Is this enough stat categories? How should I scale stat allocation?

[Kylesar1]

I'm working on a Strategic Dice War RP called Mutually Accepted Destruction.


It's gonna be a nice while before this is ready for the interest checks


The thing is that it'll be a bird's eye War RP like Starcraft. There are some stats to be allocated, so I want to know if this is enough stat categories


Action


Land- Affects trops and land-based combat


Air- Affects Paratroopers and Air-based combat


Sea- Affects Marine Troopers and Sea-based combat


Technological- Affects Technology based attacks (cyber-attacks, drone strikes, etc.)


Covert Attacks-(assassinations, nukes, spying, sabotage, etc.)


Inaction


Defense- Helps reduce damage


Recovery- Helps heal after being attacked


Education- Turns attacks into buffs for another attack


Counter- Does a bit of damage back for being attacked


Construction- Builds to permanently increase a stat


Support


*Politics- Rallying the troops


*Technology- Charges up for more powerful technological attacks


Special Ops- Charges up for powerful Covert Attacks


Medicine- Charges up for powerful recovery actions


Alliance- Buffs an ally for the turn


There are 15 stat categories in all. If this is too complicated, I'll eliminate some. I want to try to keep each category equal in number


The next question is how should I scale stat allocation? What I mean is the max. Should it be 1-5? 1-10? 1-50? 1-100? 1-1,000? Should 0 be the min?


The higher the number, the higher the accuracy, but the more complicated it gets to allocate them

 

[Grey]

When I get back to my apartment I'll have some advice. This looks promising already

 

[Kylesar1]

Oi @Grey


Thanks for the help. It's massively appreciated.

 

[Grey]

Alright, it looks like you probably have enough, but I need to know more.


What's the core rolling mechanic? What do you intend in terms of scale, tone, and theme?


Is this a 'war is hell' kind of thing, or a more detached and clinical 'a million deaths are a statistic' thing? World war or smaller conflicts?

 

[Kylesar1]

@Grey


What I'm planning on is each character controls a country, so I'm going for a world war type deal. Big strikes with no focus on one particular character, with hopefully some realistic detail on how the attack affects the area that gets attacked


I need you to elaborate on the core rolling question.


I've been so busy working on the mechanics with figuring out the dice (and how the hell to work the exalted dice) and stat allocation, I haven't thought about the intended tone or the theme. I wanted to get that out of the way before I focus on the general RP itself


I'll get back to you on that one

 

[Grey]

I was referring to your core mechanic, which I assume is a dice roll and probably a task resolution model.


Basically, there are a lot of different ways to use dice and different reasons for each kind.


For example - the classic d20. You roll a twenty-sided die, add a modifier, and if that number is higher than a difficulty number, the roll succeeds. This is quick and easy, but has a very flat probability curve and is rarely much better than flipping a coin. I can't think of a reason why you'd use it, beyond habit.


But then you have percentile rolls (simple, versatile, sometimes a bit too dense), dice pools (which have a number of subtypes), and FUDGE style rolls which are like a dice pool but weird.


So do you want rolls which are fast and easy to read, or slightly slower with a better probability curve?

 

[Kylesar1]

@Grey


I'm not at a level where I can do anything other than dice pool. My first intent was a percentile roll, but I couldn't make it work.


I want to make it somewhat easier for lower level players, since Dice RP tends to scare off players.


I find that the easiest to understand would be the Dice pool. You start with a base number of dice (which varies from stat to stat) and the dice roll itself is the damage. That way, you wouldn't have to fiddle with the Exalted dice.


