I don't really want to be another complainer, and I know it's far too late for something like this to be changed anyway, but I'm really bored right now, and I just started brainstorming. I really feel like Bethesda could have done a better job dealing with attributes. I completely agree that they didn't well at all in Morrowind or Oblivion. Only being able to increase three at each level up and trying to maximize bonuses felt far too spreadsheet-y and ruined the feeling of immersion--I know, that word again. The way that health and magicka were handled was also a complete mess in my opinion. If you waited too long to increase your endurance, you would be permanently handicapped with less health than someone who increased it right away, and even the mightiest sorceror would completely cease to improve his magicka pool once his intelligence maxed out, no matter how much he continued to master his art.

However, completely removing attributes doesn't make sense either. The Elder Scrolls has always been about becoming who you play, so it makes no sense that health, magicka, and stamina are increased according to arbitrary choice rather than the actions the player takes and the experience that the character gains. If I go to the gym and lift weights all day, it's not going to make me run a mile faster just because I end up deciding later on that more stamina would be more useful. The fact that a beefy warrior who spends all his time plodding along in heavy armor could end up with a smaller carrying capacity than a thief simply because he chose to put his points into health instead of stamina also completely flies in the face of reason.

It makes sense for attributes to be determined by skills, as these directly represent the actions you take in the game. However, this should happen automatically, rather than having to pick which attributes you think are most important and increasing them by different amounts depending on how much you used them. Here is my idea for how attributes should be determined:

Any attribute should be determined by your level and the highest level you have attained in a skill governed by that attribute. Your level should be taken into account because, for example, it doesn't matter how skillfully you can swing an axe, you need to keep doing it over and over again to increase strength. Again using the gym anology, you can perfect your technique in lifting, but you need to keep lifting, even if you are no improving your technique, in order to keep getting stronger. I believe that only the highest skill should be considered because someone who spends all day swinging a giant two-handed axe around shouldn't be any weaker just because he doesn't also take time to do the same with a small one-handed sword.

I do believe that the perk system makes luck completely useless however. Many of the things luck would determine are or could be governed by perks. Also, luck doesn't make much sense within this system (or any attributes system) anyway, as there is no way to train it.

I believe health, magicka, and stamina should then be determined by a combination of level and attributes. Level doesn't make quite as much sense here with health, as two people with the same endurance should logically be equally difficult to kill, but I believe that the sense of progression received from continually getting stronger is important enough for a role-playing game that logic can be somewhat set aside here.

I threw together some formulas to show how these things could be calculated:

A = 25 + S(.4+.01L) + B, where A is any attribute, S is the highest skill level under that attribute, L is level, and B is any bonus received (including racial bonuses).

Using this formula, a level 1 character with no strength skills higher than a 15 (the apparent minimum) would have a strength of 31, plus any racial or enchantment bonuses. A level 1 character with a strength skill of 30 (if there are any +15 bonuses, as I have only seen +5s and +10s) would have a strength of 37. A 100 in any attribute could be attained once a player had a skill of 100 and reached level 35, or 25 with a +10 racial bonus.

H = 50 + E(1+.1L), where H is health, E is endurance, and L is level.

Here, a lvl1 character with the minimum of 31 endurance would have 84 health, while a character with 37 health would have 91. Because level is multiplicative, the health difference between different endurances would increase with level, to the point where a lvl50 character with 100 endurance would have a whopping 650 health, while a lvl50 character who never bothered to increase endurance beyond the minimum would only have 236, much smaller but still larger than the beginning value due to constant battle. Similarly to Morrowind and Oblivion, a character with a maxed out endurance would gain 10 hit points per level, but your health would not depend on when you maxed out your endurance.

Sta = 50 + (Str + A + W + E)/4 * (1+.1L), where Sta is stamina, Str is strength, A is agility, W is willpower, E is endurance, and L is level

I like the way that stamina depended on a variety of attributes in previous games. Here, it works almost exactly the same as health, except instead of considering a single attribute, it considers several. Even if a character never increases their attributes, they're still getting in better shape simply from all the adventuring they're doing. :biggrin:

M = 50 + 2(I-25)(1+.1L), where M is magicka, I is intelligence, and L is level

I think magicka should be more dependent on attributes than health and stamina, simply because a warrior is never going to use and improve his magical abilities, while a mage or a thief will still toughen up and get in shape from getting beaten on and running everywhere. This way, a starting character has anywhere from 63 to 76 magicka, while a lvl 50 can have anywhere from 122 to 950.


Alright, I realize that I may have gone a little overboard on the details there, but I really feel like a system like that would be far superior to simply removing the base attributes. Does anyone else agree, or do you have completely different thoughts on the matter?

TL;DR. I put my faith in Bethesda to make the choices about their game that no one else but them barely knows anything about yet.

A = 25 + S(.4+.01L) + B, where A is any attribute, S is the highest skill level under that attribute, L is level, and B is any bonus received (including racial bonuses).

Under this system, someone with 100 1-hand would have the highest possible strength stat for their level. They would never need to level another strength skill to get a higher strength. Perhaps you could build an algorithm based on the average of all the strength skills (whatever you deem those to be).


