[crossfire] Attributes/Stats

[Mark Wedel]

  Never saw any response, but had some other musings.  Changing subject to use 
attributes, since that is a bit less general than statistics, which can mean 
almost anything.

  I was thinking there is some disparity in the different classes and how 
many/what starts are important.  These are my quick thoughts on the different 
attributes:

Strength: used for hit bonus, damage bonus, as well as carry capacity.  First to 
are only important in combat, later one is useful for everyone.  Even 
spellcasters are likely to resort to combat once in a while, so this is a fairly 
important attribute for everyone.

Dex: Gives AC bonus and speed bonus.  These are equally useful to everyone.

Con: Gives HP bonus for first 10 levels.  Equally important to everyone.

Wis: Major factor in amount of grace character has (Wis is 66%, Pow is 33% in 
terms of bonuses) for first 10 levels of characters life.  Important for praying 
at altar can casting spells.  As such, only folks using pray skill use this 
attribute a lot.

Cha: Used for shop pricing and a few secondary skills (singing, oratory).  While 
the shop pricing is equally important to all classes, overall this is a fairly 
unimportant stat.

Int: Important for wizards.  it is 33% of the bonus for sp (pow being 66%), used 
in stealing chance and learning spells.  Important stat for wizards.

Pow: Used for sp/grace bonuses, as described above.  If not a spellcaster, stat 
holds no importance.

  If one looks at these descriptions, one can see that spellcasters have a 
tougher time on stats than fighters - for fighters, pretty simple - Str, Con, 
Dex, Cha, Wis, Int, Pow, and the last 4 could be 1 and it wouldn't hurt the 
fighter much.

  For spellcasters, this is tougher - there are more stats they care about.  For 
a wizard, Pow, Int, Con, Str, Dex, Wis, Cha is probably the order.  But because 
of penalties, a 1 Dex is a bad idea.

  The other thing to note is the relative unimportance of Cha here.  For most 
characters, only real effect is on shop pricing, as a lot of characters probably 
do not use singing/oratory.  Other than making some other skill use Cha as its 
key value, I'm not sure what can be done there - I'd almost be tempted to just 
drop Cha.