Help me think cuz I am lazy and incompetent electric boogaloo

NotaNuffian

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So I understand that LitRPG will always be popular because number goes up = MC gets stronger.

What I want to know is that is there any other works that tries to explore the difference in how the stats work?

Because I looked at my dead fetus The Unwilling Usurper and tries to dissect part of it for recon.

The one that I wanted to tackle will be the stats for physical traits like Strength, Speed and Reflex, and vague stats like Health, Stamina and Mental.

Strength is always the easiest to show and misunderstood because Newton's Third Law, pressure and material strength. Lift heavy objects, punch hard.

Speed is a funny thing because I had been through this fiasco alot. In my old watched threads I could probably find a couple more of those threads talking about how Speed is a subset of Strength too and etc.

Reflex. I have no clue on how to show reflex and most folks in SHF just told me to bullet time or Szayel's very long slowmo death.

Health, Stamina and Mental is also moot for me. What bad things are they supposed to have when excess?
 
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My story does these stats:
Brawn: Physical condition
Vigor: Internal energy
Reason: understanding and magic (spirits)
Flexibility: affinity for change (skills) & (agility)
Loyalty: Affinity with summons
Fortune: affinity to natural order (luck) (blessings)
Evil: affinity to curses and the unnatural
 

NotaNuffian

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My story does these stats:
Brawn: Physical condition
Vigor: Internal energy
Reason: understanding and magic (spirits)
Flexibility: affinity for change (skills) & (agility)
Loyalty: Affinity with summons
Fortune: affinity to natural order (luck) (blessings)
Evil: affinity to curses and the unnatural
You mean the one with Minor Villain... Yeah I have to say sorry but I dropped it after can't stand the interaction of MC and the supposed main character.

The main character is a real pussy for calling the teacher imho.
 

Tempokai

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Sometimes, the numbers in LitRPG are just vanity that no one bothers to read properly. Just break down the system to three categories, Body, Mind, Spirit, and you have the answer. Add whatever, but it must make sense.
For example, Strength, Speed and Reflex are the Body category,
Health, Stamina are overlapping the three categories,
Mental is the Mind and Spirit.

Just think of them as a vanity thing that helps the reader to immerse and shit.
 

NotaNuffian

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Sometimes, the numbers in LitRPG are just vanity that no one bothers to read properly. Just break down the system to three categories, Body, Mind, Spirit, and you have the answer. Add whatever, but it must make sense.
For example, Strength, Speed and Reflex are the Body category,
Health, Stamina are overlapping the three categories,
Mental is the Mind and Spirit.

Just think of them as a vanity thing that helps the reader to immerse and shit.
Will do ^_^

I quit when my brain tried to make sense of how the individual stats are supposed to represent the state of the body, ie increase Strength by pressing the fancy + and without proper Health and Stamina, the body will eat itself alive for increasing muscle mass out of nothing.
 
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You mean the one with Minor Villain... Yeah I have to say sorry but I dropped it after can't stand the interaction of MC and the supposed main character.

The main character is a real pussy for calling the teacher imho.
Not for everyone, I suppose. I guess I can take this a a compliment that I conveyed Lucas' true personality effectively.

In any case, I also use that system in my current side story.
 

NotaNuffian

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Not for everyone, I suppose. I guess I can take this a a compliment that I conveyed Lucas' true personality effectively.

In any case, I also use that system in my current side story.
Oh.

Why Flexibility is of two different things? Skill and Agility? Is it supposed to be Dexterity? As in how good one's coordination is? Sorry if I pigeonholed the meaning.
 
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Oh.

Why Flexibility is of two different things? Skill and Agility? Is it supposed to be Dexterity? As in how good one's coordination is? Sorry if I pigeonholed the meaning.
Flexibility is how adaptable the user is at making changes to their body. So an increased flexibility stat is usually used for boosting the effectiveness of skills, but even without skills increasing the stat still makes the user more adaptable by heightening their reflexes and making them agile.

Of the two body stats. Brawn is like an unmoving solid boulder, while flexibility is like a rapid flowing stream.
 