In other words, I personally think it's a bit wonky to get a skill up to 100 early on and never have to think about that stat again. But that might part of your personal design goal.

I thought about that, but that would mean that someone who focuses exclusively on a certain type of weapon would never reach maximum strength even though they still spend just as much time "exercising." Plus, it would force players to train unnecessary skills.

The most realistic way to go about it would be to make attributes decay over time unless you continue using the skills associated with them, but that goes back to the idea of progression. I wouldn't want to see my character get weaker over time. This system sort of makes the assumption that if you take the time to master a skill, you're going to continue using it.

You are basically doing this.

Skills -> Attributes -> Health/Stam/Magica




I just personally think that it's completely ok not to have max strength. Especially if you aren't really using all the strength skills. Under your current system, a theif type that has 100 in one-hand and no other strength skills will have the maximum strength. See where I'm going?

What you say about the thief is true. I don't want to take every skill into account, since that would require someone to switch up weapons and whatnot just for that reason, but perhaps it would be good to consider the two highest. Maybe skills could even count toward multiple attributes to make this easier, two-handed toward strength and endurance, one-handed toward strength and speed, etc.

I suppose attributes could really be cut out altogether and skills and levels could contribute directly to things like health, stamina and knockdown chances, but I still think it's a bad idea to simply pick one to increase irrespective of what skills you chose.

Oops, meant to edit...

Yeah, just picking one is the equivalent of what they did before with attributes.

I like the idea you have that different skills affect different attributes. They could have different weights. Like:

2-Hand - 90% Strength, 10% Agility
Heavy Armor - 50% Strength, 50% Endurance
Archery - 80% Agility, 20% Strength

You could build a nice system like that.


My only question would be... will the attributes do more than just affect Health/Mana/Stam?

I'm thinking that the other effects that attributes had in older games made sense. I would still want to see speed affect running speed, agility affect knockdown chances (though not by itself), strength affect carry weight, things like that. It seems like all the other things that attributes controlled were dropped along with them, and I think it would be better to keep them.

They handle some of those things through perks and items. I know that encumbrance is handled through at least 1 perk. I know there are boots that increase speed. Knockdown comes through perks.

Anyway, balancing the stats with the perks and the world items will be another challenge of introducing stats.


Look at this http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/711916/elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-todd-howard-interview/ at 1:45.

I like the idea of perks, but I don't want them to be the primary thing that determines how your character plays. Really, they're another example of picking things arbitrarily, even if they are at least limited by your skills in this example. That's alright in moderation, but I still want my character to evolve more organically based on what he does. I don't like the fact that if I lug around heavy armor all day, I still won't get any stronger and be able to carry any more unless I pick it from a menu. It would be perfectly fine if I could get a bonus from a perk, but it shouldn't be the only thing defining it, imo.

okay, this board system is way too different from what I'm used to. Is there any way to delete a post if I didn't mean to make it?

It sounds like you want: Action = Direct Result

Which at least to me, sounds like you might even want to consider, in addition to your attribute system, forcing perks on the person as they level their skills. That way there is no arbitrary pick and choose.


It's something to think about anyway.

It's a little late for this.

Well that would be like the mastery levels of Oblivion, which I thought were a great feature. But really, I don't mind picking some perks just because I like them, I just don't want that to be the basis for the development of my character. The way it sounds right now, perks are just as, or even more, important than skills in determining your abilities. Combined with the fact that you pick whether you want to increase health, stamina, or magicka at level up, it seems like your play style has actually taken the back seat when it comes to defining your character.

I am liking the idea of skills contributing differently to multiple different attributes, though. I would still want to combine it with level to determine the actual value, but taking the top couple contributors from a system like that would be a lot better than either using a single attribute or the averages of all governed attributes. I really wish I was a decent modder so I could actually put this stuff in once I get the game.



As I said in the beginning of the OP. This is just a bit of brainstorming.

An easy way to do attributes could be to make them perks.
Just replace perks with attribute-perks, or add them, so one gets two kind of perks to increase each level.
So they could determine increase of stamina, health, magica, instead of increasiing them directly.
There could be skill requirements, that one need 2handed 25 or 1h 35 to gets strength level 2, but the same attribute-perk could be picked from both skills.
The advantage of attributes would be a less random feeling for increase this or that.
They could also replace the perks that are in now, but allow some specialisation.
So one first improves strength, and if one has, lets say strength 3 one can decide to specialize in carrying,
or if one has strength 2 and an attack skill 30 one could specialize in damage bonus, while the basic strength gives both, but not as much.
It would usually possible to do something like this,
the problem would be if one would have to create every npc again, or if there would be a comfy perk-renaming system in the creator-editor,
or at least if this gets not too complicated.

By teh way, mount and blade has a simple but good system.

While its true that Bethesda would never redesign this at this point, this makes a very good mod idea if you have a PC. I've seen many attribute and skill mods for Oblivion that completely changed the mechanics, and I think your idea could definitely be implemented in a mod.

How bout fallout style, you can't increase them unless under special circumstances. They just fade into the background and you only increase them when you get a skill governed by them to 100.
Just the first part was like fallout