Stats for an ABS. What would you use?

So I'm working on a pretty awesome ABS, and I want to make it so that you level up your character's "stats" (variables, not 'built in' stats) as the game progresses not by an experience system, but by other methods. For example, maybe the hero is at the library, and you search the bookshelves. You might find a book about swordplay and increase your "Form" statistic by a point. Basically I want these stats to give you better dodge percentage, better parry percentage, critical hits, better defense, et cetera. Anyways I was wondering what would you guys use for your 4 or 5 major stats in your ABS?

I'm thinking of this:

Body           (how many hit points/hearts/whatever you have.)
Strength      (Increases your damage, Increases your Critical bonus, Increases your dodge chance, lets you use a special attack more often [sorta' like MP].)
Endurance    (Affects how much damage you can take: passive defense, anti-critical hit defense, healing over time speed...)
Agility          (Affects dodge chance, and critical hit chance.)
Form           (Affects damage done, critical chance, and parry chance, hero's chance to "miss", hero's chance to kick (auto-counterattack), et cetera. The GODLY stat. Everything to do with how kickass at combat the hero is.)

So with those five stats I could calculate all sorts of things! I think it is a good system, but if anyone has input, I would love to hear it!

I like RO's stats the best but since you don't have ranged or magicians let's stick to:
1. Strength - blocking ability, affects damage you deal with any weapon, extra bonus to 2h weapons, extra bonus to axes and blunts.
2. Vitality - Defense, regeneration of hp over time, greater healing with potions.
3. Agility - Affects damage of slashing weapons, further for daggers, further for dual wielded weapons, affects the ability to dodge, affects the ability to hit, affects counter chance.
4. Luck , affects user's ability to hit a critical hit, to dodge one and to just naturally dodge by luck.
Luck may also affect your chance of finding items in monsters.
You can add int for mana for using abilities.

Note that if you let agility add too much power it will lose it's balance with strength you should hence make daggers a lot weaker than axes and so on so they'll be of much greater use combined with luck, and so just like with strength, not all the points will go there so the character won't suck.

Well for my particular ABS, you will only play as the main character, who is a bad ass swordsman. So I don't need to write stats for like "accuracy" and "intelligence" and stuff for the hero. As for the enemies, I would certainly not mind making some enemies that shoot at you. I've already managed to make an enemy that heals other enemies (which was actually really easy... the enemy himself will only try to dodge your attacks. A parallel process event does the healing. When the enemy dies, the parallel process event will "die" as well.). By the same method I could make an enemy cast ice spells on you or something. But as for shooting arrows on a smooth path FROM an enemy TO the hero.. I have no idea where to start. Anyways, that doesn't matter. The enemy "stats" are not controlled by variables. It's just a basic command like this:

<>Note: enemy rolls to dodge
<>change variable (100 sided dice) randomize 1-100
<>fork: If "100 sided dice" is less than 50*(some fraction which is less than one, calculated from hero's stats)
    <>blah blah blah enemy dodges, "miss" sound effect, et cetera

...and then a sub-fork for parry, and then yet another sub-fork for critical hits. If an attack passes through all of the forks without being dodged, parried, activating a magical shield, or becoming a critical strike, it will go through as a "normal" attack with no bonuses. It's a really simple system to me, because it follows a logical path that I'm used to. I think I probably got the idea from D&D. But anyways for enemies, I can simply change their "dodge" and "parry" and "critical" chance directly by playing with the forks.. I don't need to make stats to govern these chances because one particular enemy doesn't become stronger as the game progresses.

So yeah, that's my long winded way of saying "I would use intelligence and accuracy, but it's not applicable to the game I'm making". I only need to make stats for melee type attacks, and they will govern dodge, parry, crit, attack strength, defense strength, stuff like that. My "mana" system will be governed by strength, and it basically (so far, this is my plan) will give you a chance every time you take damage to do one of several counterattacks automatically. This will remove 1 from your "mana". But yea, I'm still in the "thinking of cool ideas" stage, and I am NOT very experienced with RPG maker. Which is why I started this topic in the first place. So... if you have any other cool ideas, or a link to a similar thread that would be superb.

