I have never read this section of the rules and felt comfortable with my understanding of the information.

In the Character Generation paragraph on page 2 it explains the the scores "represents the character's Strength, Intelligence, Charisma, Knowledge, Dexterity, Stamina...." so that lists 6 characteristics.

Following that is a listing of definitions for the basic game player characteristics that include Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma, Stamina (noted as optional and there is also a note about AKA Constitution), and Health. Again, it appears that there are 6 characteristics BUT the two lists of characteristics do not match.

Near the bottom of page 2 there is a note about generating the scores and it says to "do this for each of the five basic player characteristics and for the two optional characteristics if they are used.". That statement makes it clear that there are 5 official characteristics and 2 optional characteristics for a total of 7 attributes. The only characteristic listed as "optional" is Stamina.

One would think that examining character write ups from an official supplement would help. I have access to a few characters from one of these supplements and it lists the following characteristics in the write ups: Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Charisma, Constitution, Stamina, and Health. That's another list of seven characteristics but that list also has both Stamina and Constitution. Why when Stamina is "AKA Constitution" in the paragraph above?

I don't think I am the only one to have problems understanding what should be one of the most basic elements of game play. Does anybody have any thoughts, additions, corrections, etc.?

This one had me puzzled as well.

My original understanding was that the core 5 attributes are:

Strength
Intelligence
Charisma
Knowledge
Dexterity
Health

The Optional abitilities are:

Stamina
?


My understanding was always that Stamina and Constitution were a single ability. I don't have the books handy at the moment, but I was wondering if the second mysterious optional ability was a reference to one of the derived abilties such as Reputation?

Also, is it not a bit odd that Stamina is referred to as optional when it is ?

-Havard

Taking another look at the characteristics, here is a breakdown of their inclusion among the sources:

There are 5 characteristics shared between the intro, descriptions, and the published product.
Strength
Intelligence
Charisma
Dexterity
Stamina

Two characteristics shows up in two spots.
Constitution (technically once as an alternate name for Stamina and once as a separate characteristic)
Health

One characteristic is only mentioned once.
Knowledge

That adds up to a total of 8 characteristics with varying degrees of clarity about their use or inclusion. I can see no problem at all with the first five being used. Looking at the other three characteristics bring up a few questions:

Is there a substantial difference between Stamina, Constitution, and Health?

Is Intelligence and Knowledge the same thing in the game?

Just a little food for thought.

Thanks for clearing this up for us Charlie :)

Having had a chance to read up a little myself now, I have some more thoughts on the matter.

Knowledge is not an attribute, but is linked to Education/Training. Basically what would be called skills in some other systems.

Constitution is as you say just a different name for Stamina, so it should be dropped altogether. The fact that it is used just adds confusion.

Health is useful for determining HP recovery, while Stamina is used to determine HP (along with Str and Dex) as well as determining how many Combat Rounds a person can fight before he suffers from fatigue. As I am likely to ignore the Fatigue Rules anyway, I think I will stick with Stamina and drop Health. In cases where Health is used, I will then refer to Stamina instead.

-Havard

I was looking over this yesterday and came to the realization that the hit point formula is part of the optional Stamina rule. If you don't use Stamina then you have a number of hit points equal to your size; 10 for humans, 8 for elves etc.