Goodman Games

Just a question is all, not a critique or critisisim. So why did you decide to go with no Wisdom stat?

P.S. if this has been answered elseware please link me to the thread. I did a search of the forum and couldn't find anything other than the Luck stat replacing Wisdom.

I haven't seen this discussed anywhere. A few ideas:

1. Wisdom tends to be less useful than many other stats. What do you do with it that you can't do with Intelligence? Both sort of fill similar roles in a fantasy RPG.

2. The idea of "six basic stats" seems pretty standard. Once you add luck, something has to go.

but think about the Clerics, the CLERICS good man!

I see no reason to feel beholden to Six stats. I see no reason to keep personality (charisma) over wisdom. Why not just call it "Mental" and avoid Intelligence being a general dump stat for non-wizards/elves? If there were henchmen rules, I could see personality staying.

Clerics use Personality (aka Charisma), which works for me

ogbendog wrote:Clerics use Personality (aka Charisma), which works for me

Actually, personality (which can be thought of as "force of will" to influence people) seems to work as well as Wisdom or better.

truth be told I was a bit skeptical of the change at first. But I guess I could come around to personality/charisma for Clerics.

It certainly would help if a Cleric was charismatic to sway followers and convert heathans. Course not every Priest is charismatic, but then again that just means he has a Charisma of between 9-12 .

ok, but how do I explain to my players that, since no skills like Notice exist, Luck is used for sensory perception checks like Listen?

screenmonkey wrote:ok, but how do I explain to my players that, since no skills like Notice exist, Luck is used for sensory perception checks like Listen?

Listening is a good question. Not being sure the best way to go, and not being fully comfortable with luck as listen, I defaulted to D6 for listening at the door. If you're doing it as luck would it just be like a DC10 luck check? Seems weird, but not something I couldn't get used to. I guess there's an element of luck in happening to listen when the baddies coughed, laughed, or said something on the other side?

Gwarh wrote:truth be told I was a bit skeptical of the change at first. But I guess I could come around to personality/charisma for Clerics.

It certainly would help if a Cleric was charismatic to sway followers and convert heathans. Course not every Priest is charismatic, but then again that just means he has a Charisma of between 9-12 .

I figured it was more about persuading your patron to listen to you

In my experience the wisdom of the character, far more than any other stat, is dependent on how they are played by the player. Do low wisdom characters really do unwise things significantly more often? It is hard to play that way.

Also, it is probably unwise to follow certain gods, but that doesn't mean they can't have powerful and influential clerics!

One session in and I'm already not missing wisdom. [And I never quite got how it made you better at perception anyway.]

IMHO Wisdom has just been splitted between Intelligence and Personality.

screenmonkey wrote:ok, but how do I explain to my players that, since no skills like Notice exist

You have no Notice but you have Spotting, under Intelligence.

Wisdom and Charisma were the typical dump stats - they weren't that important (especially before 3e), like i.e. Dexterity. Merging them gives us a more useful Personality stat, I think.

ogbendog wrote:

Gwarh wrote:truth be told I was a bit skeptical of the change at first. But I guess I could come around to personality/charisma for Clerics.

It certainly would help if a Cleric was charismatic to sway followers and convert heathans. Course not every Priest is charismatic, but then again that just means he has a Charisma of between 9-12 .

I figured it was more about persuading your patron to listen to you

Easy tiger.

I'm sure Mr. Goodman has a good reason why he decided to not go with a Wisdom stat. I always enjoy seeing the curtain pulled back and hearing why designers choose to add this, remove that from a ruleset.

I'm just being honest. I was a bit taken aback by it, but I wouldn't be as interested as I am in the DCC RPG if I wasn't flexible either. I'm more than happy to be persuaded myself

I say good riddance to WIS. Personality seems a perfectly good fit for clerics. All in all I like that DCC doesnt try to kill off sacred cows of the D&D type game but changes expectations or embellishes stuff that existed in the game before.

The question is - what is dramatically interesting? Is it part of the narrative to do a listen check for every door?

Going by OD&D as a guide (which was 1 in 6), everyone had about DC 18 to listen through a door, which makes DC 10 when not through a door sensible as well.

If you don't like modifying by LUK, use INT - probably more appropriate.

Me, I intend to have Luck modify all Skill checks since they won't happen all that often and I think it doesn't upset the balance of the game. If someone has '10 - Born Under the Loom' they add twice their bonus to each Skill check.