speed stat, and can be boosted with special or magical items. It determines how far you can walk with one action point in turn-based combat.

Luck
This stat can only be boosted with magical items. It’s the X factor of the game...

Poison resistance
Determined by your constitution stat. Poison resistance will absorb the damage poison would do every turn.

Fire, Water, Earth and Air resistances
Determined by magical items you are wearing. These absorb elemental damage.

Mind resistance
Determined by your intelligence stat, and magical items you are wearing. This helps against mind attacks (for instance fear).

Piercing, Slashing, Crushing resistances
Determined by the equipment you are wearing. These resistances absorb damage from physical attacks.

FWIW I'd like to see a couple changes-
Str-
Damage bonus to weapon should vary by STR relative to weapon weight. You only need so much strength to use a dagger as effectively as you possibly can (limited by arm speed, etc)
Weapon type should have an effect on damage bonus. Edged weapons for example are much more skill based in how much damage you do. If you land flat and don't have the right mechanics, its just a really bad blunt weapon. Things like maces should factor strength in more.

Dex-
Should have a minor bonus to melee weapons. Especially lighter weapons. Think rate of attack. You could create a skill/dex fencer rather than have to be a bruiser.

Too many games stop their treatment of slashing vs crushing weapons at armor type.

I hope constitution bonus is retroactive. I HATE when you have a stat that yields less when you spec later into it. I feel forced to spec into constitution early, just to get the most out of it. Ot just make level independent, and 1 constitution = flat hp increase.

Secondly, I hope you have plenty of spells in the game that are not that much focused on scaling with int. I like to play Warrior + XYZ (magic specification), e.g. Buffs, Telekinesis, Summon beasts and other utility. I get that int = more damage, but that shouldn't mean that you're opted out of magic just because it isn't your primary stat, at least not for all spells.

Lastly, I don't feel Perception at all. It seems very weak of a talent, except for the hit chance. It's kinda a moot point, because I don't really like to waste points into it, but never hitting almost forces me to do so. A slight increase to critical chance / critical dodge on top seems like a good idea. That's why I always like when you have "secondary overlap increases" on other stats. E.G. 1 point of Strength = +10 melee damage, 1 point Dexterity = +2 melee damage. Same the other way around for ranged weapons. (it makes sense, as your little 4 page document has showed. More strenght = faster / better draw. More dex = better handling of the melee weapon etc).
So having Percetion +10 accuracy, and strenght +1 for melee, dextery +1 (or something) for ranged would be beneficial to my gameplan.

Armor:
Not receiving ANY damage seems odd. It should at least deal 1 damage imo. When someone hits me with a sword, it hurs, even if it's just a tiny bit.

Agreed, that system was very flexible (katana swinging Tremere ftw!), they seem to stay more in tune with the previous Divinity games though (which doesn't have to be a bad thing ).

I think a presentation similar to how Bloodlines did it would be a very nice thing to have so you can immediately see how stats/skills interact by hovering over them instead of having to make a spreadsheet.

Was reading the kickstarter page, and i have say i dont like the stat descriptions. Having single stats for each of melee, ranged and magic is a bad idea i believe, especially since 2 of those same stats are linked to dialogue choices. A mage cant be intimidating? i dunno, i think being able to set people on fire with your mind is pretty scary. Also the stats as described perpetuate the old trope that melee fighters are dumb, that cant use reason, just there to be brutes. And worst is the poor bow-users who have no special dialogue options at all.

Heres my solution. Decouple the stats from directly favoring specific combat styles, maybe even simply removing the damage bonus to melee/magic/ranged that str, int and dex currently have, that may be enough. Or you should take away the dialogue choices from those stats and place them elsewhere. give reason to perception, move charm over to speed and then give intimidation to constitution. that could make sense.

edit: just want to note second option of moving the dialogue bonuses is probably the better way to make things work well

My thoughts on the stats:
Strength

*Gives damage bonuses to attacks with melee weapons- Good, but depending on which weapons are actually in game, id say have dagger damage modified by dexterity rather than strength.
*Defines how much weight you can carry- Good.
*Defines what items you can lift- Good.
*Defines how far you can throw items, depending on their weight- Good

*Gives you a bonus to intimidation- I would remove all bonuses to chat rolls from stats, your character's chat rolls should only be modified by previous chat selection bonuses. So a character that uses intimidation is intimidating without feeling the need to put a point or two into strength.