NotaNuffian

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Flexibility is how adaptable the user is at making changes to their body. So an increased flexibility stat is usually used for boosting the effectiveness of skills, but even without skills increasing the stat still makes the user more adaptable by heightening their reflexes and making them agile.

Of the two body stats. Brawn is like an unmoving solid boulder, while flexibility is like a rapid flowing stream.
Brawn covers both Strength and Constitution Endurance?

I take that Vigor includes Constitution (Body's natural healing factor)?
 
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Brawn covers both Strength and Constitution?
Brawn is everything physical. Physical strength, physical defense, physical speed.
As far as how "strong someone is" in normal life like lifting boxes it's brawn, in combat like creating killer techniques it's vigor.
 

NotaNuffian

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Brawn is everything physical. Physical strength, physical defense, physical speed.
As far as how "strong someone is" in normal life like lifting boxes it's brawn, in combat like creating killer techniques it's vigor.
So physical speed =/= agility?
 
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So physical speed =/= agility?
Speed: how fast one can get from point a to point b
Agility: dodging and turning. + Contorting and acrobatics
At least how I'm using it. Might be better to just say reflexes but reflexes doesn't include the latter part.
 

CheertheSecond

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I think you will need to further divide your stats into levels: primary, secondary, tertiary stats, etc.

Str is usually described as a primary stats which means it will affect the secondary stats and through secondary stats defines the value of the tertiary stats that are applicable (if you have tertiary stats in your system).

Spd: I believe should be a secondary stats being affected by 2 primary stats, dexterity and agility. Spd can then be used to define the value of Evasion, a tertiary stat, which requires 4 stats to calculate, 2 primary stats (agility, dexterity), 1 unique modifier value (flexibility) and 1 secondary stat (spd).

Reflex: I am unsure if it should be primary or secondary. I believe someone designed Reflex to be affected by agility + dexterity + intelligence.

Mental: This thing seems to be commonly used as synonym for Mental Strength or Fortitude which is either a unique modifier value or a primary stat depending on the author. It shows how well one mind works under mental stress.

Wisdom: A primary stat. This one is the storage size of the temporary memory. Although I saw many just simply decided it to be memory size.

Intelligence: A primary stat. How fast does the brain working to get the output from the inputs.
 

LilRora

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The thing with system stats is that you can make them whatever you want them to be and you'll still be able to explain what they are. You can try do do it scientifically, or game-like, or yet somehow else, and all of those will work, some better and some worse in specific settings. The most notable difference is that when you're trying to be scientific, you won't have things like dexterity or agility since all of it is just skill, and you might not have intelligence and wisdom for similar reasons.

In my story (one I've not published yet) I have seven stats:
Physical stats: Vitality, Resilience, Power
Spiritual stats: Nexus, Spirit, Manus
Mental stat: Focus (I considered replacing it with Mind, but decided against it in the end)

All the physical stats work on weird mix of cellular, atomic, and funky magic level, which means many things, most notably that Power affects both strength and speed since it affects the overall force exerted by cells. Then Vitality raises speed of reactions, which accelerates the whole body, but does not increase actual speed because it doesn't work on cellular level, where motion comes from. The third one, Endurance, is how much energy is stored in atoms and bonds between them, which has the straightforward effect of making things harder to break, but an interesting thing is that it also increases stamina and slows down growth. This gets balanced with Vitality and Power, so the overall result of raising all three stats by the same amount is an increase in performance over time, but NOT an increase of that time.

That's, as a side note, how I dealt with the weird multiplicative maths of many system novels where you have strength, speed, and stamina, and you somehow end up with two times strength, two times speed, and two times work time, which often adds up to a sixteen times incease in stamina. Which in my opinion deasn't make sense at all, and why I don't like game-like stats in system novels.

Back on tracks though, I hope what I described, together with what was said above, conveys my point, which is that you can do whatever you want as long as you stick to a mostly consistent scheme and explain it properly. At least to yourself, because your readers don't need to know a lot of it.
 