By the way, if anyone is interested in this ATB, I sure wouldn't mind writing out a more detailed explanation for how to make a "bare bones" version (with fixed percentages, and without all the fancy stats and stuff.)

Yet anyway, as long as you have a character, there must be a stat that affects if the chara may actually hit or miss an attack, so "Accuracy" stat would be good here.

I guess you're getting too randomly the fact that a foe may evade your attacks. Anyway, it's kind of interesting your vision, I really would never think that my "Strenght" stat would affect my counterattack ratio and specials usage.  As far as I understand, parry, dodge , hit and critical hit conditions are got randomly, may I be misunderstanding your system.

I'm thinking of this:

Body           (how many hit points/hearts/whatever you have.)
Strength      (Increases your damage, Increases your Critical bonus, Increases your dodge chance, lets you use a special attack more often [sorta' like MP].)
Endurance    (Affects how much damage you can take: passive defense, anti-critical hit defense, healing over time speed...)
Agility          (Affects dodge chance, and critical hit chance.)
Form           (Affects damage done, critical chance, and parry chance, hero's chance to "miss", hero's chance to kick (auto-counterattack), et cetera. The GODLY stat. Everything to do with how kickass at combat the hero is.)

There's something I don't get here... Besides that Strenght affects usage of special abilities, what's the difference between Strenght and Form? Moreover, Agility also affects dodge and critical hit ratio. I'd assign these two things to Agility and Form respectively, and leave Strenght only to affect damage inflicted on enemies and bonus given to your attack if succeded to chain a critical hit. Now, for your kickass game, why don't replace the idea of "mana" with a system like power bars that charge as you chain hits on enemies then you would cast specific skills at specific power levels? For a game like yours it'd be more interesting, although you may actually not use bars, but this concept.

I'd like to see how actually bonuses are calculated, maybe it's simplier to understand than it looks, but basically your system isn't too clear about this; not only with hero's actions, but also with foes'.

So you allow a lot of different random ways to block and yet you refuse to allow anyone to interfere with that by pumping accuracy?

You can't make it any more unbalanced than by this way.
You dodge lvl 1 and lvl 100 monsters at the exact same rate
If you can't hit it now, you'll never be able to.
And overall... no you didn't think this through.
You have to have a counter stat for every stat or the game will be fucked.
It's strength that counters defense, It's luck that counters itself and it's dex that counters agility (agility itself being used as dex too quite often)

That aside even with nothing but a swordsman (a huge shame by the way) mana or stamina or "power" or whatever you might name it are important tools
It's that power that allows the swordsman to cast provoking skills, shield skills, bashing, breaking, smashing you name it.
You can't just let him go unlimited, and with a decent enough bonus to that (or a heavy price for mana potions) an int stat will not be useless even for a swordsman (who of course might benefits from it for heal spells, buffs and magic defense)
And say you use strength stat for it, you unbalanced it again, you made strength control too many things, from your attack to how many times you can use special skills and you even dodge with it now and crit with it!
You made strength overpowered, your interest is not to make 1 stat be a "I want this stat pl0x" and the rest "Yeah sure or I could you know.. pump that other stat" you need to make the player think a few seconds first, for that he must have a decent choice.

As for how to make enemy ranged, consider this:
1. Make an event called shot (suggested 1 per enemy) it's flag is auto on off, a shot (just like a heal for say) triggers it.
2. Once triggered the said event teleports in front of the shooter
3. The event "walks" (fast) a set amount of cells in the direction the shooter faced when he shot it.
4. After X steps the event's key is set to off again
5. Upon collision with the hero the event deals damage, according to said enemy's stats and hero's stats.

Simple enough?

So I'm going for a big element of realism in my game, which is why some of my stats seem to affect odd things. Ever tried to dodge someone swinging a stick at you? Then you know it takes a lot of strength in your legs to dodge quickly. Stronger legs would be able to dodge more quickly. Right? Also, if you had a special double-strong extra-fatiguing attack, it makes sense that you could do it more times if you were stronger.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that my idea to make everything affected by 2 or 3 stats instead of just one is a bad idea. It's gonna be kinda complicated and confusing, and hard to balance out.

