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[Max White]

I think FF8's faith was an interesting one. That is it acted as an amplifyer for magic, so as 0 healing spells and damage spells were both useless. I like double edged swords like that.

[Vector]

Strength and endurance always seem to be separated, but it occurrs to me that it's difficult to imagine someone with low str but high end, or vice versa.

On average, most women have lower strength and higher endurance than men.

[Max White]

Some people are good at running a short distance very fast. Others are better at running more slowly over a long time. Strengh and endurance are different.

The best way to explain the logic behind strengh and enducance, as it could be implemented in a game, would be that strengh is an integer that affects tasks, but has a constant debuff that slowly lowers it's value, while endurance lowers the rate of decline for strengh. Mathamaticaly, strengh is the primitive function, and endurance is the first derivitive.

[Knight of Fools]

I've actually spent far too much time thinking about a set of statistics that was balanced and interesting.  It kind of plays with the universe I've made up, but you and anyone else who wants are free to use it and/or alter it.


Body

Strength
Endurance - Affects stamina (Or energy), health, and pain threshold.
Size - Acts like Strength and Endurance combined (With a smaller effect); influences stealth and dodging.

Mind

Dexterity - General accuracy when performing tasks.
Speed - Determines reaction speed and a variety of physical tasks.
Intelligence - Affects experience gain, willpower, energy levels, and a wide variety of skills and abilities.

Soul

Power - A person's magical muscle, determining magical strength and capacity.
Spirit (Or Heart) - A person's self determination, creativity, luck, divine grace, and general drive to do what he or she does.  Affects social skills, and gives bonuses to almost everything (Especially magic).  Acts like charisma and self-will.
Instinct - A person's ability to focus on survival.  Affects perception, and gives bonuses to all on-the-fly skills, such as combat and reaction.  Higher levels may give preemptive feelings similar to a sixth sense.



It's designed so that a fighter won't go 100% Strength and Endurance - He might dip into intelligence to gain experience faster, or Instinct to apply a round bonus to all of his combat skills.  I think it's important to have attributes that affect all or most skills, and having skills that rely on at least two attributes.  Acrobatics, for example, would rely on both Dexterity and Speed, since you have to be able to maneuver your body accurately and get it into place in time to perform certain stunts.

The 3 divisions with 3 subdivisions is just because I like the number 3.  You can take out, combine, or change whatever you like, though.

[Psyco Jelly]

Physical

Strength
Speed
Coordination
Vitality
Attractiveness

Mental

Intellect
Perception
Education
Literacy
Leadership

I may elaborate on these later

[Acid]

Well my play-tested sci-fi post-apocalyptic RPG uses eight base attributes and some derived attributes:
Base:
Strength - self explanatory
Stamina - self explanatory₂
Reactions - useful for combat-oriented characters, one's ability to react fast (used when calcualting to-hit values, driving vehicles and pickpocketing)
Agility - litheness, gymnastic ability
Intellect - general knowledge of stuff, memory potential
Senses - awareness and perception, also empathy and intuition
Will - ability to resist mental pressure (e.g. when being talked into doing something teh character doesn't want), bravery and morale
Personality - oratory ability, charisma

Derived:
Damage Threshold - SORT OF like hitpoints, but ability to defend oneself describes this pretty well too.
Pain Threshold - if your DT falls below this, extreme pain starts messing your shit up.
Stun Threshold - ability to move and react in combat, sort of like the amount of beating you can take beforing getting winded or becoming unconscious.

From my experience, these values describe a character well without making the system over-complicated. Hope this helps you in any way.

[G-Flex]

I'm sort of a fan of how the attributes in the (new) World of Darkness are set up.

They're basically arranged on a table, where the columns are "physical", "social", and "mental" and the rows are "power", "finesse", and "resistance". In that way, it's sort of made regular. How well that works is a matter of opinion, but you basically have it like this:

	Physical	Social	Mental
Power	Strength	Presence	Intelligence
Finesse	Dexterity	Manipulation	Wits
Resistance	Stamina	Composure	Resolve

Food for thought, at least. Also, I'm bad at tables.

[PTTG??]

Ok, right now I like that the best. I'd have to play with it to see if it could describe a good assortment of characters, but it is the general direction I want to go.

I might combine mental and social, though. Unfortunately, that ends up being D&D...

[Knight of Fools]

Just remember that D&D could have a solid set of statistics.

Their execution is definitely off, though - I don't think that any statistic should be useless, like it is with the D&D system.  Everybody should have a reason to invest in something as ambiguous as Charisma, if such a statistic exists.  If it only has one use, only people specializing in that one use will use it.  It'll become invisible and boring for everyone else.