NotaNuffian

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The thing with system stats is that you can make them whatever you want them to be and you'll still be able to explain what they are. You can try do do it scientifically, or game-like, or yet somehow else, and all of those will work, some better and some worse in specific settings. The most notable difference is that when you're trying to be scientific, you won't have things like dexterity or agility since all of it is just skill, and you might not have intelligence and wisdom for similar reasons.

In my story (one I've not published yet) I have seven stats:
Physical stats: Vitality, Resilience, Power
Spiritual stats: Nexus, Spirit, Manus
Mental stat: Focus (I considered replacing it with Mind, but decided against it in the end)

All the physical stats work on weird mix of cellular, atomic, and funky magic level, which means many things, most notably that Power affects both strength and speed since it affects the overall force exerted by cells. Then Vitality raises speed of reactions, which accelerates the whole body, but does not increase actual speed because it doesn't work on cellular level, where motion comes from. The third one, Endurance, is how much energy is stored in atoms and bonds between them, which has the straightforward effect of making things harder to break, but an interesting thing is that it also increases stamina and slows down growth. This gets balanced with Vitality and Power, so the overall result of raising all three stats by the same amount is an increase in performance over time, but NOT an increase of that time.

That's, as a side note, how I dealt with the weird multiplicative maths of many system novels where you have strength, speed, and stamina, and you somehow end up with two times strength, two times speed, and two times work time, which often adds up to a sixteen times incease in stamina. Which in my opinion deasn't make sense at all, and why I don't like game-like stats in system novels.

Back on tracks though, I hope what I described, together with what was said above, conveys my point, which is that you can do whatever you want as long as you stick to a mostly consistent scheme and explain it properly. At least to yourself, because your readers don't need to know a lot of it.
Well, I tried to play with Strength (Toughness) and Speed/ Flexibilty (Elasticity) of the human body in the "future" concept and have James (MC) learn the hard way of maxing Strength but not Flexibility.

He can't exert past a certain point in strength (his implied Strength stat meant that he can go beyond the point) because the joints (cartilage filled) and sinews can't handle the stress due to him not wanting to increase Flexibility. Because increasing Flexibility also increase Elasticity, which brought down overall Toughness, which the idiot thought was Defense.

Cue him getting shattered like glass when someone managed to go pass his breaking point.
 

Cortavar

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OK, I'm going to come in from another angle. I'm a tabletop roleplayer, and a GM, and curious. That means I have seen my fair share of RPG systems.

Most RPGs have primary stats, but what's interesting is that the primary stats change according to what kind of story you and your players want to play.

Dungeon and Dragons has the classic (duh, it's the original) spread of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution (physical stats), Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma (mental stats). It generates campaigns that are relatively balanced between brain and brawn.

World of Darkness has 9 base stats. 3 for physical (the same Str, Dex, Con as D&D), 3 for mental, 3 for social. Each domain has a stat about power (Str for physical), a stat about control (Dex for physical) and a stat about resistance (Con for physical). Dividing the mental stats into pure mental and social stats leads to campaigns that are more focused on the social aspects.

You can find different spreads in different game systems, the point of what I am trying to say is that how you build the stat blocks of a character influences what direction you expect campaigns (and, in your case, LitRPG stories) to take place.

You can have an infinity of stats and splats (archetypes, like race or class) on a character sheet, what will really matter are those you actually use. If you want your story to focus on physical stats, break down the physical stats of D&D into more stats: Agility for movement, Dexterity for fine control, Resistance and Vitality instead of Constitution, you can even get further if you wish.

The real question is: how does that system serve my story? If it's important that your heroes can do different physical things, then a grouping of Brawn will be bad for your story. If your heroes are schemers and intellectuals, getting a single Mind stat is also ill-advised.

Unless you want to go the "let's abuse the system" road, which can also be fun: "in a system that has a single physical stat, everyone is one version or another of a mage, except that weirdo who maxed their physical ability and kicks everyone ass with it" is a fun premise.

Now that we've dealt with primary stats, let's move on to the other parts of your character sheet: secondary stats, levels and skills. LitRPGs have a different balance to those than tabletop RPGs, but I'm going to speak about the latter.

Secondary stats are derived from the primary stats, either directly (ex: Initiative is Dexterity+Perception), or with the addition of something else (ex: Health is (Constitution+a modifier that depends on class) X level).

