If there are no bounds then there are no rules. If there are no rules then we're effectively omnipotent and then there's no character progression. There must be rules for the game world to make any kind of sense and those rules must themselves be sensible. Otherwise we end up in bizarro world.

Skullcrusher tells you that your character is more adapt at using a warhammer than other two-handed weapons. Strength measures well, strength. Skullcrusher helps to define your character's skill. Not every strong warrior will be trained in every weapon. I really like that Skyrim has chosen to make the distinctions they have when it comes to melee weaponry.

This is especially true because most skills in the game are not synergistic and there is a level cap. Players are not likely to put points into redundant trees, but they will almost certainly raise redundant skills and put the resulting points in unrelated trees. This was possible in the other games, but the multipliers made it inconvenient in most cases apart from Health.

Did you just argue for 'character management' to game the leveling system in a debate about roleplaying?

No it doesn't. 'Skullcrusher' only means you have rudimentary skills with two-handed weapons and that your attacks with warhammers ignore some % of the target's armor. 'Strength 85' means you are very strong in general, which in previous games, described the character's damage potential with melee weapons (not just warhammers), their chance at success in various skills (not just warhammers), carrying capacity, starting hit points, and whatever else. 'Skullcrusher' might say more than 'Strength 85' about your skill with warhammers, but the same is true (in both directions) with 'Two-Handed Weapons 30'. It says less about every other aspect of your character. You are basically arguing about specific skill levels (with a double standard, unless you advocate the removal of those too). Perks have very little to do with it, and what relevance they do have coexists with attributes in Oblivion.

It's very much like arguing that the attribute descriptions in Daggerfall ("Pathetic" - "Superhuman") are more accurate or meaningful than the actual numbers they are derived from. Not an effective argument.

Fantasy rpg′s are littered with bizarre things, the level of realism that the game system aims to provide is only to the point where it pleases the player′s personal preference. We don′t have shoe sizes or keep track of female menstruation cycles or other realistic features because we don′t want them. I like to have attributes in some games, where they really bring something to the mechanics, in other games I can do without them. In Skyrim I customize a character with a heavy body frame, a high skill in two-handed and a really really big axe, now he is strong...if he stands next to a waitress he looks strong, if he wields his axe into a bandit, he appears strong, if I want to keep building this character as a strong barbarian I must focus on gaining more skill and perks to reflect this and this means I will disregard other skills and perks, all in all, I am doing the same thing in terms of character development as when I pick stats or attributes, without crunching numbers.

There has always only been one path for a given character build, since that's what a build is. If making a Ranger requires a given set of perks, then anyone who wants to make one will take them. You can make a chracter that only takes some of them and also takes some from the Assassin spec, but instead of being a Ranger he's a Rogue or Agent.

You're right that heavy/extreme specialization isn't really doable, however at the same time, requiring heay specialization to get the most out of a given skill reduces build options as well, since you have to sink many perks into one line in order to use it properly which will reduce the number available for use in other skills. That said, there's definitely room for further specialization in the current system if you merge the multiple ranks of some of the entry perks into one and then expand the trees.

Past TES games haven't made distinctions between different melee weaponry?

So your warhammers having a property that is inherent in warhammers means you've grown more skilled with using warhammers than you are with axes? Really? And please consider how much sense it makes that your warhammer ignores armor regardless of how strong you are. A strong person can swing a hammer with enough force that it will penetrate through a suit of armor whereas a frail, old lady, who might one day have all the skill in the world but has grown too weak to properly wield the weapon, is going to have a hard time penetrating anything.

What I'm saying is, whether a hammer will penetrate armor is not a matter of skill but a matter of physics. Whether you can land a hit without getting blocked, on the other hand, is a matter of skill. The perk tells you that the character has enough strength that hammer strikes are only slowed down a bit by armor, but then on the other hand, there's absolutely no synergy from this supposed strength of the wielder.

