Stats (a quick question)

One approach would be to design the game such that each class only has to heavily invest in 1 of those attributes, and lightly in a second (i.e. Rogue needs max agility + some strength, Mage needs max magic + some agility, Warrior needs max strength + some agility, etc.)

Another approach would be to move health regen back to strength, and introduce a mana-like quantity for warriors/rogues (I think modern D&D calls this stamina), which determines how rapidly/often you can attack, and is recharged via magic (might want to rename magic to 'will' or some such in that case).

Yeah, originally there was stamina, but it didn't exactly do a ton and I thought it was overcomplicated, so I took it out. Perhaps I'll re-add it .

So, I'm working on a roguelike rpg type of game. It's in its planning stages, and all has been going well except stats. I used to have around seven stats, but I thought it would be more approachable to just have a few, especially since the player will only be able to gain stat points a few times in the game. Right now I'm thinking spirit, strength, and agility but after some rough organization on what the stats will do, the strength stat is close to useless. Here's the stats as they are now.


Spirit--Mana, Mana regen, Health Regen, Spell damage
Agility--Attack speed, Dodge chance, Accuracy, Critical Chace
Strength--Health, Damage,
As you can see, spirit and agility have a nice twice as many effects as strength. I could move health Regen to strength, but then the pure warrior class would have no reason to gain spirit, and I think if you just focused on two stats that you would be able to have an extremely powerful character.

Any input?

I'd recommend moving health regen to strength, a pure caster doesn't need strength or possibly even agility so why should a pure warrior need spirit ?

If your game isn't too restrictive with the classes and the selection of spells is good enough even pure warriors might want to pick up a few spells anyway + you can always put a spirit requirement on magic/enchanted items.

Spirit:
Max mana, Mana regen, Health regen, Magic damage

Agility:
Attack speed, Accurancy, Dodge chance, [color="#ff0000"]Riposte chance
[color="#ff0000"]
Strength:
Max Health, Damage, [color="#ff0000"]Protection, [color="#ff0000"]Crippling blow chance

Protection: is your defense not just against physical, but also against magic attacks. It's all around defense, so it provides a desirable benefit for magic users too. (Which, by the way, Attack speed also needs to do. It needs to also benefit your magic attack speed, and accuracy needs to benefit your magic accuracy, or magic users will have no need for Agility)
Riposte: This is a counter-attack. It works that if you successfully dodge an attack (a small chance already), then you get a small chance to follow up with a bonus strike at the enemy (a free second attack.... which also has a small chance of a critical hit).
Crippling blow: Crippling blow is the critical hit chance... It's exactly the same thing but I renamed it, to better suit the theme of 'Strength'. Critical hit conjures up images in my mind of expertise in striking a weak point, some that fits well under Agility. However, Crippling blow conjures up images of brute force smashing extra damage into the enemy, install of knowledge of weak points in the enemy.

It helps a little bit, I think, but additional benefits to magic-users would be good for strength. (Maybe make Crippling blows affect magic attacks too, though rename it yet again to something that makes sense for both magic and physical attacks. Maybe "Focused attack" or "Concentrated blow"?

Good point about pure casters, although a pure caster would be hard to execute in this game because of classes. In order to have equipment that increases magic, the caster would need to have enough agility to wear good robes. However, they would only need agility and spirit to be a good pure mage. I think I'll move health regen to strength.

And yeah, the classes determine just very base stats and what weapons you can use, and I made certain a spellsword type character would be easy to make.
Stats now look like this:

Spirit--Mana, Mana regen, Spell damage
Agility--Attack speed, Dodge chance, Accuracy
Strength--Health, Damage, Health Regen
Anyone have further suggestions while I'm changing them?

But is focusing on only one or two stats good, bad or unimportant from a strategical viewpoint? How does reorganizing stat effect portfolios make the game more fun?

It is a traditional criticism of systems with many stats (e.g. D&D and Angband) that less important stats are an useless complication, but if all stats are important for different characters they form a coherent system (no reason to cut them) and improving the important ones is an obvious strategy that can be

• taken for granted, with depth pushed into other aspects of the game (e.g. all fighters maximize Strength, but which weapon are they going to use?)
• not trivial to execute (mainly by working hard to obtain stat-enhancing magic or extra experience)
• limited by diminishing returns (e.g. comparing risk of death and injury with benefits of experience and loot when deciding whether an optional quest or campaign is worthwhile)I think the main design choice you are facing is not what stats should do, but how do you plan to customize and specialize characters within the same class: with high or low values for secondary stats (e.g. Strength only for a powerful fighter vs Strength+Agility for a tricky fighter), with skills and special abilities that assume more or less the same stat values (e.g. "Dodge", "Crushing Blow", "Feint"), with equipment (e.g. halberd vs rapier), with constrained spell lists, and so on.