Things like health, mana, ki, stamina are very often secondary stats. Those generate a pool of ressources that can be depleted and refilled. The other type of secondary stats are static stats like initiative, attack bonus, defense, save throws. Those give a specific bonus to an action and are closer to skills.

Again, what secondary stats you include, if you include them at all, and the way to calculate them are up to you and the kind of story you want to tell. A LitRPG story about a mage without a mana stat is completely doable, but you'll need another way to limit their power or you'll get a Mary-Sue.

Skills are the biggest difference between LitRPGs and tabletop RPGs. In LitRPGs, skills are often independent from any stat, except maybe as a prerequisite. In RPGs, a skill level is the sum of the skill rank and the relevant statistic bonus.

What skills you include, how you obtain them and the power they bestow also depends on the type of story you want to tell. Do you have Diplomacy, Small Talk, Streetwise, Carousing, Deception and Bargaining as skills or do you group them under Social? Or do you have some of them but not the others?

Levels, finally, are there to help you improve all of the rest and possibly grant you other powers. Not all tabletop RPGs have levels, and those that do generally have lower levels in total than LitRPGs. A level 20 D&D character is almost a demigod, a level 20 LitRPG character is often just a beginner.

You need to think beforehand about the range of everything: what is the normal stat value of the untrained human? What is the maximum value of it? Is it easy to raise your base stats or hard? What does it imply for your secondary stats? Same thing with skills, levels and powers...

And, again, but that's really important: what do these choices mean for the story I want to tell?

I hope I have given you food for your story and not confused you too much!
 

LilRora

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Well, I tried to play with Strength (Toughness) and Speed/ Flexibilty (Elasticity) of the human body in the "future" concept and have James (MC) learn the hard way of maxing Strength but not Flexibility.

He can't exert past a certain point in strength (his implied Strength stat meant that he can go beyond the point) because the joints (cartilage filled) and sinews can't handle the stress due to him not wanting to increase Flexibility. Because increasing Flexibility also increase Elasticity, which brought down overall Toughness, which the idiot thought was Defense.

Cue him getting shattered like glass when someone managed to go pass his breaking point.
Makes sense. That's the more scientific approach to stats, which is arguably much better, but much harder to do well.

In my case I went even further, making it that stats don't affect things like elasticity, which only depends on the type of material. (That's actually another one of my pet peeves, when a woman has Toughness maxed out to the point she blocks swords on her skin, but a light jump makes her assets bounce like jello. Realistically it should need a proprtionally huge force to achieve the same result, unless you involve some weird magic.)

Also, back to original topic, I recommend checking out Forerunner Initiative (on RR, not sure if it's on Scribble) if you want another perspective of stats. The short story is that stats are divided into normal stats like strength and resources that do certain things, and nothing bad happens when they're depleted, but bad things start to happen once you go further. So, for example, Health is a resource, and when it hits zero, you start taking physical damage to your body. When stamina hits zero, you start getting exhausted. I don't think it's fully applicable to the idea you have, but it's at least worth considering, especially since there's a lot more details to the system that would take too long to explain here.

Another thing in regards to mental stats, an interesting way of going about it is making physical stats affect the whole body including brain, and mental stats affect soul or spirit or something of the sort. Vigor Mortis (it's not a LitRPG, but still) in later chapters really neatly divides soul and brain as two separate parts of a being that can both function independently, but interact with and affect each other if they are together in one being.

Reflex. I have no clue on how to show reflex and most folks in SHF just told me to bullet time or Szayel's very long slowmo death.

Health, Stamina and Mental is also moot for me. What bad things are they supposed to have when excess?
In that regard, Reflex should be reaction time and speed of thought, but it doesn't need to have anything to do with perceived time. I personally would make high Reflex do very quick subconscious, so for example decision making or doing maths in the head, but something like bullet time should just be practice. No random weeb would have point one second reaction speed just cause they raised a stat, but once they practice, they can go even further.

Excess health and stamina can cause abnormalities during growth/regeneration and restlessness, respectively. No idea about the Mental.
 
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