MAKING STATS MATTER MORE (THAN JUST HITTING SHIT REAL HARD).

I'm not so much a fan of having stats determine conversation options, because that generally entails that the character neither has a distinct personality developed by the game writers, nor acts as a blank slate which the player can project their own personality onto. Having the character's personality be some intersection of alignment and stat points is, in my opinion, less interesting than either of those options.

...Unless the dialogue options are something in the vein of "There's a fallen tree blocking the path? Let me get that out of the way for you." Aversions of Statistically Speaking can be interesting if they don't impinge ont he characters' personality, but outside of tabletop games, it's hard to implement with any kind of thoroughness.

I don't know if it counts as much of an example, but in my game I have Luck tied to Speed (because there's no seperate Luck stat in RM2003, and because Speed is otherwise fairly unimportant in a turn-based system). The higher the user's Speed, the higher the chance of triggering the effects of equipped Aura. Auras are equipment that have a chance to activate a special effect every turn (like, heal a small bit of HP, increase chances of recovering from status etc).

My MUD does a lot more with stats than the typical RPG does, I think. Skills often have a lot of specific effects based on different stats, or use a different stat than you expect to calculate the damage. Some of the things works pretty well and some don't.

- Agility, compared to your level, affects the maximum number of counterattacks you can perform each round. If your agility is low for your level you might only be able to perform one counterattack per round, but high agility characters can do several. I don't particularly like this and think it should compare your agility to the enemy's level instead, since right now it penalizes you for leveling up. But if the enemies are different levels that'd get messy, so it is what it is.
- There is one class where all the attack skills use agility-based attack power even if you are wielding a strength-based weapon, and then instead of adding your weapon's attack power they add a bonus based on your level.
- There's a counterattack that restores MP based on your wisdom (affects magic attack, max MP) and willpower (affects healing, magic defense, status effect hitrate/resistance/duration).
- There's a counterattack that increases your chance to block based on your weapon's attack power (but not other sources of attack power)
- There's a counterattack that increases your chance to block based on your chance to block
- The Dragoon class has a set of skills that deal magical damage, but the magical damage is based on your vitality stat instead of your wisdom stat like magical damage is supposed to be based on. The formula is otherwise identical to normal magic damage. Vitality normally only affects HP and defense, so this gives you a way to tank yourself up and still do damage.
- It has another skill that calculates a normal physical damage skill and a skill that deals damage equal to a percentage of your current HP, and then uses whichever result is weaker, to encourage you to take both offensive and defensive stats.
- Knight has a skill called Shield Strike that deals damage based on your defense instead of your attack power. It then adds 3x your shield's defense value in place of adding your weapon's attack value. However, the end result still scaled poorly at high levels, after you have the best equipment, where attack power increases a lot faster than defense. And I was mostly fine with that since you can use this skill while built like a wall, but I wanted to improve it a little. So if you pump enough AP into the skill and increase its rank high enough, I gave it a chance to hit an extra time, and the chance is based on your block stat. It does 1-5 hits normally (more hits at lower HP) plus a block-rate-based chance for 1 extra hit every 5 ability ranks.

All these ability-specific and class-specific effects are explained in the abilities' help files, so you know what's going on and can build your setup to suit the skills you're using. The goal is to make it so different stats are useful in different ways to different people, so that, for example, a shield that has high defense, a low block rate, and gives you bonus vitality has a lot of additional pros and cons in different situations. I think all this complication is fine as long as it's introduced gradually and explained well enough that the player can make informed decisions. It'd fall flat in a game where you didn't also have lots of methods to improve different stats though. It's not the kind of stuff you'd want in, say, Chrono Trigger, which would honestly benefit from not even having stats because you can't control them to any meaningful degree and they don't affect any of your decisions.

I have come to like having fewer stats, but them being more attractive for all the classes/builds. For example, a tank class putting some points into the magic stat, since he'll get healed for more.
If done right, I think it opens up more interesting builds compared to "put all your stats into the one your class/build needs".

author=Link_2112

author=RyaReisender
For your normal JRPG stats should only make you stronger.

Nope. If that were true this topic wouldn't exist.

Just because people talk about it doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Well my point was that if the game is linear and has fixed character growth (like in most JRPGs) it would suck if you needed certain stats to do some things, because you really just want to do everything on the first playthrough. I put it in constrast to open world RPGs with free character customization where such a thing makes actual sense.

Fixed character growth is a core aspect of a JRPG. That's why you say that a JRPG is "more western" if it features customization.

Romancing Saga? Only released in Japan and has completely random growth.

Yeah, that game is quite western, despite being released in Japan only. If you ever read an interview with Kawazu? He even says himself that his games are inspired by western RPGs, mainly Dungeons and Dragons.

Why put a limit on something because of where it comes from?

You don't put a limit, you just find a term to describe a certain phenomenon. You are always free to create your own genre. It's really like with music. If you want to make music you aren't limited to the big genres like rock and metal. Maybe you want to combine two and mix in some of your own ideas, you can do that. Often it creates a new name for a genre (like nu metal).

We've established that we don't want to limit ourselves to what you are suggesting.

None of the suggestions so far include anything that isn't covered by what I said. I consider all of this as "getting stronger" no matter how you combine the effects.


In that regard what I like it if for example weapon types or elements are put into stats and they all have the weapon or element typical effects.

But what's even cooler is if different weapon types or elements are converted into stats and each weapon or element is reflected by 2-3 stats. However all the stats are used by different weapons and elements (balanced so that each stat is equally useful). For example if you use a bow you need strength, dexterity and agility whereas if you use a knuckle you need strength, willpower and vitality. If you cast a light spell you might need intelligence and willpower, but a water spell might depend on intelligence and vitality.

As for free stat distribution I can't imagine any system betters than the one used in Ragnarok Online (pre-renewal):
STR - more melee damage, can carry more
AGI - attack speed, evasions
VIT - MaxHP, defense, status change resistance (though some status changes can be reduced by STR, AGI or INT instead)
INT - MaxSP and more magic damage
DEX - More ranged damage, higher accuracy, slightly increases attack speed
LUK - Criticals hits, lucky dodge (dodging that can't be reduce by high accuracy)

That system is really clever because no matter what class you imagine it needs a bit of each stat and it allows you so many different builds like do you want to have a bit less damage but attack double as fast and rely on dodging for defense or you do you want to attack slow with high damage but get some vitality to reduce damage and be immune to status changes?
I tried to design different stat system with either more or less stats, but none of them worked out quite as well.