Ability Scores

One of the biggest parts of the D&D game is the ability scores. The most basic part of a character, ability scores describe a character at its core. More than anything else, if someone sees high ability scores, they think powerful character. But, like everything else in ReD&D, ability scores have changed.

There are six ability scores, each defining a certain aspect of a character. They are as follows:

Strength: The raw physical power of an individual, this defines a characters' pure physical might, but also governs the use of certain skills pertaining to beating things, breaking things, and moving things. Additionally, this is a very important score for melee type fighting characters.

Dexterity: The speed, agility, hand-eye coordination and balance of a person, this ability score defines a character's finesse in most things. Many skills relying on subtle manipulations, careful coordination, and stealthily placed movements rely on Dexterity.

Constitution: Health, stamina, and robustness, Constitution is very important for the physical well being of a character. Those with low Constitution are easy to wound, get sick more easily, and are generally of poor fortitude.

Intelligence: Mental acuity, ability to reason, and general learning nature, this score details how easy the character is able to learn, and how much they can generally retain.

Wisdom: Emotional and mental fortitude, common sense, and the degree with which an individual can be swayed, this ability score is generally useful for any character, but tends towards those who are strong of will.

Charisma: Force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism and ability to lead, Charisma is involved in most social aspects. While those who are attractive are often charismatic, this is not always the case, and Charisma does not involve a characters' level of physical beauty at all. Rather, it involves the traits which impact how forceful they are on a less physical level.

Determining Ability Scores
Ability scores are purchased, and are often one of the first things determined by a player. This is because, not only are ability scores integral to a character, but they also influence many other aspects of a character, from skills to thematic abilities to possible character capabilities.

For humans, an average ability score, for all six stats, is 10. Other races may have higher or lower traits as their average, but they tend not to vary too far from this baseline, unless they are particularly impressive. Additionally, while a character might have a particular focus in one skill or another, other aspects of a character tend to balance out.

When purchasing ability scores, all of them start at 10. The only exception to this is if the character is of a race which has an ability modifier, which is taken into account first, rather than later. From there, the player can purchase higher or lower ability scores. It's worth noting that while decreasing an ability score nets a gain in experience points, lowering ability scores abysmally tends to hurt a character more than help.

Ability Scores and Skills
Ability scores and skills share an intrinsic bond, because ability scores regulate how many ranks can be purchased of a particular skill. The determination is simple. Every skill is keyed to a specific ability score, such as Acrobatics which is governed by Dexterity, or Linguistics which is governed by Intelligence. Every skill is limited by how high its key ability score is. In essence, a skill cannot possess more ranks than the ability score is.

So, for example, Roger is a fighting man, and he has a Strength score of 12. This makes him obviously stronger than most other humans, noticeably so. He is a brawling character, tending to favor fisticuffs to sword fighting, so he invests in the Unarmed skill. He wants to be as good as he can be, so he puts everything he has into it, raising his skill to 12. But, that's as far as he can go, unless he raises his Strength score. If he got his Strength score to 13, he could raise his Unarmed skill to 13.

This is why having high ability scores is important to skills. While it is perfectly reasonable to have a very skilled person who has 10s in every ability score, they can never achieve truly high skill ranks that way (since having 10 ranks in a skill is classified as being a Master in that skill).

Special Determinations
While ability scores obviously influence most actions, since they regulate how high a skill can get, as well as high ability scores granting bonuses to different checks, ability scores also provide other benefits based on how high they are. This is based on the actual ability score, not the modifier. Each different ability score grants a different benefit.

Strength: Strength determines how much a character can carry. This is based on a number of factors, such as size and general physiology, but is most strongly determined by a character's Strength score.

Dexterity: Dexterity determines the speed of a character, in whatever their major movement speed is. Generally, alternate movement speeds, such as a swim speed, fly speed, climb speed, or burrow speed, is listed in regards to their more natural movement speeds.

A creature has a land speed (or other basic movement speed) of a number of feet per round equal to 3 x their Dexterity score. While it may seem strange that a creature's speed is based on Dexterity rather than Strength, since it is usually muscles that determine how fast a creature is, it must be noted that musculature relating to speed is different than that relating to raw strength, and simply being a Dexterity score does not preclude it from involving muscles.

Constitution: Constitution comes into play by determining how long you can sustain strenuous activity. Strenuous activity is hard to nail down completely, but things which are strenuous include combat, running all out, lifting more than a heavy load, and other such similar things. You can maintain such activity for a number of continuous rounds equal to your Constitution score. If you continue to attempt to maintain strenuous activity, you become fatigued.

You can 'take a breather' in order to regain some of your stamina. This requires you to take a Full-Round action in which you do nothing but catch your breath. It grants you back two rounds of which you can engage in strenuous activity. If you are fatigued, taking a breather only grants you one round back. You cannot take a breather while exhausted.

Intelligence: Intelligence determines the overall understanding and capability to perceive difficult questions. As such, Intelligence rules over skills. A character can only have a number of skills with maximum ranks in them equal to his Intelligence modifier. There's simply only so much that a single person can understand at one time.

Wisdom: Wisdom is ones shield against confusion and insanity, but in more ways than one. Every character has a sanity score equal to 5 x their Wisdom modifier. Increasing ones Wisdom score will increase their sanity score, but it will not restore it; IE, if you have a Wisdom score of 10 and you take 30 points of Wisdom damage, you would be reduced to 70 sanity. If you were to then increase your Wisdom to 11, your sanity score would increase by 5 points, but would not be restored, leaving you with a maximum possible sanity score of 105, but with a current sanity score of 75.

Charisma: Charisma deals with interactions amongst people, as well as how others view you. Your Charisma score also details how many people you can interact with at one time. You can affect a number of people with your words and actions equal to 10 x your Charisma score.