Consequently the perk describes an aspect of an attribute that isn't there without actually saying much about the character's skills. Due to how BGS saw fit to design enemies, it's not even a useful perk, but even so it's a perk that gives you something that the weapon has inherently in the real world. Symbolically, one might waste points in the perk to signal that the character favors two-handed hammers but effectively it doesn't mean much. Since the perk is useless (as are all the weapon specialization perks, 1H or 2H), said character is really no better or worse with hammers than he is with axes or swords.

Contrast this with what you could accomplish by having attributes, skills, and perks compliment each other. You could be a swordsman with a lot of skill and speed but less raw strength or you could be a "hack 'em down" brute, and your stats would actually indicate which one type you are. Wouldn't that be nice?

I think the only real mistake they made in Oblivion with stats was to treat Health differently than Magicka.

In Oblivion your magicka pool (not counting items or race bonus) is twice your intelligence. So, whether you raise your intelligence starting at level 2 or much later in the game, whenever you do get around to raising intelligence your magicka will reflect it, without penalty.

Your health, on the other hand, is based on how much endurance you have when you level up. Then it is locked in and next level up you add a small amount of additional health, based on your endurance at that point. So, there is no way to "catch up" on health points. You either make endurance a priority early on or you accept the fact your character will always have less total health points than he might otherwise have had.

However, having played a ton of Oblivion over the years -- and for a long time I went through a craze where I tried to make "perfect characters" -- i eventually learned to simply not worry about it. There's a difficulty slider with many steps left and right. Nudging it left is not a crime and if playing your style means you need to nudge it left a bit, well, that's what it's for.

Plus, there are so many different ways to handle situations in Oblivion, it doesn't always come down to health. The early focus on endurance really only matters if you plan to play a non-stealthy melee class. And if that's the case, you're probably focusing on endurance-related skills anyway (heavy armor, repair, block).

Personally, I love the main attributes and derived stats in Oblivion. I know Skyrim comes close to replicating many of the things that the Oblivion stats covered, but it's just so simple it feels like a lot less.

nice post.

The RPG stats system was a way of putting real life abilities on paper. You know, with things like Dungeons and Dragons, where you need numerical values to base chance of success for dice rolls. I cant see how in any way, that system is still relevant to modern Action RPG video games. If you want to know how much damage a sword does, why not go straight to the source instead of complicating it with extra numbers?

A numerical value doesnt give me any depth with my character. I have 50 strength. Great. How do you RP 50 strength?

And this is comming from somone who RPs stats as being part of the actual game world.

The thing is, the little frail old lady with maxed out perks in two-handed, is obviously not the little frail old lady that she appears to be, she is in fact a witch with access to undead strength allowing her to wield weapons vastly larger than her frame suggests...there′s that imagination and roleplaying part...

Because they made it possible to have a master swordsman who is fast, but weak, or strong, and slow, one who embraces or resists their heritage, or one who works for\against fate, instead of just a master swordman - period. They also allowed scripting of non-combat events.
You have to live within the boundaries defined by your skills and derivatives already. There's no difference except how the derivatives are defined.

sorry to say but your 4 years late

That's a confusing question considering the last sentence. You mean to say that character strength (if it exists) isn't a part of the actual gameworld?

You do not roleplay 50 strength, you roleplay by it (what ever it is it offers).

IMO what people supporting the removal of attributes don't understand is the fact that attributes are just a tool used by the system in general. They think that putting attributes in means we get Oblivion's system. Oblivion did use attributes but didn't exploit their full potential and furthermore put them in a negative light due to the x3+5 levelling.
I've said it before Skyrim's release and I'll say it again: attributes are an easy way to create more virtual skills, just by combining them and putting attribute governed interactions in the world. Things like your strength determining how fast you chop wood/carry logs can be done easily and increase immersion a LOT. It would be silly to have a woodcutting skill (not to mention it would lead to an immense amount of skills). Same goes for other things, like your agility is a factor on lockpicking (which is a skill already) but could also determine a game of throwing knifes or how easily you slip off inclined terrain. Things that are done a lot and that require special techniques (such as Sword fights) should become actual skills in the game.

A system without attributes translates to less non standard interactions with the game world and for those few non standard (like cooking in Skyrim) there is no measure of how good you are.