Dexterity

*Gives damage bonuses to attacks with ranged weapons- Good, daggers should also be affected.
*Gives you a higher chance of successfully picking locks and picking pockets- Good
*Affects the "ideal range" of ranged weapons- Good, could also reduce action point cost of using daggers to give the feel of a rogue-type character.
*Lower chance of triggering traps, higher chance of disarming traps- Good
*Better at repairing- Unsure, would have to be explained in detail to form an opinion really.

Intelligence

*Determines your amount of mana- Good.
*Gives bonuses to magic (depending on the spell: damage, range, width of a cone, duration, how easy or hard the saving throw is...- Good
*Gives you a bonus to reasoning- As said before, chat roll bonuses shouldn't be linked to stats in my opinion.
*Helps you figure out NPC stats and resistances- Good.
*Helps you to identify unknown items- Good.
*Gives bonuses to mind resistance- Good.

Constitution

*Determines your amount of hitpoints- Good
*Gives you higher resistance against poison- Good
*Gives you a bonus to charming- Bad, See other chat bonuses.
Seems a little empty, perhaps putting points in constitution gives a few action points to use in combat?

Speed

*Determines the distance you can walk with one action point- Good
*Defines how good you are at dodging or evading attacks (defense rating)- Good
*Gives bonuses to initiative- Good
*Spend less action points when changing equipment or using items in combat- Good.

Perception

*Determines how much chance you have of successfully hitting an enemy (offense rating)- Good
*Defines your sight and hearing which helps your enemy awareness (e.g. on the mini map)- Good
*Helps with discovering traps and finding treasures and secrets- Good.

Overall id say, in my opinion, that the stats look very good. A few tweaks and the'd be golden.

How about splitting the stats in two categories?

1) Combat stats (with every perk apart from the one mentioned in point 2)

• Strenght
• Dexterity
• Intelligence
• Constitution
• Speed
• Perception

2) Interaction stats

• Intimidation
• Reasoning
• Charming
• Thievery (perhaps)

People would be able to create a certain characer build for combat situations without having to worry to make a useless character in interaction/communication (like a dumb warrior).

But perhaps the "interaction stats" could also be turned into the traits and talents system (which will be most likely reached anyway).

In the old D&D rulesets Charisma was the stat which contained stats like intimidation, reasoning and charming. But as you are creating a new ruleset/system, you apparantly want to sophisticate that classic persuasion/communication system and that's a good decision I think. But imo it shouldn't be interwoven with the mostly combat skills. These stats are important for your dual-dialogue system, so why not making them more important in your ruleset?
It would stay a solid system with a higher focus on communication and interaction. Just think it over.

And yes, all stats should stay clearly passive. They should never be seen anywhere in combat or dialogue except of their outcome. Stats and rulesets have to work in the background.

I like the theory behind splitting up the dual social stats. I could see how that would work - when you level up, you get one point in physical attributes, and 1 point in Social attributes, but you couldn't spend one of the attribute points in the other category.

I think that's a bit too much of a radical change at this point, though.

Besides, I actually like the more random aspect of the co-operative decision making. I like the idea that you cannot purposefully build your character to win every argument. A lot of games let you max out Charisma and Speech attributes to talk a miser into giving you all his money, but it's the element of unpredictability inherent in the Original Sin's co-operative decision making that's really unique.

Nothing is stopping you from pumping your warrior's intelligence or your mage's constitution or your thief's strength.

One of the things Larian wanted to do with the co-operative dialogues is to emulate the feel of tabletop RPG's by giving every player a voice. This system emulates them in another by letting your fate rest on a fickle roll of the dice, knowing that a bad roll and your carefully thought-out plan can be shot straight to hell, and then anything, anything at all can happen next...

On the subject of stats propposed in kickstarter update.

1. I will try to argue that perception is unnecessary.
Chance of successful hit can be determined by speed and dexterity(with different weights based on weapon you're using).
Sight and hearing can be determined by constitution(which is a health stat so it seems obvious).
Discovering traps and finding treasures and secrets should not be stats based in my opinion. Divine Divinity and Divinity II showed that it's possible.

2. Luck(secondary stat) can be removed.
I never understood this stat and do not know anyone depending on it. It's very obscure. RPG is fun because of experimentation. And you cannot experiment with luck. You can have bad luck with high luck and good luck with low luck. If you make luck too powerful it can break the game. If you make it not relevant then why include it at all.