[Shade-o]

G-Flex's is a very good idea.

^
It should matter, but the ability to delegate a role to whoever is best for it means that the 18 Charisma bard takes the diplomacy, the 18 Strength barbarian engages in the door-bashing, and the 18 intelligence wizard solves the riddles.

If players were unable to do that, either from being in a small group/solo, or simply not being able to choose due to circumstance, then you would have things like the barbarian with no charisma, intelligence or wisdom being run out of town for being incapable of integrating into society, or the wizard with no strength, dexterity or constitution dying when they try to lift something too heavy.

That, or stop min-maxing.

[Max White]

Do we get to bring alignments in? I mean your alighment is an attribute...
So for starters, the standard two...
Good - Neutral - Evil
Lawful - Neutral - Chaotic

But let's get some more interesting ones in!
Constructive - Neutral - Destructive
A constructive person does things that benfit themselves, while a destructive person does things to disadvantage another. So take a death knight and a necromancer, from no specific game, just going off steriotype. Both lawful evil. The death knight would look to kill an entire village of innocent peasents because it is what he does. A necromancer would try to kill as many as possible, but he's major objective is to raise the corpses into he's own army. Neutral is, as always in the middle.

Religious - Neutral - Scientific
A religous person looks for a higher force for windom and guidance, while a scientific person looks for reson and understanding. So take a cleric, druid and mage. All lawful good. The cleric prays to a diety for their magic, and preaches their ways. The mage spends many hours trying to understand magic, and it's propertys. The druid cares less for the sorce of their power, but rather just draws it from the nature aorund them.

[G-Flex]

G-Flex's is a very good idea.

Just to clarify, I only regurgitated someone else's system. If anyone needs more explanation or description, though, I'll gladly give it.

Religious - Neutral - Scientific

If you're going to go with stuff like this, I suggest branching out into a few different personality-oriented things. I don't know if "religious <--> scientific" is a good idea, since there are plenty of people interested in both.

[Muz]

Heh, I'm working on a set of attributes for an open-ended RPG myself. If you want to discuss something together, it'd be great, it's kinda boring designing a game system solo

Personally, I go for minimum detail, then branch the attributes into more detail depending on what is needed. Like if it's more diplomacy heavy, focus on diplomatic skills. If it's more combat heavy, put more focus in physical skills and damage system. If it's a crafting type of RPG, put more focus on fine details, character knowledge, etc.

Physical power
> Strength
>> (BodyPart) Strength
> Constitution
>> Toughness (injury resistance)
>> Stamina
>> Immune system (radiation, poison, disease)

Mental Abilities
> Willpower
>> Confidence
>> Resilience
> Learning

Body Control
> Agility
>> Reflexes
>> Reactions
>> Flexibility
> Dexterity
>> (BodyPart) Dexterity

Social
> Leadership
> Charm
>> Allure
>> Communications

Mystical
> Arcane
>> Magic specialty
> ESP
> Religious

It should apply for quite a lot of different types of games. Keep it as simple as possible, and branch one skill into more skills only if that attribute doesn't provide enough detail.

[squeakyReaper]

	Physical	Social	Mental
Power	Strength	Presence	Intelligence
Finesse	Dexterity	Manipulation	Wits
Resistance	Stamina	Composure	Resolve

I like this.  A lot.  I imagine them being explained like so:

Strength:  Pure physical strength.  The first punch you throw in a fight would be pure strength, as would lifting a heavy object for a short period of time.

Dexterity:  Your ability to deftly use your body.  Someone who can do the splits would be high in this, as would someone who could walk a tight rope.

Stamina:  Your body's will to keep on going.  Running a marathon would strain this, as would catching your breath after a fight.

Presence:  When you give a speech, you want to be heard- your ability to raise morale and speak would be weighed against this.

Manipulation:  If you're trying to convince someone of something, this would be used, such as bartering or lying.

Composure:  A group of brigands are upon you; high composure would allow you to keep a straight face in telling them why they shouldn't mug you.  Important for keeping your cool while being taunted, resisting intimidation and appearing ruthless.

Intelligence:  Your ability to study and answer things.  As someone put, the "wizard stat", since its your power to learn.

Wits:  I imagine this being more combat like.  A fencer must gauge his foes guards and patterns, and uses his wits to find an opening.  Being tested on things you never seen before would also use this.

Resolve:  The anti-wizard stat.  If you're set upon by depression, your resolve will see you through- if a magician tries to hypnotize you with his gaze, it's no different.

I might actually use this my self...  hmm.

[G-Flex]

You're more or less on the right track, yeah. Composure and Resolve are probably the two least obvious ones, maybe. Wits is basically the ability to think on your feet and be clever, in case that isn't clear.