Who do you RP a null Str value? but in the latter case you actually have game mechanics backing up your actual abilities. RP a 50 str is much easier because yo uactually have a value to base off of.



Indeed, nice post.

But how is attributes supposed to develop? Levelling? Perks? Static?

Indeed. But at the same time, we want to ride on horses rather than being ridden by horses, we want swords to be faster and more elegant than big hammers, we want shields to offer protection and an off-hand weapon to offer further offense, we want enemies to bleed when we cut them rather than shoot flowers out their ass, we want fire to burn and frost to freeze. We want an understandable, reasonable universe in fantasy settings. Not 100% realistic, of course, because getting instantly killed at any point in time by a stray arrow that hits us in the eye would svck badly, but REASONABLE.


If you fall down too far then your hurt yourself. That's reasonable. If you stand in front of a dragon too long then it might chew on you and kill you. That's reasonable. ANY big, battle-hardened Nord can carry exactly the same and jump exactly as heigh and swing with exactly the same force as ANY frail Breton woman. That's reas... No wait, it isn't. It's no less bizarre than horses taking a giant horsedump on gravity, as they happily run up mountain walls that would make goats suffer from vertigo.


At point 1, your character looks strong but isn't. Because there is no strength in the game. In fact you can't make any "strong" character because "strength" is a term completely foreign and alien to the game model. There are not strong or weak characters whatsoever. You can pretend that he is strong, just like you can pretend that he is smart or a drooling idiot, but there's no support for your imagined detail anywhere in the game.

At point 2, you used exactly the right word. Appears. Your character may appear to be strong but the fact is that whatever strength he appears to have does not correspond well to the way "strength" is usually interpreted. A Bosmer female with the same perks but a background story of being a technique-intensive sword-master would not appear strong but she has exactly the same stats. With attributes, she'd be medium strength but high agility whereas your barbarian would be the opposite. With attributes, we could tell those two apart. Without attributes, we simply have to imagine the difference.

If that's what it comes down to, that we have to imagine everything ourselves without the game actually supporting any of the character choices, then why are we calling the game an RPG to begin with? Surely you could also imagine a ton of different backstories for your Diablo 2 toon. Would you call that an RPG? Have you ever done any role-playing in D2?

Depends on the sysem in place. If your wish is to have a system based off of Oblivion? then the answer would be Leveling based development. Perks should be just that "Perks" you developed via training and ability. However my personal Idea is a more static one with only increases only happening rarely (Like the original fallouts, and most other classic systems, seen like in the D&D series of games.) Because like you see in past gamesas games if you play long enough you become master of all with max everything in there current system of character development.

The thing is, you are playing a single-player rpg, you are not in a mmo world, you don′t have a party of three or five characters, there are no other characters to compare with. It′s only you and your character and how you roleplay your character. You can′t see the attributes of the other characters in the world but they still compare as they should in relation to your character, the old woman at the market is very weak, that housecarl with his big warhammer is quite strong and that double-blade assassin is very fast. It is not pretending or having to imagine, the world provides that for you.

If you attempted to roleplay a civil, bretonian librarian and somehow ended up with a character with maxed out two-handed skill, you as a player obviously made some strange roleplaying choices which broke the realism of the character, it wasn′t the system's fault. If you made proper roleplaying choices what you should have is a character with high speechcraft, alchemy etc, and when you take that character outside and have him or her swing a warhammer against an enemy they won′t do much damage. You can easily tell a swordsman character who invested in dual wielding fast and small blades apart from one that invested in block and shield, they are just as distinguishable based on their perks as they would be based on some attributes.

attributes should ideally be levelled behind the scenes, simply by doing things that are based on them more or less. If you give the player the freedom to choose what attributes to level then you 'd better make choices completely equal as to not dictate the player's playstyle (even though on paper the idea of attributes that were used more should get more sounds good, it leads to skill grinding as we've seen in Oblivion which is not good). The joy of levelling is still there through perks. I think that the best recipe for these kind of systems is to hide unnecessary complexity from the player but not cut it, make it seem logical to him but don't expose your formulas.

