The Six Stats

The six typical stats of a character. Dating all the way back to Dungeons & Dragons, the granddaddy of all RPGs, they have been passed on into other gaming systems (either wholesale or with minor variations), and even farther into non-RPG media.

Classic Six Stats

• Strength: May be called Prowess in some systems. The stat that represents a person's physical power. Used to determine how strong they are and how hard they hit. Used mostly by martial classes. Since the usefulness of this stat drastically drops in systems that aren't heavily Hack and Slash, it's sometimes collapsed in with Constitution in variant systems.
• Dexterity: Also known as Agility in some systems. Dexterity represents a person's physical nimbleness. Used to determine fine motor skills, reaction time, and aiming. May or may not turn out to be The God Stat, particularly for combat purposes. Used by mostly stealth or ranged classes. Due to its reputation as The God Stat, this one is occasionally split into two in variant systems, splitting up its duties between them in some combination.
• Constitution: Also known as Endurance, Toughness, or Vitality in some systems. The stat representing a character's physical toughness. Used to determine how much damage someone can take and how well they resist poisons, illnesses, etc. Used almost universally by all classes (everybody wants Hit Points), but mostly focused on by those that use endurance. Also often associated with a particular form of willpower, namely the ability to take a hit without even flinching or to go far longer than anyone really should be able to by sheer force of stubborness.
• Intelligence: May be known as Mind, IQ, or Intellect in some systems. The stat representing how smart a character is. Used to show how skilled a person is, how quickly they learn, their ability to recall useful information in a pinch, how good they are at logical puzzles, how good their long-term memory is, how many languages they can speak, etc. Used by mostly arcane magic classes.
• Wisdom: May be known as Will in some systems. The stat representing a person's prudence, common sense, and street-smarts, and sometimes how good their imagination and lateral thinking ability is. Used to determine a character's perception, willpower, and decision-making skills. Used by mostly divine classes, and so sometimes associated with piety as well. Also often used as a measure of sanity. For comparison, an Absent-Minded Professor or a Ditzy Genius is high in Intelligence but low in Wisdom, while someone with Simple-Minded Wisdom, Wisdom from the Gutter, or Street Smart is often not that intelligent, but is quite wise. Meanwhile, any shade of The Philosopher tends to rank high in both Intelligence and Wisdom. As the vaguest and least cohesive of the stats, variant systems often rename it, usually into some variation of "perception" or "willpower", depending on what aspect of it the system wants to focus on, although splitting the stat into both is not unheard of either.
• Charisma: May be known as Personality in some systems. The stat representing a person's force of personality. Used to determine how well someone can influence others by speeches, diplomacy, fear, lying, etc. To a player whose preferred solution is Hack and Slash, this is a Dump Stat; to a player who likes to roleplay, or wants to run a Manipulative / Magnificent Bastard, it's the stat of choice. If social situations are at all important, this will be the stat for them. Asking whether or not this stat includes personal appearance or beauty is a good way to start a Flame War in certain circles. As the poster child of the Dump Stat, this is the first stat to go in many variant systems, although some systems instead handle its reputation by broadening its scope, to things as esoteric as "luck" or "stability of the soul".

A Luck Stat is the most common way of adding something new to this setup.

Given that Tropes Are Flexible, the six stats can be completely different than the so-called original ones.

Sister Trope of Three-Stat System. See also Gaming Stat Tropes. Compare with One Stat to Rule Them All and Video Game Weapon Stats.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• The Stands of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure have Destructive Power (str), Speed (dex), Range (how long from its user it can go), Power Persistence (con), Precision (int), and Development Potential (how much it can improve, and the only stat you generally want to see go down).

Comic Books

• The Marvel Universe has its Power Grid, which lists str, dex, con, int, fighting ability, and energy projection. It has a seven-point scale, which by its description maps to 1-8 (1), 9-11 (2), 12-15 (3), 16-19 (4), 20-23 (5), 24-30 (6), and 30+ (7).