3. Equipment. Armor should not depend on any stat. You should be able to wear armor if you can carry it. So magical armor can just reduce the weight.

4. Weapon scaling. I also hope that weapons and armor will NOT depend on your level. I like the idea of bows depending on strength. Basically I like the idea of weapons scaling with different stats. For example
knifes could scale with speed
crossbows, halbers and some swords with dexterity
axes, maces and some swords with strength.

5. Also what do you think about completely respeccing of character stats and skills within game? I think it should cost money. It provides a lot of experimentation and RPG genre is all about it.

6. You could also think about throwing away level system and replacing it with continuous progression. Because level system is only used to make stat increments more accessible. E.g. in level system you get level up and can increment strength by 1, in continuous progression you can at any time increment strength if you have N points of XP. You can also determine very easily from your existing level system the amount of XP needed for every level of continuous progression upgrades.

7. I also like when dialog trees show which dialog options follow from high stats. I think it should be transparent. Maybe even show throws as an option.

i like this idea, giving different weapons different stats they depend on. more complicated, but would mix things up more. Also ive been thinking about it, and i think that intelligence shouldnt have both mana increased and bonus to magic damage. All-in-one packages just lead to single stat stacking.

Edit: Just wanted to add that perception is pretty weak stat as stated on the kickstarter page, and sounds as currently described would be one raise to value X and then ignore.

Yeah i would really like to see a separate charisma style primary stat as well.

The proposed system...



... sounds to me like it would end up like a mini dress up game where you are constantly equipping different rings/amulets and stuff when you talk to an NPC.

Perhaps something like:

Charisma -> Charm / persuasion
Charisma (+ Strength bonus) -> Intimidate
Charisma (+ Intelligence bonus) -> Reasoning

Plus perks/talents to further augment.


Should "helps you figure out NPC stats and resistances" not be part of Perception rather than Intelligence?

There seems to be a large problem with the current primary stats. If you want to play a "skillful" warrior, i.e. a warrior who does not rely on Strength he only needs to rely on Perception and, if he wants to be able to take a hit, Constitution. If you want to play a ranger you really only care about Dexterity and perhaps Perception. If you want to play a wizard your main attribute will be Intelligence.

If, however, you want to play a hand-to-hand based rogue you need Strength to do damage, Dexterity to deal with traps, Intelligence to improve your reasoning, Constitution to be more charming, Speed to dodge and Perception to hit and detect. Some of this is a little exaggerated, perhaps you don't really need Strength but it's hard to specialise for an intelligent-rogue when you've only one stat per level.


Why would Constitution help reduce charm? If you're a big beefy guy and a pretty girl comes up to you and calls you tough, would you not like it because you've high constitution? Surely Perception should reduce that because you're "detecting" that she's charming you.

Why does Dexterity which means "skill" help your ability to fire a bow and not say Perception which would allow you to judge distance for example more accurately?

Why would Perception improve your ability to hit with a weapon and not say Dexterity which is your skill with that weapon?

Why would non-magic based user ever take Intelligence when they only get one stat per level even if they really want their character to be good at reasoning?

It seems to me if you want to play an intelligent charming rogue you will have to be entirely incapable in combat, that's okay if you can avoid most combats but in my experience in computer RPGs that's unlikely.

Moktira, you have misread constitution and charm. Its the charming, charismatic dialogue options, not the status effect

Apologies, I did misread that thanks, I guess it's based on health which makes you more charismatic/attractive, that makes more sense, sorry.

This is a really great post, I agree with a lot of what you say.

1. Perception does seems like an unnecessary primary skill when you have Dexterity, Intelligence and Speed.

2. Luck is useful for tabletop RPGs where you can use it to modify a dice roll, in a computer game it's not a straightforward but if they can implement something clever it could be interesting. Perhaps for example if you only narrowly fail a test then there could be a luck-based probability you will still pass it.

3. I agree mostly but perhaps there should be a skill to wear armour to reduce action points penalty. I do think heavy armour should have s strength dependence but as you say, "if you can carry it".

4. My thoughts exactly.

5. I think they said there will be an option but it will be expensive. As you say RPGs require experimentation so I don't think it should be too costly, otherwise you'll end up wanting to restart the game to improve your optimisation.