People are assuming that things work differently because it's a game. I still sometimes throw things of cliffs to see if they go up or down. However you won't have to explain anything to anyone if your system works just like people expect it to from their experience in the real world.

Yeah, I can make up stuff too, but unfortunately that doesn't solve the problem. If you're a master of two-handed hammers that age normally then eventually you're going to reach a point where your age limits your physical abilites and where that limits what you can do more than your actual skills do. Eventually you might maintain your skills through practice with wooden training weapons but actually using the weapon in combat would become difficult, and lifting and swinging an actual warhammer in combat? Nah, forget about it.

At that point, the old lady I brought up might lose a lot of the inherent armor penetration in a warhammer but she'd still have loads of skill with it. Her swings might have faded due to her age, but I still wouldn't want to take a swing to my kidneys, so if I'm unarmored or lightly armored then her age doesn't matter too much. And the reason she can't penetrate armor anymore isn't because she's "lost the perk" (whatever that means) or because she's not skilled enough anymore, but simple because she doesn't have the strength in her to swing her damn hammer fast enough. That's what's holding her down. Not skill, not the lack of sudden realizations (or perks, if you will), but raw strength that she simply doesn't have anymore.

How do you model that in Skyrim? You can't. You can't make her a former master of hammers that has now simply grown too old, at least not in a way that would be well reflected by her stats. You can write some dialogue about it, I suppose, but then you could also write some dialogue about how she's shagging the emperor every now and again. As far as the game is concerned, you're either skilled and strong or you're unskilled and weak.

This old lady was just an example, though. I wanted to showcase that skill with a hammer is independent from the armor piercing qualities of a hammer. I take it you don't really disagree, since you came up with a cool story about a witch with supernatural strength rather than an explanation of why my understanding of blunt weapons is wrong.

Pardon my French, but what the hell do you think those hordes of NPCs are there for? Making stupid comments about sweetrolls and taking arrows in the knee?

So now librarians have to be civil, eh? Anyway, if you're a civil librarian and someone is trying to cut you down and take your precious books then what do you do? I don't know about you but I'd grab the first and best two-hander with both my hands and do my best to cut him down first.

Eventually, I might learn how to conjure forth a big, two-handed tool of self-defense whenever I need it. Being a librarian, I'd read all I could about how to best use my two-handed tool and in doing so, I might learn a number of techniques that with practice might enable me to be rather effective at wielding the tool.

I'd remain a librarian at heart and I'd never end up with 100 strength, but I would end up with plenty of skill. But since there's no separation between skill and strength in Skyrim, there really isn't any distinction between a librarian who knows all the moves with a two-hander but is really not strong enough to wield it properly, and a brute force warrior with little formal skill in the weapon but who sure packs a hell of a punch whenever he lands one of his clumsy strikes.

You can try to imagine whatever you want, but it's all going to be your imagination. It's not going to be supported by the game and all in-game variables that ought to be affected by strength really aren't.

Your first point is a red herring. Some people want attributes that make a difference in the game world. Your examples miss the point entirely.

You second point can be read a few different ways. Are you primarily concerned with the cosmetics of the gameworld rather than the gameplay? (valid opinion, but if so, it's a different discussion)

You are not doing the same thing picking attributes or perks or skills. Having attributes has nothing to do with "crunching numbers", it's a way of including real world elements into the game environment. Crunching numbers only has to do with the way that is implemented by the developers. Perks and skills involve exactly the same number crunching.


Agreed. Interesting ideas.

Black Spider, I've been down this road before several times on the forums. I agree with your posts, but my guess is that you think too much like an engineer to get much traction here. Many people just want simplicity, period. There are even people who just want a world where they can model outfits. Also, getting frustrated won't help. You're trying to argue logic and math, but the issue is actually cultural. I hope you win a few converts, though.

that doesn't really matter if it's a single player or and MMO a good RPG is made better by having a good mechanics system. It make things more (I hate to say it but...)"Immersive". You now have strength's and limitations along with your fellow NPC's.