The interdependence of attributes

There are 9 attributes listed : Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, Dexterity, Vitality, Stamina, Agility, Wisdom and Luck.

In each interdependence link, I write about its logic, its implementation, justifications (which for both of them, the first passage covers for most of the links) and a logical trade off.

First interdependence link:
Strength - Constitution and Vitality.
Imagine a brittle tiny child, swinging a huge axe left to right. The first thing that comes to mind is that the child is hurting himself by doing something beyond his capability. That is what this link is all about.

Strength should be in tandem with constitution (think muscles) and vitality (think body). Eg. 50 Str 30 Con 20 Vit.

Any points beyond that would be translated in damage which hurts the character.

What is the justification for this? At first glance, this link is both unnecessary and stupid in traditional games. I seek to explain this below.

My first reasoning for this is to introduce a hint to the players, that they would face risks of gimping their character in the future. When they would earn attribute points less quickly later, the time needed to spend on correcting it would be long and suffering.

The second reasoning is to introduce tactics. When a player meets someone who looks weak but wields a disproportionate weapon, they could wait until he weakens himself before finishing him off. (It might be possible to compute body size and features to their underlying attributes.)

Basically, I want bring in the concept of opportunity costs, or trade offs. A player who goes overboard will truly be unique and powerful, in exchange for less survivability. It may appeal to some players who loves to deal huge damage, and so long as he is able to win before he wears himself out, he would be happy.

Intelligence - Stamina and Vitality
Intelligence refers to the capability to wield magic, regardless what kind it is, be it dark. holy, elemental or spirits. As Stamina forms to replace cool downs, having a proper amount is needed to use magic over an extended time. And finally, Vitality, as always, is the body's ability to perform.

Justification as above.

Constitution - Vitality and Stamina
I guess this is pretty straightforward. But what happens if they aren't in tandem? It makes no sense to get hurt wouldn't it?

Back to common sense and imagination, anyone would assume that a huge thing, those bigger than vehicles or houses, would move very slowly in comparison to a child hobbit who could sneak and run off like thieves.

In that sense, the penalty would be reduced speeds, movement, attack and others.

Dexterity - Agility and Stamina.
Dexterity is the quickness of the hands to use weapons masterfully. As such, the body must be quick (Agility) and a sudden burst of movements drains the body of stamina. Think in the sense that when we say a person is dexterous, we meant his fingers and hands, while agility refers to the limbs of the body, it would make this passage more easily understood.

Let's imagine when Bruce Lee swung his nunchaku around his body and under his arms, if his body(arms) weren't fast enough to catch and dodge the nunchaku, he would have lots more bruises everywhere. As we all know. bruises can be easily ignored until we feel the pain. And we usually feel the pain whenever we want to do something other than basic body movements. Formulating on this, a reduction of skill level is proposed. It is relevant because to a quick and nimble person, what matters to them are their skills.

Vitality - Wisdom and Stamina
It is like stating the obvious, to have a strong body that provides energy, one must have the wisdom to eat the proper foods and to exercise regularly.

So if someone who takes his vitality for granted, and does not take steps to keep it functioning well, the body would soon fail him one day, sooner than later. However, it would be extreme to kill the character for exceeding the cap. Instead, the regeneration it gets from the attribute would be limited to the maximum of Wisdom and Stamina.

Side note: It would be interesting to see healers - who focus on Wisdom, may opt of a lot of Vitality to capitalize on huge regeneration speed rather than Constitution for HP.

Stamina - Strength and Intelligence
I chose Stamina to replace cool downs, and the skills who uses the stamina bars, derives it's damage mainly from Str and Int. So, this link should be obviously needed.

It is inappropriate to levy a penalty for having too many Stamina points. The reason being that, if he have too many points, it is already suffering by dealing low damage through skills.

However, this link should still have something relevant to prove its existence. One such method would be to have skills cost less Stamina points, for every tier (range to be decided) which Stamina exceeds Str and Int combined.

This is something like reverse psychology. A player may want to enjoy that benefit, in which case he would bind himself into low but frequent damage output. Which could be a penalty since fights do not last very long.

Agility - Stamina and Wisdom
I cannot really explain the reasoning behind Wisdom in the logical sense, other than that one must know how to utilize body momentum to move around quickly. The actual reason for that is to induce healers to also take up Agility, to substitute their fragile selves with a good chance at running and escaping from danger zones.

Having too much Agility should sap Stamina points. That is understandable, especially after asking a marathon runner to sprint than jog/run the whole length instead.

Wisdom - Intelligence and Vitality
First and foremost, I must explain that I view that Wisdom comes from using power correctly. So, Int comes before Wisdom, of which Int bases itself on Vitality. Thus, Wisdom is based on Int and Vit.

We usually call those hermits who live away from villages as sages, people of great wisdom and for some, they were said that they could even see the future. These hermits avoids material wealth and power, for they are illusions in the grand truth about the world.

For a character who have become very wise ( frankly, more than Int and Vit), they would have reduced defense. ( Interesting and weird penalty IMO)

Luck would not have any interdependence links, because I intend it to be the wild card, to represent the random and unexpected things.

In a brief recap, the links are:
Strength - Constitution and Vitality
Intelligence - Stamina and Vitality
Constitution - Vitality and Stamina
Dexterity - Agility and Stamina.
Vitality - Wisdom and Stamina
Stamina - Strength and Intelligence
Agility - Stamina and Wisdom
Wisdom - Intelligence and Vitality

Str (1x), Int (2x), Con (1x), Dex (0x), Vit (4x), Sta (5x), Agi (1x), Wis (2x).

That line above shows how many times each were used to cap others.

Dexterity is not used at all. It's because having too much of it will result in characters attacking super fast, and also of Opportunity Strike which mimics Critical Strike. It would result in possibly imbalanced characters.

Str, Con and Agi were used once. In most cases, physical attacks contributes most of the dealt damage, so they are important enough already. In my opinion, having too much health defeats most of the hard worked efforts put into choosing and learning skills, and also reduces reliance on teamwork. As for Agility, quick movements should belong to the realm of players who are fragile but are good in skills, and not for lazy players.

Int and Wis are needed twice. Since I intend to pit them against each other, it is appropriate that both gets the same amount of representation. Int are needed in Sta and Wis. Wis are needed in Vit and Agility. INT - This may result in mages having extended amount of battle time (Sta) or casting amazing holy spells (Wis). WIS - We may see healers being able to heal consistently without running out of mana (Vit) and being able to keep themselves alive (Agi). I believe that the allocation are placed nicely, in that they really provide and define mages and healers as they are.

Vit and Sta are needed most widely. As for Vit, because I had taken the regeneration away from other attributes (mainly HP from Con and MP from Int), it is required that their importance is returned by being used widely. The same reasoning applies for Sta, because all skills shares the same cool down pool, aka stamina bar. VIT - are properly spread out between melee and spell users. Sta - are widely spread out among those who uses skills often, with both Con and Vit needing Stamina to ensure that everyones would get it too. In addition to that, Stamina is linked directly to the 'damage' attributes, Str and Int.