"Form" (I was also going to call it "Stance" or "Poise") was supposed to be like how "textbook perfect" the hero's fighting style is at that point in the game. I want it to affect many things, but at the same time too much form with no strength for example... the fight will consist of you dodging around an enemy for 2 or 3 minutes whacking at him and doing no damage.

Anyways, as for how my system works.. it is DEFINITELY a work in progress, but I think it's going to be cool.

Credit for this idea goes to xeph. http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,16899.0.html As soon as I read this in his tutorial, my entire system clicked together in about an hour.

Take a look at the below image of my event. All the percent chances on this event are fixed as of right now, but they will be variable dependent later. However, these variables will only be hero's variables. I do not need every enemy to have 5 or 6 stats. Just health will work. Hear me out.

So I'm trying to find 4 or 5 stats to govern all of the percentages and stuff. These stats should be sorta balanced, and like blueXx was saying I shouldn't have too many things depend on a single stat or it will become way unbalanced. So from my stats, I can calculate things like "Hero base hit %", "Hero base parry %", "Hero base crit %", and so on. But in an effort to not have to do this for every single enemy in my game, I have come up with a clever solution "Hero anti-mitigation multiplier"!


For example. I might make a soldier that has BASE 50% chance to dodge and a 70% chance to parry against a schoolgirl. These percentages are fixed for each enemy event. However! the hero is not a schoolgirl and so he will have a multiplier which is based on his "form" and "agility" (or whatever stats I end up deciding on). So lets say the hero is pretty strong, and his multiplier against dodge and parry is "0.35". This is how it works: 50% dodge x 0.35 = only 17.5% chance to dodge. That way the enemy's dodge and parry (and some other things) are dependant on how powerful the hero is, and are not just static numbers. And I also get to avoid making an endless number of variables this way.

But like I said, I haven't figured out what the stats are going to be yet, or what they are going to effect, so in this event all the percent chances are fixed.



But definitely the idea is not to have all enemies in the game with the same chance to dodge your attacks, and for the hero to have the same chance to dodge all attacks. I agree that would be a disaster!

Also, not all enemies will work like this. For example, I have a healer chick who does not attack you (like I mentioned in an above post), and will try to stay away from you. She does not parry. Instead there is a chance for her to cast "confusion" spell on you if you attack her, in which case you wander aimlessly for about 5 seconds while other guys attack you. Cool stuff like that is the aim of my ABS.

I guess you're right about the magic too... I can't imagine playing Zelda without the ice rod thing.

Honestly sure you need strong legs but the idea behind agility is sharpened reflexes, take the superhero Flash for example, he isn't a strong guy at all but he is quick, or rather, he sees everything slow, the whole idea is not being able to burst power at the last moment to save yourself, it's to see the attack coming and just move a little bit.
Rather than thinking how a boxer would dodge, think how a martial artist would.
Not to mention a guy wearing full plate armor, I mean you need a lot of strength just to move in those, you want to be jumping around?
And if you already saw it coming, the warrior's shield and weapon are his best friends, a jump back might not always be enough to evade, blocking the incoming weapon is a very needed skill
That's sort of exactly why warriors aren't considered agile beasts.

But yeah not going to go any deeper into that.
Try what I told you about the ranged attacks, see if it works for you and come back if you need help.

some time ago I came up with 3 sets of opposites that modified fighting style. Loosely outlined, they were as follows:


1) Uke/Seme
2) Patience/Impulse
3) Finesse/Brutality

they modified things like who attacked first, whether you were more likely to critical when you hit, whether you were more defensive or offensive, and so forth. Uke seme implied submissive and dominant or 'passive/aggressive' traits. A more aggressive character could take greater risks but be less concerned about defense.

They represented psychological approaches to combat.

Cool.. my head is still spinning trying to work all the "calculations" and stuff out. I'm waaay out of my league with this ABS, I think haha. Is that Uke Seme thing Japanese?

Anyways, I like your ideas. I want to lean away from the "strength, agility, intelligence, blah, blah" same stats for every single game in existence.

Cool.. my head is still spinning trying to work all the "calculations" and stuff out. I'm waaay out of my league with this ABS, I think haha. Is that Uke Seme thing Japanese?

Anyways, I like your ideas. I want to lean away from the "strength, agility, intelligence, blah, blah" same stats for every single game in existence.

