so, one thing i've never much liked about a lot of rpgs/ttrpgs, especially d&d, is HP. you level up and you get more HP, but it's not like your character has actually gotten "more life"— instead, it should represent that your character is harder to kill 'cause they're a more skilled fighter or whatever, right?
Sekiro is a game i adore and i think handles this problem brilliantly with its posture mechanic (basically, you can whittle down an enemy's posture rather than their health, making them tired and sloppy and leaving them open for a lethal blow where you just kill them, instantly). this feels like a way better mechanic to me, narratorially, for ttrpgs versus the traditional "i-slash-you-you-slash-me" ordeal. i tried to think recently about how this could look in a TTRPG, and i took a stab at designing my own stats system while at it, cause why not? i'm guessing something like this already exists in other TTRPGs, and if it does please tell me about it! but here's what i came up with (very quick and dirty draft, also inspired by Disco Elysium a bit), in case it inspires you to try implementing this kind of design in your own game.
You've got four main stats: PHYSIQUE, SAVVY, COGNITION, and HEART.
you have a posture bar for each one, because i also think it's cool to be able to do damage in non-physical ways. each stat has six skills associated with it. you can maybe increase those skills as you level up. if you over-level a skill, you get really powerful in it, but you also get a negative condition associated with it. players should embrace these as opportunities for character growth, and honestly maybe every character should start out with at least one skill over-leveled? idk, i don't have all the details fleshed out yet. anyway, on to the stats and skills!
PHYSIQUE
Interface with the world using your physical prowess and capabilities of your body. Reducing your PHYSIQUE posture to 0 makes you POWERLESS. Skills are:
- muscle → Your sheer strength. How much you can lift, how hard you can hit. When imbalanced, you become dominating, taking pleasure in inflicting physical harm on those who are smaller and weaker than you.
- speed → Your ability to move of your own volition. How fast you can carry yourself from point A to point B. When imbalanced, you become restless, feeling compelled to never stop moving from place to place and to abandon those who can’t keep up with you.
- deftness → Your agility and reaction time. How well you can dodge, flip, and bend your body. When imbalanced, you become jumpy, unable to control involuntary reactions to bright lights, loud noises, and other surprises to a debilitating degree.
- endurance → Your ability to go through physical exertion for extended periods of time. How long you can stay in the fight, how many hits you can grit your teeth through. When imbalanced, you become pain-seeking, continually seeking out increasing levels of danger and harm just to feel something.
- discipline → Your coordination and restraint. How well you can aim, whether you can hold your fire. When imbalanced, you become metaphorically colorblind, seeing the world only through narrow views of with you and against you, and taking extreme actions to bring those against you to a perverse form of justice.
- chemistry → The resilience and adaptibility of your body on a biological level. How well you can handle drugs and alcohol, how much you can connect with another being on a strictly physical level. When imbalanced, you become indulgent, constantly seeking external stimulants of some kind in order to feel normal.
SAVVY
Interface with the world via careful observation and social maneuvering. Reducing your SAVVY posture to 0 makes you SENSELESS. Skills are:
- watch → Your situational awareness and power of observation. How well you can notice small details and things amiss. When imbalanced, you become paranoid, seeing incoming dangers even in safe situations with trusted friends.
- instinct → Your ability to sense danger and to know what it takes to survive. How well you can navigate in the wilderness, discern natural strengths and weaknesses in others, predict others’ behaviors, and interface with animals and beasts. When imbalanced, you yourself become animal, losing a part of your humanity and relying increasingly on base instinct alone.
- slink → Your ability to go undetected. How stealthy you can be, how well you can hide. When imbalanced, you become faded, preferring the shadows to such an extent that you become forgotten, overlooked, and mistrusted.
- deceit → Your ability to lie and fool others into believing what you want. How big of a whopper you can tell and how believable you can make it. When imbalanced, you become compulsive, and find yourself starting to tell lies recklessly for no reason other than the sheer thrill it gives you.
- wits → Your ability to wield humor and charisma to ingratiate yourself or get out of a jam. How well you can get others to follow your natural lead, how much you can dazzle with the power of speech and smiles. When imbalanced, you become metaphorically hollow, trapped and embittered by the sense that nobody knows the true you— only the face and the show that you put on— prompting you to lash out or fall susceptible to outside manipulation.
