My “own” Solo RPG rules – Stats (Main)
For the character’s stats, I take heavy inspiration from Fabula Ultima RPG, where you assign dice of particular size to the character's stats, and when the times come to put them in action, you roll then against a set difficulty to see whether you succeeded or not.
The stats themselves are:
- Physical: Which governs any physical activity. This stat could honestly be split in two: - Prowess: the “strength” aspect of the stat; - Deftness: the “dexterity” part of it.
- Mental: Should be used for mental tasks, such as analyses, information gathering (as in piecing together clues), etc.
- Social: Used for any interaction with others.
- Spiritual: Basically force of will. I can see this being part of the Social or Mental stats, but I can also see it used alongside Physical stats: how long can the character endure an arduous task. Considering that I take the Fabula Ultima’s approach to challenge test rather than Ironsworn’s (more when I talk about difficulty), I will keep it separated.
The values for the stats, like in Fabula Ultima, are that of dice size used. Ranging from d4 to d12, though d12 is presently unavailable at character creation.
The stat distribution would work on a point buy system, with a total of 8 points to expend:
- d4: 1 point
- d6: 2 points
- d8: 3 points
- d10: 5 points
- d12: 8 points
This would give the arrays: balanced: d8, d6, d6, d4; specialised: d8, d8, d4, d4; crippling: d10, d4, d4, d4.
To have a d12 in either stat, the others would need to be zero. It could work for some specific scenarios.
I have not fully settled down on this yet, as there is some interactions when it comes to the difficulty challenges (will be explored in a future post).
An alternative system would be to shift the costs, giving the characters a higher range.
- d4: no longer available
- d6: 1 point
- d8: 2 points
- d10: 3 points
- d12: 5 points
Possible arrays being: [d10, d18, d8, d6], [d10, d10, d6, d6], and [d12, d6, d6, d6]
This could also be used as a difference between player characters and random NPCs. As the player character is meant to be a Hero and cut above the rest.
The opposite could also be true, with the lower range used for PC and NPCs alike, while particular NPC, such as villains, would have the higher range.
The possibilities are there, and I have not settle down on any.
The stats themselves would be further improved by Quirks – to be explored in the next post, which is a point for the lower range for PCs.
But there is still the matter of difficulty, which is a point in favour for the higher range.