6. This is another idea I like and have thought about before, to improve as you use rather than arbitrarily assigning an improvement of one after a certain point. eg. if you keep swinging a heavy sword after a time your strength increases, etc. I know Dungeon Siege sort of used this.

7. Hadn't thought about that, really nice idea.

I hope more people read what you wrote!

I can definitely understand a lot of the complaints about too many stats and such.

To be at least minimally functional, you will want points into:

A warrior will want:
STR - to do damage
PER - to hit enemies
CON/SPD - to tank/dodge hits

A Ranger will want:
DEX - to do damage
PER - to hit enemies
CON/SPD - to tank/dodge hits (and this is possibly optional)

A Wizard will want:
INT - to do damage
PER - to hit enemies (maybe? Possibly to see farther.)
CON/SPD - to tank/dodge hits (and this is possibly optional)


That's just the minimum. If you want your warrior to cast spells, then points in INT are probably going to be wanted, you'll probably want SPD for your Ranger to be able to run away or dodge. Your wizard won't be blasting for very long if their CON is so low that they collapse when an enemy sneezes in their direction.


Observations:

- A warrior will be spread much thinner in terms of attribute points, because this: "Hit enemies, damage enemies, don't die; pick any two." is not going to be that effective
- A ranger gets no bonuses at all to any persuasion stats.




That... that actually does make a lot of sense. It would certainly solve the warrior's problem, of them trying to be a jack of all trades with a single piddly attribute point per level.




Luck absolutely belongs in this game, because it is full of dice rolls. Dice rolls to hit, dice rolls to dodge, dice rolls to slip, dice rolls to get your way in conversation. The fact that you can find stuff to boost it makes it MORE useful, not less.




I think this depends on how it's implemented. I'm not making any judgements yet, it's too soon.



No, bows should not be dependent on Strength. We don't need to make all character builds even more identical by locking all weapon damage to a single stat.

Not all melee weapons are based on the same stats.






They said respec is probably in the game, but haven't determined the cost yet.





Continuous progression could work, take enough hits and you get better and your CON automatically goes up, dodge enough and your SPD goes up, perform enough criticals and your PER goes up, but I feel like removing the dilemma from the user about what choice to make removes too much of the




No way! That's a bad idea. I'd rather make my dialogue choices based on instinct, not trying to game the system each time. There are other games for that. Besides, there seems to be only an agree/disagree option most times, so it seems pointless to implement transparency - great, so I know that if I choose option X, I get a bonus and Y a penalty, but I disagree with option X. Transparency does me no good there.

I sincerely think that a lot of this game's fun will come from the thrill of entering a dual-dialogue and not knowing in advance how things will turn out.

If you give people incentives to pump up CHR and coldly calculate the probability of success for each dialogue, instead of playing things out naturally, that defeats the entire damn point of the co-operative dialogues.





I absolutely do not want a Charisma stat. I do not want it to be possible to create a Bluff-o-mat in the game that can pump CHR and have a high chance of winning every dialogue because they have such a high modifier.

It's an even worse idea when you consider co-op. You could get stuck playing with someone who just pumps that. Then you'd have the dual "not fun" whammies of "This tool is just a burden in combat" AND "I have never won any of these dialogue battles".

Daggers get bonus from dex actually. And they're the only weapon type atm that you can use to backstab.



They do. Different weapon types = different requirements, different damage ranges, smaller/bigger ranges, different chances to hit crit, different crit damage calculations.

Darn, this thread is longer than I thought... I will read more as soon as I find time, now working on KS.

1) Agreed
2) Agreed
3) Disagreed. Armor should be handled like any other equipment. See 4).
4) Every weapon, armor or equipment item should depent on stats, not on levels. A mage without enough strengths should not be able to wear heavy armor or wield a great sword.
5) Disagreed. Respeccing characters completely is a major immersion breaker. Respeccing single stat points could be ok for a high price (not only money but also XP?). But if you want to change your character from a mage to a warrior you should have to start a new game.
6) Makes no sense if you get only one stat point per level (as it is now). So there would be no difference between a level system and the XP system you propose. Here you only get a message "You have enough XP points now to increase a stat -> new level".
7) NEVER EVER! Stats should ALWAYS work in the background in a video game, they should never be visible in dialogues or something else. If you have "enough" stat points in e.g. charming there could be another dialogue line in some conversations but it shouldn't be marked "charming 10:.....". You should be able to get that on your own be reading the text, everything else is another immersion breaker and after all, bad design....