- cool → Your ability to stay calm and operate under pressure. How well you can keep a straight face and a hidden hand, how well you can keep your opponent from getting in your head, and how well you can compartmentalize your feelings for a later time when they’re more convenient to deal with. When imbalanced, you become stoic, believing that you must repress any and all feelings to the point where they explode forth uncontrollably, hurting those around you.
COGNITION
Interface with the world via brains and force of will. Reducing your COGNITION posture to 0 makes you MINDLESS. Skills are:
- recall → Your ability to remember details and information. How well you know history and trivia, and how accurately you can recollect the events of your own life. When imbalanced, your mind becomes flooded, filled with so much information you have difficulty making any use of it, potentially warping memories or causing you to revisit them in a nonstop spiral.
- deduction → Your ability to use reasoning, logic, and calculus. How well you can solve puzzles and mysteries, collect and present evidence, and levy the power of facts. When imbalanced, you become conspiratorial, finding connections even where they may not exist and becoming susceptible to dangerous suspicions and theories.
- technical → Your ability to engineer and deploy complicated mechanics. How well you can construct new marvels, how good you are at improvising tools with limited materials, and your ability to understand and operate the things you or others create. When imbalanced, you become machiavellian, fixating on creating increasingly bigger and riskier projects to flaunt your sheer genius and impose your will on the world.
- muse → Your imagination and your ability to create what you consider art. How well you can sing, write, sculpt, or paint your dreams into life, and how well you can comprehend the truths hidden within others’ artistic visions. When imbalanced, you become impassioned to a fault, knowing that deep down all great art comes from suffering and finding yourself willing to inflict that suffering on yourself or on others to achieve your vision.
- presence → Your overall mental stability and sense-of-self. How well you can fend off incoming charms and enchantments, and if need be, how well you can cognitively (though not necessarily emotionally) process trauma. When imbalanced, your inflated sense-of-self leads you to become narcissistic, overestimating your importance and your abilities to the detriment and danger of those around you.
- probe → Your ability to generate completely new ideas and to connect with other conciousnesses on a cognitive level. How well you can commune with the thoughts of other people and even objects, how well you can navigate the recesses of minds far larger and stranger than your own. When imbalanced, you become enraptured, becoming susceptible to losing yourself to the haunting allure one or more greater consciousnesses or that of a hive mind.
HEART
Interface with the world via emotions, bonds, and strength of character. Reducing your HEART posture to 0 makes you SOULLESS. Skills are:
- sway → Your ability to persuade others to your cause. How convincing you can be, how well you can tug on others’ heartstrings, how well you can get your side of things across. When imbalanced, you become manipulative, using your skill in toying with people’s emotions to get what you want out of them, casting aside your regard for their well-being.
- guts → Your emotional intuition (as opposed to your animal instinct) and the your internal self-confidence. How well you can perceive the true intentions of other beings, and how well you can maintain the bravery to follow your own heart, even when everything seems at its very worst. When imbalanced, you become pompous, feeling so confident in your gut that you believe you know everyone else better than they know themselves, and trusting in your mission to a degree that you no longer stop to consider risks, alternatives, or consequences.
- embrace → Your ability to bond and connect with others at an emotional level. How well you can empathize with those in pain, befriend a new stranger, deepen a bond with an old friend, or connect romantically with a lover. When imbalanced, you become codependent, abandoning your personal identity and seeking to receive all validation from one or more other individuals in unhealthy ways.
- tending → Your ability to care for those in need. How well you can heal others’ wounds, how well you can guide those who have lost their way, how well you can play the role of a parent when necessary. When imbalanced, you become overbearing, forcing your hopes for others on them and robbing them of their own agency.
- spiritual → Your ability to believe in things unseen and to interface with higher powers beyond your understanding. How well you can understand and channel the will of the divine, how well you can communicate with spirits and souls, and your odds that someone up there really is looking out for you. When imbalanced, you become zealous, enforcing your radical beliefs upon others and consumed by the ideals of your faith, following them at any and all costs.
- essence → When everything else is gone, this is what’s left. This is your soul, the precarious, inimitable thing inside of you that makes you, you. This is your determination to cling on when you’ve lost everything else. The center of your center, your true name, your raison detre, your will to live. This skill cannot become imbalanced by itself, but rather is reduced by any other imbalances you may carry.
i haven't quite figured out what the POWERLESS/SENSELESS/MINDLESS/SOULLESS (heartless?) statuses should mean yet or how that should roll into PC death, but woof, designing crunchy systems like this is really hard and this is enough for me. if you use something like this in a game you run, or you know of ttrpgs that have similar design, let me know! i'd really be interested in them!!