Sanctum System Tease Part I: Ability Score Titles

Very quick and small post. These are the 5 ability scores we're using (maybe, titles may change).

Strength

Dexterity

Reason - one ability for your character's mental prowess

Channel - your character's ability to harness, shape and wield the magic of this world

Zeal - your character's lifeforce and sometimes deals with saves

Ability Scores in D&D 3.x (and what we're going to do with them)

I'm going to talk/rant about ability scores for a bit here. Let's look at the example they give in the Player's Handbook first:

Monte (lol) rolls a 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8. These numbers may seem decently spread out but let's look at them for what they really are. Their modifiers. 3.x uses the minus 10 divided by 2 rule for determining what the modifier is for a particular score. That is, a 10 (and 11) is 0 because (10-10)/2 =0. While 12-13 is +1, etc 18-19 is +4 and so on.

So really, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8 is really 2, 2, 1, 1, 0 and -1. Not so spread out anymore huh?
Back to the book, Monte decides to play a Dwarf and after the racial adjustments he ends up with, in modifiers, 3, 3, 1, 1, 0 and -2. It's a little more of a spread, but still, not really.

This is where I take issue. When ability scores of a games 4-6ish players are looked at, it does seem that there is a very even distribution of high and low scores to the different abilities. But upon further examination, the melee classes all have basically the same ability modifiers, the ranged players are similar, and the spellcasters have similar modifiers.

The illusion of vastly different ability scores seems incredibly unnecessary. Taking that a step further, using a standard array or even rolling for ability scores seems rather pointless as well. The standard array is supposed to be a decent average for a character. Frankly I don't see the point in random generation considering it's fairly irrelevant.


So this is why, in our system, you will not be rolling for your abilities. There won't even be a difference between score and modifier. Your value of your score will be the modifier you use on certain checks and rolls. The value of these attributes will be between 0 and 5 to start with the possibility of raising them further a little later on.

More on what these abilities are called and what they are used for to come.

Screw waiting for D&DNext

We've got your new RPG system right here!

Or at least, we will. Once we finish it.

Now I'll admit very readily that I'm not as well rounded as a lot off other gamers when it comes to number of different RPGs played. But I can tell you that I've definitely put in the hours for what we'll call the Big Man on Campus. I couldn't even tell you how many sessions of 6-8+ hours I've played of D&D 3.x.

But my 'partners' (weird title, friends) and I have broken that game 8 ways from Sunday and back again. And honestly it's tiresome.

Pathfinder became the new hope that all us 3.x gamers hoped it would be. But I feel it to is slowly going the way of 3.x and breaking down.

So the 3 of us have decided that we're not going to wait for a big company to hand down a new game that is shiny and attractive at first only to see it quickly tarnish and run into the ground. Harsh I know, but once we finish what we're working on, you'll understand.

We've got lofty goals and dreams. And we absolutely believe in the uniqueness and durability of what we're creating that we can't help but have this level of confidence and some might say hubris.

Stay tuned. Exciting things on the way!