Calculations aren't that hard. Well, they aren't too bad once you got the formula down haha. Don't overthink it just let it flow later. That's just how math is done :/ If you need help, feel free to exchange emails or something lol

As for leaning away, thank you lol... Try the oppositional fighting styles. IDK what ume/seme is but I know finesse (crits, multiple attacks?) vs brutality (Heavy hitters) and impulse (faster attackers, lower defense) vs Patience (slower attackers but counter attacks?) is. I can imagine that working out quite nicely. Of course, you may wanna add 1~2 more pairs.

I think maybe I'm going about this backwards... I'm trying to think of the main stats that will govern values. What If I just list all the values I want governed instead, as well as their opposites?

Attack Strength vs. Defense Strength
+To Hit% vs.  +Dodge%
+To Crit% vs. "Roll with Punch" (for lack of a better term, or "ANTI-CRIT" if you prefer)
+To Parry% and +Block% vs. "+Crushing Attack%" (for lack of a better term)
Mana Pool (MP), Health Pool (HP), Luck (maybe)

We have our two attack stats! "Brute Force" type attack (For attack damage and "Crushing Attack" chance) and "Expertise" (For Critical Hits, and maybe parry). I'll call them "Power and Expertise" I think.

We have sort of two types of defense: "Take it on the Nose" type defense (Defense Strength, Parry and/or Block, and *maybe* HP to some extent.) and "Get out of the way" type defense (Dodge and Roll with Punch). Those can be our Endurance/Fortitude/Resolve and Agility/Acrobatics/Speed/Flexibility.

So, let's not get too sticky on the names of the stats... obviously I want them to be more original than "STR, AGI, INT..."

Body (How much HP you have, to a large degree.)
Spirit (How much MP you have.)
Power (How much damage you can deal, chance to break through block and parry.)
Expertise (Your chance to score a crit, or to parry an attack.)
Fortitude (Your natural defense. Chance to Block damage, chance to parry. How much HP you have, to a small degree.)
Acrobatics (Chance to dodge, Chance to "roll with punch" (un-crit a critical), Chance to take a "glancing blow"?)

Any thoughts on this? I think it's good! Need a cooler word for "Power" though... Ferocity! Nah...
And of course, equipment:

Weapon (Should it be additive to POWER? Or multiplicative to POWER? I'm thinking multiplicative, makes more sense to me... the worst weapon would be say *4.50 of your unarmed... the best weapon maybe like *8.50) Important is the realism in my game... Unlike most games in which "Iron Sword" is a slight step up from "Wooden Stick"... every sword in my game is assumed to be well made and very sharp. There is no reason to make one sword more than twice as damaging as another, with this logic. I want leveling up stats to be more of a focus than buying (VERY) expensive weapons anyways. The different weapons in my game will be more of a novelty than a necessity. And before someone gets all pissy about this being unbalanced, I have played many great games in which your weapon doesn't change... EVER. And it is balanced. By using a weapon as a multiplier instead of a bonus, it's going to be super-balanced. Trust me. But I digress.

Armor (Should this simply subtract damage? Or be a percent reduction? Either one is cool, but percentage makes more sense. Worst armor would be low percentage like 15%... Decent will be 60% ish... amazing will be 80% ish. Note that using a percent reduction in this way is a bit tricky... 60% is EXACTLY twice as good as 20%. 80% is EXACTLY twice as good as 60%.)

As for the maths, I'll be crunching numbers, and seeing what works. Any further input, especially on weapon/armor math ideas would be greatly appreciated!

I think that between these 6 stats, and figuring out how the equipment affects these stats, I'll be in good shape for my ABS.

in Yaoi (gay anime with a ridiculously large female following) uke is "guy on bottom" and seme is "guy on top". In aikido, they have uke - one who initiates the attack and "nage", one who counters and controls the uke.

In terms of uke/seme, I like to think of them in terms of S&M bondage, with seme being the dominatrix type (sadism) and uke being the one who likes it (masochism). Uke is super defensive but takes hits by rolling with it, seme is super aggressive. A seme might attack with more Armor piercing, do more criticals, and hit harder, while an uke might be more resistant to the same.