Willpower and Endurance

[Joose]

It occurred to me that these two things have a lot of crossover, and there isn't really a need for both in a game. Willpower generally is your ability to strengthen your mind against persuasion or psychic attack, endurance tends to be your ability to withstand more physical damage or go longer without food/water/rest. Both of them are really just a measure of how bloody stubborn you are though, and I cant think of a situation where someone would have high Willpower but low endurance without them also having low Strength. In fact, if its all just covering mind over matter things, you could split every test between straight Willpower or Strength, with some (like how long you can run for) being a mix of the two. Someone who is bloody minded but physically feeble isn't going to be able to run a marathon, but neither is someone physically fit but lazy and weak willed. Both will get to a point where they either cant go on or just really don't want to.

So, I don't want to use endurance as a separate stat, I just want to use Willpower and Strength to cover all these things. But that leaves me thinking Willpower might need renaming. Strictly speaking it makes sense for Willpower to be used for mind over matter situations, but traditionally it doesn't. Do you think leaving it named Willpower could cause confusion for veteran gamers?

[Dog Pants]

Yeah. Willpower certainly does have predetermined connotations for existing gamers. Endurance or constitution is an unrealistic stat, I feel. The human body can only take so much damage, how much is probably more down to luck than any abstract damage resisting characteristic. Some might be more resilient to illness or shock, but I don't think there's a huge amount of variation. How about fortitude, resilience, resolve? In my overcomplicated system in progress I think physical tolerance is a secondary, derived statistic of strength and willpower.

[Joose]

In my overcomplicated system in progress I think physical tolerance is a secondary, derived statistic of strength and willpower.

Thats pretty much what I'm going for, although I think I might make it that its mostly willpower, with high strength characters getting a bonus.

I agree that the amount of damage a person can take doesn't actually vary all that much person to person. I'm more looking to model a persons reaction to that injury. For example, I once broke my toe and it crippled me. It felt horrifically painful, and I couldn't put any weight on that foot at all. In contrast, my uncle once broke his arm (not fully snapped in half, but a decent crack that required a cast) during a rugby game and didn't tell his coach that he needed to go to the hospital until after the game had finished. Or there is the story about the Russian doctor in an Arctic research station that performed an appendectomy on himself with no pain relief. I couldn't do that. I wouldn't be able to sit there and let someone else do surgery on me without pain relief, let alone be in any state to perform complex tasks myself. That's what I'm trying to model: the "endurance" of those people is there ability to carry on despite horrible injury, not their ability to take loads of damage whilst somehow not actually taking the injury in the first place.

Its the "fuck you!" stat. "Fuck you, you are not controlling my mind!", "Fuck you, I will not collapse from exhaustion!", "Fuck you, I will carry on fighting even though I have an arm off!"

Resolve is good. I'll go with that. You are now my official "Naming stuff guy". You may want to come up with a better name.

[Dog Pants]

You are now my official "Naming stuff guy". You may want to come up with a better name.

Handsome Dog Pants With The Big Cock.

[Joose]

Hmm. Its a bit wordy. I shall abbreviate it to "Dog Cock"

[shot2bits]

Its the "fuck you!" stat. "Fuck you, you are not controlling my mind!", "Fuck you, I will not collapse from exhaustion!", "Fuck you, I will carry on fighting even though I have an arm off!"

Can you not just call it the "fuck you" stat

[Dog Pants]

Paranoia had a chutspah stat, that works nicely. It also had moxie.

[FatherJack]

I always have to look up the Yiddish words, I can never seem to remember what they mean as I don't hear/read them often in my circles, I think those two are roughly equivalent to hubris and cojones. The British equivalents are pretty regional.