NYSRPG:Attributes

In nys, attributes are immutable traits inherent to the character and represent his/her potential.

Possibilities

There are many possible attributes for an RPG system:

• Strength (Arms/Legs)
• Health (Poison and Diseases)
• Agility (Dodge/Balance)
• Dexterity (Hand-eye Coordination)
• Influence (Intimidation, Bluff, Diplomacy, Leadership)
• Beauty
• Resistance (Marathon)
• Intelligence
• Memory
• Will
• Magery
• Charisma
• Alertness
• Senses
• Empathy
• Self-control
• Intuition
• ESP

Choices

As you can see, some of these can, and should be, condensed. For example:

• Health + Resistance = Vitality
• Intelligence + Memory = Intellect
• Alertness + Senses + (possibly)Empathy = Perception
• Will + Self-control = Will

While others are situational, and can be put aside:

• Magery and ESP (not every character has supernatural powers)
• Beauty (note that while everyone has a Beauty score, most of the time it doesn't matter)

The main goal when choosing a set of attributes is to provide one that's balanced, a character with "Vitality-13" has the same power of another with "Intellect-13". While it's impossible to fully describe a person with 10-20 numbers, this set should contain at least sufficient information to run a typical fantasy campaign.