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons, the Trope Maker. Early editions commonly house-ruled in two additional stats, i.e. perception and appearance. Although the scale of the stats depends heavily on the edition:
  • In the first and second editions, starting characters rank from 2 (minimum on the die roll and racial penalty) to 19 (maximum roll and racial bonus). Top-level characters can theoretically go up to 25, although increasing stats is pretty hard and unlikely. Everything in the whole world has a cap of 25.
  • In the third and 3.5th editions, starting characters rank from 5 (minimum point buy and racial penalty) to 22 (maximum point buy and racial bonus). Top-level characters commonly reach 36 (easily, using standard magical items) and with enough optimization, they can get above 60.
  • In the fourth edition, starting characters rank from 8 (minimum point buy; racial penalties don't exist) to 20 (maximum point buy and racial bonus). Top-level characters reach around 26 normally, or up to 30 if optimized.
  • In the fifth edition, starting characters rank from 3 (minimum die roll; racial penalties don't exist) to 20 (maximum die roll and racial bonus). Characters have a hard cap of 20, so it's entirely possible to start at this cap and never improve.
• Pathfinder, being a spin-off of the above.
• Alternity, mostly unrelated to D&D but by the same company,
• Played with in The World of Darkness, which uses these six, but adds wits, manipulation, and appearance.
• Betrayal at House on the Hill combines Strength and Constitution into "Might", Intelligence and Wisdom into "Knowledge", and renames Dexterity "Speed". Charisma is replaced with a Sanity Meter.
• Mazes and Minotaurs: Strength, Dexterity, and Charisma are respectively renamed to Might, Skill, and Grace. Wisdom gets separated into Wits (alertness and cleverness) and Will (resolve and self-discipline). Constitution and Intelligence are replaced by Luck.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay includes the six stats in the core Characteristics that are tied to specific Skill Scores and affect secondary abilities: Strength (encumbrance and melee damage), Toughness (Damage Reduction), Agility (Action Initiative in 2^nd Edition; named Dexterity in 1^e), Intelligence, Willpower (intuition and mental fortitude), and Fellowship (social skills). Characteristics also include Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, and other edition-specific additions. In all cases, they're ranked from 1% to 100%, indicating the chance of succeeding on a challenge of average difficulty, with an average score of 30% for a human with no special training.
• Star Trek Adventures: Characters' and ships' stats are given in two groups of six. These are combined one each at GM discretion to create the target range for a Task roll, for example, Fitness + Medicine to hold down an unruly patient for treatment, or Daring + Medicine to try a novel procedure.
  • Characters have the Attributes (ranges from about 6 to a cap of 12) of Control, Fitness, Presence, Daring, Insight, and Reason, and the Disciplines (ranges from 1 to 5) of Command, Security, Science, Conn, Engineering, and Medicine.
  • Ships have the Systems of Comms, Engines, Structure, Computers, Sensors, and Weapons, and the Departments of Command, Security, Science, Conn, Engineering, and Medicine.
• Mutants & Masterminds: A superhero variant set of eight basic abilities: Strength (Str), Stamina (Sta), Dexterity (Dex), Agility (Agl), Fighting (Ftg), Intellect (Int), Awareness (Awe), and Presence (Pre).
• The Marvel Super Heroes RPG has the FASERIP system: Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, Psyche. Fighting is your melee stat, Agility is basically Dexterity, Strength determines how much you can lift and how hard you can hit, Reason is basically Intelligence, and Wisdom is divided into Intuition and Psyche, which determine awareness and willpower respectively.
• ICONS does a six-stat approach: Prowess (melee like FASERIP's Fighting), Coordination (Dexterity), Strength, Intellect (Intelligence), Awareness (basically FASERIP's Intuition), Willpower (straight up Charisma)

Toys

• Most if not all Transformers action figures come with Tech Specs, which consist of Strength, Intelligence, Speed, Endurance, Rank, Courage, Fireblast, and Skill.