Buffs and debuffs would either put the modifier on the damage itself after the roll or it would add or subtract a dice before the roll


I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, but I'll give you an example in context of the RP mechanics as I have it so far so you can hopefully get some insight into the RP as well. This is how I've been looking at it, but I'm definitely free to change my approach


Assume that all Offensive Dice are fixed at d10


Base 0 Dice for offensive stats (If you have 0 Land, you get 0 Dice unless buffed)


Player A: 1,000 HP (Base)

• Land: 70/100 (+7 Dice)
  
• Defense: 40/100 (-10 Damage)
  
• Counter: 60/100 (-6 HP to attacking country)
  
• Education: 80/100 (+1 Dice if hit)
  

Political Rally Action (From previous turn): +1 Land Dice


Total: 8 Dice


Player B: 1,000 HP (Base)


Land 57/100 (+5 Dice)


Defense: 90/100 (-20 damage)


Counter: 40/100 (-8 HP to an attacking country)


Education: *100/100 (+2 Attack Dice if hit) (Revenge: Additional +1 Dice if you strike back a country that just attacked)


The roll here would consist of 8 d10 Dice with -20 modifier


[dice]21673[/dice]

1. Player A deals 19 damage
   
2. Player A takes 8 damage from Counter
   
3. Player B Strikes Back
   • +5 Dice due to Land
     
   • +2 Dice due to Education
     
   • +1 Dice due to Revenge Perk (When Education is maxed out)
     

[*]Player B deals 27 damage (-10 from Defense)


[*]Player B takes 6 damage from Counter


[dice]21675[/dice]


Suggestions? Questions? Objections?

 

[Grey]

Okay, first all, the less dice the better with this kind of model. There's actually a very easy percentile method for this, but we'll stick with the pool for now because the extra options it opens up should be useful.


If you are intent on maxing out around, say, 15 dice that's acceptable in a forum context. But having success be an additive modifier slows things down and leads to weird disparities.


I would suggest instead that we look at a sort-of rock/paper/scissors approach and lower numbers, because I personally feel lower numbers give you a more efficient model with a deceptive amount of room to tweak. So let's reduce HP to, say, 50.


Let's stick with each increment of 10 being a d10. So Player A has 7 Land dice, +1 Education die for a total of 8. Instead of defending purely with Land, I think a more combined arms approach reflects modern conflict better. To that end, they can use Air as a kind of defensive value to represent air superiority permitting strikes against an invading Land force. We'll imagine Player B has 7 dice in Air forces which can blunt the attack to some degree - the Land dice must roll 7 or higher to succeed. Instead of adding the results, count each die with 7 or more as a Success. Each success does, say, 1 HP damage. The defending player can roll their Counter value against that to reduce the number of successes that count. So we'll say Player B has 4 dice there.


So Player A rolls 8 dice. Two of them roll below 7 and don't count. The remaining five all roll above seven.


Player B rolls 4 dice to Counter - and we'll say they have to roll better than 7 for simplicity's sake right now - and gets 1 success. So in the end Player A has done 3 damage and Player B is poised to counterattack with an increased damage potential.


Hrm, you know, that's not quite right either. Can you give me a couple of days to build you a simple system using the details you've given me? You'll be free to change it as you see fit or ignore it entirely, but I can figure this out better if I start from some base principles like building any other system.

 

[Kylesar1]

@Grey


Alright.


You can build up a new system and present it whenever you feel


If you have any more questions, either about the mechanics or the stats themselves, feel free to ask

 

[Crosswire]

I have to say that this system so far feels very, very chunky. Having 15 separate stats for each and everything is rather unnecessary, especially since ALL of them appear to revolve around combat. You said before this wouldn't be a number crunching game but that's exactly what it appears to be, too many rules and too many stats.

Action

​

Land- Affects troops and land-based combat

​

Air- Affects Paratroopers and Air-based combat

​

Sea- Affects Marine Troopers and Sea-based combat

​

Technological- Affects Technology based attacks (cyber-attacks, drone strikes, etc.)

​

Covert Attacks-(assassinations, nukes, spying, sabotage, etc.)

​

For example, having multiple categories for different branches of military/attack is a poor way of approaching things. How much damage a nation should be capable of dealing should depend on what they're using to attack, not some assigned number.


If they're attacking by land what kind of troops do they have? What weapons and vehicles are they equipped with? Est, est.

Inaction

Defense- Helps reduce damage

Recovery- Helps heal after being attacked

Education- Turns attacks into buffs for another attack

Counter- Does a bit of damage back for being attacked

Construction- Builds to permanently increase a stat​

Again, how much damage a nation takes and if the enemy suffers damage from an attack should be decided by what they have to defend with. What kind of standing army do they have? Do they have national defense systems? Militias?