Roguelikes are played by the most hardcore players. You don't need to make fewer stats for that project. No matter who complex you make it they will still swallow it I would go with more stats.

"the strength stat is close to useless" - it has damage. Anything that affects damage is a very powerful stat (because more damage means the combat is shorter, which means you need less HP and less armour, so damage boosts both offence and defence).

I think you should take a step back and see what choices you want to provide with these stats. Usually, combat have multiple ways to affect the outcome. For melees, you have the choice to do more damage, be more accurate, deal more critical hits and use melee skills more often. Except the last one, these have a defensive counterpart. Then you need to figure out which you want to be tied and which you want to be mutually exclusive. Obvious choices are damage and accuracy. You can deal lots of damage and miss often or be accurate and deal pitiful damage. Do you want accuracy and critical hits to be tied to the same stat? If so, tie them to the same stat, else create another one or make it rely on 2 stats. Then figure out how you want your defenses to behave in the same way and tie them to stats.

After that, you can see if it fits your design goal. Make characters with various stats and see if it makes sense. For example, does it makes sense for a Strength warrior to always have high defense or would you want this to be a choice between defense and evasion?

The more options you give to the player, the more stats you need.

Here's my suggestion. I describe what the 5 stats should do. They could be named something else.

Fortitude - Your ability to take physical punishment, higher physical pain tolerance and stamina, higher run speed.
Will - Your "mental fortitude", protects against "mental" magic, a higher pain tolerance, and higher concentration.
A higher concentration is a must for a spellcaster being able to cast spells quickly and in the heat of combat,
and will also help a ranged character's aim.
Strength - Required to use heavy gear effectively, like armor, heavy swords and powerful longbows. Increases dmg, and affects how fluently you can wield a weapon.
Strength increases attack speed of a weapon up to a certain point, so high strength is unecessary for light weapons,
but has huge impact on attack speed for heavy weapons. It also has a slightly negative impact on run speed.
Dexterity - Important for thievery related stuff. use of bow, and light melee weapons, especially knives (increases attack speed (if strength is high enough), and critical hit chance)
Mana - Determines how powerful magic you can cast, and how quickly you get exhausted, and regen rate.

So, a pure mage would have mana and will as mains. Mana is the offensive side, and will the defensive side (how well they can operate under pressure), they will still die just as quickly from physical attacks. I consider spells like fire and ice as dealing physical dmg. Things that attack the mind directly, is non physical. Against a heavily armoured warrior, mental attacks would be effective (some armors may be weak against certain attacks (electricity and steel), but against another mage, physical attacks would be effective.

A warrior would go for strength and fortitude as mains. They have high stamina, but they also tend to consume more (due to heavy weapons/armor), so this tends to balance out.
A templar would invest heavily in will, aswell sacrificing some strength and fortitude.

For a Ranger/Rogue, Dexterity is the main ability. Depending on how heavy sword, bow you want to wear, there's a specific strength requirement to wield those properly. Fortitude is always good, but will also allow you to run faster and longer, which is great for someone who wants to avoid melee fight. Will's improved aim is important for landing long shots. So a ranger/rogue will usually have dexterity as main, and will, fortitude and probably strength as secondaries.

Make attribute increase gradually less powerful. This way it is beneficial to actually train other than the most important attribute up to a certain percentage of your most significant attribute.

You said rogue rpg, but you also included magic etc, so I just made a proposal about a typical system. There's only 5 attributes, but these will ofcourse alter the parameters like health, melee dmg, ranged dmg, etc, only you have the freedom to alter these as you please. Especially the attack speed scenario I described.
Melee attack speed is increased by strength and dexterity, but strength becomes gradually less important (relative to weapon weight), and once strength becomes little important, dexterity takes over. For instance, an offensive fighter could focus in strength and dexerity (bow and sword), and have a high attack speed, even with heavy weapons, and be quite adept with a bow, but at the expense of fortitude, giving less health, and on top of that lower stamina, forcing him to use lighter armor (if he don't want to get exhausted very fast).

My idea was to make attributes that had a more physical approach, more describing what they are good for, yet possible to hide the underlying calculations.

Leave strength.
Just because it has two uses doesnt mean its not as good as the others.
Have you also thought of making strength more physical and tank based?
Like ad more attributes and put the health to Spirit.

Spirit--Mana, Mana regen, Health, Health Regen, Spell damage
Agility--Attack speed, Dodge chance, Accuracy, Critical Chance
Strength--Damage, Critical Damage, Endurance

Perhaps Spirit also gives resistance to fear/status effects? This would give Warriors a good reason to invest in it to keep from losing on that investment of strength .... and many games increase your carrying capacity via your Strength stat, that could be another reason for the other kind of classes to have some investment in it.

Also perhaps you could have max health determined by Strength but health regen determined by Spirit, or maybe both contribute to max health.