Thursday 17 June 2010

Charisma and other stats

Getting back to Stygia development, I'm pondering, for a small roguelike, how many stats a character needs? 3, like Crawl (these are Str, Dex, Int). Or 6 like DnD, Angband?

I think 3 is too few, but 6 is too much (has anyone ever worked out a good use for Charisma in a roguelike?

I think just the four (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Stamina) would be better. They also suit thematically the type of game I'm planning (with only three Character Classes - Basher, Sneak, Adept that map to Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence respectively).

Thoughts?

5 comments:

Brian Jeffears said...

You might as well take a crack at it with those 4 in accordance with the notions in your head.

Crawl still doesn't quite have its 3 stats fully sorted/implemented all the way.

Nolithius said...

No need to have complexity for complexity's sake! If 4 stats work well for your system, then 4 stats is the right amount. In fact, for a 3-class system you can get away with 3 stats and have the HP progression be determined by the class.

Cheers!

Ebyan "Nolithius" Alvarez-Buylla
http://www.nolithius.com

Unknown said...

I guess you need to list what game play effects each stat will have in your game before you can decide how many stats you would like to have. What use will stamina have? If it will only affect the number of hitpoint then skip stamina all together and have HP as a stat of it's own instead.

Dave said...

You know, Bjorn, you're right. It would just be used for hp, and otherwise it would be pointless complexity.

Pender said...

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. Stats should be used to implement particular gameplay goals, not introduced for their own sake. Brogue has only HP and Strength, and while lots of people have suggested various changes to the game, not a single person has ever encouraged me to add more stats.

So if you're creating some kind of summoner/charmer/diplomat class, and you want to require some kind of sacrifice of the character's direct combat and magic abilities in exchange for its summoning abilities, a new stat (as an alternative to Strength and Intelligence or whatever) might be just what the doctor ordered. But if you are considering adding CHA because it will make the character screen more impressive, I'd skip it.