Also why would 'Education' be a stat involving buffs? Education seems like a completely out of place stat here, it should involve a nation's ability to research new technologies or something involving knowledge, not get a buff from getting socked in the face.

Support

*Politics- Rallying the troops

*Technology- Charges up for more powerful technological attacks

Special Ops- Charges up for powerful Covert Attacks

Medicine- Charges up for powerful recovery actions

Alliance- Buffs an ally for the turn

​

Politics seems like a superfluous stat, Technology should NOT be a stat at all and should be a separate mechanic, Special Ops seems unnecessary (again attack power should not be determined by stats), Medicine would be connected to technology, and I have no idea how you would stat an alliance or why you want too. An alliance should be an agreement between players that can be used, broken, or manipulated as they see fit not a number on a page.


You obvious have an idea for what you're doing, but with the way things currently are this system would just be a slog to to you. I think you need to cut down the 15 stats you have to at least 7, maybe even 6. You need to have more narrative mechanics and avoid attaching a rule to every little action the players can make and take. I'm still thinking about the specifics but I think the stats should look like something like this:


Population


Production


Science


Culture


Economy


Religion?


Happiness


It's rough but I think this would be a better set of stats then what you have, they're more compressed and multi-purpose. Population could serve as both help and a measure of how much manpower a nation has to use in things like warfare. Production measures how industrious they are and how easily/quickly they can produce and build things. Science is a measure of how well they can research into new technologies and weapons. Economy measures how well that nation can make/gain Wealth and avoid poverty while Happiness measures how the people feel and how likely they are to rally behind or rebel against certain actions.


Religion and culture could be a few different things, but again these are just rough ideas. Take them into consideration at your leisure.

 

[Kylesar1]

@Crosswire


It seems as if you're more focused on maintaining the happiness and the integrity of the country, and not the war, which is the focus. This is about fighting a war, not simply running the nation. Everything here is about how things contribute to the war effort. This is simply the mechanics part of the RP.


Culture is a ??? stat


Religion is a ??? stat


Happiness means nothing when it comes to war. Think Vietnam War. A riot in the streets won't stop the soldiers from going.


I said the thing was supposed to be streamlined. A country like haiti would never be able to get their hands on the type of tanks, jeeps, and automated weaponry the US has. With your system, everyone would scramble to get the big countries because it's logical and leave other players with the scraps, so-to-speak.


If you're gonna rehaul the system, you have to make a system behind it. Where would the dice come in? Happiness seems more like an ever-changing gauge than an actual stat. What happens if the public rebels? How will population be measured? How will the population fall after an attack? How will the population fall if an attack succeeds? Is the stat scaled to represent a realistic population number?


Military and Healthcare are different things.


I know you want more of a narrative aspect, which I agree with. However, you want to throw out my entire system (which is being worked on, edited and changed) for:

• 2 stats (Culture, Religion) that means little-nothing in war
  
• 2 stats (Population and Happiness) that's nothing more than an ever-changing gauge, only one of which means something in the war effort, but not elaborated on how it'll change with the proposed attack system
  
• Production, which isn't elaborated on. Build what, which contributes to what?
  
• Science, which rolls Recovery and Technology into one, despite military and medical technology being 2 completely different things
  
• Economy which isn't elaborated on at all. The implications are obvious, but it's not about implications. It's about how you can implement in a Dice RP
  
• An attack system which doesn't take population of either side into account, nor does it take any offensive or defensive automated weaponry into account, or a military specialty into account
  

Theoretically speaking, one could get Production and Science up as high as possible and launch a couple of nukes really early on


In my system, Alliance affected how many alliances you can make, with politics making alliances accessible. If you don't have good politics, you're not making any alliances. If you have nothing to offer, you're not making any alliances


You have to have a system in mind that takes as many things as possible into account. In any RP that uses dice and stats along with attacking, there has to be offensive stats

 

[Grey]

Alright, here's a very rough model with a surprising amount of room to expand.


Warfare Prototype