Video Games

• Many of the Dungeons and Dragons RPGs (Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, etc), for obvious reasons.
• Might and Magic uses different terms (might, accuracy, endurance, intellect, personality, luck) and adds a seventh "speed" stat.
• Fallout uses the SPECIAL system, which is likewise these six stats plus a luck stat.^note Strength, Perception (Wisdom), Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility (Dexterity), Luck
  • Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader also uses the SPECIAL system, although the game is in real-time rather than turned-based.
• Divinity: Original Sin II uses five of the six: Strength for large melee weapon damage and carrying capacity; Finesse for light weapon and bow damage; Constitution for Hit Points; Intelligence for spell damage; and Wits for perceptiveness, Initiative, and Critical Hit chance. Charisma is replaced by a "Memory" attribute; the closest equivalents are the "Persuasion" and "Bargaining" Civil Abilities, which are optional and have a separate Point Build pool.
• New Horizons, has many stats, most of which are rather unconventional. Depending on player’s settings, they can either be increased by doing them (like Skyrim), or by distributing skill points after level ups. There are also skillbooks available that increase certain stats when bought.
  • Leadership: Determines which tier-ships you can sail without receiving stat-penalties. It unlocks fleets at level 5. Increases by paying your crew their monthly salary.
  • Melee: Determines damage infliged during hand-to-hand combat. Increases by doing damage.
  • Sailing: How fast ships move and turn, as well as how quickly sails are opened or closed. Increased by sailing a ship.
  • Accuracy: How accurate gunners are. Increased by hitting enemy ships and forts.
  • Cannons: Influences cannon-reload speed. Increased by finishing reloads.
  • Grappling: Determines the speed and angle at which boardings can be initiated. Increased by successful boarding-actions.
  • Repair: How well a crew can repair a ship when out at sea, provided there are planks and sailcloth in cargo hold.
  • Defence: Reduces damage taken during ship combat. Increased by getting hit by enemy cannons.
  • Commerce: Influences purchasing- and selling prices at vendors. Increased by trading goods.
  • Luck: Determines the quality and amount of loot found. Increased by gambling.
• The Outer Worlds uses six stats: Strength (affects melee attack power, carry weight, and TTD duration), Dexterity (affects reload speed, melee attack speed, and rate of durability depletion), Intelligence (affects critical damage and unlocks bonus dialogue options at low intelligence), Perception (affects accuracy and weakpoint damage), Charisma (affects Relationship Values with factions), and Temperament (affects health regeneration and companion capabilities).
• Pillars of Eternity Attributes are loosely based on Dungeons and Dragons as a baseline, but decoupled from skills (a check will refer to either an Attribute or a skill, so a character can have a high Might score but be useless at Athletics, or vice versa) and expands and shuffles the roles of the stats in question to make them all useful to all characters, preventing any from being a Dump Stat:
  • Might, the Strength analog, represents power in both the physical and mystical sense and so determines the numerical values of all attacks, including spell attacks and healing abilities, in addition to the Fortitude defense.
  • Constitution is largely the same, determining Hit Point maximum and contributing to the Fortitude defense.
  • Dexterity determines action speed (cast time) of abilities and contributes to the Reflex defense, but unlike Dungeons and Dragons does not influence accuracy.
  • Perception, which is roughly similar to Wisdom in that it governs spacial awareness, influences accuracy, the Reflex defense, and the ability to interrupt enemy actions.
  • Intellect, the Intelligence analog, governs the size of Area of Effect abilities, the duration of continuous effects, and contributes to the Will defense.
  • Resolve, a combination of Charisma Wisdom as it relates to Willpower, governs resistance to having abilities disrupted, enemy effect duration, and the Deflection and Will defences.
• Ragnarok Online has Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Agility, Vitality, and Luck.
• The very first thing you do in the 70s dnd game is to randomly determine your Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, and "Hits" (or HP) of your character. Each stat can be as low as 3 or as high as 18, with the higher number the better and numbers around 10 being the most probable to get. Notably, this stat line-up omits the Charisma from Dungeons & Dragons, probably due to the inability of the game to simulate conversation with NPCs the same way a flesh and blood dungeon-master could.
• Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3 got their inspiration from Fallout and implemented the CLASSIC system: Coordination, Luck, Awareness, Strength, Speed, Intelligence, Charisma.
• The space RPG Colony Ship has six stats: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Perception, Intelligence and Charisma.
  • Its predecessor made by the same company, The Age of Decadence, also make use of the same stats.
• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura has expanded on the stats into eight and evenly divided them into two subgroups: physical and mental.
  • Strength (Physical) and Intelligence (Mental) are the power stats.
  • Constitution (Physical) and Willpower (Mental) are the resistance stats.
  • Dexterity (Physical) and Perception (Mental) are the prowess stats
  • Beauty (Physical) and Charisma (Mental) are the appearance stats.

Visual Novels

• Monster Prom: Boldness, Fun, Smarts, Charm, Creativity, and Money. Each Love Interest requires different stat sets to be dated. Also, some stats early on increase the player's chances of randomly encountering a potential prom date. Other than leveling them up, the gameplay affects the stats by, for instance, getting them to zero if you eat a Poison Mushroom or lowering them a bit if you fail stat checks or purchase certain items from the store.

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