Attribute Pools

Recently I've started the move towards streamlining modifiers. The previous versions of Lycadican were very much reminiscent of AD&D 2nd Edition. Moving forward I'm incorporating more modern trends in gaming and one of the things I've done is to remove many modifiers by introducing Attribute Pools. With the attributes themselves I've merged a couple and dropped a couple. The remaining Attributes that do have modifiers are based on the value of the attribute itself and apply once, at character creation time. Modifiers that use to be based on attributes, such as a bonus to skill rolls for a high intelligence have been removed.

Each Attribute now has a pool (equal to the value of the Attribute.) Points in the pool can be used to reduce the difficulty of actions or to increase the chances of success by providing bonuses to rolls. This reflects effort being used to ensure success. I've also gotten rid of my version of 'Saving Throws' and made them attribute checks against the current value of the attribute pool. So if you've really exerted yourself that day, and you need a resistance roll versus poison it will be more challenging than if you had just taken it easy.

Here is an example. A character with a Constitution Attribute value of 9 would have 9 points in the Pool. If during play on one particular day that player used 3 points form the Constitution Pool to lower the difficulty level of a Feat (which would have had to be Constitution related) then his Constitution Pool is sitting at 6. Suppose this character unwittingly drinks some poison and needs to make a Constitution Check to avoid becoming paralyzed. Normally he would have had to roll under a 9, but now he has to roll under at 6.

In addition, I'm considering requiring abilities and powers to have a cost in Attribute Points. The only challenge here is that because I have no level system (beyond individual skills, abilities and powers) if I do this there may need to be some mechanism to increase the maximum value of an Attribute Pool as characters become more powerful.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!