Posted in General

My last post discussed why the Constitution score needs to be eliminated from the game. This post will discuss the official house rule for Savage Worlds.

THE TRAITS

In Savage Worlds, characters normally have five traits: Strength, Vigor, Agility Smarts, and Spirit. With this house rule, they instead have four: Brawn, Agility, Smarts, and Spirit. At character creation, all Traits start at a d4, as normal, and characters have four points to distribute to them. This number may be adjusted with Hindrances as normal.

The major impact to the rules system is replacing individual instances of “Strength” and “Vigor” with “Brawn.” The most immediately important changes are as follows:

• Toughness is equal to 2 + half a character’s Brawn.

• Melee weapon damage is equal to Brawn + the weapon’s damage.

• Edge prerequisites that rely on Vigor or Strength instead rely on Brawn.

• Climbing is based on the Brawn Trait.

The overall effect of such is that character archetypes that would formerly rely on a high Strength/Vigor receive a boost in power. A single advancement in Brawn increases their hardiness and the damage they inflict. For other characters, this house rule gives them a slight increase in power, though an archer, diplomat, or wizard is unlikely to see a considerable increase in power. In the long term, characters may increase their Traits higher than what they could normally, owing to the reduction of total Traits. (Remember, you may only advance a Trait once per rank.)

MONSTER TRAIT ADJUSTMENTS

How should the GM handle monster Traits with this change? Large monsters have slight variations on their Toughness due to Size, and many of them have considerably higher Strength scores. To make life easier on yourself, ignore the change on the monsters’ end. The change to Strength/Vigor is for the benefit of the players. As long as things are working on their end, the game should run smoothly.